#24 Mark Cohen - PHOTO TALK - WTF-STOP PODCAST - WTF-Stop Podcast - Photo Talk

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, I'm Zach Waters and welcome to another episode of
What the g F Stop Photo Right Chatter photographers about
their life and connection to the world through photography. Today's

(00:33):
guest is photographer Mark Korn, who was recognized for his
unconventional and experimental approach to image making. His work spands portraiture,
fashion and documentary photography, often pushing the boundaries of traditional composition,
especially with his street photography. Born in Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania,
in nineteen forty three, Corn's photographic journey has been deeply
rooted in his hometown and the surrounding areas to support

(00:57):
himself financially cooperate a commercial photography in his hometown of
Wilkes bar for over thirty five years, focusing on wedding
photography and port RAITs. Corn's style is renowned for his
surreal close up street photography, where he often crops and
faces or fragments bodies like he is searching for a
deeper meaning at understanding from the seemingly ordinariness of people

(01:18):
and places he comes across on the streets. His work
and bodies aware immediately almost intrusive, yet deeply evocative and
engaging with his subjects. In two thousand and five, he
published Grim Street with Powerhouse in New York, which solidified
his reputation as a master of surreal, close up, flash
driven street photography. The book brought wider recognition to his

(01:40):
role fragmented and often unsettling depictions of everyday life in
Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania. True Color, published in two thousand and seven,
again by Powerhouse in New York, is also a significant
photo book in Mark Cohan's career because it marks his
transition from black and white to colour photography while maintaining
his signature close up, flash heavy style. The images and
Fuugh colour were mostly taken in the nineteen seventies, but

(02:02):
they remained largely unpublished until this book. This give insight
into a previously hidden aspect of Corn's work and his
early engagement with colored foam. His other books include Five
Minutes in Mexico, Photographs of nineteen eighty nine, Dark Knees,
published in twenty thirteen, which was a comprehensive look at
his black and white work from nineteen sixty nine to
twenty twelve, frame a retrospective release in twenty fifteen. This

(02:24):
red respective and clues over two hundred and fifty images,
many previously unpublished, spanning Corn's extensive career on various locations
around the world. Mexico published in twenty sixteen, this book
presents Cohen's photographic exploration of Mexico, capturing the essence of
its street and people Cotton. Published in twenty twenty one.
This photobook delves into the cultural and social aspects of

(02:45):
the American South, featuring images that reflect the region's complexities.
Grand Works Published in twenty twenty four. This recent work
showcases Corn's continual exploration of urban landscapes. I was delighted
that he took the time to have a chat. We
talked that engagement he has on the streets, which is
sometimes criticized by people I've seen on social media, which

(03:06):
I think is a little bit unfair because you need
to know a little bit more about his approach. But
we discussed it and talked about how he interacts with
people on the street.

Speaker 2 (03:15):
You're invading somebody's personals, yes, and it can create all
kinds of problems. But sometimes I'm walking on the street
and people are on the street, and I see a
guy and I'll have like a special ring on his hand,
Let's say, as an example, I'm not thinking of a
specific picture, and I'll say I'm trying to get a
picture of that ring, you know what I mean. And

(03:37):
then I'll just take and put the camera very close
to the ring and take a picture. And if it's
a flash picture, it really disturbs the same, you know,
because I like to take pictures, and a lot of
flash pictures made in the twilight, so there's this ambient
light in the background and the flash, so and that
really and then I want to back away from or
if there's a kid in the picture, you know, like

(03:59):
I take a picture of a kid's face and then
I backed away from it, you know. So my interactions
with the people extremely short.

Speaker 1 (04:06):
We also talked about his time teaching at university.

Speaker 2 (04:09):
I would make up these abstract assignments for them sometimes
as we'll go out and make pictures of something that's
white or something that was one and they would come
back with all these different pictures. And a lot of
these are like math majors, or they're nursing majors, or
their history majors, you know. But one of the things

(04:30):
that was so effective in talk is like to have
these critiques where some student could come and put ten
of his pictures up on a you know, tack him
up on a board. In the class is like ten
or twelve people. I guess the teaching skill was to
run a conversation about the actual pictures that were making,
on the shortcomings or the positive things about.

Speaker 1 (04:51):
Also mentioned earlier one in the intro mark was the
wedding and portrait photographer four or thirty years in wolks
Ba in Pennsylvania. Well, I was week was did his
unconventional street style seep into his wedding photography?

Speaker 2 (05:05):
Oh? There was?

Speaker 3 (05:06):
Yeah, yeah, I did a wedding one where people were
so so annoyed that they sent the pictures to the
to the museum in New York because they knew I
had some connection to that and seeing and he wrote
a nasty letter about really.

Speaker 1 (05:20):
Tell us about that, tell us about that. And we
also discussed his use of verticals in his Mexico book
published in twenty sixteen, because I wasn't used to seeing
him shooting so many verticals. Was there a conscious effort
with the verticals in the Mexico stuff?

Speaker 2 (05:34):
Yeah? Sure it was conscious. I mean I would see
things that I want, you know, I have a picture
of a kid walking down the street and my wife
is driving the car and I'm sitting on the passenger
side with the window open, and this kid's walking and
the street's very narrow, and I turned the camera vertical
and it's like, I know this kid's going to come down,

(05:55):
and he looked right at the lens and I take
the picture and he's sort of scouted.

Speaker 1 (06:00):
You know.

Speaker 2 (06:01):
I wanted to get the whole kit, and I got it.
Which page it, but I'm not sure.

Speaker 1 (06:06):
Anyway, the day came and what it was up to.

Speaker 2 (06:09):
I'm editing a book of color photographs. I have a
possible publication coming out of all unpublished color photographs because
my color works sort of emerged in about nineteen eighty
or nineteen eighty five. You know, I was making black
and white pictures for maybe twenty years, and then I
started to experiment a little bit with color film. That

(06:33):
happened because they started to make negative color films that
were ASA four hundred, which is the same as Triac,
so I could go out and take color pictures without
bothering was an exposure meter or anything like that. I
was using the same the same medium extra except i'd
had these color negatives, and I never trended many of them.

