scribbling in the dark - photographer talks & interviews: David Alan Harvey - talks with Erica 2009

This is the first in what I hope will be a series of interviews between photographers I deeply admire and myself. A special thanks to David for kicking this off.

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David Alan Harvey talks with Erica McDonald. Interview 10/07/09 at the Brooklyn loft.

EM: You've said that you enjoy finding "a specialness in the everyday event, the ballet of the street" and that you use "the way that the light plays with the people and the architecture." I think it is those universal moments, or what I see as slices of life bathed in light, that your work is best known for - because those images allow people to feel part of the moment as if it were their own. Some of these aspects are in the lineage of Cartier-Bresson, but there are some very strong differences in your work. Can you talk about how his images and philosophy influenced you, and how you feel your work and way of working departs from his?

DAH: HCB was certainly my mentor; not in person but in history and in print. He, along with Robert Frank and Eugene Smith, were certainly the photographers I admired first, and most. They were the ones I was exposed to. The reason I identified particularly with Henri was because when I looked at the world of photographers in photography magazines and whatnot I could see that war photographers needed a war and fashion photographers needed a model and Ansel Adams needed Yosemite, and it appeared to me that everybody needed something beyond just being a photographer. Henri didn't need anything, he just needed any street corner. With me being in a little small town in Virginia, that's what I had. I didn't have any of those other things, other sports or wars or models to help make the photographs, and I enjoyed the thought of being able to make a photograph with just my own vision.

Like most young photographers I think I must have tried to copy Bresson at the beginning; I took the fly on the wall approach and would be invisible in the crowd or would try to be, and sort of followed his original philosophy of being in the background. But my personality is very different from his, and I found that it was easier for me to be a fly on the wall if I was actually a part of the situation. In other words, get in, be a part of it, be at the table, have a beer, have lunch, get to know everybody's name in the family, go fishing with the fishermen. Then, there would be some moment in there when I fact I could be the fly on the wall again. But by first integrating myself into the situation, which is what he wouldn't do. I don't think Henri has a picture inside somebody's house, for example, unless it was Matisse's house, or something like that. There's nothing wrong with that approach, it's just that at some point I had to incorporate my own personality and my own self...I was doing the same thing, but changed it. The other obvious thing is that I worked in color.

EM: Talking about your working method, you said "Sometimes when I'm working in the street I see something coming. Or, a situations starts to develop, and I pray that it's coming. Most of the time it doesn't happen. Occasionally it works the other way, something very spontaneous will happen before your very eyes that you weren't planning on. But I think the trick is in isolating the street theater. You pick a corner. If you start looking in too many directions at once, you get very confused, and think I gotta go there, I gotta go there. Based on experience, based on the light, based on the mood of the people in the picture, I just gamble that it's gonna happen right there. If I started thinking, hey, the best picture is on the other block, then I'm dead. I have to declare to myself where I am is where the best picture is." Can you talk a little about the value of commitment in photography, both in the moment and in sticking with a project?

DAH: I think what I said about declaring that where I am is the place says it all. And I can speak to that being part of an overall commitment to whatever it is that I'm doing. I think photography looks deceptively easy; it is actually easy but it does require long hours of being bored..I used to say that mostly I was either tired, bored or scared. Those three things, with occasional moments of creative ecstasy. But there is the commitment to your work over a lifetime which is so important if a photographer wants to make a mark. Hanging out on a street corner is one very, very small part of that.

EM: Have you worked on projects that you thought would be long term pieces but that you changed your mind about? How do you know when a piece is, or isn't working?

DAH: I change my mind all the time. I have lots of back burner projects, things I started, things that I even worked on for quite a long time, and was even committed to for quite a long time that at some point I put aside. I didn't say I was done but I didn't move them forward either, because something else happened that I got more interested in or I started thinking it was a bad idea or for whatever reason. Some of those projects come back and get integrated into other projects.

I worked for a long time on a project called Daydreamer which could end up being part of another book someday, or maybe it comes back as a book, but I worked a long time on Daydreamer and just didn't go forward with it. And for no particular reason; I think my style changed a little and I started doing different things.

