Transcript for Episode 71 – Photographer, Jock Sturges (USA + France)

Recorded April 12, 2020
Published May 14, 2020

Full recording here: https://wisefoolpod.com/photographer-jock-sturges-usa-france/

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Matthew Dols 0:12
I want to hear from you. Who would you like to hear as a guest on the podcast, send me an email at Matt. At wise for pod comm or direct message me on Instagram or Facebook. The entire world is now available through virtual recordings. And I want to take advantage of that I want to talk to people in South America, Asia and Africa. Give me some names and contacts of professional people that work in different aspects and different elements of the art world. You can also help by supporting our network through our Patreon account, you can find us at Patreon, pa t ar e o n.com. slash the wise for all one word. If you enjoy the conversations and the insights that you gain from the guests, I would appreciate a five star rating and Please tell your friends to listen and subscribe. Also, you can subscribe on Apple podcasts, Google podcasts, Spotify, Pandora, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts. I know that one of my weaknesses is my inability that self promotion. So here we go. If after hearing this conversation, you want to know more about me and my artwork, please go to my website. Matthewdols.com, Thanks.

Jock Sturges 1:58
When years ago, how many years ago was about six years ago, when we did the workshop together. I’m 73. And I my memory is failing. And I have no notion I’ll go with six years ago, I think at this point maybe seven years ago.

Matthew Dols 2:13
For the listeners. So seven years ago, I came and did a workshop with you in France for seven days. And I fully admit and sort of openly and realized, realized years ago but had been very sort of

scared slash anxious to even admit out loud, much less now I’m doing it publicly.

Jock Sturges 2:35
I know, I know what you’re about to say. And it isn’t necessarily

Matthew Dols 2:40
necessary for me, I feel the need to sort of just say it out loud, because I don’t talk about my own problems. So I went to your workshop, because what is I in a previous conversation I had on another podcast, we talked about expectations of how people go to workshops. And one of the things is I believe I made a horrible error with your workshop, which was that I went in with these preconceived expectations, hopes and ideas of what I was going to try to get from them that were completely unrealistic. And they I should not have had them. I, I wanted slash desire to whatever, more substantially more than should ever have been expected of you as the teacher of the workshop. And then because of that, I became very, my defense mechanism became very sort of standoffish, cold, even arrogant in many ways. And so I want to publicly apologize for my faults that I sort of maybe took out on you in some way,

Jock Sturges 3:47
which I don’t remember, remember at all. But the thing is, by the end of the workshop, you’d come around.

Matthew Dols 3:55
I did. I mean, I, I have nothing but fond memories of the workshop, except for my own actions. I believe I did, you know, had poor expectations when I entered it. And I and I did some things that were probably a bit arrogant and selfish and all kinds of stuff, but it doesn’t matter to me, you made the journey, you. You You came to realize that what we were doing was worthwhile. In the Yeah, I mean, I I have nothing but fond memories at this point. You know, in hindsight, at least, except for the the way that I felt bad for my own actions.

Jock Sturges 4:34
Apology accepted. Lovely. Okay, that’s,

Matthew Dols 4:38
so let’s get to the nitty gritty of this. So I’m doing this podcast about the fact that I’ve been in academia for many years. And I’m no longer full time in academia and I’m trying to be more active in the arts world, the arts, industry, market, whatever word you want to put to it. And I’m trying to find out how it all works. From the people who have been practicing in it, and one of the first people that popped in my head, of course, was you because not only have you been doing it, but you’ve been doing it for very long time, nothing personal.

But you’ve been doing it on a professional level for a very long time. So it starts with the question of, you know, how did you even sort of get in like, so? I mean, I remember when your first book came out, but you had been doing it far even before that. So I know you and I went to the same school, we both went to SF AI. But then how did you get that first? interest, that first gallery that first whatever, like, what was that, like, as a young artist? Okay, now there that I have a description that’s quite precise.

Jock Sturges 5:45
Because I’ve been working with the eight by 10, since 1970. And I, it never occurred to me that I could make a living with it, that my art would be anything more than anonymous. Because I love doing it so much night, and I worked other jobs to make ends meet and feed the cat. It was important because the cat had informed me that if I didn’t feed it, it would kill me in my sleep. So I was kind of at my wit’s end. And I decided that the thing to do would be to go to New York with a portfolio of my work and visit galleries. So I went to New York with my portfolio case in one hand in my heart and the other

and visited some 12 galleries or so on some of the moments on the appointed Thursday when they look at new work at yada yada. And I didn’t have a resume, because I thought my pictures were good. And I was so naive about the fact that art galleries gallerists the people that run them don’t know really what to do with work, it’s outside the box that they’re familiar with. And that that was my work, for sure. And so I just got soundly rejected. And a number of galleries didn’t even look at the work. Just because I didn’t know anybody. I didn’t have any lines on the resume, etc, etc. So I went back home promising myself, I’d never do that, again, because I was a painful experience was so disappointing, wasn’t easy for me to afford and to do the trip. But a couple years later, at a point in time, when I was starving, I hit on an ad in the back of a local public called Art week, local publication called Art week. And it said, Photo Contest cash prizes. I thought, hmm, I’ll try that. And I want it. So I thought, okay, I’ll check for $500 came in the mail. And I was over the moon. That was a month’s rent for me then a little more than a month’s rent. So I was living in San Francisco, I decided to enter a bunch of them. And I pretty quickly started learning things. I learned that the art contests that are arrived with a big fancy prospectus with the names of 100 prestigious jurors and stuff like that they’re making their money from their entries, because they’re getting 1000s of people to enter and they weren’t worth doing state fairs were not worth doing. Any place that needed you to send the pictures framed was not worth doing. What was worth doing was looking at who the juror was, if it was one person. And that person was interesting, then that was worth doing. So I want to competition in Philadelphia, and had a gallery call me out saying we like these pictures that were published as a result of having one. we’d send us some slides, I send slides and he said I’m going to come canceling my next two shows. I’m going to do a show for two months show for you. I was the Paul Kava gallery. I remember details correctly. And God knows I might not. Maybe that was a one month show. Doesn’t matter. That show sold out very quickly. And within a matter of weeks, I had four more galleries and the East Coast wanting to represent me. And then I was second place in a in a competition in San Francisco. The last one I entered. And that got collectors coming to my house to buy work. And the owner of a gallery downtown named Joburg division gallery. He saw that a lot of is collected for bringing in work to be framed that he hadn’t sold. So he called me up and said, I want to see you down here. He said, Oh, Joe, I showed you my work a year ago and you drop cigar ashes on it and said he didn’t know anything about it. And he ended up being I eventually relented after a year and formed a partnership with him. That was wonderful. I loved him more than my own father, really wonderful man opened his gallery because he loved his son when people weren’t showing his son’s work. And Joe said, what’s what’s so hard, it’s just business. He was a great, great guy, great guy. So that’s what cracked the nut for me. And it also got me a little lines in the resume. But what I liked about the process so much is that when you drop those things off at the post office and they sailed off into the dark, there was hope in your heart all day long. And when you had a bunch them out there. I was being proactive, I was doing something. And it worked. I was lucky that it worked learning. I’ve since then juried a bunch of competitions here in there. And what I had learned was that to follow the perspectives of suggestions to the letter, be very clean and clear in how you present the work. Because I’d have a thought I’d do a competition, it’d be 1000 submissions, and I’d have to eliminate stuff and almost any criteria to try to narrow it down. So that’s what worked for me.

Matthew Dols 10:32
It’s almost like the movie cinema style of way of getting it done like that, because one of the things that I keep running into is is like that kind of beautiful, serendipitous, almost romantic vision of your ability to like, get a gallery to pick you up and to get you to win. And these awards and stuff is very, very difficult to attain. Now,

Jock Sturges 10:55
it is, I mean, gallerists are gamblers. If they have three bad shows in a row, I don’t care what gallery that is, that’s that we’re in trouble. And I appreciate what they do for me hugely. That being said, I’ve had bad experiences with galleries to where work has disappeared, and I’ve not been paid and things like that. So it’s, it’s important to have some sense of how well respected a gallery is by the artists they represent. If you’re considering to being taken on by one, it’s also very important to send your work in a professional way. That’s it’s with a list of images that includes a photograph of the image, and that you get a copy of that list back from them stating that the copy of the the condition of all the pictures is perfect. Failing to do any of these things and people can take then the pictures disappear. Many galleries are wonderful, they’re terrific. They’re honest, as the day as long I’d say the vast majority, but there’s some pretty unsavory people in operation out there. I’m not going to mention names I don’t want to get sued.

