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Photo by Jane Scherr |
Wendy Ewald Interview: Conversations with History; Institute of International Studies, UC Berkeley
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Photo by Jane Scherr |
Page 2 of 6
Are you a photographer, an educator, or both? Or more than just those two things?
I used to resist this question a lot. I never studied education. I took one education course in college and dropped out. So I guess you could say that by training I'm an artist or a photographer. I think what I did, or do, is use my practice as a photographer and artist as education.
For yourself?
No, with kids or with teachers, or whatever. Sometimes I think of my work as making models, and then putting those models out there for other people to use in the way that they choose to use them.
What underlying values motivated you as you began to explore this work with photography and then as that work in photography evolved?
I think I was very interested in relationship with my subject. I mean, I'm basically a fairly shy person and I don't like the idea of intruding. In the beginning, anyway, it was a very comfortable way of giving the camera over or at least sharing the camera with the people where I was. As time went on, it became more conscious because I realized that what was coming out was something that was much more complex and much closer to the reality.
Let's explain to the audience, who may not be familiar with your work, what process you have developed of collaboration with your subject.
It started in 1969 when I worked on a Canadian Indian reservation, and
this was right after I graduated from high school. I was working, basically, as
a social worker or a day-camp counselor in this community. I brought cameras
and film that Polaroid had given me, because I thought this would be an
interesting thing to teach the children. So we had a little afternoon class where we'd go out
shooting together. I eventually got a little more organized about it and asked
them to photograph their families and their community. Pretty quickly I saw
that what they were photographing was very startling and dealt with the issues
of alcoholism and dwindling game and housing in a way that I'd never seen
pictures made before.
So, in the first instance, giving people camera and film helps them see the world around them. You're empowering them?
Yes. There are sort of two things. I mean, in that situation, there were a lot of issues that they wanted to deal with. Problems.
And these were children or adults?
These were children, ages nine to twelve or something like that. And the other instance: a lot of kids I work with in the beginning say "There is nothing here to photograph. Maybe we'll go on a trip and I'll take the camera." So it's a process of them realizing that there are things in their own lives that are worth photographing. They notice things that maybe they wouldn't notice, but it also reaffirms their own lives in a way.
So both of those two things, seeing and reaffirming their lives. You said yesterday at your talk on the campus that you like the democracy of the camera. What did you mean?
Well, to use a camera, you don't need the hand-eye coordination you need in painting or drawing. So for kids (or for any of us), it's something they can learn to use pretty quickly. And it's also something, at least in the Western world, that we have some experience with or that has a place in our lives already. A lot of the kids I work with have not been very successful in school and this is something that they can learn to do and learn to do very well. This is a tool for expression.
You also said that you get excited about the excitement of others for photography. Tell us about that.
It's a wonderful part of the work I do because it's like I'm learning how to do it for the first time all over again. But children, adults, that I've worked with, many of them, especially adults, say, "I'm no good at this." To see them go through the process of using a camera and becoming in command of that machine and seeing the results, they feel a sense of real accomplishment and self-confidence and just excitement over what's possible.
When you look at their photographs, do you see things that you didn't see?
Oh yes, all the time. For one thing, I think that we all have a sense of composition from when we're little and it sort of gets shaped and changed from images that we see. But with kids, and especially kids in rural areas where I work a lot, their sense of composition has really been formed by their environment. The way that they use a camera is very inventive, and I wouldn't have thought to use it that way. There are also things that they photograph that I couldn't see or I never could make. It's like being a fly on a wall, in a way, for me. I always feel like I'm being brought gifts when I see these pictures.
So it's a mutual, reciprocal education process. The students are learning to see, in part, and to appreciate their lives. And you're learning about them?
Yes. And I'm learning about photography and images and how people use images, and so many things.
You said earlier that you were shy, so in a way the camera becomes a tool for both of you. It's enabling you to see environments and to relate to environments that you might not have been able to do before.
Yes, absolutely. And for the kids, the camera gives them a certain power that they wouldn't normally have as well.
Tell us how you teach them to use the camera when you go into these places. I should say that you've gone all over the world, and we'll talk about that in a minute. But tell us a little about the process.
Well, one of the first things I do is just look at pictures with kids to see what they see, because we all see different things when we look at a picture, and for some kids who don't have any familiarity with pictures, to see what's in a picture can be difficult. Then eventually when I give them cameras, it's a very slow process of learning how to use the camera and learning everything about that camera and how photography works, and how light works. What I want them to do is to be in control of that process. So that they know what's going on. It takes quite a bit of time. I tell them they have to stand very still, and they can't breathe, and I'm very dogmatic about that. Then of course they rebel against all that stuff. But in the beginning I'm very strict and then it's a process of loosening up from there. And I give them assignments once they are comfortable with the camera to go home and photograph. Then they bring back the pictures or the film, depending on the process we're using, and then develop and print.
So they actually produce the product beyond just taking the picture. Is there a kind of an awe and wonder that you see as they learn this?
Yes, and it's very exciting. There are some very difficult parts of it, like learning to role the film on the reels, but they're able to do that. I mean, they really stick with it. Very few kids don't learn how to do it. They're very determined.
In the introduction to one of the Appalachian books,you said that you were given a group of kids and told that they were the slowest and would be the hardest to work with. What happened? Did that prove to be true?
That was amazing because that was definitely the best class of kids I have ever had. There were some kids in there that were incredibly talented from the beginning. There was obviously something in the visual that really turned them on or wasn't being tapped in their regular school work. But I worked with those kids for four or five years and they just made amazing pictures.
Is it your hope that these kids will learn, besides learning the camera, photography, helping to see, that they will link it to the stories of their lives and their families' lives?
You mean beyond what we do together?
Yes, right.
It's my hope, but in a lot of the places I work, their lives are pretty bound by their situation, by the culture and by their economic situation. And so I try not to have too many expectations about whether they're going to keep making pictures in some way or another. What I hope happens is that it's a key to a creative process that they may use in other ways, or problem solving that they may use in other ways. In fact, some of the kids do go on to do that.
So it's not so much their becoming a photographer as having learned a set of skills that they can apply elsewhere.
Next page: Kids and Cameras
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Brief descriptions of Wendy Ewald's books about Appalacia: