HORVATLAND - INTERVIEW  GO TO HOME

PETER HAMILTON AND FRANK HORVAT

About the project of a retrospective exhibition, to be called “HOUSE WITH 15 KEYS”

Boulogne-Billancourt, October 14th, 2012



photo by Sarah de Scisciolo


photo by Sarah de Scisciolo

P. Hamilton :

It seems to me that your present idea of photography is very different from what it was 15 years ago. Now you say: “I have ended up realizing that it’s not the subject that matters.” While in my view – unless one is dealing with very abstract work – photography is always about the subject. The subject is the reason why photography exists. Getting away from the subject seems a rather difficult task.

F. Horvat :

Most people would agree with you: photography – contrary to painting – needs a subject. But this was also what people believed about painting, before photography was invented. Then it turned out that photography could represent a subject just as well as painting – and certainly faster, if not better. This changed the ideas about painting, as we all know. So photography came to be considered the best way to represent reality (except for abstract photography, and later for conceptual photography, but to me these are varieties of pictorialism, i.e. of photography seen as a sub-class of the visual arts. To me, photography is not just a visual art, but something closer to poetry – or at least to some poetry, such as the haiku.)

On the other hand – and in an apparent contradiction to this – it is true that I couldn’t photograph if I didn’t set myself the task of showing a subject, even if I believe that what matters is not so much that subject, as the way I photograph it. It’s a little like what I believe about free will: theoretically I tend to deny free will, and to believe that I act as I am conditioned to act. But in practice I behave as if I had a free will – otherwise I wouldn’t know how to behave…

P. Hamilton :

It’s an interesting point, though I come from a rather different perspective, and I do believe in free will and that people can make choices. But I’m not sure that this answers the question about the subject.

F. Horvat :

I’ll try to answer it another way. I remember a special issue of Life, in the 50’s, showing the photographs taken by Cartier-Bresson in Soviet Russia. It was the first time a western reporter had been allowed to shoot there, and we all were eager to see what Henri had seen, in a country about which we had only heard, from communist or anti-communist propaganda. But when I saw his photos, my first reaction was “Oh, is that all?” Because what I saw were just ordinary people (though dressed a little differently from us) living a rather ordinary life (though one that was a little less comfortable than ours). It didn’t occur to me to say to myself (as I would now): “These are great Cartier-Bresson photographs. This is the way he has seen Soviet Russia.” They were great because they showed his way of relating things to each other, his geometry, as he called it, which to me should have mattered more than communist or anti-communist propaganda. Or in any case it matters more now. Because now I know, from these and from many others photos, what Soviet Russia looked like, and what the surface of the moon looks like, or even what an embryo in the uterus, or the inside of my heart look like. What now interests me is: “What can this particular photographer, Cartier-Bresson, show me that I wouldn’t see in one of those billions of images on the web?” My curiosity has shifted from the subject to the photographer. And it’s not only my personal attitude that has changed: it’s photography itself – or at least a widespread attitude to it. Because of this explosion, this inflation of images.

P. Hamilton :

I understand that. But what, to me, is more difficult to understand, is why, when you look back at your work, you would say: “In this photograph, the subject is too important, and this somehow disqualifies it from being typical of my perspective.”

F. Horvat :

I am not sure that, on this point, we are on the same wavelength. Obviously, there cannot be a photograph without a subject, even if that subject is minimal. But what interests me is not so much the subject, as the way a photographer approaches it. This approach can be shared by many photographers, as it was the case of most photo-journalists in the ‘50s. Or it can be more personal, which is the direction in which curators and publishers are driving us, for the better or the worse. In my case, getting curators and publishers to recognize my approach has been particularly difficult, because my photography is a “house with 15 keys”. This is why getting people to see my common denominator (or my 15 common denominators) seems so important to me…

P. Hamilton :

Perhaps you only have one key.