Matthew Dols 11:56
I don’t want you to mention any names but so but I’m what I’m more interested in is the good relationships that you’ve had with with galleries like, because one of the things that like I think about when it comes to gallery relationships is it’s not just making the relationship but it’s perpetuating it, nurturing it and growing it over time. Are there any things that you found worked well for like keeping a gallery or, or even growing to bigger galleries or more galleries? Like, what were some of your things that you experienced through that relationship?

Jock Sturges 12:31
Well, I’ll mentioned the Paul Kava gallery in Philadelphia, which was the first gallery that took me Paul is a remarkably good artist in his own right. And photography. His work is, is amazing. And with him, it was possible to have substantive conversations all the time in. And he wasn’t right about everything necessarily. He liked one picture for an announcement that I thought was the wrong picture. And he never sold a copy of it. But mostly, he was very, very intelligent and what he added to what I was doing, so it increased my knowledge of what I was up to myself. I mean, there are galleries in the history of the art of the arts, who’ve been immensely important to their artists and Tom Meyer in San Francisco, who is past having a gallery when he took me on on he’s a private dealer, immensely intelligent, wonderful guy who really made he said really important things to me from time to time, it was just the right moment. And Kava in Philadelphia. The photographs Do not bend gallery and Texas was was similarly useful photo I in Santa Fe has been super good too. So those relationships have been super, super good for me. Plus some some foreign galleries as well. have been great.

Matthew Dols 13:48
Yeah, I mean, how is it working these days? Like cuz I know you’ve been in galleries since what early 80s? I would say so now we’re talking almost 40 years working with the galleries. How has the the dynamic of the gallery changed like so you it was one way and of course now there’s art fairs and social media and all these other things like So how has the not just the relationship but sort of the activities of the gallery changed and evolved?

Jock Sturges 14:16
Well, the world’s become a very difficult place for galleries and a lot of closed. I’ve lost easily 10 or 12 galleries they’re just gone. And my work is selling much less now. But it’s not a surprise at all. I totally expected that to happen because I’m not a new thing to collectors and gradually that my prices have inched up. And I’ve I’ve tried to keep my work at the affordable end of the scale with a slightly larger addition to compensate. But from an Excel the man’s work sales for 25,000 I think you can’t even unless you’re a foundation or a museum, you can’t even buy one which is not undeserved. Her work is magnificent. I find that all over. She’s a good friend. But most photographers tend to get about a 10 year ride in the gallery world where they’re new, they’re exciting. Everybody wants one they’re talked about. But at the end of 10 years, that’s begins to sort of fade. And a lot of photographers, Paul company who comes to mind towards the end of their life didn’t have much money until they got so close to dying, that people said, Oh, we better get some now, at which point the money was useful as it could have been more another, that’s another photographer would have influenced me a wonderful guy. So galleries. Now I’m not selling somebody, for instance, a few galleries that have been constant. And I do still sell work. So I don’t lose hope all together. But I’m also I don’t mind, because I’m 73 now, and they don’t have that many more pictures left to take. I’ve taken the vast majority of what I will do in my lifetime already. I can’t carry the eight by 10 anymore. I’ve got problems with my back it because like my load going to the beach or going anywhere to work was about 7580 pounds. I remember. Yeah. You see you there see the saw?

Matthew Dols 16:09
Yeah, you had two assistants helping as well.

Jock Sturges 16:12
Right. And but I carried, I always carried the camera and some of the film. I carried as much as I could, basically. So now I’m sort of semi retired, but I’m still working except for COVID. Of course, it does. We all are. Yeah, exactly. But I’m still selling prints occasionally and enjoying it. But I’m very lucky in that my wife is a physician, so I’m not going to starve. So I’ve also been extraordinarily lucky in the fact that the ride that I’ve had from the art world has been close to 40 years long, as opposed to just 10. But I don’t let that I don’t let my self be flattered by that, particularly because I think the fact that my work is about the body. And the interest in the body is universal, it’s it that does not wane. And I’m hoping that my work succeeds in the process of convincing or explaining to people helping them understand that the bodies belong to real people, because they see my models evolve. They see them becoming parents, they see them getting older, and they realize that I have a responsibility to them and for them. So there’s a relationship there. The word relationship is at the center of what I do. And I’m kind of wondering, sorry,

Matthew Dols 17:26
oh, no, it’s perfectly fine. The podcast, part of the fun of a podcast is the people can tell very long and elaborate stories, because it doesn’t cost money or anything like this or whatever. So generally, if people are listening to this podcast, they’re probably interested in what you have to say. So they’ll gladly hear a long and sordid story. So yeah, have fun with it.

Jock Sturges 17:48
Okay, well, I’m there’s some great stories behind some of my pictures. I love telling.

Matthew Dols 17:52
I have one question. And then I would love to hear those stories, which is how about the nature of the books? Because you’ve got some you’ve had a very, I would, I would consider like a variety of books like your first two books, I felt like were sort of just groundbreaking sort of like, Oh my gosh, how can this be made? These are amazing all this. And then you continued to make your books could pretty consistently but then you did the what was it was it called MIT, the large scale book is a German book. Tell me I want to know a little bit about how that book came about. Because it’s, it’s a sumo book. It’s massive.

Jock Sturges 18:30
It’s possibly one of the biggest photography books ever done, is it’s turned out to be an immensely bad thing to drop in your foot. It’s huge. Ya know that the man who runs gallery vevey, which is the editor, publisher of this book, and other and other many other very fine photo books, is Alex shorts, Alexandre shorts. And he’s crazy. He’s completely nuts. He also drives faster than anybody I’ve ever driven with and scared me half to death. Don’t ever get in a sports car with him.

Matthew Dols 19:00
I will remember that.

Jock Sturges 19:01
In any case. He said, Well, john, what’s your perfect book? And I said, Well, I’ve always dreamed about doing something big. So that people for a relatively inexpensive price could own a substantial number of my pictures in the size that that I liked him to be seen. He said, okay, we do that. It took more conversation than that. He’s an architect, and he made all his money in architecture, and use that money to publish beautiful books because he loves beautiful books. Nice. So that’s what brought that into being. It’s so expensive to build and make. And all the sheets have to be hand gathered one at a time and a huge warehouse to get in the right order.

Matthew Dols 19:42
And the exterior of it is wood, if I remember correctly,

Jock Sturges 19:45
it’s three laminations of plywood covered in cloth and it took a huge amount of just science to find a book was covered could be rigid enough. So I think it’s kind of an albatross around his neck. Because it really is huge. It’s not a coffee table book, it’s a coffee table. And it’s a big thing. But the printing is beautiful. And the printing is interesting because the printer, and this is in the former East Germany, he had just a one color press. And he had to print the colors one color at a time, and then put all the sheets back through the press each time. And so he was he was doing additive printing, where the colors would change when the new color came in, etc. But this man is such a genius that he’s actually consulted with constantly by big presses that are where they have big complex problems come up, because he just knows how to do it. And he works at night. And very strange human being but a terrific printer. So the book is gorgeous. They printed really, really pretty.

Matthew Dols 20:52
When you’ve worked with steidel, and some of the other great publishing houses and print places that are sort of are in the photo industry,

Jock Sturges 20:59
come in style style is remarkable to work with. He’s the best in the world, just bar none. And it’s a massive compliment to me that he likes me as much as he does. I can’t quite get why, like, how could I be a member of the same club? This guy’s

Matthew Dols 21:16
don’t knock it just enjoy it.

Jock Sturges 21:18
No, I do I do. His process is fascinating. And I wanted to live forever, because you’ll never be another one like him. So doing those books was a great pleasure. I printed like four or five books with him for maybe just four. And my first books was scalo out of Zurich, were printed my style. Okay, so we’ve got a long history, I’ve also printed with aperture, but aperture, they were always kind of rummaging through the world to find the least expensive printer possible in Hong Kong. So that was actually I got a better tour of the globe out of aperture. But my problem with the first two aperture books is that I am an editor from aperture had spent a weekend at her house in upstate New York, editing that book, we got it to write where we liked it and got a name for it the last day of summer. But then Michael Hoffman just tore it apart and put it back together again, he was more interested in graphics than he was the fact that I’d sequence the pictures chronologically. So that you could see the growth and change in individuals and you weren’t thinking of them as Oh, this is a different person. You turn the page, there was some logic to it.