(06:55):
Was very expensive to make color prints, and I was
making sixteen by twenty prints. I wanted to continue on
along that line, not to change anything, you know, just
to keep the medium going because I had been very
successful with Grim Street. I mean, it became a book
that I think a lot of people know about now.

(07:16):
And I had the dummy for that book done twenty
years before I had it printed. Before I could get
that printed. So now I'm making a book was publishing
once all unpublished color pictures that I'm working on that
now and scanning negatives that were never printed.

Speaker 1 (07:33):
Were you scanning them on these.

Speaker 2 (07:34):
Six hundred EPSOM scanner? I have an EPSOM ten thousand,
a big scanner to do sixteen by twenty print, so
I could take the prints right out of the boxes
and make scans of these black and white prints. But
I needed something.

Speaker 3 (07:49):
To do thirty five millimeter negatives, so I made some
kind of jewelry rigged masks because I like to have
the frame lines in the picture.

Speaker 2 (07:58):
So one other time I'm scanning these negatives that have
never been printed. That's gonna be a cool book where
you stole you all content. Right in this room here,
I have this boxes filled with pigs.

Speaker 1 (08:08):
You go, file and couplets, f rid of it.

Speaker 2 (08:10):
In some way. I want to just get rid of
all these pictures because my kids, you know, they're interested
in other things. So I don't know what I'm gonna do,
you know. I mean, it's like it's going to be
a problem because there's some beautiful pictures that I made
in the nineteen seventy and seventy one and sixty eight
and sixty nine. All those prints are just not interesting.

(08:33):
I've been in all these galleries. I've been in ten galleries,
and they're selling the same half dozen negatives. You know,
the bubble gum and that jump rope and the upside
down girl. Those things sell, you know. I've sold like
five or six and there's some Oh, the bubble gum,
I must have sold like twenty prints of that. I'm
sort of stuck with all this work, you know, but
I guess somewhere I'll get it to a museum or

(08:57):
someplace that wants to look. And that's just the Prince,
you know, the Prince two percent of the negatives. There
about thousands and thousands of negatives, black and white negatives.
So now I have these color negatives, and I'm making
a book of colored pictures that were never even printed.

Speaker 1 (09:15):
How'd you go about the arditing process? I do see
in your books that you edit by date, don't you.

Speaker 2 (09:20):
I'm not that careful. I sort of leave a lot
of that up to the publisher. And chronological dating seems good,
both in a in some kind of psychological way. I mean,
these are this is the series of pictures that I took,
and once in a while there's an etch an issue,
that is, it's not exactly able to be understood chronologically

(09:43):
or you know, I don't know what the motive for
any of these pictures. I just like to take pictures.
So I go out and I quot roll the film
in and I started making these pictures.

Speaker 3 (09:52):
So when I started making color pictures, I tried, in
this silly way to not really understand whether I had
color film in the camera or like a life film
in the camera, because the motive for the picture was.

Speaker 2 (10:03):
Much stronger than the colors picture. I thought, you know,
you see something red, you know. I mean, I don't
know how to really go into that without actually talking
about a specific picture. Yeah, I had a picture like
cut into this conversation. You know, it's like a book
of art, you know, and you it says see picture
on page nine hundred, and you're on page thirty. You

(10:25):
know you want to have the picture next to the next.

Speaker 1 (10:28):
I mean, I think you're a surrealist. I've always thought,
want to look the way you work your imagery and
the way it comes together the sequences. To me, you
were a surrealist. I don't know how you see that.

Speaker 2 (10:38):
I feel that way too. I mean, I'm taking an
awful lot of pictures without looking through the camera, just
putting the camera into the space that I think the
picture is happening in.

Speaker 1 (10:47):
I think you can see that a lot with obviously
Grim Street, which was the suminal piece. I mean, it's
an amazing body of work. It was like your first
album in a way, even though I don't think it
was your first book. And I think everybody refers to
that with you. But actually I sing a lot more.
I sing a different you with your work and the
way your books have progressed, the way you've changed your

(11:08):
style a little bit and kept on incorporating that, maybe
say off the hip style as well, but just go
back to the color. You know, when you started playing
with color color neg was it the very color Cordac
very color four hundred you were using?

Speaker 2 (11:21):
Yeah? Were colored was four hundred and it And then
I went up to food G sixteen hundred.

Speaker 1 (11:26):
Yeah, that scared me a little bit when I saw that.
It's quite great, isn't it. How did you deal with that?

Speaker 2 (11:32):
It's okay? It looks more like like a Russian public Samazat.
I always thought, you know, throw one of these books together,
you know, without all that super fine printing that day'
you know the technology, you know, it's like you want
almost printed on newspaper. Yeah, that's how I grim Street.
But what made me change. One of the things that
made me change and the grim Street time, which was

(11:54):
about seventy three seventy three fought at that time. I start.
When I started, like a nineteen sixty eight, I was
using a twenty one millimeter lens because I was very
influenced by William Klein and his pictures are so fantastic
as they are, and Robert and Freeland not so much
Freedlander as Tony Ray Jones or Larry Burrows, you know,

(12:18):
David Douglas Duncan's wore pictures. You know, you wanted to
get into the scene, really, but I was never you know,
more than twenty five miles from Wilksburg. Yeah, you know,
so in this set that was, you know, between these
two coal towns, woks Bar and Scranton, and I would
walk around and make these pictures. But I was very,
very close to things. And after a while I got
into altercations with people, you know, because I was like

(12:41):
inches away, you know, I mean, which one late more
you lent? Which would be back a little bit.

Speaker 3 (12:47):
And then after about five years of that, I switched
to a fifty and once you're using a fifteen millimeter lets,
it's like almost a telephoto met You're really back from
the scene and different things, though happened.

Speaker 1 (13:00):
In your True Color book. Is there a mix of
the very color and the fuji in that?

Speaker 2 (13:06):
No, I don't think.

Speaker 3 (13:07):
So I started using fuji after True Color was was published.

