Proposal to formally study the “Seduction Community” subculture
I am interested in studying pick-up artists (“PUAs”) and their “seduction community” subculture. The community is said to have began in the 1970’s, and its popularity has since expanded enough to warrant a reality show, a handful of best-selling titles, and fictional depictions in major motion pictures (1, 2). I have been interested in the subculture, its acolytes, and its figureheads—”master PUAs” or “mPUAs”—for three years. PUAs help their disciples with anything from how to get a girlfriend, to how to talk to girls on the street, how to date strippers and models, maintain relationships, how to dress, and of course, how to pick up women in bars. For many there is an emphasis on confidence building and “getting your life together.” There are also a small number of female PUAs that help women “find the man of their dreams” and maintain strong relationships.
Everyone has different opinions on PUAs and their craft. At one extreme, people see PUAs as gurus who truly help and improve the lives of their students. At the other end, critics label them as sex-crazed users and manipulators, or charlatans and objects of ridicule. Though the reality of the subculture encompasses a wide spectrum between these extremes, predictably, portrayal of PUAs in the media tends toward the negative. This is largely because the PUAs who receive media attention are the most outlandish and controversial in their beliefs and methods. I am interested in exploring to what extent they represent their field. Much of the extant popular disdain for PUAs lies in snap judgments based on outward appearances, not only in terms of dress and style, but also of their websites, which typically combine hard-sell direct marketing and pictures of scantily clad models. I want to investigate whether one may truly judge the book by its proverbial cover.
The purpose of this research is twofold. First, I would like to set things straight: it is very easy and common for an individual or the media to look at this subculture and make a blanket dismissal of it as manipulative or quacky, especially given the lack of dedicated research one has to consult. There are guys out there who are trying to “get laid,” but there are also aspirants who are flat-out terrified of interacting with the opposite sex and simply want some instruction on how to do so. There is a continuum, but by and large, that’s not how the subculture is represented. I’d like to craft a portrayal that examines all the shades of gray. It is equally easy for one seeking this kind of knowledge to be seduced by the grand claims of mPUAs, the vast majority of whom seem to offer a personal harem to anyone with the money and desire to seek tutelage. One of the most practically useful conclusions of this study would be an outline of what might constitute reasonable expectations for one seeking the expertise of an mPUA.
Second, I would like to begin a dialogue between the PUA subculture and relevant established academic disciplines. No critique of the subculture exists on part of gender studies or psychology, so the subculture has no dissent to respond to and thus no outside perspective creating impetus for reform. The perpetuation of the PUA subculture is ostensibly based on demonstrable ends—ie, the success of its acolytes—and to the best of my knowledge, the only people seriously questioning its means are those within the subculture itself. The PUA subculture seemingly has a near-monopoly in the market of information geared towards improving a man’s chance of finding a mate. The consequences of this could be enormous, but presently, one can’t definitively say; it has not yet been sufficiently investigated or critiqued.
The two critical perspectives I have of the PUA subculture are less related to the media’s common doubts and more from the two most visible written critiques of self-help culture in general: Steve Salerno’s Sham and Micki McGee’s Self Help, Inc. Salerno questions the credibility of self-help gurus, many of whom have few, no, or dubious credentials for the work they engage in. The question, then, is: how might a guru PUA’s gaps in knowledge potentially be harmful to the acolyte? McGee in turn questions whether self-help perpetuates a culture in which individuals are belabored, running on a treadmill of self-reinvention towards unrealistic expectations. My strongest suspicion of the PUA subculture is that its hard-sell marketing and pie-in-the-sky claims create these unrealistic expectations. However, to the contrary of media outlets that criticize the subculture from a bird’s-eye view, I am willing to consider the potentially controversial stance that the subculture’s existence, given refinements primarily in these two areas, could potentially be a good thing.
The significance of this research is: what does it say about our/a culture at large that this subculture exists and is growing so rapidly? Does it work more, for instance, to perpetuate or curtail the advancement of America’s soaring divorce rate? What do mPUAs have to say about cases like that of George Sodini? My hypothesis is that the root of the PUA subculture is loneliness. By this I refer not only to a general loneliness that results from, say, a breakup, but also a deeper, more pathological loneliness that leads one on an endless quest for more sexual partners. I want to try to look into how that root grows, and the soil it grows in. I am interested generally in the parallel culture of self-help and neo-shamanism in general; indeed, the PUA subculture offers a focused, extreme form of “self-help.” I am especially interested in the lives and personalities of self-help gurus; the obvious geniuses and self-deluding charlatans fascinate me equally. Beyond graduate school, I am interested in doing in-depth investigation of other self-help related personalities and subcultures, whether in books or magazines.
This is a populous, growing, male-dominated subculture which apparently has not been investigated in-depth. The PUA “industry” produces a mind-boggling quantity of artifacts, through self-published for-profit e-books, blogs, conferences, videos, interviews, e-mail lists, and other texts. One can garner a decent understanding of the subculture from these alone, but there doesn’t seem to be anyone looking at the whole picture, from the lives and stances of the gurus to the common concerns of their disciples (a crucial distinction which is rarely made). There seems to be a dearth of scholarly work being conducted on the subject. Social anthropology, social psychology, sociology, gender studies, American studies, journalism, and media studies would all be useful channels for exploration. My research would consist of the study of texts, surveys, photography, attendance of the community’s conferences, analysis of media portrayals, and, most of all, field observation and interviews.
