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An Interview with Jack Welpott

Jack Welpott is one of the great photographers and teachers of the post-World War II generation. He has been a member and Board of Trustees at Friends of Photography (Ansel Adams Center) and Society for Photographic Education since 1963. As a recepient of the Medals of Arles and National Endowment for the Arts Grant, his works are collected by the Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Museum, and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, to name a few. In a review of his exhibition at the Lee and Lees Contemporary, Inc. Galleries in 1988, the critic Joan Murray wrote,

"Welpott has produced a powerful body of work over a lifetime in photography. Major recognition of his work, however, always seems to have eluded him. As I looked at the individual images in this exhibition, I wondered if it is possible that his problem is that he does too much too well. There are formal landscapes within the exhibition that rival those of any of the major landscape artists." *

Mr. Welpott now resides in California and is still practicing photography. You can see an online exhibition of his work at Fixing Shadows.

* "Images of Ambiguity" Artweek (ISSN 0004-4121) v19 Sept 24 1988, P.11

(This interview is conducted by Benedict J. Fernandez in 1995.)

Who are you, how old are you, and how long have you been in photography?

Oh, who am I? I'm Jack Welpott. Who is Jack Welpott? That's a good question...
How did I become a photographer? I had an uncle at a very early age, probably as early as eight or nine, or ten, and I (started) watching him in the darkroom. I got down to some serious, I mean actually serious photography by the time I was twelve, based on emulating him and watching him and so on. In my file, I find that I have photographs that I think are serious work (dating) back to when I was twelve years old, and now I'm 72! So, figure it out... Jesus, that's...

Sixty years!

Sixty years. [laughs]

What other art forms attracted you?

Photography was always the big thing, but also from very early on, music interested me. I did a little singing when I was in the army, and I had aspirations at one point of going into music. That never materialized, but I still play around on the piano and am very much interested in jazz. When I was in my thirties, actually, a young lady of my acquaintance kept saying I should take drawing classes. And I kept saying, "I can't draw," and she kept saying "Well, you can't speak French either, but you can take a class, see?" So after a while, I took her up on that, and this led me straight into actually studying painting. My Master of Fine Arts degree [University of Indiana, Bloomington] is split between painting and photography. For a time, I was seriously doing the painting, and I had some good teachers, principally Leon Golub. He was a very fine painter.

Why Photography?

It's probably because it's kin and imprinted at that early age when I was a kid. This uncle I looked up to, who was bigger than life, a hero figure and all of that, and he did it. So it must be something, you know? And once getting into it, I got hooked (onto) what it's all about. I have to say this: I've had an incredible life, and I think I owe most of it to photography. I mean, I've traveled around most of the world, I've been around the world once completely. I've been to most of the countries of Europe, been to Japan, China and Mexico. I haven't visited South America much, but I've seen a lot of the world and I think it's largely due to photography that I've done this. So why not photography? Certainly, it hasn't made me wealthy or anything like that, but it has really been an intense and exciting life. I mean, I've met a lot of screwy characters like Ben Fernandez [founder of Hoboken Almanac]. I look at it as a way of life that has been particularly intense, exciting and problematic. Photography ruins marriages, and I've been married three times - so there's a downside to it as well.

How would you characterize your style?

Well, that's a tough one. I began when I was 12 or 13 years old, and from a documentary point-of-view, (the influence was) Life magazine, and all these other picture magazines you could look at. By the time I got to be around 30, I started moving away from documentary into, I don't know how to describe it exactly... But sometimes I like to compare photography to literature, and if I do that, I look at documentary as being like journalism. And journalism is a form of literature, as there is journalistic writing. As you progress in writing, you go onward from journalism. This is not hierarchical. I don't mean that one is better than the other, but you've got journalism and novel writing and fiction, and you've got poetry. Poetry is the most esoteric and least cherished by society, I suppose, and the hardest way to make money and all of that. I've been trying to move my photography into the realm (in which), when you compare it to literature, it is more like poetry than journalism, for example. So, the minute you get into a realm like that there are big stylistic changes you get involved in. Crazy ideas like Minor White's, who said that "it isn't what it is, it's what else it is," and you're looking for metaphor and simile and all that sort of things.

I guess the best I can do about characterizing style is to say that I like clarity. I would like to get a certain brilliance in my prints. I would like them to mean more than just what they describe in nature or in the world. Somehow, I would like people to look at them and say, "oh, so that's a photograph of this object in this place," but I'd like them to go beyond that and start thinking what it might mean in poetic terms. When you get into this realm, the work sometimes becomes obtuse, obscure, or difficult for people to understand. All of this works against you, but poetry is a very satisfying world and a satisfying way of expressing whatever your deeper needs are, I think. When you look at the really good work, and know who the photographer is, just by something or another which he gives to the work, you see that this photographer endows the work with that something; even though it might be different things. For example, Edward Weston would do the nude, landscape, abstractions, buildings, or almost anything, and yet you can spot a Weston a mile away. It has to do with the way he structured images, the way he printed the image, the qualities of light and form and shape that attracted him and so on, and all these things add up to style. I think any good photographer has a stylistic identity you can tell even though the subject matter may vary all over the map. You can get a pretty good idea when you see a [Henri] Cartier-Bresson; you know it's a Cartier-Bresson, even if you (have never seen) the photograph before.

