Science Projects Volume I:The Photography & Work of Robin Cracknell.

ART VOLUME ONE PRESENTS:

A Conversation with Robin Cracknell.

AV: How old were you when you left India?

RC: I left India when I was six. Calcutta, as fascinating as it was, was no match for the American dream.

Even though my parents were English, America was the place to be in the 60’s so off we marched.

In India, I remember people talking about The Beatles and Elvis. You weren’t supposed to like both.
I guess we chose Elvis.

AV: Do you like the Beatles? I love the Beatles.

RC: The only thing I have ever shoplifted- was The Beatles ‘Something New’
from the Lechmere Store in Dedham, MA when I was maybe 14 or so.
I liked it ( although, in hindsight, I wish I’d gone for ‘Revolver’ ) but,
not long after that, my uncle gave me Exile on Main Street and the
Stones just took over.

AV: Did your childhood in India cause you to reflect on the rest of the world
in a different way when you arrived in the US?

RC: It really did.

To this day, I can’t throw away a scrap of food or watch clean water dissappear down a drain without feeling terribly guilty. My mother worked with Mother Teresa in Calcutta ( she was only sister Teresa then ) & it was a childhood of contrasts. Rich ( relatively ) white boy surrounded by immense poverty- something my mother insisted I see & understand. My sister & I were never shielded from that world and, although we grew up with servants that fanned us to sleep, there were beggars & lepers on our doorstep.

In America, my school friends had never even heard of India.

Everyone assumed I’d come over from Indiana or was part Cherokee.
I felt very different from my friends and my embarrassment at speaking
with an English accent turned into a sort of stutter which haunted me
for decades.

AV: I had similar experiences as you arriving to the US from the Philippines, funny.What was living in the US like for you?

RC: It was the proverbial land of plenty.

It was hard to make sense of all the luxury around us when,
until then, my head had been full of the starving millions.
The adjustment was hardest on my father, I think.
He went from being the master of the house with Raj-like power to just an average Joe with an office job.

But, he got his red Mustang convertible so he fit in eventually.

AV: What was it like living in Boston?

RC: Boston is a great place to live. I still miss being there.

AV: What do you miss?

RC: I just miss America full stop.
Part of that desire to return might be a sort of misguided nostalgia for times past but, compared to England,
I think America is a much friendlier, kinder place with so many more opportunities.
I also never took much stock in family when I was younger but, over time, I feel this need to be nearer to them.

AV: I find this funny, as I think Americans can sometimes be mean & my experiences with the English has been friendly..& that England has more opportunities for an artist, because their funding of the arts is much greater than that of the US. It is nice to be close to family, over time yes.

AV: When did you first pick up a camera?

RC: I remember the day I first looked through the lens of a single-reflex camera so vividly.

My friend Karl Jackson had a cheap SLR around his neck while were killing time by the handball courts at school.
I was bored and asked if I could look through it.
He passed it to me and I looked through that viewfinder and the world just looked different.
The ground glass. The focusing. It was amazing.
I felt strangely empowered. It was weird.
I begged my parents for a few weeks and eventually got my own camera.

Everything changed after that.

AV: What happened when you finally dove into a serious interest in photography?

RC: Shortly after getting my own camera, I began taking pictures of my friends and selling the prints to their parents for $3.
I also set up a darkroom in my father’s den.
It was very uncool to like photography at my school
( the photography teacher was very camp and we were all called ‘photo-fags’ )
but I liked it enough to endure all that and I just documented everything I saw.

AV: Very interesting… & funny, do you still have any of these 3$ prints??

RC: No! I wish I did. My memory of them is that they were actually pretty good.

AV: What was living in Georgetown like for you?

RC: Georgetown feels like another lifetime. It was a very preppy school with a lot of spoiled, robotic types there waiting to inherit Daddy’s fortune, but there were also enough marginal types like myself to have a feeling of community.
I was an outsider but I met a lot of other wonderful outsiders there. There was a lot of drinking and drugging but a lot of writing and poetry and deep friendships too.

AV: I identify very much with “I was an outsider but I met a lot of other wonderful outsiders”, works that way for some of us does it not. What were you reading at the time?

