http://www.janetsternburgphoto.com
http://www.janetsternburgphoto.com/IveBeenWalking.html
http://janetsternburg.com/
This episode was recorded on 5 November 2021 using Zoom and edited by Paula Blair with Audacity.
Music: commonGround by airtone (c) copyright 2018 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial (3.0) license. http://dig.ccmixter.org/files/airtone/58703
hello dear listeners welcome to the official cultures stuff podcast where we take into different areas of the parts media and creative industries I'm Paul the planner and in this episode I have the most fascinating conversation which I hope is one of many ways Janet stern Burke as you hear Janet is a writer and photographer based in Los Angeles we talk mainly about hi Janet came to photography website really planning to be back in nineteen ninety yes as a mode of expression or thinking or being in the world while walking while going for EMS walks around cities we get into a quite a lot of detail and thinking through what those acts of walking and photographing in teal and trivial butts we really only scratched the surface so I hope China will return when her next project comes to fruition this timer me in the talking up bites her photographic NSA back I've been walking and some of her earlier work but she's already working on the same sets haven't revealed themselves to her as we record I must say I feel so lucky to be making these kinds of connections and I'm really glad that you can share them with me as well I hope you learn as much as both down and I do from this talk actually that's a really nice thing is that down it felt that that was important for her to say that she really learned something from talking to me today and I love that I love that this is happening on the show before hand you over a massive thanks to our glorious past trends over at Peachtree on dot com forward slash AP cultures but he supports and all the ways I struggle really to keep this go weighing just a quick reminder as well that all the important links for this episode and if you want to become somebody help site to show those are all in the show notes for every you're accessing this episodes if you hear any binding a toll in the pocket cranes I think I should manage she cried the mites but %HESITATION if you hear any binding or popping noises I'm recording this on the face of November twenty twenty one I live in England it's going moderate there with fireworks and all sorts might make her next door neighbors it's very quiet and there because they have a beautiful Kali and he's not been having a fun week so you know I I think they've taken I think a lot of the dog owning places and hence the her his or her off somewhere else having a break so apologies if there any banging noises are coming sorry that I haven't managed to get out of a spot it's not time of the year and I thought it was worth mentioning I was going to leave this until a quieter day but I'm on my own may as well do something I am a bit scratchy because I've been talking all day I can't concentrate on anything else so I thought get just get this done while I'm while over there anyway just thanks so much for listening and please do check out John it's website on her backs and perhaps even days out while you listen to us describing them enjoy this episode Janet Sternberg I'm so delighted you're joining me today on the official cultures you've been trying to set this up for a while a nicer finally saying our recording and it's just such a pleasure and an honor to have you very warm welcome have completely lovely and that yes we have had a back and forth before we finally got to this but I think it's been good enough where you're not we send each other things we talked a little bit from our respective homes you in Ireland now I'm in England's women get enjoy so I have a sort of stealing that not even this is not that formal it feels simpatico nice so Janet you got loads of experience I think we're mainly going to talk about your more recent photography years got it back I just a moment cold iced and walking and photography and I say back but you've been a writer for a long time he's been a researcher you park Jan Feldman media and all sorts of areas so you just got a wealth of experience that we can learn from and I'm so excited to get into a lot of issues that come up straight your work today would you be happy to give my listeners a bit of an overview about you and how you would like to describe yourself without be all right it would be although it presents a problem because I've really never been in England at school getting myself no no I'm quite serious I I I think it's actually a bit of an issue because people who do multiple things they either have to condense themselves into a single description and that makes people happy because they know how cool you are it's it's clear however if you do a number of different things often more or less at the same time it reminds me of something that I read that I find very still interesting there was a writer whose name at this moment is %HESITATION escaping me but it will come back to me and from the nineteen forties who was both a photographer and writer and she did a very beautiful book of photography on the left side of the page and a novel on the right and there was every page and it was not illustrative it was just somehow it just the right oblique angle to each up there and he went back to his publisher for hopefully a new book and the publisher said the world is not ready for an ambi dexterous person maybe said