Matthew Dols 22:33
Wait a minute. So the book that’s out the one that I own, and everybody else owns is not a

Jock Sturges 22:38
it’s not what I envisioned at all. Wow. Okay. And that happened again, with my second book with aperture, which was radiant identity, which was a line from a poem, and I think he misunderstood the poem. I think the poem was about death. But anyway, and it’s also for me, it was too too many trips of the tongue to the palate, radiant identities. But I didn’t have any choice because you’d put on you’d already put it into catalog. So that that was Michael Hoffman might, he was a bit of a Martin net. But once again, being published by apertures is a huge privilege,

Matthew Dols 23:10
indeed, still to this day, because they mean, they still have a great reputation for making beautiful publications.

Jock Sturges 23:17
aperture has survived as a nonprofit for a very long time. in an environment that is not easy. So no, nothing but admiration there. And I’ve got to work with Steve. I’m forgetting names all the time now that their production guy and I learned an enormous amount about printing books from him. See, Baron with terrific guy who died younger than he should have done. Lots of great things, doing all that work. Knowing how to press check a book is very, very important. You need to be on the press as you’re working, so that you can ask for corrections. And no matter how good the press is, if there’s going to be some things that you know about what the images should look like that they don’t. The style is amazing, is he’s like, because nobody knows more than him. So making books, you know, here’s the interesting thing as a young photographer, this what I want it I want it to look right, and I want it to gallery shows and being in museum would be cool, right?

Matthew Dols 24:15
Yeah, absolutely.

Jock Sturges 24:16
Alright, so that’s kind of like the three things that one hopes for if you’re young in photography, I over the course of time, what I figured out was that the biggest reward in photography was being able to do the work. And so the galleries, the reviews, the books, the museums, all of that is like it’s not it’s it’s almost nothing to me compared to how much I love being in the sun working. That’s the biggest reward that successes as let me continue to be in the sun and continue to work. doing the work is what matters to me the most being in the sun and knowing those people because that because my work is about that life that I’m living, knowing them. And you’ve been there and you’ve seen what that’s like Have they like the work? You? Did? You remember that? Right?

Matthew Dols 25:05
I remember that the entire experience of being there was the probably one of the most surreal, sort of, literally, like, I took my life and everything I was doing. And I just dropped out of it for a week and I experienced a completely different world. Because the workshop in case people who are listening don’t know this workshop is at an I’m going to mispronounce it mode, they leave a

Jock Sturges 25:28
note to leave, that’s fine. That’s good,

Matthew Dols 25:29
okay. Which is a naturalist community and to participate in the workshop, every participant must also live the life of being a resident in Mandalay Bay. And so I remember going in the first day, and I was so uncomfortable, because I had never done anything like that before. Mind you, I was also living in Middle Eastern country at the time. So it was a dramatic culture shock for me to go from one to the other. within two days, I remember being absolutely understanding and comfortable with life and the lifestyle, it, it made sense. And everybody seemed perfectly accepting of everybody and everything about it. And it was really quite enlightening for me to then look back on your work that I’d already known and have a sort of a different perspective of having experienced it, and even been in some of the exact same places as some of the photos that I, you know, revered as a young student doing like, Oh, this is in the shower, outside of the house and all this, and that I was actually get to be there and see the the people living there. And it was really quite enlightening. For me.

Jock Sturges 26:48
It is an eye opener, especially for Americans who were very confused about all things sexual. Because it’s not a sexy content and context at all.

Matthew Dols 26:56
Not at all. Like I’m all about sexy in my own work. But like it, there was no, there was nothing sexual about the experience at all. Period, just there was nothing It was just living. And that’s it. So yeah,

Jock Sturges 27:12
what was stunning, it was the absence of shame, people without any shame at all, that they didn’t even think that way. we all we all can relate to having someone open the door on us when we’re in the toilet, right? That’s embarrassing. But in in model II, they in that context, people are born, they spent their whole life that way. They just say hi, they’re not embarrassed at all. They’re just human beings sitting there, close or not no close, so much less important. So you get so working in that, without the app without the clue of clothing. You don’t know when in history The picture was taken. So you end up making a document that’s true in a way that has it stretches in both directions on like the human spectrum much further than what we can do if we’re limited by what the person is wearing. That will date the picture to within minutes this day and age,

Matthew Dols 28:06
maybe hairstyles, but that’s the beauty about it.

Jock Sturges 28:10
That’s actually an issue. It’s an issue. That’s been hard for me because a lot of women now are shaving their sex completely. Which I think infantilizes them. And so I’m finding that I’m trying to, I’m avoiding that straight on you. Because it’s just a little bit too much information. I it’s not that I love pubic hair. I I’m neutral about it. But it’s absence disturbs me.

Matthew Dols 28:38
Yeah, I just had the same conversation with my wife a couple days ago. And yeah, it’s the she the adult woman shaving feels awkward.

Jock Sturges 28:49
And then occasionally in Mandalay Bay, because it’s a big place summer populations, about 30,000 people. You’ll see men also shaming their privates. And that seems even stranger to me. For some reason, I just took the whole very notion of a, of a razor blade down on that, that reason of the geography makes me really nervous. But I’m not sure what, what what’s going on. It seems a little bit strange. But it’s, it’s conforming to the norm and the norm is that people do that. And so people in my work when they were younger, I thought when they grow up, they never do anything like that they’re all doing it. So that will date the work that will date the work, and maybe maybe like to as well too, but sometimes I’ll take them out in Photoshop.

Matthew Dols 29:34
Oh, you had tattoos and everyone thought about that. I don’t remember ever seeing any tattoos in any of your photos.

Jock Sturges 29:40
my goddaughter Fanny had a had a piercing that’s what she did never had to she had a piercing that I hate piercings. That’s just me. That’s that’s just my taste has nothing to do with what everybody else is for the people that like them more power to them. But I had a beautiful picture of her leaning against the railing and there was a nose piercing in it. They just had to go away. And now she’s kind of glad because she was in peace embarrassed by that point. Anyway, I’ve wandered all over the map there. Sorry, sir. Okay.

Matthew Dols 30:11
Okay, you had mentioned that you wanted to talk about some of your favorite photos and some experiences of them. I have one that I’ve always wondered about. And I can never I’ve never, I can’t even find it because I don’t know what the title of it is. But I’m sure if I describe it, you’ll know it.

Jock Sturges 30:27
I’ve had people say, Well, I saw one of your pictures. It was a grill on the beach.

Matthew Dols 30:31
Oh, come on. I’m better than that. I can. No, no, no, no, I believe if I remember correctly, it’s actually your wife in the shower, folded over forward shaving her legs, leaving your leg right? Yeah, the shapes and the forms in that image, are they when I remember seeing them when I was found your book for the first time. I remember sitting in class because my teacher had brought in. I believe that was last days of summer. And I was just transfixed by like the beautiful composition, the light the curves there was it

Jock Sturges 31:05
was none of that none of there’s no pose there at all. But what there is what I call it don’t move a graph. I saw that it’s Don’t move, don’t move. Now, you’ve seen inside of my house, I’ve got a nice light that comes in from the from the west there. And in the later in the day. I’ve got open shadows earlier in the day, that worked for me well as well. And there’s a white building just out opposite which which gives a lot of fill. So it’s an easy place to make pictures. And so I very often set the camera up there. When another picture that were there for people, for women. Wonderful is my wife, she’s looking in the mirror. And for women basically doing their morning toilet one when girls shaving another girl’s leg, it was the first time the girl and she was standing having her leg shaved, had ever had it done. And another was in the shower, rinsing shampoo, whatever here and there was my in the mirror, it was a little hard to get that picture, I took 50 bad ones 50 that didn’t quite work as well, which is one of photography’s compelling mystery if we can talk about eventually

Matthew Dols 32:06
feel free that I mean that’s something with especially with digital photography, and cell phone, photography, and all the other stuff, I feel like everybody seems to think you can get a great photo very quickly and easily these days. And I personally, I’m still love sort of your closer to your generation for sure have the belief that quality takes time and it takes a lot of mistakes and learning from your mistakes in order to get better. And so on and so on.