RC: Well, the ones I remember were Flannery O’Connor, Salinger, Milton, Keats, Beowulf, a lot of modern poets….Sylvia Plath made me feel more normal. Anne Sexton made her mark.
Everything got thrown at us.
I devoured it all.

AV: I love O’Connor’s ‘Everything that rises must Converge‘ & Plath makes me feel more normal as well, HAH.

Who are some of your favorite writers?

RC: Richard Ford always strikes a nerve with me. Martin Amis rarely lets me down. David Shields’ ‘Dead Languages’ is maybe my favorite of all time. Frederick Exley I love. Andrea Ashworth, ‘Once in a House on Fire’ blew me away.

AV: I’ve never heard of these authors-I’ll have to look them up, ‘Once in a house on Fire’ sounds amazing-.

RC: ‘Once in a House of Fire’ is heartbreaking and so beautifully written.
Childhood memoirs seem all the rage these days but this one is really something special.

AV: What was the culture in this period of your life, through your eyes?

RC: The only culture I was aware of at the time was spoiled European rich kids killing time until they went home to work for their parents. It was the 80’s and the music, the clothes, everything seemed very boring.
Punk and English ’subversion’ was what attracted me and I hoped I’d end up there eventually.
Washington DC back then was very corporate.
The DC music scene was fantastic but the Georgetown crowd was very white, very buttoned down, dull dull dull.

AV: I notice you seem to have an affinity for the number 11- the way you present it in gradients of luminescent aqua blue & overlain over your son’s back & nape, 11 in this image has a great deal of psychological power & funnily enough, now I’ve been noticing the number 11 everywhere- echoing this beautiful glowing image..

Do you have an affinity for the number, does it have a special significance to you?

RC: I think I read somewhere 11 is a critical time in a boy’s life. In some cultures, it represents the entry to manhood when a boy could make love and make war.
I like the way the number looks as well.
As a child who stuttered, any repeated number has a sort of symbolism for me.
I certainly remember 11 as being a traumatic year.
The end of good things. The beginning of terrible things (so it felt).

AV: Now I have an even greater appreciation for ‘11′. And especially now, in looking at ‘Stutter’ again..

AV: What were some of your experiences with photo illustration for English publishers?

RC: It was great to be paid for doing what you loved and exciting to see your work produced on a such a grand scale and often appearing on posters on bus shelters and things. I worked with some great art directors who gave me so much freedom to interpret books as I wished.
They were wonderful years. Things changed when publishers started buying stock photographs but, for a while, it was a very exciting industry.

AV: Too bad stock has taken over, they should return to artistic commissions- just as the amazing recent film The Silence of Sleep returned to gorgeous stop motion animation.

Do you think that this work experience at this point in your life-
fed into your continued attraction to narrative & as you say, stories “about love, loss and language” in your work?

RC: I think the ‘love, loss and language’ obsession is just a part of me.
My way of working something out.
Like therapy.
The work experience was exciting and a good ‘job’ but my real work came out later
when I left the commercial stuff behind, took care of my son and slowly, over 10 years, my real work surfaced.
The transition from commercial work to ‘fine art’ is tough. For me, it took a long time to figure out what exactly it was I had to tell the world.

AV: Your photography is very therapeutic… & not only did you find out what your work means, so did we.

Your work does have this effect of being in motion, a psychological & symbolic motion, which is not often captured in a still image. And you use a great deal of controlled & thought out manual artistic manipulation. It reminds me of similar techniques that Stan Brakhage employed in hand manipulating his films.. Do you like Brakhage?

What do you think of him?

RC: I’ve only just discovered him thanks to you, but yes, he is obviously the master.
He called it ‘pure cinema’ and, of course, that is what it is.
Forget the narrative, forget the tricks, forget the music….just these flickering images like a dream.
I love the silence.
We forget what silence actually ’sounds’ like sometimes.
The story is in there somewhere too but, like an abstract painting, you find that story for yourself.
I’m a big fan of Joseph Cornell and I see that Brakhage and Cornell were friends which is no surprise.
The term ‘visual poetry’ is overused but it is exactly what Brakhage is all about. (I almost don’t want to see too much of his work. I’m afraid I’ll subconsciously steal from him.)
But, yes, he is a revelation.