writer maybe he said artist but you take the point and I think it is not working many many more people especially those a lot younger than I am in fact doing multiple things that are not self conscious about it since you asked I am and your what as said to describe myself well I think it well in terms of work although there are many other angles to come into about myself but in terms of work ethic of actually %HESITATION sensibility maybe is better than engaging work I think I've always been a writer I mean was a little girl my mother says March first workers work I don't know if that's true but it's a nice will lead she started fairly wide mother gesture when I was six years old I wrote something a barrister to say what it was but I will I've gone to she's fantasia movie remember and I was so thrilled by it that I came back and asked my mother for paper and pencil the reason I'm embarrassed that wasn't true really that much my first writing was movie Curtis it was more about how much I loved it actually so that's been my intention given many many years when I ran away from that identity I do other things but underneath the beating heart has always been the word and I've always been interested in the word and the image and I've made some forays in that direction I did are still many years ago on the writer Virginia will short term for public television and there was an actor who is evoking Welch not literally playing her but there is quite beautiful landscape not England like England and voice over work courage and after I did that I realized that there has to be a better way of doing it because the visual and the words for each other your room and there were too many maybe like I'm doing now but too many rich and so trying to solve the problem of imagine board is another feature of my life and I think I might have made a real attempt at it recently with this new book we can come back to that but to finally end up the saga not really in nineteen ninety eight I finished a book and it is due to ten years in the writing which is a little bit much but then again you asked me to describe it so I'd like to try to get it right and I was in a very funny position that was new to me the book was set in the past historical and personal and I looked up and I couldn't see what was around me what was in the present I could see it but I couldn't feel it is something and the upshot of this is I went to our second home in Mexico and set myself a little practice of walking every day without a goal without thinking and I saw a window and I liked what was in it and I thought I want to take a photograph first time I've ever thought that and %HESITATION I went to the town square and the only thing that was available was a disposable camera and a lot more to say about that if you want but my life since nineteen ninety eight has been very much photographer writer writer photographer and whatever else you want to add in to talk where she is leading the pack small that's really informative Janet I think that actually sets and it gives us a really fell picture and we can start getting into some details fire when I was reading straight that piece that you're talking about where you describe all of this happening it really struck me that you were because it's very autobiographical and it feels that your photography and stop going that direction as well it's a way of writing the south it's a way of reflecting your style and I feel that there's a lot of South Park teacher coming three and very subtle ways your photography so this wondering if it's not something you have been thinking about aids or what you thought up I thought well I route to be honest I'd love to know how you see that but I will respond briefly I think the through line through all of this is that the way I'm in the world is as a Polish you know they can sound so highfalutin you know %HESITATION %HESITATION addict this poetic that I don't mean it that way it's just how I feel and see the world in terms of being moved I don't know how else to shared without sounding good day and I've always loved autobiography in general not memoir I don't like that would warn bitch because I refused to call one of my books memoir which is sort of stupid because it you know booksellers remember when they were bookstores shelves they didn't know where it went but I really felt memoir and I've said this before so excuse me if that sounds canned but it's me more me me me me me me me we are no that doesn't interest me what does interest me is all the levels and prismatic facets of the cells the cells third time inspection history and connections to other kinds of thinking so I kind of think that everything I've done in church home grocery is as a visual Polish and I think as such the images reveal that fashion having said that I would like to know how you seen an element of an autobiographical self in the work can I ask you of course yes absolutely when I read your text and when I look at your images it comes across to me that it's high you see ed Scriven ye the salvinia ways that you can start seeing boasts the world's and yourself and the world that's really what strikes me by a lot of your images I really love you telling your own story a bite hi you think him to begin dating tests it's really spontaneous it's very much you know you you strike out you go for a walk with site a real practice beside it direction was IT destination you're just doing the acts of walking so it's quite performative in life I'm not sense and I'm really interested in life performance