Speaker 2 (13:11):
True Color came about very quickly, you know, it was
after the Grim Street book came out. Powerhouse said, well,
let's make a true color book, you know, a color book.
So I made this book, you know, very quickly. I
made the Prince myself and they scanned the princes that
I made, and I was only learning to make eight
you know, I tried to make a set of eight

(13:32):
by ten color prints and they scared them a little
too perfectly. So the next color book will be better,
I mean, the colors will be more be more realistic.
Let's say.

Speaker 1 (13:46):
Yeah, it's funny. I chuckled when you said you get
into altercations with people. And I've read the things you've
spoken to people about about, you know, the way you
used to start, the way of just shooting, getting really
up close and using your flash. And I always wondered
if that was part of the course when you were
doing that sort of photography. I presume it happened a lot.

(14:07):
But I actually watched you on there's a few YouTube
videos about and I sort of watching. I wasn't watching
you take in the picture. I was watching you and
the way you interact. There's a sort of barrier there totally.
What I noticed was is that you either shot, you
ei the person you're looking. You get in, you're waiting
for your moment, and the second you shoot, you disengage totally.

(14:31):
You just walk. There's no sort of going back a
little bit and sort of trying to justify it.

Speaker 2 (14:36):
You're invading somebody's personals, yes, and it can create all
kinds of problems. But sometimes I'm walking on the street
and people are on the street, and I see a
guy and not have like a special ring on his hand.
Let's say, as an example, I'm not thinking of was
there our picture? And I'll say, I'm trying to get
a picture of that ring, you know what I mean.

(14:58):
And then I'll just take and put the camera very
close to the ring and take a picture. And if
it's a flash picture, it really disturbs the sing, you know,
because I like to take pictures of a lot of
flash pictures made in the twilight, so there's this ambient
light in the background and the flash so and that
really and then I want to back away from or
if there's a kid in the picture, you know, like

(15:20):
I take a picture of a kid's face and then
I back away from it, you know. So my interactions
with the people extremely short, you know, in times of seconds.

Speaker 1 (15:28):
You know.

Speaker 2 (15:28):
I take a flash picture and I move away, you know,
and I haven't really even seen the picture. I don't
see the picture till I pull the film off. The
real and dark wi if I can see it's come out,
you know, And then I said, well that's possible, and
that's possible, and then I can make a print from
Leveshoe with those negatives, And the same thing was happening
with color later on, because I would walk around town.

(15:49):
You know, I made a game out of it. If
I take the film and I walk into the drug store,
and I could have the negatives and the prints done
in an hour anywhere in the here. You know, every
real store at a one hour machine, and a machine
must be gone now, you know. But I'm not really
sure what I'm doing. You know, there's there's you know,

(16:10):
phenomenology is real. You know, it's a real thing that happens.
When you take a picture on a sunny day. It's
not the same as when you take a picture and
there's lightning in the sky. You know, It's just it's
not the same. Yeah, So if something changes and I
cannot describe it, going back.

Speaker 1 (16:28):
To your approach and everything, and I think in today's
social media world, you know, I've read the obvious criticisms
in the way, you know, the intrusiveness of taking pictures
like that, But photography is in the trusive medium it
is whatever way you look at it is an intrusive form.
I think sometimes people have missed the point with you.
Just like when you photograph kids. You know, people now
can just say, oh, you know, dodgy photographing children. I

(16:51):
think your photography has less to do about the subjects.
It's more about you. It's all about that abstractness of
the way you're seeing the world. It's it's relevant whether
it's a sort of woman with her legs in high heels,
or a kid lying on a towel on the grass
or whatever. There's actually less to do with what the
subject represents in gender or age or and I think

(17:11):
it's more about what abstract qualities they're bringing to the
pavement and the sidewalk in the street. How'd you see that?

Speaker 2 (17:18):
Yeah? I do. I think a lot of the work
sometimes is autobiographical in someone there's some part of my personality,
some part of myself that is drawn to express itself
in the subjects I'd picked. But I have grim Street's
a hundred pictures. It's not a lot of pictures because
it's drawn from the sousand negatives. I used to put

(17:40):
negatives away in a sleeve called NCNP. Would have no contacts,
no prints, because I was making I was running a
photography studio at the time I was doing it. I
mean I used up every minute, it seemed. So I
tried to make a contact print of every strip that
I made a print from. So the contact prints I

(18:02):
have or of strips of six or five that were
there's a print on most of them. There's hundreds of
strips that I never made any print. I didn't have
time to contact them. Yeah, so I just bunched him
into a glass scene and said, no contacts, no print.
So I went back to those glass scene, those sleeves
of unprinted and there's a lot of good work there,

(18:23):
you know, but there was only there's only so much
that you could emerge with, you know, unless you have
like a couple guys, you know, like in the movie
blow Up, you know, the guy walks in and he
throws the film on the desk and he goes to
the bar, and it's all done with a bunch. Make
me eleven by fourteen of each one of these, you know,
so I can see what I've been doing. Well, I

(18:44):
couldn't do it, you know. That was like very romantic notion.
David Emmings and I saw that movie. That's a great movie.
It's you know, I saw that movie like in seventy
five ish, you know, at about that time, so I
couldn't print all those negatives. My thing is to get
at these negatives and prints and the whole thing out
of this apartment, you know, and have somebody like scan

(19:06):
it all or see it all. And then the autobiographical
nature of this work, well, merge.

Speaker 1 (19:13):
There's another side of you as well, isn't that? And
that's what I want to saw head towards now. I
want you to take me back to where it all
started for you as a young man growing up in Pennsylvania.
I'd like to find out as well about you as
a commercial photographer. You had your on studio or you
did weddings and corporate workup presume yes, that's the side
I have no idea about it. Can we start from

(19:35):
the beginning and work into that Marcolin wedding photographer? Because
I'm intrigued by this.

