I have no way of knowing when I'm photographing myself ever
What's the result
It was the surprise of finding out what would happen if I did this
At the time that I started to make photography seriously (in 1971)
I wasn't aware of self-portraiture as a genre
or even as something that one would do with a camera
And if one tries this
if they know there's a place
Where they can go all by themselves into a forest
nobody knows
take their clothes off
walk around for twenty minutes
then get dressed and come out of the forest
I think that will be a transformative experience
I'm not saying people need to walk around naked
I'm not an advocate of nudityin that way at all
but, in the photographs
and especially in black and white photographs
where the idea of the texture, of the skin and the light
it becomes an element like the grey tonalities of a tree
I have no assistant
I'm by myself
When an image idea comes to my mind, in the location
and I say "I bet I could do this"
and it's difficult
or it's cold or it's snow
or up on a cliff
But my fear is that I'm going to make a mistake
and if I make a mistake in some cases
I'd be dead, I would be choo...
And there's one image in particular from 1974
That shows one leg, my one leg only
I'm on a cliff covered in show and there's the sea
a very dangerous picture
Everything disappeared except for my rear and my leg
When you look closely
there's a white line under my butt
it's the reflection of the snow coming back on the body
That reality is the documentary truth of that image
The one thing I did not want to do
I didn't want to manipulate
I am a documentary photographer
And I started to title them Self Portraits
so people knew I was the person who in the picture
But as I made up a series of these images
and because I was nude
it also fell into the category of the male nude, in photography
But as a heterosexual man
I felt I wanted to bring the female figure person into the picture
So this one is called Self Portrait with Selva
She's a very dear friend
In this picture we're in Malta
here's the Mediterranean and here's the cliff
and we're like this little dot here
And then I put the camera
and give the responsibility again to the camera to take the picture
and nine seconds later we're joining hands
And that's what it's saw
and that I become part of her
I have found that through surrealism
throught the juxtaposition of elements that don't necessarily go together
that the ability to creat images that become memorable
Meaning we remember "oh there's this picture with three fingers"
we don't have to see it anymore
Images like that
are what I think photographers are searching for
There's the one in the show
with these two buildings
I put the camera under the window
turned the self timer on
And I just angled my hands out to where my eye lines up
The image for many people for myself
still holds the surreal charm perhaps
of the wish to move the buildings away and to see the sky
This recent picture, Hope, Maine
it's the first picture where I feel old
I feel like up until then
you could not feel my age in the pictures very well
but the old man arrives
The tree itself is falling
a dying tree
and on the dying tree is a dying man
And I wanna go as long as I can
I wanna live many years
but I wanna see what the end does
I wanted the challenge of seeing
When will I not be strong enough to lift my own weight
When will I not be able to bend the way I can bend
When will the tree fall