Jock Sturges 32:33
There’s two levels to that. One of the reasons that quality takes time is that you need to practice you need to sharpen the stick, you need to be good with your materials so that if luck happens by you’re ready for it. I’m a strong believer in not using light meters. And just understanding the light well enough so that you basically you shouldn’t you’re done. Not to do color work, I do use light meters because the there isn’t the latitude for error there that there isn’t black and white. So the mechanical side of it. But the mechanical side of photography is 1% of the difficulty of making good picture is a trace element, which is not an if it’s not on our diet, we die. Okay, you have to have technique, you’d have to know what you’re doing with the camera you have to have and to do that you have to practice like a lot. And you know something the art art world doesn’t care if you don’t do some of they’ll because they’ll turn their attention to someone who does Simple as that. So work hard or go home. The hard part in photography is what’s in front of your camera, what do you know about it? I think in seeing the work, I hope at least did I work in front of your group?

Matthew Dols 33:40
Yes, I stayed late and actually was I saw two shoots that you did.

Jock Sturges 33:47
Okay, so what I’m shooting isn’t just that person there is the fact that I’ve known her or him for 10 years, 12 years or whatever, and I’m photographing their kids now etc. Second, third generation, there are people who might care about deeply and when I’m profoundly lucky to have posing for me and they’re not but they’re not really even posing, they’re just being there. And the best pictures always come from something they do themselves. Always. There’s a kind of tyranny that borders on misogynistic in the way men order women around to take their pictures, do this do this. All these photographs, that result basically are a veil of male imagination that’s been thrown over a decent human being and probably would never have done those things on our own. So they’re not true pictures. They’re there. They’re an artifact. And that’s, that’s harsh. I’m not going to indict the entire world of photography that but there’s lots of photographers that do i do well and care. Peter Lindbergh was a very good example of that the models all adored him because he cared about them and his pictures are are wonderful because of it. There was a relationship there. So that’s that’s the hard part is knowing what’s in front of your camera. Now and I were talking about people but the subject, whatever subject you have in front of your camera, what do you know about it?

Matthew Dols 35:13
Well, within that something else that I always found interesting about your work is that they, the location, and the lights let you continue to shoot in the same place decade after decade or place that sort of like locale. So like the the model event in Northern California all these ways, and you know them those locations so well, that you don’t, you barely even need to sort of plan it. So like, just having that consistency of the relationship, even with the quality of the light, knowing the light at the time of day, the time of year, all this kind of stuff, what’s going to be growing where what the the trees are going to look like, and all this kind of stuff like you chose to sort of apologize or comes off wrong, like repeatedly use the same place over and over, instead of going to new locations. Why did you choose that?

Jock Sturges 36:06
Because it took forever to learn the light where I was, I started working on beaches and Block Island on the east coast. And there I got my education on what not to do. Because I do a lot of what you don’t do. In terms of misjudging exposures, messaging time of day Miss judging the sentiments of the models, not that so much. But still, I was photographing the beginning there, I was photographing strangers, people they didn’t know. And my work educated me because consistently, the best pictures were people I’d known a little bit or more, the more I knew them, the better the pictures got. And the more I knew them that the more I liked them, the more they liked me and the happier they were when the pictures were good. And they figured out pretty quickly that they didn’t have to pose that it would be at the end of the shoot when they were you know, when they were scratching their nose and picking up picking something up or suppress it Don’t move. And I’d get this natural gesture, I think of it as awkward grace, that for me is all the grease in the world, the natural things that people do, that you can’t tell them to do. It just doesn’t work. Or if you do, you’re throwing away the truth of what the beauty that’s before you. So when a when you have a picture that happens, and that’s worked really well. It’s an ecstatic moment. It’s really an ecstatic moment. And the model feels that too. And it’s very important to remember this to talk to the model and convey what you’re feeling as you’re working. And if you convey excitement like that, they’re well fed, they’re very well fed. They love it. You can change the life of the people you’re working with, I have a number of stories about pictures that did exactly that. out completely, it completely reified. The models in such an important way as to their self image, etc, that they, they were a different person.

Matthew Dols 37:56
I’m interested that you seem to get as you say, you repeatedly go back to people again and again and seems like a lot of photographers and I’m as guilty of this as anybody else. Don’t have the sort of the Muses are those people that they make these long term relationships with to make growth and better images over time and all this kind of stuff? So like so you chose have chosen to sort of create these muses more or less that you continually go back to your family and of course in all the others. What do you think about the fact that that’s not as common these days?

Jock Sturges 38:32
I it makes me sad, but there’s in art photographers I’ve met online, and I love to surf and find someone whose work I think is much better than than they realize and then started corresponding with them and I’ve actually published 16 books for young photographers helped publish through gallery movie and that’s terrific fun for me and and I do it pure self interest in doing it. Why do you think I do it

Matthew Dols 38:57
to pass on your knowledge to the next generation?

Jock Sturges 39:00
Now? I want to see the pictures. I want to see what they’ll do.

Matthew Dols 39:05
Yeah, I remember you introduced me to Elaine lebeau

Unknown Speaker 39:08
Lavoie, Alana.

Matthew Dols 39:10
He came by one day while we were there,

Jock Sturges 39:13
very, very strong photographer who is no longer my friend. But that’s that’s a long story I won’t get into I don’t admire him the way I did before. Online was I did a book with him. connected with collectors. I gave him a good 35 millimeter Canon lens. I gave him a Mac Macintosh convention tower computer. I did everything I could to help him with his work. And then he disappointed me quite profoundly. So but the work is still good. I have to say that he his work is wonderful. It’s inventive. Its its original. And it’s just devilishly clever very often.

Matthew Dols 39:48
He was a fascinating guy because I remember he came from sculpture, if I remember correctly before he got into photography,

Jock Sturges 39:54
education in Photographic Arts at all. And doesn’t didn’t know who Stieglitz was, or anybody. Doesn’t matter. He’s, he’s a diamond in the rough. Alright, so

Matthew Dols 40:04
going back to your profound changes that images affected the models. I’d love to hear that.

Jock Sturges 40:12
Okay, well, I’ll give you one example. My favorite. And I’m sorry, I don’t have the image somehow to show the world.

Matthew Dols 40:19
I will be happy to put a link to it or put it on the post when I put this out.

Jock Sturges 40:24
None of its online because I wouldn’t have permission from that family right now.

Matthew Dols 40:27
Fair enough. Okay.

Jock Sturges 40:28
I have a model named Nicole whom I started with quite young and model Levi their German family, and very, very tall friesians. And Nicole hated herself. They showed me her class picture and it was like, kid, kid kid, and then Nicole, like, a half a kid taller than everybody else there. And then it looked like a picket fence with somebody put a pole in the middle. So Dieter was a major in the German army, big powerful man with a mustache and you meet theater anything How did we win the war, kind of a super match. Very nice guy, very nice guy and great dad. And it killed him and his daughter didn’t like herself. Because she really didn’t she walked she walked with a stoop with their hair, their head forward and her hair in her face. And she was embarrassed to exist because she was so tall. So they stopped coming them on leave it but they went to a nature’s place with up the coast a bit. And called euro net, which caters more specifically to Germans. almost as big as model lever is. I went up there to photograph or I tried to keep things going every summer, one day, and I knew I was going to have a very short shoot because there was a big thunderstorm off the coast grumbling away. The middle Peninsula is famous for its thunderstorms. And that was a big one out there. So we went to the beach. And I said, Nicole, just go over there. And she’s about 1616, maybe almost 17. And I fussed for the camera, which is what I do, I turn my back on my models, I don’t want to influence what they do at all. And I figured it with the camera, the camera was all set up. And I turned around and she’s laying down in her back in some titles with her head towards me and one knee bent. And I take one look at it with my eyes direct not looking through the camera, and I go that’s gonna look really well on the on the ground glass. He was it was a miracle because it was upside down and made up the books. She was flying.