AV: What are some of your techniques?

One of my favorite images of yours is- Memory a 50 x 50 C-type print.
It has this ebulliently speckled & light sepia tint, the water is glacial & fresh, & typically, if you cannot see a sitters face one gets a visceral & disturbing reaction, or a sense of dislocation, or alienation.

But in ‘Memory’ it’s as though he is blowing the bubble of his soul, one part revelation & another psychological- & a meeting of the elemental & the psychic…

How did you achieve some of these effects?

RC: Oh, that’s a great interpretation. Thanks. I can’t really give away my secrets but I work with a combination of conventional film and 35mm cine film.
Also, bleach and chemicals and time. And accidents! It is all very random. Nothing digital.
That ‘Memory’ print means a lot to me. My son and I had returned to America for the first time in a while and he so wanted to move there and leave England behind and just start over.

AV: Have you ever attempted digital?

RC: Nope.

AV: What does the portrait of your son ‘Memory’ mean to you.
And, what do our memories, signify to you?

RC: My son and I were swimming in this lake near my sister’s house and I remember thinking I had never seen him so happy. His face in that picture was just beaming, just overflowing with abandon and delight.
The obvious thing would be to preserve that, but I like the idea of those old super eight movies when, at the end, all these white dots would flicker and the screen would suddenly go bright white, so I worked that into the image instead.

I wanted it to be like an ending and a new beginning–or maybe a face so happy that all there is is light.

We were so happy, swimming in this wonderful lake, in what felt like a million miles from home.
This picture is about starting over and putting pain behind you.

And, well, what isn’t memory?
It is all memory.
The past is another country as they say. We are shaped by memory, haunted by it, comforted by it. I’m still trying to make sense of it. I’m interested in trauma and how traumatic memories create the people we are and change us forever.
Therapy is all about unraveling memories and maybe that is something art does.

AV: Yes, the past is another country.

“Therapy is all about unraveling memories and maybe that is something art does” I agree.

You tell us- “These images are deteriorating. Although the prints are standard, archival C-types, it is the nature of the chemical processes I use on the negatives that, over the course of time, those negatives will deteriorate and eventually disappear.
All prints are single editions unique to their date of printing because, as the negatives are corroding, they cannot ever be accurately duplicated. Over time, like their subject matter and the places and feelings they document, they will change, fade and vanish.”

I think what is so remarkable about the risks you take with your work, is this bold confrontation & acceptance of the inevitable, yet, in this disclosure we are closer to life than we could ever imagine?
Does this ring true to you?

RC: Yes! You’ve put it so well I don’t know what I can add to what you’ve said. Photography is our feeble way of stopping or slowing down time but we can’t. It’s inevitable that we will die and all these pictures will corrode and disappear but we go on making them anyway.

Something both sad and yet very romantic about that.

AV: Very true, perhaps we should also think of a return to cave painting, but that is not even a full guarantee that one’s images will survive. Ha ha? I love cave paintings.

I’d like to hear more of your own philosophies on your visual language.

RC: No real philosophy. I’m just digging away at something.

Most ‘visual things’ like corporate images and advertising and most ‘art’ just doesn’t connect with me at all on any level so my work is just my little way of redressing the balance!
I make pictures that make sense to me.
I’m not a great writer or singer –I’ll never be Lou Reed or Bob Dylan– and I can’t really paint so, fortunately, I have this thing I can do.
When my images make sense to others, I’m so flattered it gives me the confidence to make some more. That’s about it.

AV: I think ‘Doll House’, ‘A Love Big As’ & ‘Fallow The Dream’ are original, complex & beautifully organic works, fantastic & meaningful narrative surprises in them as well… And, I think a sense of awareness & recognition from others of one’s work, is occasionally vital for most- artists, I work that way-! Do you think awareness & recognition from others is vital for most artists?

RC: Oh, I do. Completely. I’m not strong enough to work in a vacuum.
I am so consumed by self-doubt every step of the way that I absolutely need feedback to keep going.
I always have this gnawing feeling inside of ‘this is just not good enough’ so recognition allows me to ignore that doubt for a while and carry on.