Speaker 2 (19:41):
I started off, you know, somebody gave me a camera
when I was like twelve or something. I learned how
to how to use the camera, take pictures, develop the film.
You know, a cousin gave me this camera and my
uncle showed me how to make a test strip in
the dark room. And I was in high school and
the first kind of eye idea that I got about

(20:02):
photography being a real thing in the world. And this
is like in nineteen fifty seven or fifty eight, you know,
Eastman Kodak High School photo content. And I was a winner,
you know. I sent the stuff in and I said, well,
this was pretty real. You know. By the time I
could drive a car, I was I was making portraits
of these little kids for people near Wilkesbury, and I

(20:26):
made these sixteen by twenty portraits of them. You know,
I used it ninety millimeters length. That way I could
do a headshot and make a sixteen by twenty quite
easily in my dark room. And that was a big
seller and a couple of eight byte pends along with it.
That's how I started a photo business. And I was
pretty successful for a small town. And I did corporate
work in annual reports, and then I had to do

(20:48):
some weddings too, you know, because it was a it's
a small town, and I did all these things. In
between all that I made the work. That's the real work.
So to start making sixteen by twenty prints of negatives
that I made when I was out for a walk
was not a big technical problem for me because I
had been making them of these kids, you know, I'm
dry mounting to a board and selling them. And around

(21:10):
this time, there was this show in Rochester, New York
that the George Eastman have a guy named Nathan Lyons
put together a show called Vision and Expression. And I
was in this show, and I went up to Rochester
and I saw the installation of the show. I noticed
immediately that a sixteen by twenty took up more room
in the gallery sent an eight by ten, and I

(21:33):
just stuck with the sixteen by So that formed the
that became a format, and I still use the format today,
exactly the same size prints in the same film and
the same developer. But now I'm in Philadelphia, so I'm
in a different place. Once I started to have shows
in New York, I began to realize some income from
those shows. Then after that I had a great gallery

(21:57):
in California, and that was when the true color portfolio
is made and who they are superb prints. I could
see the potential of a color negative because I had
a dye transfer printer at that time, Guy Strickers, who's
out in Seattle, and he made these prints, Michael Wilson.
So that's why I saw the potential in these negatives,

(22:18):
and now I can see how to scan them.

Speaker 1 (22:19):
Don't know what you about dye transfer printing.

Speaker 2 (22:21):
Ye, I don't know anything about it except they take
a thirty five millimeter negative and then they make an
eight x ten internegative of some sort, and then they
make the dies. I don't do it anymore. They're incredibly
expensive to make one, and it's a disappearing thing. And
a lot of people are talking about how inkjet print,
you know, like digital die pigmuan prints are just as permanent.

(22:43):
I don't know about that. I'm black and white printer.
I mean I know how to make it, you know,
take a triex negative and make a beautiful print out
or any kind of thirty five million I mean, my
in larger doesn't move. It's all set up to make
one size print. I have another in larger right next
to it to make others.

Speaker 1 (22:59):
Go back to the you were given, you were given
the like as forget that must have been like goldtos.

Speaker 2 (23:03):
Then was it first camera? I was given was a
plastic you know camera that used one twenty seventh film,
which was a strange film size, and I fooled around
with the camera. Remember I'm only like thirteen or fourteen
years old. I took a picture of a cat chasing
a ball on a string and things like this, and

(23:24):
I'm just fooling with this camera. But I couldn't understand
how to load the in the dark, to load the tank.
So I would take the rolls of film to the
drug store and have them develop a lab and looks
bear it just developed there. I remember it cost eleven
cents developed the film. Then I had the negatives that
I could enlarge them the years before, I was very
comfortable loading a thirty five milimeter stainless steel real, that's

(23:49):
what I do now. It's a long bark, you know,
from you know, because it's many years, and it's a
lot of dark from the you know, when you're first
learning how to work in your own dark room. And
I always had it dark.

Speaker 1 (24:02):
When you look back when you first started and how
you stumbled your way through it all, it's such a
beautiful period, isn't it. When you look back at them
early times where you would just spend days in the
dark room, and you were shooting pictures where you're bulkloading
film as well.

Speaker 2 (24:16):
I tried that for a while, but not too long.

Speaker 1 (24:19):
It's a bit scary, isn't it.

Speaker 2 (24:22):
You don't load the reels everything. I might have done
a couple of hundred feet and then said, I'm not
nice to get the film in the pack.

Speaker 1 (24:32):
I can't even get them onto spools when they come
out of the cavester when you've shot them. They that
scares me. That process. I do it, but it's just,
oh my god, I'm just so scared of it all.
What process you know when you're putting the film out
of the camera into the wall to develop.

Speaker 2 (24:49):
It, Oh well, no, the whole canister comes out. They're
taken in the dark. One I have appliers. I opened
it up as appliers and put it on their reel.
It takes a minute.

Speaker 1 (24:58):
Yeah, you make it sense.

Speaker 2 (25:02):
The same. You have to do. You have to I'm
a great believer in limitation, you know.

Speaker 1 (25:08):
It's like yeah, but then they both remember we had
the traditional plastics buckets, you know what you put your phone,
and then they bought the metal ones out, which I
just couldn't not get my head right. I was just
so I think I was just too precious on that process.
I was so nervous about the next step of taking
the film out of the camera.

Speaker 2 (25:26):
I remember that I used to thank used to be
plastic with some kind of plastic reels inside. And then
when the stainless steel reels came out, they were a
little tricky. Because I used to teach photographer when I
was living in Wilkesburg. There were a couple of small colleges.
There was a King's College, and I started teaching there
and I set up a dark room there. You know,

(25:49):
the guys had made it with the dark room for me,
and I caught the photography there for a few years.
And there was another small college of Wilkesburg called Milt's College.
I was teaching there, so I liked always to talk.
You know. I only would teach basic photography, you know,
I would teach kids how to make a test trip,
you know, on how to look at the finished prince.

