Matt Bialer is a literary agent with Sanford J. Greenburger Associates and has worked in the industry for more than twenty years. Originally from Teaneck, New Jersey, he lives in Park Slope in Brooklyn with his wife and young daughter.While professionally representing a wide range of authors and celebrities, Matt is also an artist himself. Working primarily in the medium of black and white photography, with the street scenes of New York as his subject matter, his images have achieved significant recognition and exhibition.
KS
Many years ago when I was working as an undergraduate instructor as a way of paying for my graduate studies, one of the writing topics I assigned dealt with childhood photos. I thought it might be an interesting take-off point for my freshmen and sophomores, to reflect on some key moment or scene captured in a snapshot. It was a poignant idea for me because I had and still have such ambivalent feelings about my family photos and the stories that they tell-or don’t tell.The problem was several of my students weren’t in possession of the same body of material that I was. I had two students from Vietnamese refugee families and another recently arrived from Mexico. Many things had been left behind-or they were trying to put behind them. I had a Native American kid with as complicated a view of the “spirituality” of photographs as he did of his family background-and one African-American girl who broke down in tears in my office, reporting that no photographs of her existed at all. None, she insisted, had ever been taken.I was forced to revise my thinking and the topic. Clearly, childhood photos, which I’d understood on a personal level to have a variety of subtexts, had some much more obvious cultural ones. A certain level of affluence was required. Stability (at least superficially). I came to see that there were many of the same racial, economic and social factors at work that one might’ve found in those days walking into a Hallmark card shop.This situation seems to have changed dramatically in the intervening years. We’ve had profound developments in our social thinking. Economic conditions have progressed, at least for many. And we’ve had a major technological revolution with the pervasive spread of digital imagery. Cell phones come with cameras now and video cameras are widely affordable. The whole process of recording images seems to have become much more democratic, if not ubiquitous. As someone who works with more traditional equipment and darkroom based skills on an artistic level, how do you feel these changes have affected our thinking about photography? It can certainly be argued that they’ve been good sociologically-but have they been “good” psychologically? Does our culture have a stronger and more integrated sense of social self as a consequence? Do we know ourselves better because we have more images of ourselves? And what do you think the effect has been on photography as an art form? Are we more appreciative of it-or less?
MB
I’d say that people don’t appreciate fine art photography more than they did before. Also, what’s even considered fine art photography keeps changing. And if people do appreciate fine art photography more it’s not necessarily because of the proliferation of images and media outlets and choices. There’s no doubt in my mind that this whole process of recording images and communicating immediately will have to change not only fine art photography but also all of the arts in general. How could it not? Just the fact that I can send a text message to you in Australia from a rowboat in a lake in Massachusetts and you can answer me in seconds is representative of a profound change in our culture. I think that having all of these images immediately at our disposal and being able to communicate much faster is generally good and certainly good for peoples’ freedoms. But the by-product is that there’s so much visual (not to mention audio) garbage to sift through. I don’t think it’s an accident that cell phone picture taking and these reality TV shows and obviously YouTube are happening at the same time. People like to feel like they’re voyeurs. People like to feel that they’re watching themselves in some of these shows. People like to create images or vote for an event to occur on their favorite TV show. It’s truly postmodern TV. Now you can participate in helping to throw a character off a show. With YouTube, anyone can be Scorcese. It’s all so new and there’s indeed something exciting about all of this. When I walk around the streets of New York, I see so many people taking cell phone photos of icons (Times Square, The Empire State Building, etc.) that they can easily find on a postcard. But that’s not the point. They took the picture. They “own” it. The picture that they took of the place almost seems more important than being in the place in the here and now. On a more personal level for me as a street photographer, there are so many people walking around the streets of New York talking on their cell phones. At first, it was a novelty. Now it’s all too common and the image of that isn’t even fresh anymore. One has to work with it or around it. Now, people either stand or walk around looking down at their Blackberries. And the background behind them is a big, distracting Starbucks sign or some big, ugly Commerce Bank facade. The street photographer from the old days didn’t face these kinds of challenges: the cell phones, the big, distracting visual backdrops, the homogenizing of place.
