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"Reflecting back after more than 3 1/2 decades of picture taking, it is certainly fair to say things have really changed.
My interest in photography came through music. In 1968 I borrowed a friend’s camera to photograph Jimi Hendrix in concert in my home town of Kansas City, Missouri. Knowing nothing whatsoever about cameras, let alone photography, I asked my friend whose camera I was using, how to set the exposure. Taking that night was magical. The next day we processed the film in his darkroom and proceeded to make some prints. When I saw the image appear before my eyes in the developer, I was hooked! I immediately enrolled in photo classes at the University of Kansas and began my formal studies in photography. The only classes they offered were in Photojournalism, an area of photography that really didn’t interest me!
From the beginning, I knew that my real interest was people. After completing all the photography classes at the University of Kansas, I switched schools to pursue a masters degree in Cinematography at the University of Southern California. There I got my first real experience with hard lights. Utilizing quartz spots, HMI’s, and big soft boxes, I began to establish a feel for studio lighting, something that was to become a big part of my image making. Working with fixed lights such as these helped enormously in making the transition to strobes.
As I began photographing personalities in the early 70’s, I thought celebrities wore their own clothes, did their own hair and makeup and basically knew what was going on. However, I quickly learned that I was wrong. I had assumptions and my own ideas as I was shooting but kept them to myself. It wasn’t until the contact sheets came back the next day that I realized that many of the assumptions were true and that I should have relied more on my instinct.
The best way to learn your craft is simply by doing it. No classroom or text book can replace the actual real life experiences of pursuing your art. After reviewing countless contact sheets from my photo shoots, I quickly realized that the talent I was photographing could definitely benefit from more of my direct input. The most valuable asset I had to offer my clients was my very candid honesty. What I do for a living is based on that very honesty and trust. Personalities are often much more comfortable hiding behind the façade of the characters they are portraying on film. When it comes time to strip them from their “alter egos”, it is often difficult for them to focus on their “inner selves”. That is where the magic of my work begins. Establishing a relationship with the talent based on trust, understanding and confidence organizes the building blocks of the photo session.
Today, more than ever before, this is crucial. Celebrities are so insulated that reality itself becomes the real question. The managers, agents, publicists, directors and producers attached to the talent themselves, make it next to impossible to break through this outer crust, so to speak. I am often dictated to the length of the photo session, what the talent will wear, who will doing the makeup and hair, when and where the session will take place, not to mention who owns the rights to the imagery. I often ask myself what is left to the photographer as an artist today. The entire picture of celebrity photography as it was once known, has radically changed over the past twenty years. As a struggling artist today, it is critical to stand up for your rights as well as your imagery.
The talent needs as much direction in creating their personal imagery as they do in creating their on screen character personas. And by the same token, photographers need to pay attention that they are not using their own identity by giving in to the homogenous requests of the talent’s publicists. Granted, it is a fine line today that one has to walk in order to please both the talent’s requests and the photographer’s images as an artistic representation of themselves. For a photographer to be a true success as an artist, he must be capable of developing and showcasing a unique and discriminating style in his art that becomes recognizable when viewing the images.
In addition to the changes personality photography has taken, the evolution of traditional photography as we know it has been undergoing a radical facelift. Film is being replaced by Flashcards. Traditional labs are rapidly closing and the photographer is taking more control of his art.
When Photoshop and computers started making themselves known on the photography and graphics scene, I must say I was a bit skeptical. I felt that Photoshop was a good excuse for poor photography and that it negatively altered the purity of the original capture. However, as I cautiously began to pay attention, I realized that in properly administered doses it was actually producing the same results as traditional retouching but miraculously without the generational loss of quality attained with duplicate transparencies or negatives. With Photoshop, one must learn when to stop and not go too far! I honestly feel that a real photographer can’t be made in Photoshop – only enhanced. The capture must be there in the first place. While learning Photoshop, since most of my analogue work was being scanned and finished in that program, I began looking at what was happening with digital cameras. At the beginning, outside the point and shoots, most of the so-called “professional” cameras really didn’t make any sense. However, like everything else in the digital arena that quickly changed. Soon the quality of digital cameras began to surpass the quality of their analogue counterparts.
This was very interesting for me. Traveling abroad since 9/11 has been very difficult. The danger of film being x-rayed not to mention the amount of film and equipment necessary for big shoots became a greater problem. Because digital can capture light so well at low luminance, offer terrific storage with Flashcards as well as all of the other merits, traveling and the security of knowing that your imagery will be safe was a real incentive to going digital. The shoots became easier, less equipment needed and the assurance of knowing that you’ve got the shot. Often I would get a great Polaroid and then spend two hours shooting film, trying to match the Polaroid. With digital, once you see the capture, you know you’ve got the shot and if desired, you can push something more.
Digital has really freed me up as a photographer and also afforded me the opportunity of being more in control of my imagery. I now, thanks to Epson, make all of my own archival prints. Before I relied on someone else’s vision to interpret my imagery. Today from captures to final output that vision is totally mine. Digital should not be feared but rather embraced. Just like in the 1800’s when photography was going through its metamorphosis with daguerrotypes, ambrotypes, tin types, and glass plate negatives, we are seeing traditional photography evolving towards a digital progression. The opportunities for growth and expansion are endless. This is truly a significant time in the evolution of photography as we know it."
- Greg Gorman
IL PROCEDIMENTO DI CONVERSIONE IN BIANCO E NERO UTILIZZATO DA GREG GORMAN