I feel uniquely qualified to do this research first and foremost because of my penchant for interviewing, and because I can comfortably walk the line between this subculture and the academic realm. In other words, I am sufficiently empathetic to have already earned the confidence of many in the subculture by speaking their language, and they can let their guards down knowing that I’m not approaching with an axe to grind. This is crucial in seeking the balance and immediacy in research I hope to achieve. On this note, I envision my research to culminate in a thesis/book—ideally digestible by laymen readers but informed by scholarly rigor–that chronicles a history of the subculture, relates my immediate experiences with and observations of those in the community itself, and explores the following questions:
The subculture:
- What are the social implications of David DeAngelo and other guru PUAs having over a million subscriptions to their email newsletters?
- How large is the PUA subculture? How does it stack up, population-wise, with other subcultures? What constitutes an “official” subculture?
- If you surveyed the audience at a PUA conference, what could you ask?
- Is there a typical experience under a PUA’s tutelage?
The business + charlatanism:
- Why do such an overwhelming majority of PUAs resort to the same brand of hard-sell advertising? What are the fundamentals of hard-sell marketing? Is it intrinsically a bad thing?
- What are the correlations between PUAs and entertainers? Preachers? Infomercial hosts? How could spelling out these connections be useful?
- How are charlatans distributed throughout business? Why do some industries and businesses, like self-help, attract charlatans? What are their commonalities?
- Do charlatans exist at all levels, or are the truly famous PUAs and gurus really worth their salt? And simply because they’re highly skilled, does that necessarily make them good teachers?
- Are all of the PUA diatribes, while passed off as informational, fundamentally marketing pieces?
The lives of mPUAs:
- What percentage of mPUAs are knowingly deceptive or dishonest, as opposed to self-deluding?
- To what extent is the PUA repertoire an act?
- What are their personal lives like? Do they form lasting relationships? And are they to be faulted for not forming lasting relationships?
- Are rival PUAs universally competitive?
- Is there a socioeconomic or biographical background common to the master/celebrity PUAs? Their devotees?
- Can a correlation be made between modern society and self-help gurus and indigenous societies and shamans? How do subcultures like this compare and contrast with religions or cults?
- What motivates them, and how did those motivations arise? How does life change once these skills are acquired? To what lengths will people go to attain them? What must one learn, what is required, and how, why, and where do people fail? Once you reach “the top,” is it all it’s cracked up to be?
Truth in advertising:
- Is the kind of wild, unfathomable success with women that PUAs talk about really attainable?
- Can and does this really help people? Even if it can, in practice, is the net/cumulative effect of this subculture a negative one, something that essentially deludes people?
- Do they purport teach a “real understanding of women?” Or just what women are attracted to?
- To what extent might the PUAs be creating a unquenchable thirst for something, in the manner of advertising?
- What does social psychology have to say about their methods, especially considering that many PUAs purport to achieve success with women primarily through application of social psychology?
- To what extent does one’s website or brand correlate with one’s true skill or integrity? In other words, how often will the teacher with the tasteful, classy website teach better than the one with the sloppy, seemingly exaggerated website? Does the cream always rise to the top?
The people who go to the conferences and gurus:
- The common perception that the motivation is always and only sex. Is this actually the case? How often is the ultimate motive sex, as opposed to a committed relationship or marriage?
- Do the lives of those who have learned something improve? Are the effects long-lasting?
- What percentage of people who get the direct-marketing newsletters read them? Do actual addictions to the newsletters form?
- What of the aspirants’ yearly income goes into this endeavor? What percentage feel like it was worth the money and time?
- Do PUAs attract a certain kind of person—e.g. lonely people, people with sexual neuroses, people with few social skills–or are their audiences mostly “normal guys?” How might these answers be surprising, correlate, or be used to re-frame public opinion?
- Do different kinds of people prefer different gurus? What about in the general realm of self-help and guru-ism?
- How can media’s influence on the attendee’s desire for more success with women be quantified or explored? Is this a need primarily created and perpetuated by a superficial, sexed-up mass culture and subsequently capitalized on by the mPUAs?
Societal perspective, media portrayal, moral implications:
- What does it say about our culture that so many men are compelled to study this, with such peculiar verve? And why exactly is it so unusually controversial?
- What does the community’s existence and trajectory say about the relationship between modern men and women? How does one describe and depict the complexities of the American courtship ritual? How has it evolved, and where might it be headed?
- Is what PUAs talk about “as innocuous as anything published in Cosmopolitan?” If it is, why does the public usually find it so much more insidious? Is it because of their secret-club-for-men-only attitude? Does the secretive club attitude have analogs in pre-modern humanity? Why is sex/dating advice not considered insidious when dispensed towards women in a popular magazine?
- Do PUAs simply appeal to our basest instincts and then drill?
- How would one gain credibility in society at large as a PUA; ie, how would one legitimize themselves publicly so as not to be lumped into the social strata reserved for pimps and prostitutes?
- What, for instance, would be a more socially acceptable way of instructing men on attracting women? Or is “The Right Way” in society’s eyes to simply “wait for what’s coming to you” and “be yourself” instead of aggressively pursuing a mate?
- At a broader level, why are self-help gurus so commonly despised? Does it trickle down from an “industrial” disdain?
- Why is the general theme in PUA of “getting your life together” so commonly ignored and underplayed in media?
- What specifically is wrong with studying, breaking down, practicing, and mastering seduction or attraction as one would a sport or video game? What is the socially acceptable alternative?
- If you break down the process of PUA tutelage, can the socially dubious elements be pinpointed and refined?