And I was just like, I was incredibly effusive. I was so happy with what I was seeing, I knew it was going to be one of the best pictures that I had done that year, maybe in quite a few years, which turned out to be true. So I shot three frames, and it started to rain. So we pelted like crazy for the house and for their caravan. And it rained like the end of the world the way summer Thunder showers do cleared off finally. And we put all the tables together from the neighbors in theirs and they had a big long evening dinner, Alfresco under the stars and maybe 30 people. I was one of the things that happens in France, that’s so pleasant, so wonderful. The kids are taking off and running around and one point during the meal. I mentioned to her that I don’t think you’d ever find an American army major in an Atreus camp. And he put his arm around this little fat man next to him and says, Now this is nothing kills mitochondrial is my general. So great. So 11 o’clock shows up. And as you know, I’ve got to get back into model evey before the gate closes. So I’m packing up, it’s very dark, because even though it stopped raining, it was overcast. And not only the only light is the light in the in the back of my car, in the trunk of the car as I’m putting stuff gear in. And here comes Dieter the father out of the gloom. And he’s marching up to me like with a really serious expression on his face. And I realized as he gets closer, and I can see him a little better. He’s crying. And he walks right up to me this huge, powerful man, and he grabs my hand my head with both his hands. And I really thought I was about to die for some reason I didn’t understand, right? And he gives me two Big kisses like this. Nah, nah. I’ve never been kissed by a scratchy man like that before. My sympathy to women. And he said, Nicole just told me that she thinks that she’s beautiful after all. And starting the next day, she started walking around upright. And I got a very funny postcard from Dieter saying that he had overheard two boys saying, Have you seen that new girl just down on this, like around the corner there? She’s amazing. She’s like a goddess. And she’d been there for weeks. They hadn’t noticed her. She’d been invisible. So Charice Western the first time she posed Charice was before she was Western. For the first time she posed For Everquest, and it totally changed her life. In her in her biography, she talks about how she walked out of his studio, because he didn’t tell her what to do. He said, Just do whatever you like. And, and was verbal about him being happy and admiring, and he fed her. And it changed her life, it completely changed. She thought that compared to her friends who had cute little Bobby haircuts that were typical for the age, and were just like all the same, she towered over them. She was long and lanky, and an original thinker. And she hadn’t liked herself up until that moment, and she adored herself from that moment forward. So photographers have this power when you’re working to do some real good with your models to help them understand. We had a model in the workshop who is born with a physical deformity. Do you remember that?

Matthew Dols 45:52
I did. She was in my workshop. Yes.

Jock Sturges 45:54
And I’ll just call her Kay. To preserve her identity, or her anonymity. She didn’t want to do the workshop because she felt that she was kind of weird. And she wore her hair really long, keep yourself covered up, and was unbalanced depressive and not very happy person. But if you gave her half a chance to be happy, she was the sweetest person you’ve ever met. So her friends talked her into modeling. And she turned out to be the Workshop’s favorite model. And she just lit up like a Christmas tree. She was so she was so changed from that moment forward.

Matthew Dols 46:28
I do remember the beginning of the week where she was very shy and very covered, basically. And by the end of the week, she was very confident and smiling more and much more, just generally confident of what she was doing,

Jock Sturges 46:41
that that difference is there to make with anybody you photograph.

Matthew Dols 46:44
Something that you mentioned a little earlier that I because, again, sort of the podcast is a lot about sort of the business of the arts also, like, have you had difficulty because of the subject matter in relation to the internet.

Jock Sturges 46:57
The internet is is not the best thing in the world for me. And it’s it lets more people see my images than might have been the case. But the problem is that my work is pirated all the time.

Matthew Dols 47:08
For inappropriate reasons, I’m sure.

Jock Sturges 47:10
Yeah. And also, I’m very concerned with what’s happening with with websites that have sensory sensitive, built into their design the way the way Facebook does,

Matthew Dols 47:19
and Instagram,

Jock Sturges 47:21
and Instagram and Instagram and not quite as severe as Facebook’s. But it’s appeared it’s a it’s a leaning towards puritanical thought, that, I think is changing people’s sensibility about the body and and their own bodies and their themselves.

Matthew Dols 47:37
Oh, it absolutely is.

Jock Sturges 47:38
Facebook has been kind of good for me in a way I’ve enjoyed the community of friends I have here. And I enjoy seeing work that I wouldn’t might never have seen otherwise, especially out of the former Eastern Bloc out of Russia. And there’s wonderful, wonderful photographers working now that we know almost nothing about. So I enjoy that a lot. And but the censorship, basically I’m about 3% of my work can go on can go online there. Right. I

Matthew Dols 48:05
mean, that’s what I was thinking you, you mentioned that, first of all, you have to have model releases that allow a for you to use them for your own artwork. But then there’s sort of a different level of monitor release to be able to allow for your images to be used on the internet, I’m sure. And then of course, there’s the barriers on the internet for through censorship and stuff that I don’t publish my notes on the Internet at all. So anybody seeing them there, it wasn’t me that put them there. And it usually if I become aware of it, I tried to get them taken down, because they contravene my agreement with the families.

Jock Sturges 48:36
And then and then one case cost me a very important model for my work, who’s whose family was shocked to see her picture reproduced on the internet. I got to take it down, but the damage was done. And it wasn’t put up by me. Right?

Matthew Dols 48:52
Me This is something that I noticed when we’re at the workshop. And also when you first spoke with us as well as you truly make these like strong connections not just often with the models, but with the models, families,

Jock Sturges 49:05
and in the family equally equally as well. So I’m not sending messages that I think she’s beautiful and she’s not. So the social work that I do as a photographer, that’s where I spend 99% of my time is is knowing these people going out to dinner with them. We stand and talk about our kids and the edge of the sand, watching them try to kill themselves in the ocean. And we have long conversations. That’s part of what I like so much about French culture is there is so much emphasis on that kind of social behavior. People being with each other talking, having substantive conversations, caring about aesthetics, talking about life, this a lot of the French are taught a lot of philosophy. And they have interesting minds. And they care about the family process. Their kids don’t go to the mall, they go to the mall, they all go and the kids come are many places that kids come home from school so they can have their new meal at home. And meals last hours in French schools as an hour give for lunch, right and good food. The teachers have wine. I mean, it’s a totally different way of living, that that considers the texture of our lives to be what we have to enjoy and make beautiful, which we don’t do. We’re too We’re too much, too much too much worried about car payments and, and having more things.

Matthew Dols 50:30
Yeah, I mean, as a creative person, I’m more interested in having time than money. Like you were saying earlier with the that basically, the production of your artwork and the publishing of the books, and the exhibitions basically afforded you the time and space to be able to make your work.

Jock Sturges 50:47
Exactly, exactly. So and it’s been fun. I’ve had a terrific time. I am, I have zero regrets.

Matthew Dols 50:57
Are you still running workshops?

Jock Sturges 50:59
I haven’t taught one in a while. If I suddenly think of an artist, I want to mention I can’t remember the name anymore. So I wonder how good a teacher I’d be in that in that way. So that’s a concern I why the last workshop I taught went very, very well for most of the people in it, but one or two people I was cranky with. And that, in retrospect, I’m really embarrassed that I was a bad teacher for those people.

Matthew Dols 51:24
I still keep in touch with some of the people that were in the workshop. And we all still have very fond memories of it. So it wasn’t our group that you’re you had that problem with?

Jock Sturges 51:33
No, definitely not that workshop, and you were a good person in that workshop. Way too hard on yourself. We were adapting to a completely novel environment.

Matthew Dols 51:42
The one thing that I really didn’t appreciate from you, it was at the end, it was literally I believe, the last day and you took all of the models that we had available to us and threw them in one location and just said, okay, make something interesting with six models. And I had never worked with more than two ever in my entire career and one photograph.

Jock Sturges 52:06
So what was the problem for you? You had no control over six people, did you?

Matthew Dols 52:09
I had no idea what to even do with them. Like I try to do too many variables for me. And I was just like, oh my god, what do I do with all this? And it was very difficult.

Jock Sturges 52:20
The whole point of that was let you see what happens when you’re not controlling them.

Matthew Dols 52:25
When they’re just reacting with each other and sitting down and talking and doing whatever they’re doing, because that’s where all the beauty is. The models were fabulous. They they knew not to do anything like so they would they were great. But yeah, it was very overwhelming. For me the the sheer volume it was I think it was six models or five. But regardless, it was substantially more than the two maximum I had ever used before.

Jock Sturges 52:50
So, right. Well, the whole point is, the models will seek out their relationships with each other. And they’ll relate to each other the way that’s, I mean, they all know each other very well and had for a long time. And so it’s really fun to see that dynamic because you can’t invent it. You show up as a photographer and you say you stand here, you stand there. And they go Why would I stand next to her? I mean it she dissed me last night. Right and whatever. which happened. Yes. Yeah, it did. So would you suggest that I not do that with with students?

Matthew Dols 53:23
No, not at all. I’m just saying it was the one thing that really really like what beyond the obvious of me having to be naked while taking pictures of naked people. That was the other obvious

Jock Sturges 53:32
you were so cute naked.

Matthew Dols 53:35
It was fun. me it really was. especially coming from the Middle East. So like, I’ve never publicly said this before. But the the one little cunning plan fun for me about the entire experience was that I got my Muslim government employer to pay for me to go participate in your workshop.