KS
It’s easy to understand the history of black and white photography. That’s how photography began-it was a technical limitation. It wasn’t an aesthetic choice at one stage, because the capability for color just wasn’t there. I know that within photography circles, this is a point that has been discussed and analyzed ad nauseam-but for the benefit of people who haven’t been exposed to these debates, could you sum up the “philosophy” of black and white photography? Why do photographers choose this as a medium?
“Here was a new art that was the child of the industrial age.”
MB
Well, I think as you point out, black and white photography was the only choice at the time. And then people like Steiglitz came along and further legitimized photography as a fine art. He had the credibility to make such an assertion because he was a very respected and forward thinking art dealer and he also happened to produce photographs that were “the goods.” I think that his influence was enormous and far-reaching. For instance, Edward Steichen became the first Director of the Department of Photography at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. He was Steiglitz’s friend and the two shared many of the same views. And then Steichen’s legacy continued in his successor. It was a small world (fine art photography) and it was new and there were few players. I’ve some other speculations on this issue. In a sense, it was easier to differentiate photography from painting because it was indeed in black and white. It was easier for photographers to have these other kinds of concerns such as lights and darks and tones. And the whole weight of Western Art wasn’t as directly on their shoulders. And, of course, photography came from machines and here was a new art that was the child of the industrial age. The silver gelatin print was a triumph of technology. But I also think it took a long time for photography to become accepted as an art form by the public, dealers and institutions. And maybe the freedom wasn’t quite there yet to take more risks and compete more head on with painting. Now, it’s a very different world. I remember that someone once said that the song “Eleanor Rigby” was defined as Rock because the Beatles did it. Rock music was still new and trying to define itself. I think that photography took a long time to get its sea legs so to speak. There were street photographers who took color in the 1950’s (Saul Leiter, Ernst Haas and others) but the interest wasn’t the same as in the black and white work. Color work was still looked at suspiciously and photographers like Walker Evans basically denounced it (though I think Evans later changed his view). It wasn’t really until the 1970’s that color work started to rear its head. There were photographers like William Eggelston, Stephen Shore, William Christenberry (a disciple of Evans). There was an uproar when Eggelston was given a one-man show at MOMA in New York in the mid-seventies. The work was in color and some of the photographs were images of the photographer’s bathtub or the interior of his stove. Now, the world is completely different. Everything is so fragmented. Music fans can find their own blogs to stay in the bubble of the music they like. The same goes for the other arts. I guess the downside it that it will be harder for there to ever be a consensus on who is GREAT right now. But the upside is that there’s much more of an “anything goes” atmosphere and, if you don’t like what you see, you can start a blog and talk about and show what’s important to you. The choices are infinite.
KS
The substantial emphasis in your work is on street photography-which means working in hectic, constantly changing environments of New York thoroughfares. I work a lot with architectural and some fashion photographers, and to me the disciplines couldn’t be more different. In my world, there’s a laborious set-up for every shot. Lighting. Light levels. Angles. Virtually everything is storyboarded, planned. You don’t have any of that to either work with or worry about. How do you relate the thought process, the technical skills and the operation of that “inner photographic eye” of people working in these heavily structured and usually commercial situations with what you’re doing?
“I’m addicted to the adrenaline and the action.”
MB
I think that what I do is pretty different than that. I appreciate a lot of “set-up” photography but I don’t have the disposition to do it. I’m not that technical. I wouldn’t have the patience. I don’t even think I’ve got the “vision” for it, although maybe I would if I tried it. I think the hard part about doing set-up photography is that it all comes from the photographer and/or is a collaboration with others such as the subjects. In what I do, my subjects are all moving and so am I. But I get the kickstart, the catalyst, the impulse to shoot something that catches my eye or from my anticipation that something is about to happen. Visual matter is constantly flashing before me and I have to instantly decide if I’m going to press the shutter. I’m addicted to the adrenaline and the action although I do sometimes have very off days. This is all very different from set-up work. There’s a lot of this kind of work that I like to look at. There are so many varieties of it that it’s impossible to get into all of it here. There’s a lot that I find too sensational or obvious or shallow. For instance, I like some fashion photographers but I often find that the photographer finds a style and I don’t see much growth from there. Maybe that’s because the clients want more of the same. But I love Irving Penn. Gregory Crewdson. Richard Misrach. Jeff Wall. Thomas Deamand. Richard Prince. Many others. There’s a photographer named Roger Ballen whose work I find challenging and disturbing. At first, I liked it. Then I didn’t. And now I do again, although it’s a little too sensationalistic and grotesque for my taste. Basically, he exaggerates some of the most shocking elements of Diane Arbus’ particularly later work. He photographs the rural peoples of South Africa and sets them up in very extreme photographic situations. Sometimes, it looks as if the people are in great pain. And sometimes they’re having outrageous fun. There’s no doubt that there’s an intriguing and intelligent talent here and the work is supposed to make you feel uncomfortable.