(26:09):
I did that for twenty years, you know, like part time.
Then I would I did some teaching, and like I
went to Princeton for a semester and I went to
the corkoring down in Washington for a year. I think
I talked about two semesters down there, and then I
was at Risdy for a couple ron in Providence. I

(26:31):
went to Risley when Harry Callahan and Aaron Siskin were
teaching at Risdy. Somehow they said we'll get this guy
to come up there. So I went up to Risney
for a year and taught up there. But I never
would take like like a full time professor job because
would be very It's very distracting. I mean, if you're

(26:53):
at Risdy and you talking to students, they want to
know what gallery exactly they can go to tomorrow. You
know in New York, you know, they're very ambitious in
these in these schools. And that wasn't you know. I
mean I got to all the galleries because I had
to show at the Museum of Modern Art when I

(27:14):
was thirty, you know what I mean. And that was
a little spacey to have that happen.

Speaker 1 (27:23):
No, I know, it stopped museum about No. I was like, wow,
you were so young as well. Yeah, what were you teaching?
Because I know you did a lot of university because
you just mentioned you did a lot of university lecturing,
teaching and stuff. What was the range of stuff you
were actually delivering though.

Speaker 2 (27:37):
I would make up these abstract assignments for them sometimes
as we'll go out and make pictures of something that's
white or something that was one and they would come
back with all these different pictures. And a lot of
these are like math majors, or they're nursing majors, or
their history majors. You know. But one of the things

(27:59):
that was so effect then't talk is like to have
these critiques where some student could come and put ten
of his pictures up on a you know, tack him
up on a board, and the class is like ten
or twelve people. I guess the teaching skill was to
run a conversation about the actual pictures that were making,
on the shortcomings or the positive things about So I

(28:20):
did this for a while, must have it was pretty good.

Speaker 1 (28:23):
I guess you sort of learned a lot as well,
don't you When you do.

Speaker 3 (28:26):
Yeah, you learn a lot about yourself, you know where
you learn you learn a lot about totally.

Speaker 1 (28:32):
I don't know, you know.

Speaker 2 (28:33):
There was nothing like getting in a car and driving
two miles from home, with parking the car and walking
around the box. There was no motive at all except
to use up this wamp to take these pictures. I
knew I was doing, you know, and I knew I
was doing something that looked unusual. At the time, I
was doing well. I mean I could take a box
of pictures to New York and people would say it

(28:56):
would look at them. One of the first classes I
had and I took one class in New York at
the School of Visual Arts with a guy named Ken
Hyman who was a photojournalist, and he was a really
good photographer, and he looked at my work and immediately said,
we'll take this work over to John Sarkowski at the

(29:17):
Museum of Modern Art. And so I did you know.
I would have conversations with him over a period of
a few years, you know, and in these trips to
New York, I began to understand that I was really
doing something that was unusual even in New York. And
so just how this happened, I just kept making pictures.

Speaker 1 (29:37):
When you see other people starting to believe in your work,
that gives you the self belief, I guess, oh sure sure.
Having somebody in the establishment as well, having that belief
gives you a purpose. And I guess it's the same
as your students. You have to show a belief in
what they did and gives the need to give em
body them and give them purpose to take something from

(29:58):
what you're giving them.

Speaker 2 (30:00):
Funny, in an interview like this or in this conversation
we're having, because what's happening, things come into focus a
little more clearly that I really deserve to be because
walking around the block and taking pictures, it's a much
stronger impression impression in developing the film and seeing the
film the same day. I did a lot of this

(30:21):
stuff in real time, you know. I take pictures on
Tuesday morning and make prints on Tuesday night. And that
was more inspiring to me to see my own work
emerges of sixteen by twenty print ready for the big city,
than to have a successful class or a successful critique.

(30:41):
You know. Teaching was never for me as interesting as
what I was doing all by myself at the time
I was making these pictures. But I could do the teaching,
you know, because I liked to. You know, there were
some positive aspects about it.

Speaker 3 (30:56):
Yeah, just like the photography business, you know, Yeah, lady,
you know, two.

Speaker 2 (31:01):
Hundred dollars worth of pictures, and that was that was
something he thought. I mean, I was had some value
to take, you know, but the basic value was to
develop the film and take the film off the stainless
steeler and see the negatives up against the light, you know,
soaking wet just after they're washed, and said, there's stuff
on this role. And I would do that and still

(31:22):
do that. It's harder to you know. I just did
a book in Japan today called ground Groundwork, and that
should be out in April from super Labo. You know,
the publisher super Labo.

Speaker 1 (31:36):
Yeah you do. Yeah. Is that the publisher you've had
cotton with?

Speaker 2 (31:42):
Right?

Speaker 1 (31:43):
Is that the same publisher? Yes, because some amazing books.

Speaker 2 (31:47):
Actually the guy, the guy strange publisher.

Speaker 1 (31:51):
Have I loved that about the Japanese.

Speaker 2 (31:53):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (31:54):
Dido Moriano is a great photographer. I mean, the guy insane,
you know what I mean. He takes pictures like you breathe,
you know, I mean, I don't know, you know, I
see his picture.

Speaker 1 (32:05):
I just went through his exhibition in London. Yeah, it
was amazing. The photographer's gallery. Every single floor, even the
lift was him and I videoed every bit of it. Well,
I haven't put it online yet. Yeah, I looked a
right wed or walking around the photographer's gallery. They even
had a reading room. The books in the reading room

(32:27):
were so rare they were worth a fortune and anybody
could just walk in and read them. Yeah, when you
were doing a commercial work as a wedding photographer, obviously
it's a very different style to which what you were
developing on the street. Was it or did it because
of I don't know anything about your commercial side, Tell
me about it.

Speaker 2 (32:47):
The first weddings I did were thirty five millimeters black
and white, you know what I mean. And I would
try to cover the wedding like I was with Magnum
or somebody like that, you know what I mean. Like
it was like it was, I didn't go to the print.
You know. I made these and they were very People
loved them, you know. They were these very candid weddings,

(33:07):
and you know, I just did them with about making
an album of about thirty pictures, let's say, and i'd
give them contact prinsurper. Well, after a while, that didn't
work out so good because it's hard to make a
nice group shot with a thirty five millimeter negative. So
I had to go up the bigger negatives and a
bigger slash, you know what I mean. I had to
have like I had a super I don't know the

(33:29):
name of it, but it was like a number of
five flash bulb. When it went on, there was a
bright stroke and so that became like a you know,
an abstract thing. But it was very lucrative to do
a wedding at that time, and then I just got
tired of it, you know what I mean. I just
it's like the worst thing that you can ask a
photographer to do is to do a wedding. Gary Winnigret

(33:51):
I think shot a wedding or two. I'm not sure that. So,
I mean the wedding photography was just I had the
equipment so I could do it. You know, people would
get divorced and she'd give me a concert. What do
you want me to do with this album?