- Where is the line between helpful/useful (Will Smith in Hitch) and shady/contemptible (Tom Cruise in Magnolia)?
- What data can be extrapolated from analyzing the media (television, newspaper, magazine, internet) about popular opinion on PUAs?
- How would psychology classify PUAs as individuals?
- How would sociology classify them as a collective?
- What is the feminist reading of the PUA subculture?
History of the subculture:
- Who in the subculture could contribute to compiling its definitive history, especially in its early and developmental stages?
- When did this become a bona-fide subculture? At what point does something become a bona-fide subculture?
- Is the PUA an American creation? What is American about PUAs? Do American and European PUAs differ?
- Is there a gap in proficiency between the original PUAs of the 70’s and those emerging today? Was the original culture one of charlatanism?
The subculture as a response to society/culture at large:
- Purportedly through studying social psychology, PUAs have found amazingly clever ways of dismantling people’s social shields. (The problem, of course, is that they depart from here into manipulation, etc). They, more than any collective I know of, confront this interpersonal issue most directly.
- Has any other discipline found a deeper understanding of how we can dismantle the protective antisocial shields we create around ourselves in public, and how/why they are erected in the first place?
- Why, when walking down the street, do we avert our eyes from passersby?
- Why, when waiting for the bus next to strangers for five minutes, are we silent?
- Why do we act as though we and others are invisible?
- Is there something particularly American about this, or is it generally like this the world over?
- Why should it be so unnatural or terrifying to make conversation with a stranger?
- Why do even the most innocuous take this certain measure of confidence, and why is potential interaction between strangers so often “weird” or “creepy?”
- Is interacting with a stranger from scratch a skill that has to be practiced?
- Is it a bit of a gift that’s given only to a few who are naturally disarming? Or is it simply an overblown, irrational fear that, once you’ve confronted it a few times, disappears?
Damion Berger: BOMB Interview (Uncut)
BOMB interview here.
Damion Berger’s work is interesting to me precisely because it has so little in common with the majority of his contemporaries. When I first saw it, we just had to talk. So talk we did, about everything: his early mentors, the photographic rat race, form and content, and the ubiquitous debate of large versus small format. He was born in Britain and presently divides his time between Monaco and New York. This summer, he’ll begin a new series about the public ritual of fireworks. His work is currently on display at the Bonni Benrubi Gallery in New York through September 5, and at the Art & Rapy Gallery in Monaco through July 4. Both of his major projects, RSVP and In the Deep End, will be published by Mets & Schlit in the spring and fall of 2010.
© Damion Berger, from In the Deep End
Alec Quig: Let’s start at the beginning. Is there any connection between your craft—your approach to it, or your particular appreciation of it—and working with Helmut Newton? Perhaps through osmosis?
Damion Berger: I was seventeen, eighteen years old at the time. Basically, I wrote him a letter. I was planning on being in the south of France for the summer, and he lived down there. This letter was a little quirky and off the wall; not your traditional job application. And the next thing you know, he was asking me to come assist him for the summer. At the end of the summer, he asked for me stay on, continue to work with him, and move down there. So I did that. I worked for him for a year.
Regarding his influence, I honestly don’t know. I think it’s almost impossible to quantify to what extent the myriad of one’s different influences might supplant or enhance one’s intrinsic style. Photography aside, being seventeen or eighteen, and every day there being a new surprise as to which hot supermodel would walk through the door…that was pretty special.
AQ: And at seventeen! That’s so young! My grandpa worked as a security guard at Texas stadium when I was a kid, and I met some of the Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders when I was twelve years old. I’ve been girl crazy ever since. [Laughter]
DB: I have great stories, great experiences. Of course, after the end of the shoot for whatever magazine he would be shooting for that day, he would segue in to his more personal work. With all of the infrastructure, the models, the assistants, hairdressers, and makeup artists already around—all of whom were generally thrilled to be working with the great ‘Helmut Newton’—he would often ask the model to dispense with the clothes, and nudity would reign.
One day we were under the neon lights of an indoor parking garage, and quite a well known model of the time was getting ready, undressing. She takes her clothes off, and, what a shame, she isn’t fully shaved. And on this particular occasion that ran contrary to Helmut’s aesthetic. So, we need a razor. Everyone’s panicking. “What are we going to do, we need a razor!”
Well. I had my little scooter, and I’m saying, “No problem, Helmut, I’ll run back home and get my,” you know, “Gilette Sensor XL.” And in reality, I’m barely old enough to shave. So I come back with my razor, and she takes it, looks at me and says, “Aren’t you gonna help me?”
Of course she was kidding. So, after going off alone and having done the deed, she presents me with this extremely hairy razor in a little box. Meanwhile, she had had the makeup artist put this waterproof, semi-permanent lipstick on her lips. And she walks directly toward me, takes my face, exaggeratedly kisses both of my cheeks, and creates these ridiculous lip marks that you just couldn’t get off. I’m pretty sure I didn’t use the razor again. But I admit that it might have been a few days before I washed her lipstick off my cheeks!
AQ: Unreal.
DB: So apart from experience, the main thing I got out of working for him first and foremost was seeing the world of fashion photography at its pinnacle. Really, where it doesn’t get any better, in terms of budgets…in terms of everything! Seeing it at the top, at it’s peak. And then realizing it’s not for you. That’s more valuable at age eighteen than anything else. At that stage, I knew fuck all about photography, to be perfectly honest! I knew more about fashion photography then simply because I knew nothing of anything else! I was getting a business degree at the time, but it was after working with Helmut that I decided to give that all up, go to New York, and get a photography degree at Parson’s.