Jock Sturges 53:59
Okay, and that’s, that’s, that’s on the air for the whole world to hear. And now you realize

Matthew Dols 54:03
it’s fine. I don’t live there anymore.

Jock Sturges 54:06
I had a very, very good photographer who’s become quite a good friend sense, who was incredibly clever at composing his pictures. His eye for design was exquisite. And these pictures as a result, had very evolved static and intent and an attentional dynamics. to them. The architecture of his pictures was really something but that rode roughshod over identity. He was presenting a lovely face and a beautiful ground with the shadows control perfectly. He was one of the best photographers I’ve ever had in the workshop. But he wasn’t letting the models be themselves. And so I stopped him in the middle of some work at one point and I said, Hey, guys, that was three sisters. He was shooting. I said, go over and just go over there, do whatever you want. Like I got to talk to this guy. And so they went and a couple of them sat on the log. And I said, Oh, There’s a picture. And he got it. He got it.

Matthew Dols 55:04
Yeah. Oh yeah, I mean your style of, you know, sort of basically creating a situation or a location, you know, light and all the quote, qualities and then sort of simply allowing life to happen in that space is somewhat unique in the photographic industry. Most people in the photography industry construct and build and create an image. Whereas your attention, your attention, your intention, is to document something in a, you know, a beautiful location. Basically,

Jock Sturges 55:38
the models do all the work for me. And that’s, that’s why my pictures are always titled, what their names are. They’re the people that book that own the pictures before anybody else does. I get them all I give them all prints of every picture when I was working with the eight by 10. Now I give them thumb drives with all their photographs on

Matthew Dols 55:55
which I was going to ask so are you still shooting eight by 10

Jock Sturges 55:59
I am just a teeny bit but I got the camera out the other day and I was appalled by how heavy it is. I need to put it on a diet or something. Working with a digital camera that works so well. That I’m really happy with the results.

Matthew Dols 56:13
What have you ended up with because when I first when I was there, you would just finish the Rowley project.

Jock Sturges 56:19
I’ve since done a like a project with him and it would end with cameras or like a medium format S double oh seven. license to kill, but I haven’t used that yet. And the lenses for it are hellishly expensive the cameras hellishly expensive, it’s like $50,000 for a camera and three lenses. Excuse me, 30,000 euros.

Matthew Dols 56:40
Still, that’s a date. Yes, that’s very expensive,

Jock Sturges 56:43
even to me, I could never have afforded a camera like this. And it’s incredibly sharp. It’s a 37 megapixel camera. So it’s not that high in megapixels, but I can make parents as big as any of my eight by 10 prints that have no grain, and really astonishing detail. If I have an issue with it, it’s that the sharpness of the pictures overwhelms my senses a little bit. And so whereas as a, as a working photographer, I like making pictures that are well in focus. I got a little fixated on that at the beginning. And now I backed off a little bit, I’m letting things be a little softer. But like it makes a strong camera. They’re really beautiful.

Matthew Dols 57:25
I don’t think like has ever not made good cameras. I mean, they’re like,

Jock Sturges 57:30
and 60% of them never have been taken out of the box. They’re on winter on Adult pieces. That is sad. People collect them. I’ve never understood that comments are for taking pictures photograph in Ireland for 10 years. And I was going to do a book but that came degree for sad reasons I won’t go into some pirated one of my Irish pictures and and ran it in an ad in a pornographic comic book which upset people where I was working a lot they thought I’d had something to do with it which of course I hadn’t. So the book that I had permissions for never happened, but is some of the best work I’ve ever done in Ireland. And as as I’ve always done everywhere else in my life I got to know some some families quite well and one family that I got to know quite well had a house that was on the on the on the edge of a of a cove. The Cove was man made and this is fascinating because it was man made 5000 years ago. And it was it was completely working the same as it had been designed to add a very narrow opening it was round and the and the narrow opening to the sea was narrow enough that there would never be waves inside the cove. But also nothing alive ever inside the cove. In Irish mythology there’s a creature called a silky silky in the water is a seal but should he quit the water it becomes a naked woman if a man is lucky enough to find this the the pelt that’s been quit that she’s taken off the silk and then hides it is silky will come and live with Him forever. Unless she finds the skin but she finds his skin then she has to she’s bound to go back to the ocean immediately and disappear. And the man swims after and drowns is typical Irish story.

Matthew Dols 59:20
I was gonna say as all mythologies and yes,

Jock Sturges 59:23
while we’re working, I’m working against a blackberry hedge on my back to the pond. And I’ve got there’s like three or four kids, I’m photographing one of two twin sisters. And one of the kids says I there’s a seal in the cove. And I looked around and sure enough, there’s a seal and it disappears and comes closer and disappears. Again it comes up closer does it three times until it’s really only about 1012 feet from us. And it’s not moving. It’s perfectly motionless in the black non reflective reflecting water of this Cove is like a black mirror and it’s got huge brown And it’s just staring at us. So they’re the kids are all gone. There’s nothing, never nothing live in the court. Nothing comes in here. It’s just like it’s dead place. So there’s something called get mom. So they send the youngest to go get the mother, when she rotates in because the youngest in Irish families. There’s 13 kids in his family always gets the short end of the stick.

Matthew Dols 1:00:20
As as youngest kids always do,

Jock Sturges 1:00:22
right? He has to run up to the house, it comes down with the mother and the mother comes down with him. scolding, said, I don’t know why you’re telling me tales again, you know, I’ve said I’ve been after this 1000 times, you’re, you’re telling lies. You’re you’re not telling the truth. Now you’re very bold. And then she sees the seal. And she goes, Oh, Jesus, she crosses herself three times, and says, I’m sorry, I doubted you. There’s a seal in the CoCo granny. So he goes, our God is facing like, Maddie has to go up the hill again. So she goes in a little while later granny comes down and flailing hurricane and breeding him just as his mother had for telling, telling tales. And then she sees the seal. And she crosses herself several times. And we’re all standing there looking at it. And just out of a mad notion. I said I turn to the mother and I say it’s a silky think. And she goes, Oh, you’re right. Granny is a soft key. And the grandmother goes like this, and goes back up the hill as fast as she can. And the door goes damn with a thud. We all watched her go. And we turned around the silky was because the climate was gone. We didn’t see it again. And I took a picture a few minutes afterwards of one of the twins against this blackberry hedge and her eyes are like this big or huge.

Matthew Dols 1:01:36
Sure. She just saw So okay,

Jock Sturges 1:01:38
here’s what the thing is. They all accepted instantly that it was a mythical creature. There was an innocence in the west of Ireland, then that’s, that’s fast departing. Because now the kids don’t wear the homespun clothes they had when I first started working there, they were in Nike and Adidas. And they just have to have the latest trainers. It’s one of my favorite pictures because of the expression. Her expression was fueled by something so spectacular.

Matthew Dols 1:02:03
It that’s these are the things that like a lot of people have difficulty like you can make a photograph. But a photograph is really frozen moment in time. And there’s always a story before it. And there’s sometimes a story after it. But like to try to somehow integrate that story with the things. Sometimes it takes a little bit too much effort. Like if you had, if you wrote that whole story out next to that photograph. I’m not sure most of the public would read the entire story.

Jock Sturges 1:02:34
Oh, there’s the loss, their loss, or loss. It’s a completely true story. I don’t have to embellish. It’s, it’s everything I said happened just exactly like that. And it was a lovely moment to have lived. And I and I got one great picture. But the rest of the pictures I took that day were of no great moment the family liked them. And they got the prints and they loved them. That’s one of the mysteries we I alluded to earlier. is the mystery is why are bad pictures bad and are good pictures. Good. Oh,

Matthew Dols 1:03:04
that’s, that’s an eternal question.

Jock Sturges 1:03:07
It is. And the ratio of good pictures to bad pictures is vastly in favor of bad pictures. I think that people that were not photography, somebody understand that is that we take far more bad pictures, and we take good ones.

Matthew Dols 1:03:21
I remember my my teacher in high school always said, with a roll of 36 exposure, if you got one. Good photo not not amazing, not fabulous. Not your best ever. But like one good photo than the roll was successful.

Jock Sturges 1:03:36
Sure, any way you can get to it. So with the eight by 10, I end up printing about 15% of what I shoot, in terms of making, accepting get into what I do that 15% becomes a much, much, much smaller percentage earlier on when I was shooting a lot more pictures and not making as many good ones. When I started slowing down and shooting less film I got better.