artist while so it kind of takes me dying not area at it's sort of a bite life and arts and arts and life and about play and not really planning anything but spontaneity rose you know contingency rose and that idea of you just felt so compelled suddenly to take a photograph and to just make an image either forty receding I think that's where to me you're documenting how you were saying something out last time that's what you felt compelled to day and then doctor finding right where can I get a camera and so he got a little disposable cameras because that's it's available to you and then you discovering that there are limitations I thought that's a really special box of limitations and again not hi you're seeing the world's and making art out of something very every day not ideal really strikes me as on again it's for me not very much relates to the the art lice relation maths and life performance %HESITATION so there's a life nice there's a spontaneity to the photography and it's not planned date stash but you D. S. specific poetry poetry come see us in those races while Rory Burr evoking an image and repeating out into words some high so I'm really starting to see high at your images are poetic and not sunset if you know what I mean so so to me that's where it's autobiographical toy you say yeah that's helping you realize how you see the world so it's an official culture center it's a way of saying but it specifically your way of saying and that moment I thought time and not play yes and I think there's something really fascinating if I thought that's really worse delving into quite a bit well I hope a lot that I can get some sort of a transcript of our conversation what you're saying is something I would like to have and to go back to and I think it's very astute when I hear about elements of autobiography I changed things somewhat more narrow lead that you're because I'm not a documentarian and any way at all and I think that this question of how I see which of course then devolves to how you see or anybody else to see but that is kind of exactly what I care about think of a few more things to say about what you just said and one is that I always follow my own path and sometimes most of the time is able I think I just I think I can say at this stage I'm seventy eight that it worked out you know like everybody many a bump in the road but I have said well you know maybe I'll get an MFA in writing this is when I was in New York and lived in Manhattan for many many years before coming out west and well maybe I'll do that I'd already worked for some years in the quote unquote other non academic part of the world and I went up to Columbia and I sat in on a class and everybody in the class was looking toward the professor who is a very well known published horse and it seemed like we were kids and they were vying for his approval and they were competing against each other and I walked out and I had a sort of a modest migraine headaches on the way back walking to my apartment in the Upper West Side and I thought no just that's not me it's not for me I can't do that so I didn't something else I studied with one person publishers work I admired because I thought that his approach which was very straightforward would be very useful for me because I can get fancy I don't want to get fancy so everything is beautiful match and so there's no orthodoxy in my life which I realize religiously lately but it cuts to the next thing two more things one is the idea of starting an art form late in life which is what I did with photography because I love the way you're describing the spontaneity but I think that can only come at some level when you don't have a great big critics standing on your shoulders you know we've all had bad words listening tools and been in the world of art region for awhile and that that's really great about we live for you can just say okay I can I'll just do it I'll just do it I'm not going to subject it to a whole set of questions about whether I can whether Ryan from mission whether I'm good enough and that's really something I wish I'd known younger I think would be a great thing to have his young life your dog birthday but it didn't happen later and the last thing the third thing is I think a little bit of what you're talking about is what I love and think of in whole or treat whether it's one word or image or whatever and that's our world it's a show should emerge room not I mean I really love documentary work and being here it actually is a form of witnessing political and otherwise but that's not what I'm doing I'm going %HESITATION and without thinking a lot about it it's like yes this this is something that really I know it's in my territory and it relates to this and it relates to that none of which I'm thinking at the time but it's in a social way of being in the world and making leaps rather than logical connections so I think that's where that comes in from Israel Warrnambool many parts sorry not a toll no that's what we're here for it to talk all of this all right that's exactly what we're here for I just wanted to pick up on what you're saying obey this idea of being late in life in coming to some saying because I think this is something we need to talk about it more and more as a society really is what does that even mean to be are your mates career or emerging I really good friends of mine she said they no longer with us but she was in her seventies and she made this point to many many times that it's never too late to begin any art form and we're