AV: Wow, what an honest way to put it, I really identify, this does happen. And, yes the vacuum is terribly draining.

Got to love all potentialities.

Do you have any other photographers, or artists in your family?

RC: My mother had a lot of natural ability but, sadly, never had the time to develop it.
As far as I know, no one in my family has ever been even remotely interested in art.
Quite the opposite.
Creativity was something I felt I always had to compromise and hide away and apologize for.

AV: I think you definitely inherited your mother’s natural ability & have applied it beautifully.
Did you- hide & apologize for your creativity??

RC: In my family and in my school, art or anything creative was seen as a bit suspect.

Art was something for the girls. It wasn’t until I learned more about the lives of artists (particularly The New York School) that I realized those artists were the real rock and rollers of their days and this was just what I was going to do no matter what anyone thought.

Being a fashion photographer later on obviously had its rewards but, until then, photography was seen as being very nerdy and it was a rather lonely obsession.
I think my son feels the same way about his stamps and his Scrabble.
It is lonely when you love something and no one else sees the point.

AV: Ha, ha wow! I am in agreement, It can be very lonely sometimes, yes. And I love stamps. Your son is 13 now yes? Does he share in your love for photography?

RC: Yes, Jake is now 13. As yet, he’s not particularly interested in art or photography which is just fine with me. I want him to be his own person and, for now, our enthusiasms are different which is probably as it should be. He is a gifted, many-times-published poet but I have no idea at all what road he’ll eventually follow.

AV: I’d love to read his poetry sometime, If I may.

What cameras do you use?

RC: Although I have a 5 x 4 view camera, a 6 x 6 cm Bronica and some Polaroids, I use mainly 35mm cameras.

An ancient Nikon F3 and an even older F2.

AV: It seems that you prefer film, as opposed to digital, are there other advantages to film other than the obvious?

RC: I just love film. The texture, what you can do to it.
The way it ages. The surface.
I can’t explain why but it just feels very real to me.

AV: What do you think of digital media & it’s results & qualities having entered into the language of our visual media & that of our visual experiences?

RC: Well, it probably has a lot to do with speed and cost but the finished product, to my eyes, is never ever the same.

AV: I am really really curious about ‘Pet Sounds’- may we have a
little bit of it’s premise?

RC: I read that Werner Herzog never takes more than a week to write a screenplay.
I’ve been working on ‘Pet Sounds’ for 3 or 4 years.
It’s about a child who is raped and then decides never to speak again and how this decision makes his family disintegrate around him.
It’s set in Sixties America, the summer of love etc. All about contrasts,the end of a dream, the end of childhood.

AV: GASP. I cannot wait- to see this!!!!! Profound.

You also tell us “The photographs, in many ways, are just a prelude to film making.
The processes and techniques I use are more cinematography than photography anyway”…

I must ask you about your love for cinema, how did this
come about & what have been favorite cinematic experiences, films?

RC: Oh God, where do I begin? Cinema, for me, is the ultimate way we have to lose ourselves.
That and, maybe, sex or amazing music is about the only time we can really lose ourselves.

A few that have stuck with me are My Life as a Dog, Midnight Cowboy, The King of Comedy,
Picnic at Hanging Rock, Dancer in the Dark, Don’t Look Now….
And a million others.

AV: I cried my eyes out at the ending of Dancer in the Dark , even after the theater had been empty, for a long time.
Important & poignant film I think, Bjork’s performance was amazing….

How do you employ cinematographic techniques? For those of us who do not know the mechanics?
And who are your greatest film making influences & why?

RC: Well, I have an odd collection of still images taken from obscure foreign films and I try and emulate that ‘picture out of context’ feeling in my work as though my photograph is just a
fragment of some other narrative.
Technically, I also use graphics from cine film which I sometimes scratch into the image to give them that timeworn feeling.
Like the 11 image you mentioned earlier. Also, I go for the sorts of Technicolor colors one sometimes gets in 60’s and 70’s cinema. I like all sorts of directors and cinematographers but never remember their names. Lasse Halstrom and Lars Von Trier seem to come up with goods most of the time though. Scorcese is a master of course.