Where do you think photography will go with the new image capturing techniques?

Well, the temptation is to say it's going to go to hell; but it probably won't. I think that digital imaging is certainly going to take over photojournalism, magazine-type work and all of the commercial impulses in photography. It's not going to be the death of the silver image. Maybe eventually, but not for a good while. It has certainly changed photography dramatically, because until the (coming of the) digital image there was a tendency in society to believe photographs, and of course that helped the propagandists, because photographs can lie as well as anything else. But there's a tendency to look at (a photograph) and think that's really it. Like when the FBI comes out and shows Martin Luther King supposedly hobnobbing with a bunch of communists, that wasn't a digitally altered photograph, but it was false. So all I'm saying is that any photograph, from any period, can be full of truth or it can be a big lie. The point is that society at large tended to believe that photographs are the truth, and I think now we're moving into an area where society at large will not believe any photograph is true, because (the new technologies) will make it possible to make any kind of change you want. This is going to lead the viewer to think, "Well, I can't believe this, really; it's a nice photograph to look at and I enjoy it, but I can't really accept it as absolute truth." This has some really big implications for journalists and people who want to make images which supposedly tell us the truth about situations. You can't do it anymore, I guess. Maybe the only truth is that when you're watching television, and they say "We are taking you live to Bosnia," if its truly live you might get some inkling of what the reality is. But even that can be edited, changed and altered. So I guess the photographic image has lost its truthfulness in a certain way, although in my mind this is going to make images that we absolutely know to be true. I mean, old photographs with a history that have been seen and published - everyone has looked at them and people talk about how they're going to increase in value in the marketplace and in other ways. As I once said to Pedro Meyer, we might come to the day when the only true photograph is an old photograph, and these will have real value for that reason. So, on we go. We have to have digital photography, and we will have it, and a lot of great art can be produced by that, I'm sure.

What is your view on the ethics of these new technologies?

What is your view on the ethics of these new technologies?

Well, actually there used to be a very important ethic for the photo-documentarian: to not slant his work too much in one particular direction. The ethic was to be as true to the truth as they could be, whatever the truth was. With the new technology, no one will believe that these images are true, anyway. So, that ethic goes out the window. It doesn't matter what you do, nobody's going to believe it. In some ways it relieves the working photographer of these ethical concerns that he used to have - it doesn't matter, no one will believe you.

What have you learned about yourself through your photography?

I've always thought that photography was a great therapeutic tool. I've been doing it for 60 years, and it's the same as 60 years spent on a therapist's couch. If you engage your work seriously, I think you'll learn as much about yourself as any shrink will tell you. But this means you have to look at it and ask yourself what the image is telling you about yourself and so on. I think that whatever certainties I have about my own existence come largely from photography. It has made me understand my strengths and weaknesses, my inclinations and impulses, and has helped me cope with my fears. So, it's a wonderful therapeutic tool in that sense. In fact, some psychiatrists and mental institutions have made some use of it along these lines, to help people engage (in) the world. Photography is wonderful in getting someone who is afraid of the world to confront it. Dorothea Lange said that the camera is a device that teaches you to see without a camera, and there's a lot of truth to that. If you spend your life looking through a camera, you learn to see the world in ways that most people don't. I've always been struck by the fact that it is a very meditative process. There were these rocks out here by Dylan beach, and I'd go out there and photograph, and spend all day there looking with my camera at those rocks. A lot of other people took interest in this, especially tourists. They would come bounding up in their cars, jump out with their 35mm cameras, take 6 photographs and would be gone in 10 minutes. And I was left thinking that there must be some big difference in what I'm doing and what they're doing. I concluded that the difference is this: I'm really contemplating those rocks and engaging them in a dialogue that is a thousand times more complete than anything these others are doing with them. Now, this must involve and engage my own head in some way; my understanding of nature and of the world. And I think that it does. Working in this way lead to my interest in Buddhism.

If you were a teacher of young photographers, what would be your philosophy in the classroom?