constantly emerging and evolving and becoming a hero so it it's a really interesting thing to say goodbye it's being late in life and the way it has this connotation alls I didn't come to the cinema and I I wanna just troubled out a little bit because I think will actually become the things when they're ready for them and then there shouldn't really be a timer I'm not if you know what I mean so I just sort of one that say click dot points a little bit because it seems like you've come see photography at a point where you were ready for it and it was ready for you okay and that was on your terms you know so I I just think you know that's really important so not going to go the pine trees don't have to dictate to me hi I'm Megan hi I create some high I see things and how may be in the world you know so I think it just made me think about I don't know if you have a response why do or should do should there's a really interesting article in the last month in The New Yorker magazine by the renowned and he's writing about how we broadly speaking obviously the west and certainly the United States as a culture we like to think well it's generation Z. your generation extra which we attribute certain qualities and by the same token he talks about well we like to think of the sixties and the seventies and characterized those initial your way but he was pointing out first of all with the generational thing shifts and changes and it's also a vast generalizations talk about well generations G. is more benevolent and more political you know it's it's just a way it's like saying I'm a writer as opposed to I'm a person who does many different things it's a way to have a handle on the world but it's not true handle at least that's what I feel very strongly reading him and I have felt it at all other times too it's a way of being read Dr of the complexity that is in the world there is this phenomenon that people of Britain about about late like Sri H. everything and isn't it interesting that Dillinger Corning had Alzheimer's and he could paint so wonderfully when it was in this whatever eighties years yes %HESITATION I can't so I think that's pretty interesting what drops away perhaps not that Alzheimer's is something one wants and that's not what I mean obviously but but that what drops away is I think a bit of what I was talking about earlier and that strictures that one is imposed on one cell and there is a freedom and %HESITATION what's greater luxury in life is there than to feel free and that's shared I think I am recognizing something that everybody recognizes especially if they're self reflective or or somewhere to almost intuitive and that is what they really are sh dangers that one has to recognize and I think for quite awhile now I'm gonna be very personal those of you who are listening and I feel like it you've got a lovely face and next a deal that I can be that but you're quite awhile through a complex of reasons parents home life whatever I wanted to be known and I wanted to have my work life or admired nothing is terribly wrong with that I was never any good at pushing my work in the world but it has itself gone into the world to one very small but real degree and it's been really didn't recently one of my books the archives for it was acquired by a %HESITATION wonderful our client is a great great pleasure you know it will go on but right now I am in the middle of another stage and I'm trying to figure it out when I say I'm the middle I'm you know I'm not I wouldn't either side but it certainly feels as though I don't need any of that M. at doing it and watching it is running counter to what's right for me now and I think Colbert played a big role at mac because for a year I was able and again please anybody who's listening I do know how unbelievably fortunate I was during this year and most people or not but I have an apartment I have dogs euro and in no way to consider equivalent shoes I have a husband I have a life that was to a large extent on zoom but the ability not the ability the freedom not to have to be social just to be quiet and go and look and read me back to what it was like when I was nine years old when I would check paper and pencil and whatever things %HESITATION option this monastery across the street from us I'm Jewish monastery have this tremendous a war because it was a miracle very beautiful S. self conscious about being Jewish in the middle of all of that but that's neither here nor there I was kind of exalted when I would go up there and that's what I was feeling that you're a collision that it was a return to that little girl and she's who I want now to get to stage I mean it's obviously I can't catch her again but I can look toward off happy finding her again so right now I'm involved in during a ceremony things to make the book happen in the world I've been walking macbook one Amazon of terror moving right along you know when I have some wonderful events coming up I'm doing a book signing at a gallery very good photography gallery a week from Sunday and they asked me who I'd like to be in discussion with and it was an easy answer but aren't one person said yes you read genius I think Antonio dimazio minerals scientist whose work is having rate really important to me and then we became friends so this that was a thing on top of batch so this is by no means a complaint what could be lovelier when sitting in a terrific gallery talking in front of people and exchanging ideas with Antonio dimazio so it's not a complaint it's a kind of we know what people used