AV: I definitely get these color scheme influences in your ‘Cine’ project works. & I am curious about your image of a quiet winter lake, rows of spindly & delicate trees & calm mists & a low fog…
Where did you find this image & what did you do to it?
It could almost be an aqua tint- also reminiscent of dry point prints by Rembrandt.

RC: Yes, I love that image too. That is a found image–a piece of 16mm film rescued from a trash bin outside some arty cinema house in London– which I stored away in a metal box for years.
When I looked at it again, I noticed rust had developed on the surface so I printed it.

AV: HA! You are full of incredible mysteries.

And 60’s & 70’s film- yes, incredibly vibrant!! ‘Valley of
the Dolls’ bright, still have yet to see it, the trailer I saw, in grainy golds & red’s, muted tar blacks, quite lush colors…

Do you ever get people to sit for you or people for
hire?

RC: I always use ‘real’ people. People I know. Sometimes I have to work with people I don’t know and that can be interesting but not at all the same experience.

AV: Who would you love to get to sit for you?

RC: I met Francis Bacon once and asked him but he very politely turned me down. I see faces every day on the bus or in the street and fall in love with them but I have never dared approach anyone with that sort of request.

AV: You should, request! Please request.
Bacon?? My goodness Robin!! I’ve loved Bacon since I was 13!! I too wanted to meet him, any other details on your run in with him to share?
I know I would not be alone in this odd request.
Bacon said of his love of gambling something along the lines of “It’s interesting to see so much concentrated winning & losing in one place”..

RC: I used to live near South Kensington in London and would see Bacon all the time.
One time I happened to have a postcard of his in my pocket which he signed. We talked about Julian Schnabel once on a street corner and he was just lovely.
A very friendly, rather funny looking old man and not at all like what you would expect.

AV: Wow, you just made many people happy, we may live vicariously- through you.

I love the work of Ed Paschke, I wanted to meet him as well- & ironically his studio is very nearby where I live, he was also a very generous & congenial artist. He curated shows ( 2000’s ‘Les Chemical Carnales’ a four person show curated by, Ed Paschke ) for his students, friends or apprentices, and he made sure to see their openings, if he could not attend he would see the show when he was able. I don’t know what the progress is on making his studio a historic site, since his death. I am sure it must be expensive, but I & I am certain many, would love to pay to make a visit.

And, Chris Ware has been very popular in Chicago as of late & I suppose I should- like his work, obviously a great deal of people love his work, & I do like it on some levels, but there is something very vital, essential, lacking for me.

I guess, I have this expectation that artworks have very organic, compelling and honest elements to them & his ‘cartoon art works’, even with the tales of adversity one of his characters Jimmy Corrigan goes through, I just don’t fully register authentically- with his work on this visceral level. I think I do, I can, find the work of R.Crumb, compelling.

Schnabel’s ‘Before Night Falls’ about the life of Reinaldo Arenas, was incredible. Nice Artist to Film maker transition there!….I am not a huge fan of his paintings, I am more of a fan of some of his older work, Hope I really really like, I like the broken chaotic domesticity of his shattered & mosaic- like dish impasto paintings.

What did Bacon say about Schnabel? Do you still have his signed postcard?

RC: I asked Bacon about something I had read where Schnabel had phoned him up wanting to chat and Bacon, apparently, had slammed the phone down having no interest in him at all. I asked him if that was true. He didn’t exactly deny it.
I got the impression he wasn’t into Schnabel or any other contemporary painter. Yes, I do still have the postcard, of course!
I’m still amazed that I actually had a Bacon postcard in my pocket when I bumped into him!
AV: Interesting about Schnabel & other contemporary painters, Bacon was on his own! That is amazing, that you had his postcard in your pocket when you bumped into him.

AV: Did you show Bacon your work?

RC: No, I never got around to discussing photography with Bacon. I sent him a photograph later but have no idea whether he got it or not. My impression was he really wasn’t interested in anyone’s work but his own.Not in a bad way. Just that he was focused on his own thing and
other art and other artists were just superfluous!

AV: Is there a place in the world, that you would love to shoot & why?

RC: Hmmm. I’m not so much about places. I’d like to go back to India though and re shoot my childhood haunts in the way Christian Boltanski re-stages scenes from his childhood.