Matthew Dols 1:03:57
What’s gonna happen with this, okay, this is the thing that I actually go around in my head a lot is basically like, my archives slash negatives, or my digital images, whatever, like after I pass away, who will basically keep on, you know, like, I’m always afraid that images of mine are going to be exhibited or published or whatever that I don’t think are my best images. So do you do anything to say like, these are the ones that are that I’m willing to put my name on and for eternity? Or do you like burn negatives? Or like how do you try and make it so that the these things that may not represent you well won’t ever see the light of day?

Jock Sturges 1:04:37
decision is not yet taken. I mean, it’s it’s an issue. It’s an issue and monumental because I have a vast archive,

Matthew Dols 1:04:46
I would imagine 40 some years. Yeah.

Jock Sturges 1:04:48
I think the least number of pictures I took a year was two or 3000.

Matthew Dols 1:04:51
And when you say pictures, you mean eight by 10 negative pictures. Yeah.

Jock Sturges 1:04:56
I’ve got them all in fire safe because I want them to If there’s an earthquake or a fire or something, and they they weigh enough to kill a man,

Matthew Dols 1:05:08
I’m sure.

Jock Sturges 1:05:09
So my answer to that is I prefer not to think about it. Because I’m too busy. I’m too busy working on new things. People often ask me, what’s my favorite photograph? And I say the one I haven’t made yet. Because I’m always hungry for more. I’ve never gotten tired of what I do. But I have gotten tired, year by year, like for one year, if I’ve worked a lot on the beach The next year, I think, you know, I need to stay off the beach. I did too much that last summer. It’s too easy for me. And because I because if something’s easy for me, that starts to make me nervous.

Matthew Dols 1:05:39
Well, you’re also a little bit different than contemporary photography, contemporary, you know, it’s so fast paced these days with, of course, social media, updating websites, all this stuff. Like when you’re working on a body of work, from what I remember about you, you worked for a couple of years before, you might even come to a point of saying, Yeah, this is feels like a good selection of work to put together so like, these long are you still doing these longer term projects?

Jock Sturges 1:06:06
Is not projects, period. It’s just one. And that’s what I’m supposed to.

Matthew Dols 1:06:12
Okay, the stop the stopping points that are called books and exhibitions.

Jock Sturges 1:06:17
Right? Well, I think there’s maybe too many of my books in the world already. And I’m a little bit embarrassed that they’ve been part of how I pay the rent. And so the, the books themselves, there is some profit in publishing a book, but not a huge amount. It’s very expensive to print a good photo book. But where where there’s a benefit is that collectors like to collect published work. So they help they help with print sales a lot. On the on balance, it’s my books, that will be my legacy. Because people in artwork, who knows were unlikely to have been to a museum to see work there. But there might work, they might be more lucky or in finding a book. What comes to mind is a quote by an American actor who was asked if he was trying to achieve immortality in his art, he said, No, I want to achieve immortality by not dying.

Matthew Dols 1:07:11
Yeah, beating me, I just wonder about the you’re saying like you only printed 15% of everything you shot over, you know, a long career, I would be fascinated like to see if like a curator went through it or some other I like to have other people ever look through any of these and

Jock Sturges 1:07:29
my existence do a little bit. But if you can, you couldn’t look through all of them, it would take you a year. Very frequently, I go into a box looking for something that’s negative, similar to another that we want to look at together, etc. Whatever reason. We’re spelunking. And I come across stuff that I said, Why didn’t I never print this?

Matthew Dols 1:07:48
Well, that’s sort of what I’m getting at is like, I would imagine, with hindsight, some of those that you didn’t, might actually be pretty spectacular.

Jock Sturges 1:07:57
Yeah, no, I, I put a picture up on Facebook, that was a new taken from behind a young woman sitting on a dock, it was actually a fashion model. And when I’ve worked with a number of times over the year, one of my favorites, she was at a location in Northern California with me. And I made this one particular picture, and had never printed it came across it a few months ago and stuck it up on Facebook. And it’s probably one of the most liked images I’ve ever put up there. I thought what this thing I hadn’t even thought to now this is kind of nice.

Matthew Dols 1:08:28
That leads to a question because I remember there was a time in your career where you did some work for I think it was gap and a couple other companies like this

Jock Sturges 1:08:37
never gap, but wasn’t gap. Yes. I remember

Matthew Dols 1:08:40
some seeing some beautiful commercial images that you did that were like interiors with a crit like broken walls and stuff like this. And then on the beaches and things like this. I saw some there as well. How did that all come about? Because I mean, you were pretty much a hardcore art photographer. At that point, I believe, if I’m remembering my timeline of your career correctly, and then all of a sudden you did this commercial work.

Jock Sturges 1:09:05
I my fine art work had come to the attention of a woman named Alexander Gordon yeska, who was Polish nobility, one of some kind or another, an eccentric, very bright, very beautiful woman who had a magazine in Paris called rebel. And she likes specifically to work with fine art photographers. In fact, that’s what she that’s she sought to do that exclusively to kind of give her magazine a cache that other magazines didn’t have as much. So she called me up and said she wanted to do fashion shoot with me. And I said, Well, have you looked at my pictures? There’s no clothes in them. So I don’t actually like clothes that much. She said nevermind, showed up with a ton of clothes. In June and model evey use a few of my models and then she brought her models with her. And we did a fun shoot. It was she almost killed me. She’s actually almost killed me three times. She had me photographing in the rain driving storm with water was coming off my camera sideways. And for a flew with film holders and stuff getting wet, the slides getting wet. It was she ended up using one of those photographs for the cover of the magazine. But we had to spend a lot of money for an expensive retoucher to take out all the war spots. I’d gotten with the model was like near death from she was so cold she was wearing a very light because you shoot Of course you shoot Spring Summer stuff in cold weather. And you spring that you have your everything is backwards. So she was freezing, we went up to the lifeguard station and three or four lifeguards turned all their hair dryers on her at the same time didn’t keep her from dying on us was was apparently dramatic. But as a result of that an agency contacted me from New York, a very eccentric man and Michelangelo was the head of the agency and he flew to Paris and then came down from here to Paris office. Also when he came down with the head of his Paris office, they flew down from Paris to to meet me and model the back. And there was a funny story there because his assistant was a very attractive woman. She was Italian. And she was wearing a pair of Prada pants that were very, very tight in which she looked very, very good. But nothing I had she gotten out of the car, they run it to get to get up to us. She came to me said Doc, I have a problem. The zipper she’s stuck. And I really you know, I need to use, you know, you need to go to the bathroom said Yes, I did. I do. Can you help me please? I’m desperate. So I got a pair of pliers and a pair of vise grip pliers and I said Look, I can pull pretty hard with this right and one of two things will happen. Because I had tried it manually It was absolutely stuck. Either the zipper will open or I’ll tear your pants in half is really kind of nothing in between. So sure enough, I tore her pants nicely in half. And she ran for the bathroom. And we got to we got to repair Rio, which is a wrap. It’s kind of an Indonesian thing. Nice mermaid in Indonesia, just to wrap around like a towel but it’s as good goes around a couple of times you can make dresses by tying the end.

Matthew Dols 1:12:24
Yeah, like a sarong

Jock Sturges 1:12:25
axon. Yes. And she wore that while she was there. There was no natures in her personality at all. She did not want to be anything other than clothes. So then they left and I signed a contract with the company. And on the plane home she went to the to the toilet on the plane. And someone behind her stepped on the trailing hem of the of the perio. And it came off and she didn’t notice she was wearing a thong because the pants had been so tight that you really couldn’t wear anything that could be identified through the material. And I think that passengers in that flight were very entertained by her. The way she was bluffing and my lever She must have turned crimson. Michelangelo thought it was very funny.

Matthew Dols 1:13:10
Yeah, sounds like a very French Italian story. Yes.