I have a reasonable number of back burner projects. That's one of the reasons I admire Martin Parr - he doesn't have any back burner projects, he publishes everything. But I couldn't work like that, I had to wait until I thought it was just right or everything was done. Knowing when you are done is not something I think can be described, you just know that you are done. Or, for me, in the case of the Spanish culture, I'll never be done. Maybe Divided Soul is chapter one.

EM: When you were 20 you invested yourself in a piece about a black family in Virginia and you created the book 'Tell It Like It Is.' Was that book your entre into the professional world? How important do you think book projects are now in helping a photographer find their footing in the photography world?

DAH: I'd say that Tell It Like It Is was watershed for me. There were several watershed things that happened in the early part of my career, but for sure Tell It Like It Is was, because it was the first time my work was actually in print. I mean being distributed around, being seen by more than two people. And it had a good cause, I think. I was trying to save the neighborhood - that didn't happen but it was a good cause. At the very same time it got a nice display in the Chrysler Museum and then led to a grant from the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. That set me up in the philosophy of doing a personal project, because certainly no one paid me to do Tell It Like It Is. I had to struggle to do it, but I saw immediately that working on your own thing was absolutely the best thing to do because it reaped rewards in terms of the grant and in terms of a way of thinking, and maybe it sensitized a few people as well to the situation. I hope so.

I think that's still a viable model, and is so more than ever, because there is less institutional funding. The only way a photographer really can make a mark today is by doing personal projects. But that has always been the case. If you look at every photographer that you know, that has made a mark, has a book, has exhibited widely, all of them have worked on personal projects.

EM: Which photography books are you most enjoying right now, meaning work that you are looking at on a personal level? I draw a lot of inspiration from photography books, do you still do that?

DAH: I still do that. I enjoy all photography books. The other day I saw a book that was new to me though I had had it for awhile. It really blew me away, that was From The Land of Miracles by Wendy Sue Lamm. That is a very strong book.

EM: So you still draw inspiration from other photographers?

DAH: Well sure, absolutely. Like when Trent's (Parke) The Christmas Tree Bucket came out..when all of my colleagues publish a book I'm moved. Maybe there are some books I don't like, but I'm constantly moved by the work of other photographers. The work I showed my workshop students today from Marco Vernaschi, that's very strong work. So yes, I am constantly blown away by what some people are doing, and then I also see a lot of really mediocre work that I don't think so much of. But that's normal, you are going to see some things that really strike you and some things that don't.

EM: You had polio as a child. Do you think that affected your sensitivity and insights as a person and as a photographer?

DAH: There's not even a doubt in my mind about that. That certainly formed my attitude, my way of looking at the world, for sure. Anybody who is in a life threatening situation and gets out of it, I think is going to be like that. When I was in a sort of solitary confinement, which was what it was like, I had a lot of time to be with myself and at an early age that is probably a good thing. The only thing I had coming in from the outside were books, magazines and postcards. My grandmother and mother were shipping things to me at the hospital, and the books and magazines were the only things that I had. I didn't even have conversation.

EM: So you gained a greater connection to the world through the visual and the written?

DAH: I don't remember thinking that at the time, but that had to have been the case, because it certainly stimulated both my interest to the visual and the literary realms.

EM: You've said that you draw inspiration from novels and the other the arts when you are preparing for a project. The work of the legendary painter Andrew Wyeth, who you did an assignment on for National Geographic, had an influence on you, and you studied art history in college. Did you ever consider becoming a visual artist in a different medium?

DAH: No, I never did. I was always absolutely fascinated by what artists did but I figured there was no way I could do it. I knew that I couldn't draw. I was maybe ever so slightly, temporarily frustrated that I didn't have that kind of artistic talent because I was surrounded by a lot of people who did. My Japanese roommate in college was an extremely talented individual as a painter and as a graphic designer. But I had already had photography in my background before I got to the point where I was meeting people my age who had a lot of artistic talent, so I was already a photographer. Even now I can look at the other arts and think "man, I wish I could do that," you know sing or play a musical instrument really well or make a film or be a great painter, but only a little. Mostly I'm in admiration of those people. I just try to my little bit.

