To the extent I'm known it's obviously as a musician, but one of
my great loves is photography. Photography and music are different
forms of expression with the same impulse for me, and it is about telling
stories.
With photography and songs you don't have to give the audience the whole
story. You give them some of the story and you allow them to discover it for
themselves, what does that mean to you, so a big part of being an artist to me is
knowing, almost like having some kind of glasses on, that tell you that a random
object is symbolic of something.
So photography is a little bit different in that, you know, I think you chase a lot
of leads, and most of them don't turn into stories, but some of them do.
Yeah that's... And a story is not always obvious, like
"once upon a time" and you see the beginning, middle, and the end. A story to
me begins emerging as an impulse.
Underexposing it's going to be the way to go on this, so if it's 25...
One of the things that's the most interesting to me is to know that it'll
have great tones as a photograph and that may seem like a vapid endeavor but
to me you have to make a decision on how you're gonna expose this in order to get
the story that you want.
Beautiful.
When I started really taking printing in the darkroom seriously it was so that I
could make lasting, holdable, archival images with some art in them of my kids.
I felt like "okay well if I shoot this on film and if I make the prints myself I
can tell a story that they can carry with them," which is the essence of
photography really.
This kinda seems like the Japanese Beatles to me, it just looks
like a weird out of sync Abbey Road moment you know.
This is William Shatner.
I made a record for Shatner, wrote songs with him, essentially just songs about
his life and he wanted to buy a horse in Kentucky so he's done this quite a few
times he knows the ritual. I had no idea what they were talking about.
Apparently he bought the horse in code while we were all standing there and we
get in the car he goes "yeah it's purchased" and I said "are you serious?
when did you say that?" and he goes "I said it." "When did you, when did you say, I didn't hear that
at all, I was listening really carefully." "Benny, I said it." So he bought that horse.
There's a fine line between sneaking up on someone and stealing sort of their
image, and just doing it quietly. You know, like, I don't want to go stealing a
moment either and being a sneak.
But there are times when someone's
having a quiet moment, you're walking, it seems like, I don't know. I have a
meter that tells me that this is okay. I've spent my life on stage, it's not
part of my paradigm that someone wouldn't be looking at me. It's just not my
experience, so I don't feel like an inconspicuous, invisible photographer.
In photography I believe that there are different languages and you choose a
language to master. Black and white has been that language for me. I see scenes
everywhere in black and white.
And I think especially as you have more life experience that you realize how much
things change every year, every moment, but to have that captured in a way that
tells a story is invaluable
Art in general seems to be about telling a story.
The storytelling is part of human nature