Speaker 1 (34:08):
So you were following the traditional footpaths and style, were
you in your wedding photography and stuff and your commercial work?

Speaker 2 (34:14):
Yeah? The bride throws the broquet, yeah yeah, so there
was a was a never the real Marck coin creeping
in on that, Oh there was?

Speaker 3 (34:21):
Yeah, Yeah, I did a wedding one where people were
so so annoyed that they sent the pictures to the
to the museum in New York because they knew I
had some connection to that, and they wrote a nasty letter.

Speaker 1 (34:34):
About really tell us about that, tell us about that.

Speaker 2 (34:38):
Well, I have the letter, but I haven't booked at
it twenty five or forty years, you know.

Speaker 3 (34:43):
Yeah, but they forwarded the letter to me from the
museum back to me, and they say, you're not.

Speaker 2 (34:50):
Think about this wedding business, you know, because I wouldn't,
you know, I wouldn't think nothing.

Speaker 1 (34:55):
You know.

Speaker 2 (34:55):
I took a picture of the bouquet in a bride's hand.
I thought that was very cool, you know, with their
heads and in it.

Speaker 1 (35:04):
Danny, I was thinking that, you know, like, do you say,
why was the photographer right close to the bride which
was eating the cake?

Speaker 2 (35:15):
Yeah, stuff like that.

Speaker 1 (35:18):
You know.

Speaker 2 (35:18):
I thought, well, I'd take one from me and mone
for them, you know, but it didn't work out. Now
I'm much better on the street, you know. I would
go to Mexico.

Speaker 3 (35:26):
The first time I went to Mexico City, it was
so phenomenal.

Speaker 2 (35:31):
For me to go to that city, which is such
an exciting city. I mean to start taking pictures there.
So I made I made like ten trips to Mexico
City or to Mexico, some of them Lahaka and Vera Cruz,
and I went to Meridia, Mireda and took pictures in

(35:52):
these places. And when you walk on the street in
Mexico City, that's a surrealistic city because you'll see things
happen there that you won't see in Chicago. I think
it's fantastic. I was in London. I took pictures in
London for six weeks in nineteen seventy five. I made

(36:12):
a great set of pictures in London. It lays in
a box here, you know. But we can't make this
work unless you think it's good, you know. And so
it's not like Booksbaro, it's different.

Speaker 1 (36:24):
Did you have two books published in Mexico. I saw
the Texas University one, which was about ten years ago.
What was there another one before that?

Speaker 2 (36:33):
Well, the book at Texas University was made by Xavier
Baral in Paris, and it was like a deal between them.
But I did a book called five Minutes in Mexico.

Speaker 1 (36:44):
That's it. That's the one. I've not seen that book.

Speaker 2 (36:47):
Yeah, Well, it's like one of these books that was
made quick and there's.

Speaker 3 (36:51):
No real binding, got it. That's why I was eager
to have a real book about Mexico. And so that
book is the book in Texas.

Speaker 2 (37:00):
The University of Texas Press has it, and you could
probably get it from the Antillia Xavier Barral in Paris.

Speaker 1 (37:09):
And that's a.

Speaker 2 (37:09):
Beautiful book because he, you know, that guy, Xavier Barrall
knew how to make a book. I mean I took
the pictures in a box, a set of like one
hundred eight by tens and we looked at it in
his office and he looked at me and said, oh god,
it's the book here, and he will take care of
you know what I mean, And he knew any You know,

(37:29):
you just let this guy, let him make a book.
I mean, he was really terrific making I mean he
made the Dark Knews book too.

Speaker 1 (37:37):
Yeah, the Mexico book is really well, the Texas University book.
I'll say, because I have been obviously seeing the five
Minute book, I find the style of work you shot,
the way you shot it very different to Grim Street,
even though your abstractness was everything for me. Your works
quite dream sequencing, a lot of it. I find it.

(37:57):
I'm very surreal. When I looked at the Mexical book,
there was a lot of verticals, which I didn't associate
with you at all as a vertical shooter. Has your
style changed as you got older?

Speaker 3 (38:09):
Yeah, I got to the point like by nineteen eighty
I was already you know, like I have been in
these situations where I was working two clout.

Speaker 2 (38:18):
You know, a camera like Alika or a Nikon. These
cameras are made to be held horizontally. To make a
vertical picture, it's like you have to stop and take
a rest.

Speaker 3 (38:28):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (38:28):
God Abrison could do it, you know, and I would
try to do it sometimes, but it's much slower, you know,
to make a vertical picture to rotate the camra where
horizontally it's like much more fluids. And most of my
pictures were I think all Grim Streets horizontal, I know much.

Speaker 1 (38:47):
Yeah, it must be talking about the style in Mexico.
As I'm saying, I felt there was a there was
a separation, there's a distance between you and the subject mode.
As going back to the Grim Street stuff, I felt
you were doing that in true color. And that's what
initially now when we first started talking, when I said, everybody,
when they talk about your work, they always go to

(39:07):
Grim Street. They always go to that in your face,
off the hip sort of work. And I said, I
see a different Mark Holn. I see Mark Cole, who's
changed your style somewhat, but also changed the way any approaches.
And you can start seeing that with your True Color book,
because if you actually look at your True Color book, yes,
you've got the abstract nest, you've got that close up,
you've got the in your face, but actually you step

(39:30):
away a lot in your shot, you move away from
you put some distance there.