EM: You did write a novella, what's happening with that?

DAH: The novella was written three years ago. It's done. So I've just got a few more pictures to take. Why not? I wouldn't want to end that project.

EM: Your interest in photography started very young. Did you have copies of National Geographic magazine in the home growing up? Did you imagine yourself as one of their photographers? And what would you do differently if you had to start at the beginning as a photographer today?

DAH: I wouldn't do anything differently about anything. That doesn't mean that I haven't made mistakes, but still I wouldn't do anything differently. I don't have any regrets. Like I said, mistakes yes, and I think, shit, how did I get through that? Sure. But that's a whole lot different than regret. I'd play the game of life exactly the same all over again, I think. I probably shouldn't, there's probably a smarter way.

About National Geographic, it was over at my grandmother's house. I didn't pay as much attention to that as LIFE and LOOK. I was mildly interested in National Geographic for the places, but I was really interested in LIFE and LOOK for the pictures. For the actual photography. I think my mother told me that when I was about 13 or 14 I made a declaration at the dinner table one night that I was going to work for LIFE magazine. That was the one that was coming in to the home that was really showing me photography in a way that was very dramatic and interesting and cause oriented and humanistic.

EM: You present your work as a personal diary, and often encourage photographers to look in the mirror and do work that they really care about. You have said that in Cuba you were as inspired on your last day there as you were on your first, and in enumerating things that touched you about the place, you said "How many things do you need to be in love?" Is that mostly what a life of photography has given you, a way to write a love story about your time here? What allows you to connect to this way of working?

DAH: Absolutely, and what I said about Cuba is pretty much the whole story for all of it. I was referring to one particular love affair, but it's all like that. And what I try to impart to my students is that my professional life and my personal life are pretty much the same thing. Just look at it; I work with my son and with my friends, I take them with me on assignment, I took my mom and dad with me when I was doing a story on French teenagers, I've taken my kids all over the world with me. I've always incorporated personal life and professional life in everything. There are hardly any random things that happen to me where I am not connected - all the dots are about as connected as they ever could be. So I do try to impart that to my students, that they should try to give that a shot. I've worked hard to make that happen, but I've always had that, from teenage years all the way till now, I've never not had the personal and professional lives somehow connected.

EM: You have a very active role in mentoring emerging photographers, through your workshops as well as online at burn magazine and in personal connections. What motivates you to be so involved in mentoring? You once told me that the giving back helps you too, can you talk about what you meant by this?

DAH: I believe in the pay back / pay forward concept. That's pretty easy. I teach workshops now but I've always taught workshops. I think I taught my first workshop when I was twenty three, one year after I took one. I took one, and changed a certain part of my life. I was already deep into photography, but the fact that these professional big name photographers were sitting there looking at my pictures and were giving me advice on this that and the other thing, I was so blown away by that. I was so mesmerized by this one week that I had that made up for all the other stuff that I had been so hungry for but had only gotten out of books. So I said if I ever survive or make it in this business, I'll pay back, I'll do that myself. So I started the next year.

EM: You have said that to you that one aspect of being an emerging photographer is "one who is still growing, and that hopefully we are all still growing." How do you see that your own work has developed over time, and is there something you'd like to see come to fruition in your photography down the line?

DAH: I don't dwell on any of it too much. I have a couple of projects i want to work on now. I'm in the middle of my American Family project; I should be finished with my American Family project, but again it's a personal project and it takes a reasonable amount of money which I've run out of. But that's what I'm in the middle of now. I can look and see how it all ties together, I haven't shown this class yet, but it starts with one book I made when I was fourteen, and it goes all the way up until the project I'm doing now. And it's a big circle. The beginning, the middle, the end, it's all one big thing.

EM: Thank you..

DAH: You're welcome.