to go around with forked sticks looking for water dousing your no it's like I'm doubting myself she wrote that's a fussing about it cutting it and I really understand what you mean when you're connecting west that young version of yourself that still in there somewhere I think well maybe a lot of us have done not I. P. I hear about a lot of people discovering their inner child and dating it might sound strange but an acting styles parenting and trying to have a connection with their young south again so I really understand what you mean when you say that that's a lovely way to go up I did as well as wondering if we can talk about it by the technology because I think what's interesting here is almost a lock of tack and your photography and that's the point Hey it comes to mind as well you talk about eight the sense of freedom that you have and to me I think that our autonomy you have a choice to be autonomous and just folding lock back into the idea of autobiography and it being a bite the cells do you there south discovery happening here there's several action their self awareness happening you know it's really fascinating to hear that you're discovering a lot about yourself there's an emergence of yourself coming straight and not just yet S. C. H. but yet previous agents as well as she as you look back as well as in the here and now I am sick forward so there's there's really something and not I think but again I think just thinking about the cameras that you've been using so previously you've been using disposable cameras and may even then and she iPhones and I mean we very much associates the smartphone way taking self fees E. date out but in a very different way you know it's a very different way of approaching sells porchetta SLC or at marking yourself in the worlds marking your journeys you know the unplanned nature of your journeys I think and I've been walking when when you set and ready B. Weston's MHS and you start to recognize actually there's some patterns here there are different shapes that are emerging there's hi you like it hi space is taken up how you see yourself and reflective surfaces and you just might catch those you might see yourself an M. car window being reflected its or you'll see just a snippet of somebody going by on the skateboards and deal take a fractional image of that person or you'll see some water but through a hole in a bit of concrete you know it's how you frame sayings and and highly stylized exceeded as well by their relatively restrictive framing of the phone or is a disposable camera and you talk quite a bit of by each focused on high you don't actually have control over focus on its may be quite a flattened image and not sort of saying so again it's coming back said it's how you say but also we can't really change the focus of our ice you we see what we say and that's a bit like comedies communists C. as well they can't really do anything T. tactical with holiday see eyes are %HESITATION and G. ready if that was the human eye which I think is really lovely I think again you you're sort of back to basics what you're really pushing the limits of dot BSX technology if that makes sense I was wondering if you have any further sought some mountain what you're thinking it's a match and if that relates to anything else that's come up in your stinking sense there I do sure the first thing I just want to go back to the image of the US skateboarder which is just his legs in a window above because I just want to talk briefly about feeling the way that emotion becomes a feeling to be more precise and just re reading to Moscow because he was black I was wandering around and there's a large flows of nearby and even Google Tokyo downtown and there's the Japanese American national museum and then down this long sh it's really a pedestrian street but it's quite a wide one is usually on the contemporary arch and it's usually has lots of people and during colder there was nobody and when I saw the pair of legs on the skateboard first I recognized that it was a remarkable image because above that is glass that is should be reflective and it almost makes the upper half of him look not only is though he's only partially remember almost as though he's bursting into flames because of that kind of rate of goals of what some call him and then the strange brick subside it's Jeremy with the feeling was first and he's alone he's a skateboarder usually something which challenge some way in the context there was no context and so I just want to begin by acknowledging the something that I think is the spoken enough about in photography and that is the emotion of taking a picture of the feeling of checking the picture I think perhaps it's some not part of the tradition of straight talk or street which has been to a very large extent not completely by a long shot in the hands of men and I think men are not that comfortable talking about feelings that may be archaic so be it but I I do think it's time for that to enter into the world of singing the other thing is you know I usually very very clean I have read this respect for people who really are technically magnificent and there are a lot of them Mr tell your story and sometimes I prefer to say always confusing well not really a photographer %HESITATION an image maker because that die offs my hat to the people who work within the traditional exquisite means of photography and I do in a sense I mean there's a lot of composition is a lot of howling trolls there's a lot of juxtaposition over traditional elements of