KS
Obviously one thing which appeals to you about street scenes is their dynamism. Blink and the scene is lost-or changes. You talk about the act of shooting in terms of jazz-with both that sense of metropolitan buzz of the environment and the improvisational aspect within you the artist. Yet, many of your photos, and it seems to me, the ones that most decisively display what I’d call your underlying signature have a remarkable level of composition. You incorporate words or fragments of advertising text. There’s a rich, multilayered use of reflections and shadows. There’s a lot more going on than the freezing in time of people on a sidewalk. So, I guess my question goes to two things. One, how impressionistic do you think what you’re doing is? How much of what we end up seeing is “created” either in the sense of being willed upon the scene or revealed by your inner vision?Secondly-and this is a point I think artists working in any medium can relate to, how do you balance the appreciation of composition-the recognition of a deliberate process and a working toward an expected end, with the spontaneity and improvisational responsiveness required to get to an interesting result?
MB
Thanks for your very kind words. I think it’s a true combination of both. Sometimes, I get an interesting picture that I don’t even remember taking. Or, there’s a shot that I took that I think will be the greatest picture ever taken. And it ends up looking like crap. What was I thinking? Technical problems abound. The picture comes out too blurry. I loaded the wrong film. Someone’s obtrusive butt got in the way of what initially caught my eye, and there are always bad, distracting backdrops. I’m constantly willing my “inner vision” on what I see. And a good, interesting picture will depend upon my reflexes and no technical failures (blur, film in camera, not enough light). I think that what interests me visually is a combination of what is going on inside of me, what I’m feeling and something that I see that piques my interest, the definite outside catalyst. I often see something, examine the potential but don’t hit the shutter because I don’t see a way to get an angle or the “moment” is gone or there was no moment to begin with. It’s all speed, speed, speed. That’s the jazz connection for me because I feel like I’m playing off of something going on or at least trying to! I think that beginning street photographers often don’t consider the backdrop, the light, who else is coming down the street that might “raise the bar” of the picture in terms of making it more complex and interesting. But one learns this from experience and trial and error. Just because you see an interesting looking person, doesn’t mean that you have an interesting picture.I do know that if I have a “bad day” of shooting (and there are way too many of those) I blame it on me more than a lack of interesting subject matter. New York City is teeming with subject matter. Yes, it’s a challenge to keep it all fresh in terms of exciting pictures. But I like to still think that there are very exciting possibilities. A street photographer and blogger friend of mine, Jeff Ladd (www.5b4.blogspot.com) it’s one of the best and most intelligent websites about photography and photography books,) just showed me this lovely and quiet little picture that he took of a pigeon sitting in the corner on a sidewalk. The dappled shadow around the pigeon echoes the stripes and markings on the bird, it’s a small miracle.
KS
This is sort of an extension of my last question. Technological developments in photography-from slow motion to scanning electron microscopy to infrared and night vision, not to mention magnetic resonance imaging, have profoundly changed our sense of the world-our notion of reality and how we experience it. We’ve come to learn and have proven that there’s essentially a whole lot of reality in hiding relative to our normal perception and attention.In your work, how much do you see yourself as reflecting or revealing (and how important is that to you)? And how much of it’s your own private framing?Said another way, how much do you want us, the viewers, to experience your images as images-and how much do want us to believe in them as revelations of reality, however modest or grandiose we might construe that idea to be?