Jock Sturges 1:13:13
So then I started doing commercial shoots. The first one I shot was in Santa Barbara, with this playlist stylist by the name of Karl Templer I knew nothing about doing this. I didn’t really know who his stylist was or why they were there. I had no clue. I’ve never done this before. And early on in the shoot. This guy’s going talk talk talk, talk, talk talk talk with it’s telling me about the the atmosphere he’s looking for and everything. And I just want to get on to making pictures. And so I thought I’d turn him into URL. If you could just be quiet and sit over there. Let’s just let me work please. Okay. No one ever ever said anything like that to him before but he completely ignored me and just kept talking. I later discovered that he was like the one of the top two or three stylists in the world. I’ve heard I’ve heard people refer to him as a god. And he was in fact wonderful to work with. He was he’s a very, very smart about what he does. It’s hard because I try to make emotional connections with my models and and, and with with fashion work. It’s hard to get there. You don’t really have time. So what I eventually as I began doing more shoots, I started working with the same models again anytime I could because there’s there it was getting deeper. For my very first paid commercial shoot, which was for an English Couturier. I had a modeling Amanda Moore and the stylist had warned me She says she’s kind of talking. Right when I went to pick her up at the airport. And sure enough, she had a lot to say in the car coming back. But I was liking what I was hearing. She was being very clever with language. She clearly had a good education, but she was young. And I said I said I said Amanda, you didn’t. You didn’t get what you’re talking to me about in high school. You got to meet this. You’ve been to college. said, How do you know? It’s just because you’re smart as a whip? When did you go to college? How old are you? I was 12. She went to college when she was 12 or something like that she’s really young. And what was going on was that she’s living in the fashion world where not a lot of people meditate at that level necessarily. They’re brilliant about clothes in the history of fashion, etc. There’s intelligence there. For sure this profound intelligence there, but not the kind of clever intelligence that she had. So she was talking as much as she was because he was looking for an echo. We got to monta and I had a shoot in the evening, even though everybody was really tired from the from their international flights. We had two boys in her. And the next morning, we had a technical problem, and we lost the mornings work, and we thought we’d lost the night then evenings work as well. So we had to reshoot. But that next morning, she was already very, very tired from having had to work right to the seat this sunset. So in the morning, she was dragging and I said, Look, in that room right there. As my bedroom, you go in there and close the door and sleep. I work with the boys. So for about two and a half hours, I work just with the two boys, until Carl suddenly said, Wait a minute, where’s the man. But he just came out of the house stretching and was in the best mood because she really had kind of gotten enough. young and strong. She bounced back quickly. And I got the sweetest pictures of her. I had my goddaughter Adele posing with her and other photographers who notice it. Amanda’s so tough, she tended towards black leather. How did you get these sweet pictures of her I said I was nice to her. I work with her again shortly after and we got on like a house on fire. I made beautiful pictures of her. I asked her at the end during that first shoot. Is there ever a picture of you that you’d like to have the two that no one’s ever taken. And she says yeah, and she referenced a movie, I forget what it was now. And it was a black girl in a black leather jacket. And so I made that photograph for a simple kindness. It really matters what you put in. And who people are, it does to me. Because I don’t want to live my life with strangers. That’s not fun. That’s not interesting. It’s nicer to have people that you’re close to your back.

Matthew Dols 1:17:20
I’m sure there are a lot of like mid career and young emerging artists that are photographers and particularly probably listening to this. So I’m interested in just because I know you and I know you probably have some great sort of words of advice of how to build a good career because you have a nice, long, lifelong career, which is not as common these days. And I would like to encourage more creative people to try and build lifelong careers.

Jock Sturges 1:17:49
aspiring photographers want to be famous, let’s pretty much they’d like they’d like to be famous, which puts the cart before the horse. Because if you seek fame before you have skill, you’re not going to get anywhere. The hardest thing about photography is that you have to make a choice. And there are so many things about the world that are fascinating and, and attractive that making that choice isn’t easy. Because sticking with one thing, at the expense of all the other things, the aggregate, the aggregate desirability of all the other things that are out there is hard. But you do have to choose. It’s one of the it’s the hardest part in photography is what your subject will be understanding what that needs to be. Because it must pretty much be one thing, a great photographer like Stieglitz, he had maybe three important separate bodies of work. But that’s the exception, not the rule. So you’ve got to make a choice. But how do you get there? Do you make a conscious choice? Well, that turns out to be complicated, because maybe you’re wrong. And you’re you’re trying to fit in what you’re doing is you’re thinking too hard, because photography helps us. And the way it helped me and the way I was suggested that might help other people is that all of us have the same experience. But once in a while when we’re shooting, we make a picture we want to see before all the others. And so I can’t wait to get back and see that in large. It can’t wait to look at it and work with it. It’s just like something. And then that’s the lizard brain. That’s that’s way back in your head. That’s that’s that’s something about that moment. qidz something deep in your experience of the world. And you want to work with that, that you can’t wait to see that picture. It’s that time for sound familiar to you?

Matthew Dols 1:19:30
Oh, yeah, I know exactly what you’re talking about.

Jock Sturges 1:19:32
I’ve never met a photographer that doesn’t have that happen. Well, what I did in my career is that when I had that experience, I said, Okay, I’m going to do just that. I’m going to do just that thing. And the next time I came out with a camera I went I photographed either the same subject or something similar, very similar. I tried to, I just tried to narrow my field of focus right down to that, that one thing that really had tripped my switch. one of two things happens well It doesn’t work after shooting that for like a few days, you kind of decide, okay, I did enough of that. Or maybe a few months even, you start to really feel bored doing it. So what you’ve done them as you back away from that is you’ve closed the door. And you don’t need to go through that door again, because you’ve had it, you’ve examined it, you’ve looked at it, you’ve seen how you fit with it. But you’ve learned some things in the process about what about what you do and don’t like. And you’ve also polished your skill. So it’s not a wasted effort at all, it’s a very important effort. In the beginning, photographers photograph many things. And that’s important work, because it’s sharpening the stick for them, it’s giving them skills. So then, ideally, you do it, and you will continue to be fascinated by that thing. And then you have in the course of doing that work, a picture that you want to see before all the others, and that helps you refine. And then finally, you get to the point where you like what you’re photographing so much that you don’t want to stop, and you don’t even care what other people think about it. And that solves the art problem. That’s the answer to the art problem right there. Making artists for having and making it making artists for making art is the best way I know to get income get in touch with us. The subconscious being that is the majority of who we are deep in our heads. All that architecture of thought and association that goes into what we like, is deeply buried in our minds. And you need help you need help from the Invisible Man. That’s it That’s back there. The Invisible person, and they’ll give it to you, Oh, I can’t wait to print this one. That that would that work for me. One picture I took at a an a hippie commune in Northern California, changed my life because it was totally unexpected. It wasn’t something I planning on doing. It was my brother lived up there. And he said, Listen, go to the commune. It’s interesting made some very nice people, they’re just good faces. So I drive hours into the mountains to get to this place. And I get there and there’s like 80 naked people standing in the road. This is January. And this is a couple 1000 feet 3000 feet. So it’s cold and there’s snow in the ground. And what they’ve done is they’ve made a sweat lodge, and uncovered blankets and put hot stones inside. And they were all taking sweats to clean, they’re clean, their pores open. They’re all standing in the middle of like Ireland was steaming, this team’s rising off their bodies because it’s cold. It’s a bright day. So I made some photographs, I’d never seen that many people comfortable naked at the same time. That was the first for me. And I made one picture of a young girl sitting in the shed and in a shed. And I was astonished that she was so completely at peace with her body that they all were I’d never seen that. I’ve never seen the absence of shame before. And I was hooked. That that’s that changed everything.

Matthew Dols 1:22:49
Everything I’ve ever seen of you is we’ll just call it figurative in some way. So there’s always a human ship for a minute. Do you take pictures that don’t have people in them?

Jock Sturges 1:22:58
I do. But they’re they’re what I think of as affectionate landscapes, I take pictures of places that I really, really love. I have a number of pictures of the beach at Mandalay Bay. But in most of them, I’ve let there be a figure in the picture of way, way, way in the distance like teeny, almost too small to even see. Because the beach is an immense space, the percentage of March of that beach is fast. When the tide goes out the there’s wet sand and beautiful tide pools which in the summer sun can be very warm. And since the ocean is often cold there, you can lie in them like taking a warm bath. It’s a beautiful place. And so I’ve made landscapes there. And I’ve made some landscapes in Northern California where my brother lives. I’ve been going there my foot feels like most of my life. Long time. Okay, Matthew, thank you so much for your kind interest.

Matthew Dols 1:23:49
This has been fun. Thank you. I mean, thank you for your time.

Jock Sturges 1:23:54
You’re not nearly as elegant as I remember.

Matthew Dols 1:23:59
Yeah, it’s true. I hope I’m not man.

The Wise Fool is produced by Fifty14. I am your host Matthew Dols – www.matthewdols.com

All information is available in the show notes or on our website www.wisefoolpod.com