photography all the necessary ones I work with so it's not like I'm in nine weeks in World War during around going back briefly did the disposable because it has no direct the you know this you know because there's only automatic focus it took me away from the initial thing that photographers I've been trying to do with her and that is just say I'm like this I make sure I don't like this %HESITATION Blue Ridge and if you can't do that another world unfolds and that's everything in the frame being of equal value and although I am not a Buddhist I read a lot of Judaism and I think about this on my own practice it necessarily and I think it is a somewhat Buddhist approach to refuse the hierarchy of values that one can very easily holes in photography kind of comes with the territory the other thing is that when I was in college which I think that's a picturesque story but we will go next I studied philosophy and I'm still really interested in philosophy so when I saw those first images from the disposable not only did they interest me as images but I realize that a lot of those several things which I've mentioned minimum depth of field and focus I was getting something that I haven't seen before although I didn't think of it that way other people have said that because when you're working with reflection which I was there's always an option and free lander I mean these are great great show tiger first but you know where the photographer is you know he's standing somewhere and you see that imagine you do understand the space between the photographer and what he's looking at etcetera and what I saw I was getting was something that had none of that that's what I saw was this particularly since I had no strictures against brewer I loved it actually %HESITATION and I loved passengers and looking closely at complex emergency room health things in Japan a trait that I was involving a philosophy and it was philosophy about mind and abolished in a certain way politics because if you give up the idea of sharpness if you give up the idea that everything has to have enough facts a wind around ishe you find that you're giving up the idea that the world has to have borders and boundaries and you're also moving into a territory that says well I may need those borders and boundaries but my mind does need them my mind is porous and so I would have backed him not just your way of seeing but a way of being and that was really really important to me for quite a long time and again I think that traditional photography people don't quite talk that way and a little outside of the discourse and that's just fine with me going back to your earlier point it's it's a kind of freedom to come and say well yes senior yes streaming yes thinking it's all part of the process and so I really love developing what I'm telling you in two minutes which was in fact a number of years but those years the article was replaced by the digital I couldn't get things developed I couldn't get things printed so are you do you keep those should be optional I mean I'm not very technological I can work with the computer but I don't need to let my work and again that's not exactly anti technology it's not anti Photoshop I'd just like to work with how are you seeing drawback to your fridge and not try to turn it into something that exists between me and the world which is mine manipulation of the world that can be a bit naive sounding close you missing who may be interested in philosophy but it's also true I mean there's just some anyway sure at the level I'm talking when I thought should be digital I started with like an iPhone four year or we're not working with an iPhone and but I continue to get what I want with the new book I'm sure you've noticed a lot of the work isn't inter penetrating isn't forest isn't reflection and I we we have moved into a phase that shows I can have both I can do things that are more well this is what I see and more this is how white banks but many years ago a wonderful man who really cared about my work said Janet you really have to start with a better camera like bought a bunch of other people said it and of course the criterion is are you getting what you want and if I am which I am at this point why learn the whole apparatus of what is in itself a very technologically important art form it's not the way I won't watch that's a really excellent points and it strikes me as well that when you become reliant on the technology the technology does the heavy lifting you you're using very powerful cameras are you're working with different lenses and you're choosing a different lands it becomes stay apparatus that is forming a imagine you're really just pointing it out but it does all the rest of the work in a way and not to adults denigrate that but it's just not as you say it's not what you want that's not what you're looking for and there are lots of people like there he are doing that they're doing it extremely well and they're making incredible images like that but that's the thing it's you making it so it has to be in the exact medium that you want to need it today and I think there's a lot of the static value and that may be the last the end of the year with a sort of meds tack no it's not even low tack it's it's pretty decent stuff in homing iPhone cameras are incredible I think near the old iPhone I have is a Bascom I've ever had in my life he however I know that you know to me because I you know I I know exactly the sort of disposable cameras she you mean and I used it was a lot when I was a teenager