My philosophy in the classroom is derived from Henry Holmes Smith, who was my teacher. Henry used to say that he was trying to find out what the students' game plan was. Now, this is a very hard thing to do, because the students oftentimes don't know themselves what their game plans are. But by looking at their work and talking with them, and trying to get a line on who they are, where they're from and what their values are, he felt one might begin to discover what their game plan is. As the teacher, if you know what the students' game plans are, you can help them to do it better. And this is what Henry did - he tried to help his students refine their various approaches to photography. This meant, of course, that there was no one particular style of photography as a rule, although inevitably a teacher has his own interests, and can be liable to dump them on the students. But you try to help them along. I believe in the old idea that creativity can't be taught. There's a lot to be said for that. You can create a condition, however, in which creativity will flourish. In other words, you can make a world which is comfortable for this creativity to thrive in, where people are encouraged and can feel good about what they're doing. For me, what I can do is try to figure out the student's game plan, help them do it better, and try to create an environment that will stimulate creativity. I think it's a bit like (being) a football coach, you're trying to get these disparate people to do better - at whatever the hell they're doing - whether a tight end or a quarterback.

How do you imagine your future as a photographer?

A graduate student of mine said once to a classmate that in so-called "art" photography, the role that the photographer is supposed to play in this society is to be dead. This way the work will have value. In other words, the only imagery in the fine-art world that commands good prices and makes good money is work from dead photographers. So I've often thought that the best future I could have as a fine-art photographer would be for me to "die" and move to Mexico. This way, maybe my work could be sold for very high prices.

As far as my future, well at the age of 72, I hope I can just keep doing it into my eighties, and it would be nice if it was into my nineties, but who knows. For as long as I'm able to function, (I would like to) keep doing these things, as it is a lifelong process. In fact, it's an addiction, too. I think that if you photograph regularly, and for enough years, it's very hard to stop doing it. I've often thought that I should quit doing this, and sit back and watch the flowers grow or something, but I can't seem to do it. Even though at this age I'm slowing down some, I still gotta go in there and do this damn thing. I suppose it will always be that way. That's why you hear all these stories about some old photographer like "Well, you know he worked up until the last week before he died." I mean, they say that about Imogen Cunningham and a lot of people. And they did. It was only because it was habit for them. If they could even stumble into the darkroom they'd try to get something done. I try to do it better, and hope that maybe people will start paying out a lot of money before I'm dead instead of after. That would be nice. This way I could not only photograph and print more, but do it more easily. Money provides this option, whether hiring help, getting new equipment or all that stuff. So that's my future, just to keep on going. So they'll say of me "You know, he worked right up till the day he died. He died at the enlarger making a perfect print." [laughs] Anyhow, something like that.

Is the darkroom very important?

Yes, I think so. For me at least. I know a lot of younger photographers who send all their work out to be printed, but I look at photography as yin/yang. In other words, it's about light/dark, negative/positive - there are all these polarities, and the darkroom is one of them. I firmly believe that if you want to do the very best work possible, you have to take responsibility for the whole process - front to back. You could also conceivably do this if you were to stand over an assistant who's doing all the processing and so on, but I think a lot of photographers abdicate (control), and they're not really taking charge of the whole process. The end result is a kind of standardization of prints, etc., that doesn't serve them well (or) put them in the ring with people like [Paul] Strand, [Edward] Weston and others who did take charge of everything. Now, I can face the possibility of getting older and maybe one day I won't be able to print. I know one great old photographer who has people print for him, but he's lying on a cot right outside the darkroom and the printers have to bring every single print they make to him. He looks at each print, and says "No, do this... Do that... Change this... Change that..." And he drives these people bananas, because he can make them do it for days to get a single print. But he's taking charge, he's taking responsibility for the whole process from start to finish. I just believe you've got to do that. So I don't particularly want other people to print my work, unless I can really somehow supervise it very closely.

Do you have the same feeling with your camera work?

You mean taking the pictures?

Yeah.

Well, do you mean if I let other people take my pictures?

No, I mean when you take a picture, do you prepare as much as you can so that you have minimal amount of work to do in the darkroom?

Yes, I believe in the idea of what [Ansel] Adams called "previsualization," where if you can solve as many problems as possible in the camera, you're going to ride for a higher level of aesthetics and so on. The images will be better, and thus the prints will be better. For example, Cartier-Bresson insisted that the full frame of the negative be printed, which meant that he wanted to take responsibility for the full image. And he did. I would take that to the level of actually wanting to see the photograph which I made. When I click the shutter, I'd like to know what paper I'm going to print on, what it's going to look like, where I'm going to burn it in and where I'm going to dodge it. I'd like to be able to know all of those things the moment I click the shutter. I think that if you photograph long enough, and concentrate enough, you can come pretty close to understanding all of those things before you even step into the darkroom.

Whom do you think you are similar to stylistically?