MB
This is a very intriguing question. A favorite photographer, Garry Winogrand, once said, “The photograph isn’t what was photographed. It’s something else. It’s a new fact.” He also said: “The artist is irrelevant once the work exists.” I think I agree with the first quotation. That gets to what’s at the core of what I love about street photography. The most interesting work is that something else, that new fact and we can never really know what it means. For instance, all of these people walking past each other and who don’t know each other at all are in one photograph that seems to “work” and create a reaction in the viewer. And it can create an entirely different reaction in another viewer. How cool is that? I’m not so sure I agree with Winogrand’s other statement. One would ideally like to believe that the artist is irrelevant but how can we look at an Andy Warhol and not know about Warhol? How can I read Faulkner and view the novel outside of his persona? How can we really separate GOODFELLAS and Scorcese? I know it’s possible to make the separation when one is unfamiliar with the artist. But I can’t look at Garry Winogrand apart from what I know about him. Just can’t.
KS
With your work, with its focus so intent on people and moments of interaction, the narrative element seems to me absolutely crucial. Is that how you see it? I can put a sequence of your images to music, and the result seems very filmic to me. I feel a story is being told. Individual images achieve this on their own. Like holograms of some larger story. Do you see yourself as a storyteller?How would you feel if a writer took a sequence of your images as the basis for a series of stories? Would you feel complimented-or that your work had been countermanded or conflicted with? As someone who reads and sells other people’s more literal stories, how does a sense of narrative, drama and character exposition inform your work?
“I would like to think that if two writers were asked to spin out a story from the same photograph by me that there would be two very different and intriguing tales.”
MB
Yes, I do see myself as a storyteller. But-ideally-I would like to see myself as some sort of visual poet. I would feel very complimented, especially if it were someone such as yourself or Katie. I would not feel my work has been violated at all. And, anyway, it exists apart no matter what. I would be intrigued that one or any of my pictures could be “spun out” like that. I think that all of this stuff (narrative, drama) is there but I would hope in not so obvious a way. I would like to think of it all as a little more elusive, mysterious, fragmentary. I would like to think that if two writers were asked to spin out a story from the same photograph by me that there would be two very different and intriguing tales. Then I will know that I’ve succeeded. I hope that my work is enticing enough for the viewer to ask: What is happening? And, at the same time, I hope that it’s engaging and complex enough to not offer obvious answers.
KS
You’ve both studied and written poetry-and you have a great love for it. How has this affected your photography?
MB
Well, having a background in poetry and being a literary agent have definitely influenced my photography. I think with poetry I took some of the elements that make a poem work and applied them to photographs. For instance, one can spin many narratives on what is really going on in a Robert Lowell poem. Look at “To Speak of Woe that is in Marriage.” What is really going on there? Or, for that matter, Ashberry?As a book agent, I’m constantly around writers and helping them figure out what works and doesn’t work. I’m helping writers shape or compose their books. This has an effect. I love being around creative people. I feed on it. It’s also how I make my living.I’m a diehard music fan. All kinds. Jazz. Rock. Classical. I like to make a connection between jazz and street photography because they’re not too far apart in age, there’s a short but great tradition and there’s something about black and white and rhythms that connect them. There’s also improvising on the spot and immediately reacting to what comes your way.For the past eight years or so, I’ve also been doing watercolor landscape painting. This comes out of the fact that my family spends a lot of time in the Berkshires in western Massachusetts. It’s a very beautiful and special place. There are lots of trees and soothing hills. And a lot of high culture. I felt a need to “respond” to this incredible beauty but I didn’t want to photograph it. I mean I do photograph it but I use the pictures as inspirations for paintings. And-yes-the urban black and white street photography and the landscape painting do have some connections. There’s spontaneity. I learned a lot about composition as a photographer and so I think that this came more naturally to me as a painter. Painting is more relaxing to me because I don’t have to worry about a tree beating the crap out of me. And I think that some of what I picked up from painting has applied to my photography. I actually have more painter friends so I pick up on their concerns about composition and color and tone. And now I do color street photography when I go on trips. And I think my color work has a vibe that’s in some of the painting. I’ve a pretty good life with all of this. And I love sharing this life with my wife and daughter.