you know and then the nineties and early two thousands but I lost a lot of static I actually really like the aesthetic of those older photographs and that sort of lower quality photographs I quite light this is very strange but I quite like odds to talk free inverted commas because they're something spontaneous about it there is something totally unique about it it's an image that's maybe on plans on there something actually quite unique and special about that that I find that's not what you're doing but that's just personal interest I just like that again the contingency of things I suppose on montages passionate about west and boxers the photography so they the more performative side effects so especially with I've been walking I mean what came first did she have the idea that you wanted to do the topic can it be a bike that same or was it you we are finding that you were just going walking and you risk taking photographs and it came from what you were just standing there actually but I will go back for seconds sure I think that what links the people who do this remarkably technologically advanced photographer I'm not talking the people who manipulate on talking about the ones who must cortical straight photography in what I'm doing is that the link is that were ravaged by the world were ravaged by color and texture then sometimes I'll show you something I wish I could think of a good example I think we'll get of my friend Joe and cellist who's just a master at on the textures what one of the things that classical photography on local vision is not classical it's very much your own and I look at I think that's so beautiful and it requires so much knowledge to do that this is not putting down my shelves and it isn't saying that I don't have the sophisticated change on the line I know the I can capture in my way the ravishing the ravishing interjection room color in the world I'm really just pointing to a link between low tech and high tech and that we're both using it I think for this since Aug warning to what's the word I'm looking for ravishing I think you saw the thing on century I write about something called the gas and you're out in the world and you see something and you're just now and are almost instinctive level this is it this is what you are my goodness %HESITATION yes gas click again between the gas and the collectors composition and other things to do some sort of self evident jester WYO that kind of came naturally so I don't want to make a large distinction other than one of honor and respect between the people who capture the world through very high degrees of technology and the very simple forms that I'm using because I think we're both responding to the world engine troubles in the same well I'm trying to recall because you were talking about several things one was the technological in a sense version mark I know you were not in again this simplistic respect but my really wanting to talk about donating %HESITATION but then you remember what else you were saying after that incident really yes there is a bit of a chicken and egg question is hi did depict come a bite sized thing so yes of course of course well you know again the word organic %HESITATION such a cliche but I do believe in it and they're very particular almost biological since your honor I started walking out and they started checking pictures and I got interested in them and I do what we all do which I just love and thats bring the stuff home look at it if you change promising think about it printed out of the home printer try it next other images tries you what they're saying is blue all that kind of thing and I do that every day now I realized pretty much every day that I was checking pictures I was posting them on Instagram which was a new thing for me and your %HESITATION world reckon it should empty shooting and sure people not bastard people should your unusual images and there could be a book sure that's when that became a real possibility as did something else and baggage the initial feeling that I'd heard of seeing emptiness and despair and as I write each are in the introduction to I've been walking the %HESITATION extinguishing of people's aspirations which has a particular product comes from because I've seen it in my parent's life all of that shock started to evolve and I didn't quite know what it was evolving churro just was taking pictures but then someone should remember right it's not so much emptiness and despair or whatever that you're seeing it's human traces in the middle of bash and that went %HESITATION yes that's right old so shortening project it becomes it becomes that's what I'm trying to describe I didn't say I'm gonna do a book about no no no no I'm not even a bomb distortion which is kind of went out there but it be changed again too or maybe repeat too much but we have seen during that time and then I didn't lucky in terms of my professional suppose I have to say career I'm not too fond of that word but it is a reasonable ordinance describe something special because good things have happened like %HESITATION someone seeing the war that person was from Germany she happened to being at my home %HESITATION she happens to be familiar with the world of photography we kept in touch she said I'd like to bring these images to a publisher they said yes and then that was in two thousand seven sixteen century never change and that wasn't the chamber I think they're really wonderful monograph we're wonderful people who I didn't know what was really exciting wrote about my work