Similar to... [laughs] I don't know, really. I know there are a lot of people affecting me, everybody from Walker Evans, Weston, Strand, [Alfred] Steiglitz, Fred Sommer, Henry Holmes Smith... Probably a half a dozen other photographers. Maybe even Ben Fernandez! Anyhow, a lot of people are affecting what I think. I know that some of the images have a look that one could say "Well, that's probably derived from Weston," or something. Particularly with some of the portraits that I do: head portraits. Beyond that, I don't really know. I think that most of my photographs are sufficiently different than any of those people. I can't say there is one particular influence. I think it's really an amalgam of a lot of influences and ideas that turn me on. Not only from photographers, but painters. I'm particularly interested in 19th Century French Painting, and those painters have affected me a lot. Particularly [Henri] Matisse affected me a lot. So, I think there are a bunch of "things" which are stimulating me to work in certain ways. In painting, I was trained in abstract expressionism, which was a popular way of going with painting at the time. So abstract expressionism affected me, but I don't think my photographs look like "abstract expressionist" photographs. There may be elements of that and so on.

So, do you feel that you take from the art world; painting, sculpture and poetry, more than you do from photography?

No, I'd say it's kind of equal in many ways. I mean, an awful lot of it is from painting. Particularly the nudes. It might be that certain categories of work are more related to different influences. I think my figure photographs are very much related to painting, and the history of painting. But then a lot of my other photographs are related to the history of photography. Maybe you can't separate them out. In my view, photography and painting really share one history. The influences that work on one, work on the other. I've had some trouble with the idea that people want to say "Well, there's the history of painting, and then there's the history of photography, and they've got nothing to do with each other." I don't think that's true. They are really closely related. So I don't make any distinction between being influenced by a photographer or by a painter. There's an old saying; the question used to be asked: "Do artists learn from nature, or from other artists?" They learn from both ways, not either or, but a great deal of it is learning from other artists. I mean, you look at work, and you're stimulated by an idea, and you either consciously or unconsciously think that maybe you can extend that idea further. So you go after it and try. For me, I've had the good luck to be exposed to a lot of great photography and great painting and good writing and so on. All of these things have affected my head as to what I do.

Is there any good music that affects your images?

Oh, yeah! Jazz, principally. The thing about jazz is the spontaneity. When I'm working behind a camera sometimes, I feel like I'm trying to achieve something like a jazz musician does. He will blow in the club for two hours, trying to get six minutes of a high, where he's really taking off. I've felt sometimes, when I'm in back of a camera, that I'm hitting one of those highs as a musician does and so on. A moment of insight when you're just floating. I've felt sometimes under the dark cloth like I'm just floating, you know, in the air. Then I know that something special is happening.

When you're under the cloth, is that a sketch that you're visualizing or is it the finished photograph?

In my mind, whenever possible, I'm visualizing the finished photograph. I think photographers ought to make sketches; that to me would be a preliminary investigation towards a finished work or something. I've often wished that I could take a lot of my photographs that don't quite satisfy me, but which I think have something in them which is leading somewhere, and just exhibit them as "sketch," "sketch #1," you know. To try to differentiate and say to people, "Look - this is not wholly there for me, but there is something important in it nonetheless." In fact, it might even be more exciting. Like sometimes, you can look at the sketches of a painter and think that they're more exciting than the painting. That's possible too, see. But as far as the painter is concerned, usually the sketching is an effort to explore ideas which are going to lead ultimately to some greater thing. I don't see why photographers can't do that. I think people ought to get the chance to look at our outtakes, so to speak, like they do in the movies.

Like contacts, look at the contact sheets...

Yeah, the contact prints, or even finished prints, which are considered to be preparatory for the final print. We don't tend to do that, though. You put the masterpiece on the museum wall, or at least what one thinks is one.

Garry Winogrand left something like 3,000 rolls of film undeveloped when he died, and from what I understand [John] Szarkowski got a grant and had all these rolls processed and contacted, and then looked through them. And then Szarkowski looked through them and said "There's nothing in these!" It's an interesting question, because the photographer is usually the first editor. Of course, Garry was probably editing before taking the shot, then took the shot. But Szarkowski is not clear about what Winogrand had in his mind.

I don't know, maybe there's nothing there. But I doubt that. I think that Winogrand would think there's something there. But Szarkowski is famous for making this kind of blunder. There was a film about Dorothea Lange he was in, and in this one scene they were selecting the prints for her retrospective. Invariably, she would put up something and he'd say "I don't think you should include that. That's not so important." And Dorothea Lange said "That has to be in! That's very important, that has to be included." And of course I agreed with her, that what she was picking was important. But Szarkowski, with too much power, (and) power corrupts, was trying to throw out things that were good. And now he's trying to throw out everything that Winogrand did. I don't think that's a fair shake. The work ought to be looked at more carefully. I'm no great fan of Winogrand's, but Winogrand surely thought there was something there. If it was left to him, he would have made a show out of it or something, you know.

So the photographer should have the final say, most of the time...

If possible, but then photographers die, and so other people start doing it. Unless you nail them down so nobody will mess with it, it's going to get all screwed up, as it has with many photographers.

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