Speaker 2 (39:34):
But the True Color Book is made at the same
time as the Grim Street Book. Yeah, but the Grim
Street Book, the dummy for the Grim Street Book was
started at least ten years before that, or fifteen years before.
I didn't make color pictures till about nineteen seventy Worler
only five. I started using color negative film. I all

(39:55):
shot a roll of Cody Chrumb and lost all those.
When I would go someplace, I would go to Spain,
like when I was younger, you know, and well I
got to shoot a roll of Cody Krop, you know
what I mean, and then that's all gone. I understand
what you're saying. I started to move back. The altercation
instances were increasing at the time. You know, the whole

(40:17):
psychology of intrusion was changing. You know, the whole public
consciousness of abused by video cameras and television cameras. Even
in nineteen seventy, I was a guy coming with the camera.
There's an association with Ye. Sure, there's a sexuality that

(40:37):
is catalyzed by seeing a person with a camera in
everybody's mind in some.

Speaker 1 (40:42):
Way, you know what I mean absolutely Ill, Was it
because a color as well that you step back a
little bit?

Speaker 2 (40:49):
No?

Speaker 1 (40:50):
No, okay, No, it's interesting.

Speaker 2 (40:53):
It was time. I mean, the difference between nineteen seventy
and nineteen eighty over those ten years. You know, there's
a lot of biographical chain in myself.

Speaker 1 (41:05):
No, and the true color really shows a different side
to you in terms of for me anyway, your type
compositions moving backwards. You know, the man in the car,
the kids looking out the car, with the church cross
at the right hand side. There's subdued sort of greeny buildings.
They've give the viewer a little bit more freedom to
just breathe a little bit in your shot and That's

(41:27):
what I was getting at in terms of we always
go back to grim Street when anybody looks at you
and talks about you, but actually look at the rest
of his work. He doesn't just do that. He steps
away your compositions. Whether he's still shooting for the hip,
I'm not. You've moved backwards a little bit, and you've
put some space in between the subject. And I started
seeing that in true color. When I looked at the

(41:47):
true color work, I started seeing a different side of you,
and I just wondered if that was the color which
was making you do that as well. But then we
get to Mexico, I'm seeing something else happening with the vertical.
With a lot of verticals, I'm still seeing the same
sort of style the space between the subject. Was there
a conscious effort with the verticals in the Mexico stuff?

Speaker 2 (42:09):
Yeah, sure it was conscious. I mean I would see
things that I want, you know. I have a picture
of a kid walking down the street and my wife
is driving the car and I'm sitting on the passenger
side with the window open, and this kid's walking and
the street's very narrow, and I turned the camera vertical
and it's like I know, this kid's going to come down,

(42:29):
and he looked right at the lens and I take
the picture and he's sort of scowling. You know. I
wanted to get the whole kid, and I got it,
which page it, but I'm not sure what it's in there,
you know, kid walking down the street and I'm taking
a picture from the car window. And then in color,
I have a picture that I took myself through a
car window. You know, I was drifting with my car

(42:53):
and had the window down. I could pick the camera
up and make a vertical picture of a kid on
a skateboard. I think that's in true color, a kid
on a skateboard. You can see the mirror of the car.
But it's got nothing to do with color film. You know.
The colors are you know, with Kodak with the colors
in there or you know what I mean that the
incident is what's And those are two good pictures to

(43:14):
compare a side to side. One is color film. One's
black and white, and it's the same sort of picture
taken through a car window of a kid on the
skateboard in one sense, and the other one is kid
walking down a hill on corner of WACA in another sense.
So we've got to put those on the screen to
talk about them, you know, in an auditorium or something. Yeah,

(43:36):
when you're making a lecture.

Speaker 1 (43:38):
And shot Mexico black and white, I thought it would
have lent itself to color.

Speaker 2 (43:42):
Yeah, well, I don't know. I never even thought. I
took a couple of rolls of color when I went
down there. But you know, I'm looking I'm doing this
color book, and I think talking to about it, and
I'm thinking, I don't want to put the word color in.
I know, because this guy has modern color, this guy
has true color. This guy has ants always put color
in the type. They're beautiful prints, I mean, by transfer

(44:03):
of color print is quite something to see. And you
can make a very type secret too. I wasn't printing
color in the dark when I learned how to make
a color testra. No, I don't do that. I just
print black and white and scan color negative.

Speaker 1 (44:17):
I think the Mexico book, it looks like the way
it's designed, it's almost like a photo album. You know,
the size of the prints look like seven by five
most all of the images, and it just looks like
a photo album. There's no real narrative to it, but
I think it's still it still reflects the way you work.
And the book itself, for me, is more like just incidents.

(44:39):
It just feels like dream sequences again, like things which
you're like memories in your head, which are reflecting in
your head. In it, you're you're shooting what's going on
in your head.

Speaker 2 (44:48):
Maybe a dream sequence is good because and then and
the idea that you say there's no narrative is also
accurate in that, you know, I'm not telling like Cotton
is like like photo story about ten days in the South.
You know. It took a drive from I think Atlanta
to Memphis or something, and I drove around the South

(45:11):
and took pictures of things. I called it cotton because
the South is balanced on cotton in a certain way
from one hundred years ago, and that's what that's about.
It has a tinge of photojournalism in it.

Speaker 1 (45:25):
Yes, that book intrigued me, and that was something I
wanted to talk to you about Cotton as well, because
that was the first time I felt that you've tried
to say something about history in this book. Just you
tried to sort of say something within the narrative and
the context of the book and whether at the time
you were doing that consciously or subconsciously, I'm not really sure.
But it's an interesting book actually that's published. Is that

(45:46):
the Tokyo publisher. Yeah, twenty twenty one. Yeah, talk to
me about how this came about, because I was really intrigued.
But it just again it's a very different mark on
for me.