notably I will I will add distance one in Moscow and still thrilled with this association %HESITATION the director Graham vendors and I have his email in action above because Jones definitely a piece of good fortune but I. centrum work and he said yeah I can see my waiter writing about this and %HESITATION she's seen that book but it's on she arranged for page prose poem because the book is big and it's about seeing the child receive that about my work it's quite a thrilling piece with this book after I felt I had enough questions remember Justin that's J. publisher and they said yes who knows what makes the world turn one's favor or go the opposite direction but these are examples of that much and I loved working with these people and it was all between Berlin where they were insuring Los Angeles and so is all online on June June marvelous designer wear the same wavelength and the chamber production and editorial team could say to me things like well I don't think that's a strong and images that Michael %HESITATION yeah if you're right or no show we made a book we made a very short time a year and a month well all the chicks in the photographs were taken and all the production which which I think is kind of a record of Sir Arthur Foulkes extremist settlers I think it reflects perhaps the urgency and immediacy of that but yeah became a book wonderful that's scripted you've cultivated such a productive relationship then was a publisher that's pretty into here said John I mean I'm wary of keeping me any longer you've been so generous with your time and all of your ideas and everything just have to interrupt and say what's recently Grange is when you're given the opportunity to statements arts and be honest about them and in this particular sometime she wanted candy you know you say things you said before and obviously some of this I thought about that before but I do feel that in this particular conversation I said some things that were new to me which means I learn something so I have to just tell you that it isn't just general I'm sure of it %HESITATION that's really wonderful to hear okay that's great I'm I'm so glad that you feel comfortable enough and that you feel that you've learned something as well I certainly have learned things and not so what this podcast is all about is everybody learning things to her so I'm so glad that that's happened very late and we mentioned before is that we're really just scratching the surface I think here and I know you you need to go so you're so welcome back anytime I've loved this conversation I will love to have more conversations this year I think you're you're fabulous and I think you're working nights something in me at at night said intellectual curiosity that reminds me why I got into all of this in the first grade in addition if you re that's what you want I like your word I tend to think of inspire but I think it's not it's just a marvelous March and if we can do that for other people that's just great %HESITATION passing on the spark I will tell you I know myself very well I get absorbed and that means that I probably will not raise my hands and checked all what can we do this again but if you want to would you contact me and I will say yes in a heartbeat I'm just telling the truth about me because I don't just get absorbed absolutely okay will very quickly before you go I know you've got a website we G. just point our listeners to your website I'll get it in the show notes but if you just say it for them where can we find you online what a something first nobody knows how to spell my name right so I'm gonna %HESITATION stern Berger S. G. E. R. N. B. U. R. G. everyone I won't tell you what everyone does but I want planted in your mind but Bergesen shitty Star City is how it translates if you I kind of like that and because I have a hosted Mexico I sometimes want to say see ya sorry one meter or not you're still a bit one Nita Dane Estrella just see but I I like to think that we're thinking about manage moving back to so if you know that you can find me anywhere I have two websites one is for photography and it is W. W. W. if you want to think that way Janet Sternberg photo dot com Janet Sternberg photo is one word and it's your case and then I have another one and it's for writing what's surprisingly books and that one is W. W. W. G. Sternberg dot com so it's not hard I would have been nice Google Christian so I can be found on the writing website there's a link to the photography one why should one of these days we don't go back maybe yes maybe no so I am find a ball I would love to do phone by and large %HESITATION on the cryptocurrency website up at the top is my email and that's wonderful thank you for that well thank you so much for doing this and I think I definitely will be in touch as she possibly in the new year and to look at and say a lot more stuff I think I love it I love to do you know what you're doing and love to give you a loan New York I'm going to show you something no not really R. O. this year's cannot see this that one holding up is a plastic sheet of %HESITATION you know the kind of thing you can slip photos insurance your ticket nine half by elevens spiral bound and %HESITATION here it is holding it up and you know just which one selfish you know writes a little I don't know something it she says new also it exposed I'd been walking and so course I look at it and I'm trying to find out what it's about you will find its way all right lovely thank you Paula bye bye thank you John thank
audiovisual cultures 