© Damion Berger, from RSVP
AQ: And your experience there was positive?
DB: Certainly. Without a doubt. My teachers or professors—a title that somehow doesn’t seem appropriate—played an important part in my development both from a technical and conceptual standpoint. Probably the most significant influence I had was from Charles Harbutt.
AQ: I was thinking earlier about how different your work is from his. I’ve presently only seen Travelogue. But wow, how utterly different in temperament his images are, next to yours! He strikes me, at least via his photos, as a kind-of cynical, American, modernist Cartier-Bresson.
DB: Well, at first he can be quite brusque [Laughter], but actually he’s not that cynical. There are elements of great humanity in his photographs . You have to see his photograph, ‘Blind Boy,’ from his essay on a orphanage for the blind, and his other book, Progresso.
AQ: You’re right. And that essay in Travelogue is wonderful and on-point. I remember it, in an abstract sense, almost more than the individual photographs themselves. While reading it, the whole time I’m thinking, “I’m right there with you, buddy.”
DB: He tells it to you straight, without embellishment.
AQ: Like his photographs.
DB: Like his photographs. He’s a superb teacher. Sometimes he does it by not saying much, and other times he says a lot and thick skin is required.
AQ: How?
DB: Well, before I took his classes, I had done this series in Southeast Asia. I tacked them up for critique, my fellow students lined up and patted me on the back, and I was feeling pretty good about myself. Then, to my surprise, he came and tore it down to size. Which is what I needed. The problem with a lot of photography is that it goes round and round in circles, learning more from itself than the world outside. It’s a recurring danger. I was following in the shadow of people whom I admired a lot, through emulation. But it’s important to exorcise those demons.
I graduated in 2001, having started four years earlier. Back then, you didn’t really see the point of Photoshop so much. But I’m not actually in the darkroom anymore, dodging, burning my prints. I’m doing that all on Photoshop, but staying true to traditional means, and using photoshop as the no-compromise tool it is. I’m not using any techniques that aren’t just as viable in the darkroom. But what I do see is a lot of digital retouching on part of people who didn’t grow up in the darkroom. They’re much closer to an aesthetic that borders on illustration than traditional photography.
AQ: What do you mean by illustration?
DB: Where it starts to look painterly, or no longer true to the negative. Rather than choosing tools that affect large areas of the image, as one would when casting a shadow on the print under the enlarger, people start to pull out the brush tool and draw shadows. And it’s a psychological thing, even if you can’t readily perceive the difference. It plays on my mind. There’s a certain thing about the integrity of the negative that I try to maintain, regardless of whether it’s made in the darkroom or photoshop. Photoshop lets you do it more precisely.
AQ: Of course. And since the beginning of the century, it’s been the ethos of: don’t try to turn your photos into paintings, or we’re going to fucking stone you. But I’m generally glad that that’s being upheld!
DB: I’m not sure if it’s painting necessarily, or simply photographs that look retouched. Like advertising or beauty shots. I work from a traditional darkroom guide print. I try to stay as true as possible to my interpretation. I preserve a lot of the grain too. It’s integral.
AQ: It was one of the first things I noticed in your work, even online.
DB: Elsewhere, it’s largely been…sterilized out.
AQ: There’s no better word for it. But back to Parson’s—how did learning happen there for you?
© Damion Berger, from RSVP
DB: What I remember most is seeing slides in, you know, Photography 101. Kertesz, Avedon, Lartigue. I didn’t know about anyone else, and that was the first time I’d been exposed to any of that. It was an abrupt intervention in terms of what I thought. I think these schools are entirely what you make of them. I certainly don’t believe that art school is a necessary path to creating strong and relevant work, but the teachers do impart knowledge and guidance that does help. But it’s important to leave the school mentality behind and not pay too much attention to any perceived rivalry among students.
AQ: I can’t talk as much about that from experience. I never dove in to art school. I never wanted much to do with it.
DB: You’re competing with, and challenging yourself more than anyone or anything else. You have to set the bar a lot higher than your peers and look towards those artists making the most exciting and innovative work, and in terms of your own ambition, to pay equal attention to the photographers who comprise the pillars of the medium.
AQ: Did you “get” those guys very quickly?
DB: Oh, yeah.
AQ: The reason I ask is because lot of young people, people my age, are coming at photography via the internet, as opposed to books or gallery prints. And from that vantage, new photographers have more of an immediate slam-bang factor than the classic guys. Our “old masters” suddenly seem out of step with the way culture is getting delivered.
DB: On one hand, the internet is partly responsible for the huge surge in interest in contemporary photography internationally, but on the other hand, there’s a big criticism one can level at “internet programming.” It’s a little like the 24-hour news cycle, and can be a voracious thing, constantly creating the need for something else. As a result, it’s about more, more, more. The resultant work has a different shelf life, and that’s pretty dangerous.
First of all, you don’t get the chance or time to look at any work and take it in. It’s a vignette, a superficial experience. We’re all grappling with the different ways in which photography and art in general is being consumed, be it on the wall, in books, and increasingly on the computer screen. The nature of the internet is such that the blogs tend to highlight the ‘best hits’ from an artist’s oeuvre. It’s creating its own narrow sense of history from one day to the next. Because it’s seen somewhat out of context, it’s creating its own history inherent to the internet. It’s different from the kind of history created through….
AQ: Bona-fide historical events. As opposed to media events that are constructed to fill programming.