“Painting is more relaxing to me because I don’t have to worry about a tree beating the crap out of me.”
KS
Your photographs all involve people you don’t know, moments of interaction in passing along city streets-sometimes obviously dramatic, others more incidental-the drama in these being more subtle (and often, to me, more engaging as a result).But across all the imagery I’ve seen, I take away a sense of care for your subjects. I get the feeling that there’s more at work than a vicarious “use” of them-as subjects. Has photographing strangers made you feel more connected to people?
MB
I think that being the father of a five-year-old girl has made me feel more connected to people. I just know many more people through being a dad and-more important-I want the world to be a better place for my daughter Isabel. And I think that if one compares my earlier photographs to what I do now, I think that they would find more caring for people and a depth in the work. Maybe? I somehow think that this has partially to do with being a father. And it has to do with some life and death issues that have come up in my life. Out on the street, there are mothers and fathers, sons and daughters all around me. And I hope that my passion and commitment to something possibly greater than ourselves inspires and sets an example for my daughter.I sometimes feel guilty for taking someone’s picture. People rarely get upset. But sometimes they do or I can tell I kind of jolted them. But I’m not hurting anybody. And I like to think there’s a cause here. Not some grand humanitarian one (I’m not one of those humanitarian photographers) but, yes, an artistic one. I don’t usually photograph homeless people, cripples, or someone who just had a heart attack and is lying on the sidewalk. I feel that there’s a violation there or this is a cheap shot. I do not want to feel like I’m gaining from someone’s very real pain.I just saw on the news about the Japanese photographer Kenji Nagai in Yangon, Myanmor. What a terrible thing. Everything about it. And while the photographer (or maybe videographer?) was dying he was still taking pictures. What does this say? I mean, my God! Now there was a man not looking for fictions. I can see how this was his reflexes and adrenaline. But getting back to that Winogrand quote about the artist not being relevant once the work exists. How do we view Nagai’s final pictures as He’s dying? Does it actually matter that they were good pictures or good video? Isn’t it more powerful that he was lying there and he took it? And then it fades to black.
KS
Going back to the issue of spontaneity-the being in the right place at the right time-versus a more deliberate approach to choice and composition-is this a tension that you try to turn to advantage? Out of all the pictures you shoot, how many do you end up deeming appropriate to present as finished images?
MB
Yes, it’s all about that tension. It’s the right balance of both. It can’t be just spontaneous because it won’t come out good. I’ve to quickly capitalize and “compose” fast. Very few end up as finished images. Pitifully few. Part of this is because my standards are higher. Or I go through slumps (similar to baseball hitting slumps, I think). Or I feel that I’ve taken that picture before. It’s never easy and it doesn’t get any easier. I constantly have to push myself or I feel that the work will decline. There’s never any coasting. Doing street photography for many years (for me it’s been 22 years) is a very difficult endeavor. I naively thought it would be easy. At first, there’s the novelty and there’s always still that, but it gets harder to keep things fresh, especially if you photograph mostly in the same city. I’m in awe of what great street photography is and I’ve nothing but humility and respect. I try not to rest on my laurels. I’m as good as my last shot.
KS
Ralph Eugene Meatyard is a photographer who means a great deal to me. I love the imagination of his contrived set pieces. I love the masks, the sense of theater. But I find this, his most famous work, so compelling because of the abstract “Zen Twig” stuff-the more impressionistic, purely visual pieces. It’s the tension between these two entirely different tendencies that appeals to me. Do you feel you have a similar kind of tension at work?
MB
Yes, probably. I love the Zen Twig too. Getting back to Meatyard for a moment…I love how he used his whole family in his work. It’s clearly an expression of love. I would be kind of shocked to hear otherwise. Although one never knows. I love the old, broken down houses and how he made it all fun. And yet there’s a certain subversive quality there too. I think that some of my favorite Meatyard’s (is there a cooler name?) are those that he set up in terms of place and props but yet he still came out with something spontaneous. I love the masks blowing in the wind on the late fall tree branches. There’s something so deeply American here, like surprises found hidden in the attic. Though I don’t see any jack-o-lanterns, how can one not think of childhood, Halloween, ghosts, the woods? I think I admire the innocent, disturbing feel here more than I do, say, of Sally Mann. I mean her work is monumental, classical, beautiful but maybe I like how Meatyard was more offhand and casual. And had some genuine fun with the kids. He’s a detour off the Norman Rockwell Highway.