Speaker 2 (45:57):
Well, I think the pictures are l like nineteen ninety
maybe ninety two, I don't even remember. But you know,
I had made the Prince and I made a few
of them, sixteen by twenty and I made a bunch
of eight by tens of them, and I didn't know
what to do with them. But Yasinori Hulky, who's the

(46:18):
guy that is the publisher, wanted you know. I met
him in Paris and I made the first book with him,
which was Bred and Snow and that's a colored book.
Then we made this cotton book, and now we're making
a book called Groundwork, which is new Work, which will
be a good and many of the more pictures I

(46:40):
made in Philadelphia. There are pictures like a piece of
cabbage on the ground with snow on a cabbage, and
pictures are three pieces of bread by a puddle. And
these are surrealistic pictures that I took walking. It's not
like an in your face picture. It's in a garden picture,
but they're made like a nineteen seventy three. And what

(47:02):
I did was did a shortcut through twenty twenty three
and made the same kind of pictures in Philadelphia, of
detritus all over Philadelphia and started to make a book
that So that book is groundwork. Yeah, when you see it,
I hope you'll be able to publicize it.

Speaker 1 (47:22):
What you're going to do with your archive?

Speaker 2 (47:25):
Mark?

Speaker 1 (47:25):
What's going to happen to your archive when you have
to pass it on?

Speaker 2 (47:28):
I don't know what my children will get it. I
don't know.

Speaker 1 (47:31):
It's a lemma, isn't it. You're not alone. A lot
of the photographers I talked to all we've got these
amazing bodies of work throughout their lives. And I sitting
there thinking what am I going to do with this?

Speaker 2 (47:43):
I don't know what I'm doing, you know, And it's
like I'm not like unknown, you know. It's like I
can't go to the the met or the Getty and say,
well you can take all this away?

Speaker 3 (47:55):
And I need I need the money, they said, well,
as they're interesting in a gift basically, you know most museums.

Speaker 1 (48:03):
I notice one of your videos the as Hoffman studio
behind where you were shooting. Really yeah, and that in
the time where you come from, that they were quite
a big studio setupent As Hoffman.

Speaker 2 (48:18):
Yes, they were. I never met Ace Hoffman, but he
was quite a character up there one. I mean, they
had this studio in looks bare and I used to
buy everything.

Speaker 1 (48:27):
You know.

Speaker 2 (48:27):
It was a camera store in the front and a
studio in the back. You know. They had guys that
were like they knew how to do the Hollywood lighting
and how to make you know, big negatives and retouch
them and make nineteen forty portraits of people. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (48:42):
I had to do some research on them on As
Hoffman years ago, and it was just when I watched
the video the name, I said, there's as Hoffman. I
forgot what it was, but it was many years ago.
What's next? Then, you've got your book, You've got the
new book. Any exhibitions planned?

Speaker 2 (48:57):
No, you know, I have two books and I think
will come out with them the next six months. I
don't I don't believe in twice see.

Speaker 1 (49:05):
Well, well, well, you've had four or five books out
in the last forty five years, so you do all right?

Speaker 2 (49:10):
Oh yeah, yeah, I have. You know, I was in
a bunch of books about photography that that counts.

Speaker 1 (49:17):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (49:17):
So I don't know what's next up. I have to
finish this color book and then I'm gonna go for
a walk and take some more pictures.

Speaker 1 (49:26):
I'm still out shooting. Are you still out doing it?

Speaker 2 (49:28):
Oh? Yeah? There are pictures in the color book and
pictures in the groundwork book that are twenty twenty four pictures. Yeah.
I mean, it's the magic of the internet.

Speaker 1 (49:37):
You know.

Speaker 2 (49:38):
I can send a scan to a printer in five minutes.

Speaker 1 (49:41):
Do you feel social media's help you?

Speaker 2 (49:43):
I don't even know. I don't know. I know that
the film of me taking pictures, that Michael Engler film
has been seen about a million times, and it's an
influential film because it shows you exactly how I work.
These guys came from the German TV crew, came to Spare,
followed me around for an hour or about that. We

(50:03):
went to different places and I tried to show them
exactly what I did. You know, I had my flash
with me and I you know, and people saw that,
and when I look at the comments that are underneath that,
and a lot of people say, well, that guy's obnoxious,
that's not right. You shouldn't be Doe.

Speaker 3 (50:18):
And then there's an equal number of people say, well,
that's really cool.

Speaker 1 (50:22):
That's the nature of the beast now. And people sit
on the behind that computers and do that keyboards and
do that. You know, I think when they start investigating
you and looking at your work, sometimes negativity is a
good thing in a way that might inspire somebody to
find out more about who you are. I think it's
very easy now to criticize without really understanding who you
criticize it.

Speaker 2 (50:41):
The depth of the work is still pretty much unknown.
Not the color work is known more, but the black
and white work is known through grim Street, which is
a very good approximation of the work. But it's like that,
you know, it's a tippity iceberg.

Speaker 1 (50:55):
It is. It is long.

Speaker 2 (50:57):
They are never shown, they're never seeing that are good.

Speaker 1 (51:00):
If I got any commission work, does anybody ever bring
you up?

Speaker 2 (51:02):
I did a fashion shoot that never worked work out
because it was too artificial for me. You know, they
see my pictures and now, wow, this is really neat.
They said, let's get them to do fashion work, so
I went on fashion shoot. So, well, we can't use this,
but I think they should still use it because I
think the fashion pictures that I sent them were pretty good.
It might take them a few more years to see that.

Speaker 1 (51:23):
Well, what you were saying that the work which is
out there of you is the tip of the iceberg,
and that's one of the reasons I've personally wanted to
talk to you for a while. I didn't think you
would do it. I thought you might have been bored
with the people coming at you. The same way. I'd
love your work, and I love your approach. I love
the way you take on subject matter, and I think
there's an honesty with the way you work. I've always
liked that. I think maybe you know, this is just

(51:45):
the beginning of other people getting to really understand who
you are. Market's been a pleasure, and I'm really thankful
you took the time to have a chat with me.

Speaker 2 (51:53):
Great, I'm glad we talked, and I hope you'll send
me a link well.

Speaker 1 (51:58):
Well, definitely, And if you ever want to about anything
else you've got project, just give us a shout. Okay,
thanks for that, Thank you, No worries, all the best tea, bye,
good bye, bye bye,

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#24 Mark Cohen - PHOTO TALK - WTF-STOP PODCAST

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}#24 Mark Cohen - PHOTO TALK - WTF-STOP PODCAST