DB: It does provoke a reactive dialogue, though, in the way that a book, gallery, or museum show cannot. It also satisfies a voracious demand, say, by those who can’t get their hands on the books, who live far from museums and galleries. That serves a crucial function, but it’s important to be mindful of how different an experience it is to going to a museum or gallery…
AQ: …and seeing things “the way the artist intended.” Agreed. I mean, I certainly wouldn’t have come across your work without the internet.
DB: If you could teleport to the MoMA every afternoon…
AQ: You’d be having a different experience with the work.
DB: And you’d be in front of that work for many afternoons before it changes.
AQ: Well, that said, I also think it’s nuts that everyone, everywhere can’t see all of American Photographs or, like, American Prospects online, as a slideshow, with the essays, in order, etc. And a lot of new stuff you look at out there, you can lump it all together.
DB: I come from a very straight, traditionalist background. It’s what sparked my interest in photography to begin with. The work of the ‘old guard’ photographers that comprise the pillars of the medium.
AQ: Strand, Stieglitz, all those guys.
DB: Absolutely. Encountering that work for the first time was revelatory, and it holds a certain spark for me still. Yet when discussing influences or one’s own work, there’s something that’s very dangerous, which is to talk about work that’s influenced you—past or present—as if it sets a tone for your general attitude or interest towards photography. To a certain degree, artists get known through repetition. The old adage, “If it isn’t broke, then don’t fix it,” has historically found a lot of resonance. I’m becoming more and more interested in consistently challenging my comfort zone and trying to expand the parameters in which I’m working without being tied down to one specific approach.
© Damion Berger, from In the Deep End
AQ: Well, on that note, how would you describe your style? I mean, I would describe it a certain way, but I’m interested in how you would describe it.
DB: My style—which might be an evolving thing— is about the threads or aesthetic sensibilities that run through my work as a whole. The RSVP and In The Deep End series are very different bodies of work, but they have a similar style. I’d like to think they share a certain compositional elegance and the pursuit of that singular moment. The only problem is that I’m currently working on a few very different projects—one being large format, with a somewhat similar sensibility. But conceptually and otherwise, they’re very different.
AQ: The Fireworks series?
DB: Well, I’m in the middle of that work, so I don’t want to talk about it yet! But I’m quite interested conceptually in using and synchronizing multiple cameras. In contrast to RSVP, which was a very straight project, I’m excited to be experimenting with new tools and processes that are allowing me to orient my work in a broader direction.
AQ: And you’re shooting film. On a Leica.
DB: In the case of RSVP – yes. Regarding this new project, I’m using large format for the first time, but whether it’s a Leica, digital, large format…you pick the tool for the trade. It’s a wonderful camera, but more importantly, it’s also the only camera I could have used for this project. Shooting without flash, at 1/15, 1/8 of a second, in very little ambient light. It was the perfect tool for the job. I was initially most interested in photographers who historically used the same tools, and it’s probably no accident that I started using a Leica to begin with, but in this case there was no other choice.
AQ: Well, when I saw your stuff for the first time I…it was like, “Wowwww!” It really is…I don’t often see new work with this particular brand of craftsmanship anymore. The word that keeps coming back is “stately.” It’s muted. It’s not doing much criticizing, and most current photography is about critique, criticism. In every interview with photographers—this rarely comes up with painters, but always photographers—we’re always talking about judgement. About whether photography is judgmental or not. And the consensus is, of course, that you’re making a judgement by making a picture.
DB: Of course, but there’s a difference between…
AQ: Having an axe to grind.
DB: Yes! Having a chip on your shoulder. You wrote an email to me earlier about having a journalistic mission, and there not being much of one in RSVP. But I think “journalistic” is a word that might be appropriate. You’re photographing what you see, as you see it – which is not to say that I’m working without a compass. Far from it. In the moment, my decisions are based on more of an instinctual judgement. One also needs a certain amount of distance, which is why the editing process is so important. It’s not a question of it being judgmental, its a question of being nonpartisan.
AQ: And that’s a useful distinction.
DB: It’s very easy to go into situations with a preconceived notion of what you want to illustrate, and then photograph accordingly. I mean, I’m a big fan of much of Larry Fink’s work. But his high society photographs from Social Graces, despite being quite interesting and beautiful photographs…I see that body of work as a self fulfilling prophecy. He’s going in with a flash that’s automatically harsh. I think it’s very easy to say, “OK, these are rich people that are completely oblivious to the other hardships going on in the world, so let’s just portray them in that way.”
AQ: Yeah. “Those assholes.”
DB: It’s too easy. It’s much more interesting to go in there with a fairly grounded view of the world and see what emerges. That doesn’t mean that you wont make a photograph of someone doing something embarrassing. Like if I see the bathroom attendant picking his nose, I won’t think, “This poor attendant, he sits there all day for minimum pay, I mustn’t take that picture, instead I should portray him as the only ‘real’ person amongst this crowd of irreverent rich people.” It’s just far too easy to do that, and I fought that approach enormously. What I’m saying is that it’s perfectly valid to let each photograph from the body of work stand for itself and not come down on one side of the line or the the other.
AQ: Right.
DB: Documentary photography is documenting what’s going on. It isn’t illustration for other conceptual ideas. It can be, and it often is, but that isn’t my intention. I tried not to fall into the trap of only seeking out the type of photograph that conforms to a biased persuasion. Perhaps the decisive moment is more important because its instinctual – the moment is fleeting and therefore less evident.
AQ: But somehow this idea seems to have become passé in the cultural sphere in which we’re operating.
