Escaping Artist

For an archive that caters primarily to fashion, lifestyle, travel, and celebrity based imagery, which is then sold to the type of magazines owned by Conde Nast, I was surprised to find that the archive of Seydou Keïta is among our recent acquisitions. Born in Mali, he was a self-taught photographer who specialized in portraits of his family, friends, and neighbors beginning in the 1940’s. It is difficult to photograph people and places that are steeped in a history of photographic exploitation, but his perspective appears authentic. The constructed quality of the images and the subjects posed expressions reminds me of James Van Der Zee, the notorious manipulator. I am curious how accurate these portraits are in showing a slice of Malian life at that time.

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Last week my co-worker and I deserted our desks to catch a lecture by one of the “creative directors” of the company. He happens to work in our photo studio, and is the only one with a nice roomy office full of windows. David is an older, very knowledgeable, friendly man who spends very little time working in his office, and more time out lecturing or attending events. The receptionist calls him “pretty boy,” much to our amusement, and hounds him about his comings and goings. We know of them by the tokens he shares with us; samples he does not want, books he has picked up, a gallery catalog for us to peruse. Doing a Google search for his name brought up a variety of results, but my general impression of his job is that a lot of people, designers, vendors, and students alike, consider his opinion necessary and enlightening.

I eavesdrop a great deal on his conversations when I hear him being interviewed as I am interested in how he talks about fashion. He treats it as something other than frivolous, and therefore expects it to be something other than frivolous. His comments concerning retail and the economy have been interesting to overhear since last year, as the industry shrank, posting losses one month after another. He has been suggesting fashion needed the change this recession is bringing, seems hopeful about shifting toward practicality and necessity, and enthusiastic that fashion is (at least temporarily) moving away from expensive excess and trends that are divorced from everyday life and people. He argues there is no reason we can’t still have glamour and beauty—“deluxe but not flashy”—pointing out that depression era style had both, but that it should be of a different kind.

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While I can’t really say I love my job, I do appreciate my co-worker with whom I share a small part of her photo studio. An additional member to the art department, or “creative services,” I am a somewhat odd fit at times among the other fashionable girls who sit in their cubicles and in front of their new Mac’s all day long. I used to joke when I first arrived that they put the less fashion forward employees in the dark photo studio to do their work. A veteran illustrator has an office behind me, though he travels and lectures more than he sits in it, leaving the photographer for company, and my days at work usually pass uneventfully and without the usual work stresses—npr, the constant background to our sporadic conversations, tends to aggravate me more than my job.

Outside our building, located in the heart of the fashion district, is a gold plaque—like the sidewalk stars in Hollywood—of Oscar de la Renta. Talking with a friend of a friend the other night, a graduated fashion designer, I discovered that the company I work for is an important one, and that the books we have been working on these past months are an expensive and treasured resource—who knew? The upstairs of the company looks different from our department, where fabric samples and trend storyboards are propped against the walls. The “second floor,” in office lingo, resembles a scene from The Devil Wears Prada, rolling racks of vendor samples line the walls, and the “assistants,” regular faces in the photo studio, remind me of the movie as well—they are pretty, efficient, and obsessed with fashion.

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When I met with Susan before leaving Richmond she said, jokingly, “you probably could work fulltime and still make a lot of work…!” I laughed at the time, but the last few months have tested that statement—a test proving that while it might be possible, it is highly impractical. I used to laugh at the people who would say, major in something “practical” (I smile broader now that “practical” majors are, or soon will be, as “useless” as my own) and to pursue other interests as a “hobby.” This loosely translates into how you can give up your real interests without losing all self-respect while doing it. Practical major or not, however, life after school involves a great deal of juggling. From my current perspective I am glad I used my time in grad school the way I did, essentially I bought two years of time from vcu leaving me free to make work; now I am slightly envious of those who are still in grad school if only because they are still at liberty to make, and are expected to do little else.

It has not been a problem to make work with images already taken, such as those I shot over the summer and early in the fall. The Oregon City images were a good place to begin, editing felt new because I have hardly had time to glance through them since the summer—the Holgas have yet to be seen in positive form. An idle scanner on my desk at work has prolonged the inevitable purchase of my own, but has sped up the process of making and printing. Taking new images, however, has been the real challenge, not simply because of the time it takes to go walking, but also because time of day has a lot to do with my ability to wander with satisfaction. If only I could gather together remnants of time from each day, and could compile them together into a whole day.

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or; Learning the Hard Way

During the calamity of a new york day, I am finding myself smothered by the kind of multitasking I was forewarned of before I moved here. An elderly man I bumped into while wandering central park last August put on quite a show of new york expertise for my benefit, explaining new yorker mannerisms and where they originate.“You will find you walk and talk a little bit faster” he prattled off, much to my amusement. Talking to Californians now, however, is as much a struggle to keep my temper in check as walking through a packed underground tunnel between 8th Ave and 7th during the rush hour after work. It is true that multitasking here means something a little different than I would have thought. Certainly, though I work five days a week, I have escaped from monotony. In fact, America herself, at the present moment, is anything but boring.

More than that, I find myself plopped in the realm of “inexperience” on many fronts. I seem to be getting myself into things by a faulty combination of luck and skill, and am figuring out later what they entail. How do you pitch an idea to an editor? No one teaches this in advance; it is part of that unspoken world of “professional” practices institutions only hint at. They seem to prepare you for it as poorly as high school does for collage. Though tact seemed to dictate producing idea after idea for proper approval, the moment I was told “no”, the learning began. The way you learn to pitch an idea is obvious when you come to the frame of mind that goes something like this: I want to write about it, it is important because of these reasons, and here is why I am the best person to do it. Again, it is quite difficult to find out just how you get images from a gallery or museum, much less which images you can use and why. Freelance sounds like normal employment with a temporary spin, but isn’t. Reading over my new contract, it feels strange to essentially be an employee while singing over a document that states, in as many ways as possible, that I am not. As my paychecks increase, I am slightly confused about what exactly I am being compensated for–the lack of security? If so it matters only slightly, nothing in new york at the present moment is secure, and I like gotham the better for it.