Shainman School is Out for Summer

How did you develop your style? How did you get to where you are now and then what led up to it?

I just get bored really easily. I’ve always taken pictures, and when I took pictures that I saw everyone else was taking, I asked myself, “what else is there?” At first the elements I brought in were all different kinds of lights that I was trying. It was all over the place. I allowed a light to dictate how the session ran, what I wanted to do, how I saw the person, and what we found together. Walking into a room and seeing a piece of light and saying, “Can you just stand in this light? This is our light. This is our moment together talking and having a conversation in photography.”  Since I'm not a painter or an artist in that sense. I love the idea of creating IN the camera, creating my own brushstrokes in the sense that this is a one-off ...

I really love testing the boundaries of what photography could present. Whether it be pieces of optic, broken glass, old cameras or just a variety of things. I'm still searching for stuff. I have a shoot on Thursday and I'll bring some of that in, but I feel like I've done everything, so now I have to figure out something else.  It's always “what's next?” with me which is translated through a lot of my work.

Do you just experiment with things until you find something that works? Are you ever nervous that it won't work?

I look around and just see things, even the simplest things. When people ask about that. I say the simplest thing, “Have you ever sat at dinner with someone and pick up the glass and you looked at them through the glass?” And that starts the conversation there… as you move the glass and you watch the face or the object in front of you distort and move very differently, you find the little moment within that. So it's just being open to seeing what's around, and what could make something different. Now, what can I use to create something out of that? Something someone wasn't thinking about. It's funny, a lot of the things that I've collected over the years like crystals, broken pieces of glass and optics. People have now made commercial pieces that you can buy for the film industry, I think it’s pretty funny ... I have a box of things that never worked, but you never know when something is going to eventually work. It’s just kind of collecting, You could have 20 pieces and then one thing is amazing and the rest are just cool looking but they don't do anything.

You talked a little bit about how you really approach it as a collaborative process. How do you balance capturing the personality of the subject that you're photographing and their “essence,” but simultaneously try new things, keeping your creative vision and experimenting?

I'll bring things! I try not to have too much in mind. I'll have this shoot coming up, I have 10 thoughts of how I could approach to shoot this actor. After I get there and I realize who he is, what his interest in participating is, and how much he wants to be there, then I’ll determine what the next thing is. Doing someone's portrait is a collaborative process. You have to listen, but you have to also feel what's right ... 

Is there a shoot, or person, or anything that you remember standing out to you? Something wacky or difficult?

In 30 years of this, yeah! I have fun with a lot of people. There's a recent one I just did, I was shooting Rami Malek for a movie poster about a year ago in Marseille, and he called me and said “I have these ideas.” He was supposed to come to the studio, shoot on a grey seamless for an hour, and he was going to be gone. Instead, he asked, “could we meet by these staircases that are painted, can we shoot there?” and I said “okay!” So a small crew went over, and we got there and the stairs that used to be so beautifully graffitied someone has painted a massive Palestinian flag over it. It was no longer usable for what he wanted out of it. It's pretty amazing looking, but it just wasn’t at all what he wanted for his shoot. So we started shooting around and then he goes “I have a lot of ideas, can we just run around and do them.” So three hours later we're standing on the rooftop in Marseille on this beautiful apartment building running around shooting and watching the sun go down and then after all that we went to the studio.

When somebody wants to collaborate like that, it really makes it fun again ....

I try to incorporate their emotions. I try to say to them “what do you feel about this? How do you want to approach it? ...

I don't know if you like this description, but there is this recurring idea of your work being “controlled chaos.” I don't know if that's something that you like or not, but it's what's out there, so I'm gonna bring it up.

[Laughs] My wife doesn't like to come to my office, so this is my office. [Gestures to room]

I love it.

So, you kind of get an idea that I live in chaos, I create out of chaos, and a lot of my stuff is made out of that. My journals are made from me collecting things. I have a table, and I throw things on the table, and they pile up. Then I'll walk by one day and two or three things have fallen together, and that starts my conversation ... 

Do you find it difficult to keep a balance between spontaneity and intention?

That's interesting. I don't know. I think intending to do something in art is interesting. You can pick up a brush and take a canvas and paint it, but do you really know where it's going to end? If you know where it's going to end, then why did you start it? Why are you even doing it? Your intent is to answer something or create something and then leave it at that. That's your intent. Then after that, it's the chaos that creates it or the subconscious mind talking, or the missed brushstroke. In photography they say it's when you choose to push the shutter. You could have 20 people standing there photographing the exact same thing, and it'll be interesting at what point everyone pushes the shutter. It's all the same picture, but it's 20 different views of that picture, or how they saw it in that moment ... 

... I like shooting musicians, probably more than shooting actors. It's where I started, it's not so much image oriented, they don't have an image. When I started out, musicians weren't selling their face, they were selling their music. Nowadays with pop stars, if you're shooting Taylor Swift, you're shooting a product. She has this way she wants to be seen and you can't mess with it. There's nothing wrong with that, it's sold well and it does well, but then you go shoot someone like a singer-songwriter who never gets photographed and they really don't have a sense of their image, they're sitting there in front of you because their music has said something to somebody and they bought it. It’s a very different kind of thing. When you're shooting actors they're all concerned, they all want to make sure they don't look too weird or whatever, so sometimes it's a tougher one.

You don't have to answer this, but do you ever think that when you try and capture the vibe of a person you're either surprised or frustrated of what the photo conveys versus what they are in real life?