F. Horvat :

Perhaps, but you would have to recognize it. And this is why, when you say “This photo of yours is a good photo”, I may answer “It may well be, but it doesn’t fit any of my keys, and therefore I won’t include it in my selection”.

P. Hamilton :

The distinction may be very clear to you, in your mind, but it’s not clear to me. I can look at your Monte Gargano picture and see it in the context of the time in which you produced it.

F. Horvat :

I know it isn’t clear to you. Partly because you look at my photos in the perspective of sixty years ago, partly because I couldn’t get you to see them in my present perspective, or possibly because my present perspective is mistaken… This is why I am so interested in this conversation, and so grateful to you for your attention.

P. Hamilton :

Let’s go back to the picture from Monte Gargano. I understand it was a self-assignment, but you were doing it as if it had been an editorial commission, by some magazine such as Life

F. Horvat :

Certainly…

P. Hamilton :

… and if I look at the rest of your work, up until the end of the 80’s or beginning of the 90’s, I find that there was always an editorial commission behind it…

F. Horvat :

This is true for my fashion photos. Not for my photo-journalism: most great magazines had folded (or changed) by the end of the ‘60s, and photo-journalists didn’t know where to turn…

P. Hamilton :

…but let me finish: an editorial commission, by the terms of which you had to show reality from your viewpoint, because that was what you wanted to do and also what you were commissioned to do. Now it seems to me that in your present perspective, the editorial commission is coming from you exclusively, in other words that there is no commissioning partner.

F. Horvat :

Exactly, I’m my own client.

P. Hamilton :

Which is a very good position to be in, but also a very bad position, because you have to please the person who is the most difficult to please.

F. Horvat :

And also the one who is most likely to indulge in wishful thinking!

P. Hamilton :

And to change his mind.

F. Horvat :

Very true!

P. Hamilton :

Now, what I wanted to suggest is that it always helps to have a client (or a patron, as they were called in the Renaissance). Because this gives the artist a reason to do the work, if nothing else to make a living…

F. Horvat :

May I answer now?

P. Hamilton :

No, I haven’t finished. Under those conditions, the work had a sense, or a purpose, which in the first place was to satisfy the patrons’ demands. Even if, as we know, the greatest works may have exceeded those demands. Now, you are reviewing a lifetime of work made in this context. And you’re saying: “Well, I’m going to look at this work differently. It was originally made for a patron (or even for an imagined patron), and therefore the emphasis was on the subject, because that was what patrons were interested in. But now I’m going to change my conception about the value of my images.” Am I right?

F. Horvat :

Yes, I agree, there was a need for a patron. But here is my answer – only please don’t take it for as conceited as it sounds, it’s only a metaphor. I often think of some great painters, who lived long enough (and in sufficiently good health) to produce their best work in their last years: like Titian, Rembrandt, Renoir, Picasso… Of course I wouldn’t compare myself to them – except for my present age. But what I often thought, when looking at their last paintings, was that these artists, at that advanced age, didn’t have to prove anything any more. They had no more need for a patron, no more mundane purpose, they could afford their freedom – and this, this only, is what I have in common with them. Now I wonder: if Goya, at the time of his last paintings – the ones, you know, of La Quinta del Sordo – if the old, deaf Goya had anachronistically been provided a Macintosh, and the possibility of reconsidering all his work and assembling a retrospective of it, from his very beginnings – wouldn’t he then have liked to go back to his first canvasses and drawings, in order to check if they contained, in embryo, some of what he achieved at the end? This is my metaphor for House with 15 Keys.

P. Hamilton :

I understand better now. Thank you. I think that was very helpful. Still, I believe that one of the problems is that the person who looks at a retrospective wants to perceive a development, a progression in time. Anyhow, to me, the Monte Gargano picture is fascinating. The feeling that these people have arrived in a promised land, after a long journey. Their carts, like those of the pioneers crossing the American prairie. The whole construction of the image, with the children in the front… I think it’s amazing.