DB: Certainly, the majority of contemporary photography today is large format. It’s not a question of the project as a whole being pondered over. It’s fundamentally a debate over the relative merits of how thought-out or considered each individual photographic act should be before tripping the shutter. I don’t belittle my photographic decisions in any way because I take less time pondering over the actual recognition of that question: “Is this important or relevant tosay?”
I readily admit that there’s something of a sport to this kind of photography. When you say Kertesz, Cartier-Bresson, Lartigue, this whole slew of photographers from the first half of the century…their ability to capture a moment that has not been staged is quite remarkable. There’s much in common here with the kind of misdirection employed by illusionists and magicians. And there’s something in proving to yourself that you can find the ‘bulls-eye’ as well as anyone else. I think once you’ve proven that to yourself, there’s something liberating in being able to concentrate on the content of the photograph with the knowledge that the formal elements will take care of themselves. They become second nature.
AQ: Yes! This is what I’ve very recently had the joy of discovering myself, photographing out west. But it’s sad to me, sometimes: my generation seems to be so over straight, 50mm work. They’re thinking, pondering, “getting inspired,” and spending their time not going out and taking pictures, but conceptualizing big projects for that fine day, sometime in the future, when they finally acquire a large-format and the right head and so on. I don’t know. How can you work with a large format before you get intimately acquainted with the, you know, 50mm street camera?
DB: Taking the time with the large format is associated with a heightened intellectual investment. This might be a controversial thing to say, but I think that’s bullshit!
AQ: What is, specifically?
DB: I’m talking in generalities here, but when one chooses to work large format, one’s work is by association regarded as having been conceptualized to a greater degree than work done with a small camera. I just think that’s a tremendous fallacy. I don’t know if it’s part and parcel with the fact that there’s commitment there. Lugging this big heavy gear around to capture images.
AQ: There are a million ways to legitimize oneself.
DB: There seems to be this pandering to the idea that the photographer has gone to greater lengths and has invested himself more in the taking of a certain image if he’s using large format as opposed to small format, which, by extension, is associated with the snapshot, loosely composed, shot from the hip, “I don’t know if I took 500 images on motor drive, shot from the navel,” kind of thing.
I mean, to be honest, I think that’s rubbish! In my own work, very few of my better images have more than one frame on the contact sheets. My framing is just as rigourous as anyone else’s. There’s no second or third shot. You have one chance and one chance only. It’s fleeting. This doesn’t imply any undue reliance on the accidental. I think the taste-makers—curators, writers, critics—need to find the hook beyond the image itself in order to…
AQ: Have something to write about!
DB: Right.
© Damion Berger, from In the Deep End
AQ: But RSVP’s conceptual bent, the reason you’re doing it…
DB: There were a number of things I was specifically interested in with RSVP. As with many things in life, the deeper you dig, the more you observe and learn, the more questions develop – one’s initial impulse to pursue a certain project is often supplanted by a broader conceptual horizon, and that was certainly the case for me.
To begin with, it was an adventure. It wasn’t just: rich people, black tie, cool environment, let’s explore. In these social circles, where people are all dressed up in dinner jackets and ball gowns, everyone’s reduced to a uniform, different, but not unlike the waiters and staff. The guest’s dress code acts as a membership badge of sorts, a uniform that symbolizes belonging to a higher social stratus. The fact that my subjects are reduced to such a uniform means that it’s a great common denominator, a leveller. And it serves to highlight their other more specific and individual differences.
AQ: You plunge yourself into this specialized homogeny that’s rare to encounter on the street.
DB: I was interested in that question: are there intrinsic nationalistic and cultural traits that come across in body language? I wanted to investigate, though photography, what generic human characteristics one could extrapolate. I also wanted to highlight how, upon entering one of these events, it feels like you’re walking into a bygone era. These parties lose their context within the contemporary world. In these days of TMZ.com and celebrity pop culture…
AQ: Thats a connection I didn’t make.
DB: …I’m not sure if most people are aware that this world continues to exist to the extent that it does. I was interested in this sense of timelessness. But that’s a dangerous word in art.
AQ: How? Why?
DB: Well, I’ve discussed RSVP in the context of this issue before. The fact is, I don’t actually consider this work as timeless in the conventional sense. These photos are somehow out of time. The sense of nostalgia that arises when looking at these photographs immediately gives way to surprise when the viewer is confronted with the knowledge that they’re not from a bygone era. They’re representative of a wholly different time: today. Maybe sooner or later we’ll look back at these pictures and they’ll represent the end of another era, hence, “the end of opulence.” It’s quite interesting how work can be re-contextualized. In light of recent economic events, RSVP has a much deeper contemporary significance today.
AQ: This economic downturn seems freakishly convenient.
DB: It’s interesting. New York Magazine just ran two of my images, and the headline was “The Rage of the Rich.” This work is getting a lot more attention right now because of this.
AQ: Yeah. Popular hatred of the super rich seems to have reached an all-time high. Sinister bureaucrats and CEOs are constantly gracing the front pages. Now the journalist is being expressionistic and the artist is non-partisan!
DB: Though I completed the project little more than a few years ago, in such a short period of time, the work has progressed a ways from initially being considered to some extent less worthy. Rightly or wrongly, documentary work has traditionally been considered more worthy when aimed at those on the periphery.
AQ: I’m glad we came back to this. Superficially, it seems different, but you’re essentially doing the same thing as the photographers who go after the margin-dwellers. You’re exploring another world, one that’s somewhat unfamiliar.