AV: I have an odd philosophy about ‘place’…. & I would love- to see this Robin, do it please, do go to India & re- shoot your childhood haunts. I also love your ‘India’ c-type photograph, with mixed media, it’s your mother, holding you as an infant yes??
I’ve never heard of Christian Boltanski ! I love him, lot’s to learn about him & I see a relationships between your & his work.

RC: Yes, Boltanksi is a big influence. I especially love his pictures of children and his installations. He seemed very interested in grief and memory. My mother, who fought cancer for years and died when I was relatively young, is someone who often appears in my work for similar reasons–a way of making sense of this once powerful force now reduced to a blurry memory, a couple of faded pictures and a handful of letters…

AV: Your mother has a stunning & unique energy about her & you really succeed at representing her powerful force, your memory of her & your love for her. Your loss of your mother, your grief at her loss, seems to be less about darkness & quite wonderfully light & alive, intimate- warmly curled up in amber tones & symbolically embracing in ‘India’, reverent.

‘It’s not commercial’ & ‘Image’ are other favorites of your photographs- they got me laughing out loud to myself.. Is this your humor at work? Must be…

RC: I guess it must be. I find those very funny too. Those are found bits of cine film discovered in the wastebasket in the projection booth of the ICA cinema in London.

AV: How did you get into the projection booth? &, where do you go now to find your clippings?

RC: When I first moved to London, I was cold, bored and broke and the ICA was a warm place to hang out all day. The bookshop was amazing and they had foreign movies running all afternoon. I eventually met the projectionist and we just chatted away in the projection booth.

I noticed these bits of film cuttings everywhere and just gathered them up. He’s not there anymore and I think most of the movies there are now digital so who knows where I’ll get my next dose? 35mm ‘proper’ cine film is a dying art. I suppose that’s part of the attraction.

AV: Who is the boy in ‘x’?” I get a visceral reaction from it to ask.

&, ‘Being Four’, really transports me to 4, by the way, I’ve never seen anything that gives me this reaction. Every time I look at 4, I become 4, it’s astonishing because I’ll feel Thailand & hear the waxy whispering of the Banana trees & see the Floating bows of Red Hibiscus… Many memories.

RC: What a lovely thing to say. Thanks. That is me in Boy X. Age six, just arrived from India. Staying at my grandparents’ house in Dedham MA.
Being 4 goes back to a time when my son was unhappy in the aftermath of a complicated custody battle. I kept thinking, this is not how being four should feel.

AV: I wondered if it could be you, your ‘Memory’ in Boy X.

Yes, being 4 should be happy & 4, that age has such an intense, delicate & personal intimacy with reality & the world.

In some of your images, you use French & then what looks like Korean or Chinese characters..’Sunday Best’ for example- what languages do you use, are they mostly Asian languages in origin?

And for those of us who do not know Korean or Chinese, what is being said?

RC: I have had some bits and pieces translated. Sometimes they fit and sometimes they don’t. I suppose I’m more interested in them as ‘marks’ as opposed to anything literal. I just love the look of them, the feel, the texture and also the inscrutability. Most of the words are cinema
terms like ‘Start’, ‘Reel One’, ‘The End’, etc.

AV: Would you consider showing in Chicago?
RC: I’ve never shown in Chicago –or anywhere in America. Of course, I would love to.

AV: What do you think of the photographs that people have taken, reproductions of your images via the web etc, what do you think of the fact that these images will survive, after your originals have disintegrated?

RC: Well, with the internet, it’s a necessary evil I suppose that your work ends up in strange places, in strange hands. But discovering your photographs on some Estonian teenager’s blog or getting fan mail from an art student in China is also a wonderful thing. I’m happy they’re out there.

If they survive in pixilated form after I’m dead and gone, that’s fine but, for me, but the only real versions are the prints. On a monitor, they look like cheap imitations so I’m not too precious about where those end up.

AV: ‘11′ !! Thank you so much, Robin.
More of Robin Cracknell’s work & representation, can be found at his website.

Robin Cracknell was interviewed for Art Volume One, by, Chicago artist & writer Amy M Denes.