KS
Three shorter, sharper (and of course infinitely discursive) questions to end on.1. If for some reason you were asked to photograph, say a wedding-would there be a difference in approach to how you would do it, relative to a commercial photographer? Do you think that in that fixed and sort of pre-determined context your skills and vision would produce a distinctly different result? Or would the format hinder you so severely-even overwhelm your personal vision so that it wouldn’t recognizably emerge?On this same note, if I had to write the wedding invitation or develop the theme for the reception, I’d like to think I would do a better job than the commercial supplier. Not only a more “creative” result-but one more appropriate to the people in question (mind you it would be an adventurous couple who would let us loose with such a responsibility!). Do you feel the same? Or would this kind of assignment seem like total anathema and nothing to do with what you feel you’re doing?2. Who is the one photographer who has influenced you most?3. Robert Irwin, an artist and a mind who has affected me greatly says that art is “what happens to the viewer.” The implication is sort of a Venn diagram, where the “art” in any creation is that shared interface-the moment when a viewer or reader, or audience member, becomes in a sense a co-creator. Do you agree with this? Which would you rather overhear at a gallery opening of your work:”That guy is a really good photographer.”"Look at this scene-the expressions on the people’s faces. The shadows in the background.”
MB
1. I’ve never officially photographed a wedding. I’ve been offered many though. When some friends have gotten married I’ve brought my camera and have sort have been the “rogue wedding photographer.” I don’t have the pressure though. I just look for the same stuff I do when I’m on the streets except this time I know many of the people and I can also be a little more in their faces. I think my personal vision does emerge.2. And I feel the same in the second part of your question. I don’t mind being the rogue photographer at friends’ weddings.3. Garry Winogrand. I’m not sure if he influenced me the most but he certainly shook my world more than any other photographer. You and I were recently talking about Philip K. Dick and how forward thinking he was. You said that he had a profound understanding of California culture and could extrapolate in to our current time. Though Winogrand did spend a lot of time in California (and Texas), he’s primarily known for his work on the streets of New York. He and Dick roughly lived around the same time and died within two years of each other. I don’t want to press the similarities too much but they were both extremely interested in alienation and even paranoia (perhaps lesser so in Winogrand). Both had an intensity to their work and a very intense, unflinching vision. They were both so forward thinking and their best work still holds up and feels contemporary decades later. Obviously, some of the same forces were at work on them: the Vietnam War, Assassinations, the Cold War, the Summer of Love. Winogrand reacted to the world in a harsh and satiric manner. There’s so much that I can say about his best work, the sense of composition, the imbalances, the energy, the cruelty. For instance, he would use animals that were not native to New York as illustrations of what New York was really like. The very notion of a monkey in the back of a convertible, snarling at the camera, says it all about what the city had become in Winogrand’s eyes. I love how he photographed the “suits” walking around the city. I was a suit in midtown for 14 years myself and have a similar obsession with photographing the Plight of the Suit. There’s ultimately something so sad, fleeting, fragile beneath this tough Winogrand exterior. His work is so complex. But he captured something about the urban experience that still excites me to this day. He’s a very important artist to me. When Winogrand was dying of gall bladder cancer, he had to fill out a questionnaire at a clinic. He said that he always thought of himself as “some sort of unkillable weed.” And he also said that he had a feeling of “hopelessness and helplessness about the world.” Phil Dick couldn’t have said it better.I also love Robert Frank, Walker Evans, Lee Friedlander, William Klein, Josef Koudelka, Saul Leiter. Many others. Including friends. And painters as well.Last part of your question. I totally agree with Irwin. All we have is our subjective reaction. And I would like the viewer in the gallery to say both!For more information on Matt Bialer’s work, please visit his website:www.mattbialer.com
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