Yeah, that's tough. I try to see who they are and look back at them and be a mirror more than anything else ...

... But at the end of the day if you walk in the door and you're an asshole, and the picture comes out and you look like an asshole, I can't help you. I can try my darndest to make you not look like that person, but if that's what you want to put out, the camera will capture that, no matter how much we change your, hair, makeup, styling, lighting, whatever, it is what it is.

With the extreme accessibility of photography now, how everyone has an iPhone or a smartphone and can take photos. How do you feel about that? Is it exciting or frustrating for you?

No, I think it's good. It's a double-edged sword. It's good on one hand because it means everyone's becoming more aware of what photography is, and people are looking at photography. But on the other hand, everyone thinks they're a photographer and not understanding what that means. If you wrote a paragraph, you're not a writer. If you wrote someone a letter, you're not a writer. 99.9% of the people who take pictures on their iPhone are just writing letters.  I think that's great! I think that's important! They are capturing the visuals of their lives and storing them.

What are your thoughts of post production? I think many photographers are really split because half of them think a photograph is a work of art and if they want it to look a certain way, changing it a little bit in post production is part of the creative process, and then others believe a photo is a photo. If the photograph is bad you're not a good photographer.  

... We forget that photography is an expression. You're trying to express something within yourself. So, whatever tool it is to get there, you have to allow it to be. 

Do you think you’ve always felt that since the beginning of doing this? Or is it something that you've come to recently?

I think I've come to more of an understanding of it. I didn't know what it was when I was younger. You just don't know, and then you suddenly realize what you're trying to achieve while you’re doing it. You meet people that are young artists and they're doing great work but they have no idea where it's going to go and they're being told they're amazing so then it's really really hard to change and do something totally different. Look at Damien Hirst right now doing these massive flower paintings on these pieces of canvas and he's just launching paint at it and they're so amazing to me! The energy! I wasn’t a huge fan of his sharks, but to go from putting animals in formaldehyde to doing these crazy paintings … I love that he just jumps every which way. It is interesting when an artist can constantly create what they want to do and not look for someone's approval of what it is. That's the hardest part of art, everyone's looking for approval. You want someone to say that they like it ... 

Yeah totally! That's also why I was asking about nostalgia.  I think people have this almost obsession right now with “back in the good old days, or back before this … ” I think sometimes people look back with a sort of yearning.

I said this the other day, because my wife and I were talking. Someone asked me the question, “If you could go back in time what would you change about yourself? And I said,”nothing.” Because if I did, I wouldn't be here. Everything that's brought me to this point in my life has been for a reason. The good, the bad, it's allowed me to be who I am. If my parents didn't get divorced when I was five, if I didn't go to New York City to go to art school, if I hadn't met my wife. There are a million different things that bring you to a point of where you are. It's all the little things. You can't create them and you can't go back and change them, because it's those little clicks that make you who you are ... 

... The only thing I have that I would be nostalgic about would be my health. The advice would be to take better care of myself, you know, but I didn't. And maybe that's why I do what I do now, I mean maybe those are all part of it also.

Right, that's a really good answer, I don't think a lot of people feel that way.

Well yeah! They all look back and act like somehow they weren't in control of their lives to create what they wanted to. That could be very possible depending on how you were raised and what you did and what inspired you. You could be in high school and everything's going to shit, nothing's happening and you have a bad home life, but you're creative and you want to figure out what it is ... 

... Be open as you go through life, be open to things that come out of nowhere. It's easier to get up every day and be comfortable in every action you do.  To do something that you're uncomfortable doing, those little changes in your life will then make your life more interesting.

Yeah. I had a very similar conversation with my brother last night who suffers from a lot of mental health issues and he's having a really hard time. He feels stuck and we were talking about how the only way out of it doing new scary stuff.

Yeah! Changing your routine. He needs to shift routine, constantly, just give himself something new. If he always walks to class every single day in the same direction, try walking in a different way. It's a point of doing those simple things to start breaking your brain. I've been going through the same thing right now. I've had my knee replaced, and I am having a lot of problems with it. I am so tied down, and I look at my wife some days, and tell her “I am so depressed. I don't know what to do and I'm just frustrated and it's upsetting to me.” But then I have to ask myself, “what can I do to make it different today?” ... 

.. In mental health I think that's a problem. There's a routine and people get into the routine in their heads and they get sucked down. I've dealt with it. I have a lot of friends that have dealt with it. It's really about doing something different. Just start giving yourself “little daily things to do something different.” If you always do something a certain way, try something else. Try your coffee in a new way, sleep a new way, maybe stay up all night and then start the day. There's a million different ways! And see how your body feels and how everything starts to shift. Your brain will go with you

What are the biggest obstacles or struggles you’ve faced? Have you ever been in a rut or not had anything that inspires you?

Well, that goes back to the conversation of mental health, which is basically the same thing. It's the feeling of frustration because you can't seem to get to where you want to go. It’s the same thing with mental health. When I have those times where I don't know what to do...

I just have to do something else or just start throwing things around. When Ralph Steadman can't draw, he takes his brush and he just throws a blob of ink onto it and sees what comes. He’ll see something's there, start playing with it and then something comes out of it. It's the same thing as changing your routine. If you sit there and fight with it, nothing will come from it. You can't force yourself to be creative. It's not like other things where you force yourself through it. It doesn't really work that way.