DB: I could argue that it’s more important because it’s uncommon! There’s something about photographing the dispossessed that’s considered more deserving. What I’m saying is, well, it’s just not that cut and dry. Today, because of what precipitated our current economic climate, what I find interesting is that this project has been completely turned on its head. When people might have looked down their noses at the virtue of turning one’s lens on the subject of wealth, it’s now of great interest.
© Damion Berger, from RSVP
DB: We were talking about competition for grants for emerging photographers, and people are saying, “Exposure, exposure, exposure, I want as much as possible.” There is this herd mentality within the sphere of emerging photographers. And I hate that term, by the way. “Emerging photographers.” I absolutely hate it. Because emerging means…
AQ: Well, it throws you into a barrel!
DB: Let’s face it, it describes where you are in your career. It’s an economic designation rather than a judgement of where you are artistically. It seems to have an overriding theme of…
AQ: “They don’t know what they’re doing yet.”
DB: “They’re doing some sort of interesting stuff and maaaybe we might consider it relevant or accomplished sometime in the future.”
There’s really this herd mentality with all of these competitions. And I have to admit, I’m a little guilty, because I’ve gotten in some of them. You’ve gotta do this contest, and you’ve gotta get that award, and you jump aboard this merry-go-round with everyone else. Everyone’s competing, tit for tat, in emailed press releases and in competitions judged from small JPEGs on a computer screen. Art shouldn’t be competitive in that way. Many follow this identical path of validation. It should be different for everyone, and ambition shouldn’t be tempered by traveling this well-trodden route. The emphasis should be on great work in spite of the constant bombardment of contests and their final deadlines!
AQ: And shit, most of the time, you pay a lot of money to enter them!
DB: Well, there are many photography organisations that should be applauded for the tremendous amount of hard work and effort they put into promoting and offering opportunity to new talent. On the flip side there are others that offer these competitions for largely self-serving motives and who take advantage. Some of it is definitely a racket.
AQ: I don’t know if you saw this, there’s a post that lots of people were raging on…
DB: Around a certain photography magazine’s contest, I think.
AQ: And they’re talking about how it’s a racket. I had all these suspicions, and, you know, the next day, found this post.
DB: I think it’s dangerous to generalize, but yes, in some cases, I do think it’s used as a profit driver rather than purely to cover costs in association with the contest they’re promoting. Some less-established review events charge a small fortune for little return. Many are first come, first serve. You pay a substantial fee to attend. Then you have the option of listing your area of interest, such as galleries or publishers, rather than your preferred reviewers. One review in particular offers you the option of securing a slot with a specific reviewer in exchange for another hefty fee. For many reviews, the fee you pay is divided up, and a large amount is given back to the reviewers to cover travel expenses and so on. But I do know some that are expensive as hell, require little overhead, and the reviewers are donating their time and covering their expenses one hundred percent. Reviews can be a very worthwhile investments of a photographer’s money and effort, but only if they’re chosen selectively.
© Damion Berger, from In The Deep End
DB: You were talking about production value earlier. I’m not one to prescribe the sort of thinking that low production value, unpolished, rough art, equals high art.
AQ: More often than not, I’m compelled to respond to that kind of thing with my middle finger. Your work has immense appeal to me because, in the face of this, it has such an emphasis on craft.
DB: I think photographs should always retain a degree of seductiveness.
AQ: It’s essential!
DB: I agree, completely. I go to considerable effort in making the richest, most beautiful prints I can. And it’s also about presentation. In my RSVP photos, context is very important because of what I was talking about earlier: the photos seem out of time. If I were to matt and frame the work in the same traditional time-honored fashion, something might be lost. I wanted to underscore the dichotomy between when one thinks the photographs were made and when they actually were. There have to be real reasons that you’re presenting the work in a particular way. Though those kinds of aesthetic choices are secondary, they’re perhaps just as relevant as the immediate decisions one makes when initially exposing the negative.
AQ: One of the first things we talked about in the beginning was how your work is a little out of step with the overriding trends in contemporary photography. Some blog was talking about how you’re bucking trends.
DB: My work might buck current trends, but I don’t think it’s reactionary. At least not in any strategic sense. Clearly, I absorb a lot of current photography. In addition to the pleasure I derive from it, it’s necessary to educate oneself as to who’s done what. I think this is very important in terms of knowing the value of your own work, where it fits in, and whether or not you’re repeating for the umpteenth time what dozens have already done before you. It doesn’t necessarily mean that, because a certain style or photographic approach has emerged as…
AQ: …The hip thing.
DB: Yes—I don’t think that should influence one to follow. You have to be true to yourself. And you might, as I have, find a consistent style, but the way that you apply that style…
AQ: Evolves.
DB: Yes. And its different in each case, but common sensibilities or threads run through it.
AQ: I can see that. From RSVP down to your newest project.
DB: It’s not reactionary in the sense that I made a choice to photograph RSVP in a more traditional manner. It was just the way I photograph. I photograph the way I see. Regarding In The Deep End, there is a classicist approach in some ways, but through the distortion inherent in water, I think I’ve succeeded in making pictures that are quite unfamiliar.
But I’m often surprised when people instantly think they’ve been Photoshopped. Such, I suppose, is the predisposition of many towards contemporary photography today. Other than the use of black and white, the way in which I went about shooting was anything but traditional. You’re underwater, camera between your legs, holding your breath, trying to avoid attention, to conceal the camera. You don’t want people to see you. I guess you could say In The Deep End is an aquatic equivalent of street photography.