F. Horvat :

I’m only too glad to hear you say these nice things about my photograph – so I won’t contradict you. But for my present purpose, I have to make a selection, and this could mean eliminating some photos that I like: if I put this one in, I have to take another one out.

P. Hamilton :

I know that problem. What’s happening now, with the computer, is that all these images can be brought to the screen, but that once we start opening them up, we don’t have a mechanism for prioritizing them. At least not in terms of a continuous, smooth variable, that goes from high to low. It’s either yes or no, that’s how computers work. While choosing photographs is not simply yes-no. Sometimes, to have a meaning, they have to accumulate and be seen in relation to each other.

F. Horvat :

You are right. Much depends on how one image affects the others.

Here Viviana, Frank’s assistant, joins the conversation.

Viviana :

The question is why Frank feels that one photo is “a Frank Horvat photo”, and why another one isn’t – even if it’s not necessarily a bad image.

F. Horvat :

Well, when I was working for magazines, I obviously tried to show what I thought may be of interest to their readers. For instance what a person (or a place, or a situation) would have looked to their eyes, if they had been on the spot – rather than my own reaction (or my own feeling) about this person (or place, or situation). But now, when I select my photos for a retrospective, I am more interested in those that say something about my personal reactions. Take this photograph of lifesavers, in Sidney. Unquestionably my purpose, when I took it, was to show what they looked like, the outmoded bathing suits they wore, the kind of military drill they practiced. Call it objective information. But if I select it now, for my retrospective exhibition, it may be also – and primarily – to show the mixed feelings I had about their virility (or their pretended virility). Which were very subjective, very personal, and to a great extent unconscious. In other words, the message of this photograph – now and in my own eyes – is not so much a photo-story about the life-savers in Sidney, as an expression of my somewhat antagonistic attitude when I am confronted with this pretence of virility. Which makes it, to me, a more “Frank Horvat photograph”.

P. Hamilton :

Would you say that your personal feelings about this group of pilgrims at Monte Gargano were less intense?

F. Horvat :

Certainly. They were religious persons on a pilgrimage, they looked like a nice bunch of people, but I didn’t feel concerned by their religion. The way they stood in the middle of that landscape was kind of biblical and probably reminded me of other situations, like (as you said) the pioneers in the American West, or the Hebrews in the Sinaï desert. I might have thought that it would make a great page in a magazine – but I don’t remember having any special personal feeling.

P. Hamilton :

I see something, in this picture, which is about belief and community.

F. Horvat :

Certainly. But my reaction to belief and community may be less personal and less intense than my sarcastic reaction to the life-savers – or at least it was at the time.

P. Hamilton :

What I meant is that it was taken in the same years when you travelled to India and Pakistan and photographed there, in a way which – to me – has very strong similarities with what I see in the image of these pilgrims.

F. Horvat :

Yes, but then there were other occasions in Pakistan and India, and other photos I took on those occasions, when I got much more involved with people – if only to overcome their reluctance to the camera. Like this girl. She was a dancer, which meant a kind of high-class prostitute. And also a very young one, probably not older than 12 or 13. Did I find her sexually attractive? Possibly, but I would have had qualms about having sex with a child, and besides I couldn’t have afforded her. But the idea must have crossed my mind: in Lahore, unveiled and available girls were few and far between…

P. Hamilton :

I can see why that photograph has a resonance for you, which probably Monte Gargano hasn't…

F. Horvat :

I certainly didn’t consider having sex with any of them! But what I now call my “personal feelings”, and what makes some of my photos a “more Frank Horvat” photo, are not only my feelings about the subject. But also (and mainly), the feelings I had, at that moment, about the light, the composition, about my relation (or non relation) to the subject, the ideas that I associate with it, the metaphors it brings to my mind. All this may not have been very evident to the magazine reader in 1953, but it may be conveyed – to some extent – by my present exhibition and by the way it is assembled.