INT: So, how did you shoot these photos?<\/p>\n
AS: I used a 4×5-view camera and a wide angle 90mm lens. Brands don\u2019t matter on view cameras. I printed all the photographs myself (at that time) 30\u201dx40\u201d.<\/p>\n
I allowed myself between two and four exposures for each teenager. I did this for a couple reasons. One was because I couldn\u2019t afford to spend a lot of money on film and processing, so I had to be economical. I knew I had to make the photograph work in those exposures since I knew I wouldn\u2019t be able to return. If I had used a 35mm camera, I don\u2019t think I could have had the technical control \u2013 and when babies are six months old, they already know how to pose for a 35mm camera. I didn\u2019t want people to pose in that fake way.<\/p>\n
The shutter speed was a quarter of a second. The result was a kind of intensity of their pose. That was on purpose \u2013 to have the subject look directly into the lens, in a direct, almost confrontational way. I wanted the teenagers to have more power over the viewer. I also used Polaroids to check my lighting and to show each person what I was trying to do, so they could be part of the process. I have a lot of respect for anyone who is willing to let me into their lives.<\/p>\n
INT: There\u2019s a strange tragedy to these photos because we can never truly know these people enough, we can only see them through how they choose to present themselves. There\u2019s also beauty in that detachment. The space between us and them is only a quarter of a second.<\/p>\n
AS: Of course. When I made the photographs, it was a time in art where representation was very important. A photograph looks like a fact, but it isn\u2019t. Photographs take hundreds of decisions that need to be made \u2013 all the way through the process. Who I am and how I act is part of the process of making a photograph. When I\u2019m making photographs, I\u2019m \u2018creating\u2019 the situation in some ways. I\u2019m choosing how it will all happen. The equipment is a choice, the film, the composition, the lighting, even how the other person feels.<\/p>\n
It was important that none of my subjects felt exploited \u2013 when you have a camera, you have the power to tell a story. You also hold power that can be misused.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"INT: So, how did you shoot these photos? AS: I used a 4×5-view camera and a wide angle…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":259209,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[76,354,355,49,48,356,75],"class_list":{"0":"post-259208","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-arts-and-design","10":"tag-artsanddesign","11":"tag-ca","12":"tag-canada","13":"tag-design","14":"tag-entertainment"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259208","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=259208"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259208\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/259209"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=259208"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=259208"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=259208"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}