AQ: [Cackling]
DB: I chose to work in black and white because without the blue hue of the water to provide context, one’s recognition that these pictures are taken underwater is momentarily delayed. Color comes with its own problems, of course. A lot of the time it imposes itself on the image. It can be so enveloping that It acts as a barrier. My decision to work in black and white underscores the abstract sense of suspension, movement, and reality that permeates through the series.
On some level It might also have been a reaction to the saturated, posed, and artificially lit underwater fashion and product photography. The ‘Howard Schatz school of photography,’ for lack of a better term. Technical concerns aside, once immersed in the water, the swimming pool strips away all social context. And that’s not an uninteresting idea.
AQ: Especially next to traditional social-documentary work and your other projects. Photography has been concerned with social context from the beginning. And here you’re essentially erasing it! There’s all of this lateral movement in your work at a conceptual, bird’s eye level, and it seems natural, effortless.
DB: My two main projects are complete opposites of the same social coin. In The Deep End, which presents its subjects removed of any social context, was in part reactionary, coming as it did after RSVP, which is about heavy social context. I had to step back and breathe a little bit – the irony, of course, is that in so doing, I had to hold my breath over and over whilst underwater.
AQ: So, then, how does this forthcoming Fireworks project fit in?
DB: My work focuses on the broad themes of social ritual. Fireworks, like sunsets, can be a tremendous cliché, but they can also be seen as an opportunity to illustrate something familiar in an totally unfamiliar way.
AQ: And you can call it a cliché or you can call it a motif.
DB: Yes. In as much as In The Deep End plays on the whimsical, it is also about social rituals.
AQ: Like the watering hole in africa.
DB: Yes! It’s a place to let off steam from life.
AQ: In public. This would be an entirely different project if you were doing it in backyard swimming pools. I guess what I’m interested in establishing is the subtlety of these two projects’ conceptual support structures. Where the concept is so frequently in the spotlight, I see your work as being the other way around.
DB: Contemporary art is heavily driven by concept.
AQ: Do you think that today, concept generally takes precedence over form?
DB: Jerry Saltz recently said that “the plethora of over-academicized curators and critics have wrung the joy out of art,” and ever since, “sterility reigned.” He went on to say that artists and curators alike are “guilty of unoriginality.” Whether one agrees with this statement or not, it’s easy to understand how and why this viewpoint has emerged. As time goes on and more and more work is produced, artistic innovation and originality is harder to achieve. In turn, the concept has been put on a higher pedestal now more than perhaps ever before. Among other considerations, it also provides further means of differentiation.
AQ: Is your work’s insistence on tight form a response to this, even if unconsciously? Is this “taking a stand?”
DB: It’s certainly important to me, but I don’t think the level of craft or the effort I put into making good prints has anything to do with “taking a stand.” I try to make work that is every bit an equal to the conceptual considerations behind it. The fact that there has been this huge intellectualization inevitably means that sometimes work doesn’t live up to its concept. When it does, the work is certainly the stronger for it.
First and foremost, I’m in the business of satisfying my own creative needs. I’m my own best barometer. If I’m excited about the work I’m doing, it’s because I sense something original and fresh in the direction I’m pursuing. Making sure that the form of my work is up to my standards is important to me, although it’s far from a central concern. I do believe that this strengthens the work, but it’s certainly not what drives my artistic impulse. I aspire to make great pictures, and to create work that has the ability to surprise, to seduce, and to stimulate. I’ll state the reasons why I think it’s relevant, but above all, let it sit out there and resonate. With a bit of luck, perhaps I’ll hear an echo!
For more on Damion Berger, visit his website at www.damionberger.com.
For more on Alec Quig, visit his website at www.alecquig.com.
Top 10 TED Talks: Part I
Between four drives from Chicago to New Orleans, one drive from Chicago to Portland, and four twenty-hour bus rides in Brasil, I’ve watched over 100 TED Talks on my scuffed up, unreliable iPod. Here’s part I of my favorites.
1. Wade Davis on endangered cultures
From the paths opened up by this talk, this guy dramatically changed my thinking and broadened the scope of my interests. There are few things more tragic to me than the extinction of irreplaceable cultures. I’ve now read many of his books, and it’s led me towards cultivating interests in anthropology, shamanism, botany and ethnobotany, and perhaps most of all, the revelation that there’s no one right way of thinking or being.
2. Edward Burtynsky on China
This is the among the most troubling things I’ve ever seen. I only saw the photos for the first time last week in Powell’s Books, and it was like seeing the speech again for the first time. Staggering and timely.
*****
3. Chris Jordan on excess
Here’s an artist who’s smart enough not to waste his time with art world mumbo jumbo, making work about something immediate, relevant, and affecting to all. This hits a lot harder than dry statistics.
4. Jonathan Haidt on the moral roots of liberals and conservatives
SO smart and SO illuminating. Everyone I’ve ever played this for–conservative and liberal–gets the same surprised, enlightened look on their face.
5. James Howard Kunstler on suburbia
Hits home big time for me; I’m living intermittently in the middle of it. Every thirty seconds I have to stop myself from crying, “You go, girl!”
Operation: Westward Ho, Part VI: To the sea
I finally made it to the ocean, from Portland to Astoria, Oregon, and captured my last batch of pictures. I fly back to the heartland tomorrow, and have never been so sad or reluctant to leave a place.
Laz D
Laz D is a rapper with down syndrome. We were introduced by his musical partner in crime, Jack Gibson. Yesterday I did a shoot for his album cover and also shot his latest album release party.
