© Jerry Uelsmann

Robert Farber: I have the opportunity and the pleasure to meet up with Jerry Uelsmann here at Photo Fusion in Florida. Jerry was kind enough to talk to us at Photoworkshop and talk about his career and how wonderful I feel his work is and how millions of people do also. Jerry, I've known to respect your work over the years, and your credibility as a very fine photographer. Where did you start, and how long ago did you start doing this?

Jerry Uelsmann: Well I started many, many years ago. I went to Rochester Institute of Technology essentially to be a commercial photographer, but I had a some key intersections there with people like Minor White and Beaumont Newhall and I always say they answered my questions with more interesting questions and I was made aware that you could make photographs for very personal reasons. I then went on to graduate school at Indiana University where I studied with Henry Holmes Smith who was a wonderful artist and teacher and went directly to the University of Florida where I taught for 38 years and recently retired. The University basically became my patron. It allowed me to explore the options of self-expression using photography. The other factor that's important for people to realize that I was for many years the only photographer in the art department, so when I began exploring the visual options in the darkroom, I had a lot of support from my fellow faculty members. People in photography were often very critical. The straight approach was king back then, and the idea that you would manipulate an image was sort of frowned upon. It's become much more acceptable today of course with the computer.

Robert Farber: Now you say "king" so I assume that was somewhere about mid to late 60s...

Jerry Uelsmann: Actually in the early 60s I began initially exploring. I started teaching in 1960. In that decade from the 60s to the 70s there was a sort of a major transition in terms of photography being accepted as a fine art. It used to be (you probably remember this) the New York Times had a camera page and the art page, they rarely dealt with photography, and then gradually they would deal with people who worked in the classic approach, be it Paul Strand or Cartier Bresson. The foot was in the door, and more and more people began to respect photography seriously.

Robert Farber: So you never really got involved with any form with commercial work. That left your mind when you were back at RIT in the old days.

Jerry Uelsmann: That's true. I must say I'm very happy when people want to use my images commercially because I enjoy--they usually pay well and I'm just thrilled people can find a reason for using them. But I don't--I've never done assignments or had that pressure.

Robert Farber: Have you ever shot one commercial assignment at all?

Jerry Uelsmann: Well, only recently, in 1996 Adobe asked me to create an image on the computer and for doing that they gave me a rather elaborate computer system which now my wife uses mainly.

Robert Farber: And your wife Maggie Keller is a very fine artist herself with the computer and with photography...

Jerry Uelsmann: Right, and she works essentially using the scanner as a camera and builds images there. And our work is very different, it's sympathetic in that we both deal with sort of fantasy, dream-like, psychological images, but they're very different than mine. I'm still primarily in the darkroom. I guess I've learned that the darkroom is very much a part of my creative process. It's just the way in which I work, and somehow watching that print emerge and the developer is still magical to me, that space is important to me. I find it very tedious to sit at the computer, so I'm not opposed to using the computer and I've used it in a few instances to help make an image stronger in my opinion. But basically I'm still committed to the darkroom.

Robert Farber: It sounds like you're getting a little influence from your wife, right....?

Jerry Uelsmann: Well, because of her, I'm aware of the vast visual options that computer offers. Now I must tell you I was invited to give a key note address to Adobe people a couple years ago, and one of the things I said was, "Tell me something great about the computer. It offers you an immense number of visual options. Tell me something bad about the computer. It offers you an immense number of visual options." I guess I've learned that too many options are counter-productive to the creative process at least for me. And I like those limitations that I have with the darkroom.

Robert Farber: So you've been involved in academia for all of these years, and I guess this is really, I should say (I don't want to say a fresh approach) but it's really something that's unique amongst other photographers that we have the opportunity to know or had the opportunity to interview for the photoworkshop. And I feel that really gives people an idea, an openness that they don't only have to be involved in the commercial world or even just fine art and commercial, that they could happily survive within the academic world as an artist.

Jerry Uelsmann: Well, I have mixed feelings about that. I do think that in our culture in our time, academia has sort of become the patron for the artist. And if you're a poet or a writer that many of them do teach, and that gives you a stable income, but I think it's difficult to find teaching positions today, and it's really for young artists, they must be able to work creatively and still do work that has some viable commercial quality to it. I find it rather impressive that every so-called commercial photographer that I know that's high-end, has an amazing amount of personal work that they're very eager to share, that they keep doing. And I think that's really an important phenomenon. We're going to see it more and more, where young people, they're not going to find the teaching jobs, they're certainly going to have to be able to apply their creative sensibility to commercial assignments to survive.

Robert Farber: I also noticed from most of the people that either email me or visit the photoworkshop, they don't even think about being involved in academia or doing things as a grant for the National Endowment of the Arts. They're thinking of opening a studio and becoming a commercial photographer, and doing the fine art work, and the problem is once they start making money with it they forget about that first interest of photography.

Jerry Uelsmann: I think it's very difficult. I think you have to be really driven. I know I work on a regular basis, and I must tell you that at the end of the year if I have ten images that I like it's been a good year, but every year I produce at least a hundred or more images in the darkroom. On one hand it's depressing to know that only 10 percent of those images make it, on the other hand it's like saying we're doing this interview now, let's just be profound. We can't just be profound, you try to be as eloquent as you can, and when I go into the darkroom I try to make images that have some consequence, but I can't say hey, today I'm going to make really great art. There's a lot of risk taking that goes on, there has to be a sense of play, the creative process involves an awful lot of self-doubt. I mean I certainly do not feel that I have some privileged sensibility. I work my ass off trying to produce images that matter. I print a lot of stupid pictures.

Robert Farber: The reason, you say you produce only a handful of them of images that really matter over a year, but that's only in your eyes, that's the way you are as a perfectionist, isn't that true?

Jerry Uelsmann: A lot of them are important images in that they help define the finished image. It would be like when you're shooting you have tons of contact sheets with all kinds of versions of a particular pose or situation, and then within that you try and find one that has some quintessential quality, that sort of transcends the others, and for me the darkroom is where I begin to build images, and sometimes it takes a long time before I look back at something and say you know it would be better had I done this or you get involved in overkill. Sometimes you fall back on something that worked before, and you imitate yourself. There's just a whole series of very human things that happen that keep you from making these images that have a stronger sense to them.

Robert Farber: If you build the images in a darkroom, do you sometimes go back to images that are sitting in your files? Do you have that experience? Like I felt myself, I turn back to images that didn't mean anything to you before, and all of a sudden they do...

Jerry Uelsmann: As you grow, I think you can find times where you really saw more than you understood, and you go back and you see those images again with fresh eyes and realize there's potential within those images. And you can sort of learn to feed off yourself. I never cease to be amazed by the fact that sometimes in the middle of building an image, I remember a negative I shot 20 years earlier that might fit in that situation. One of the things that frightens me is a lot of people working with computers today use these kind of "canned" images, and to me it's really important that you're out there interacting with the world that when you click that shutter you remember what goes on there. It's a part of you, maybe a part of your pre-conscious, but it's there.

Robert Farber: Which is also good advice to keep your images organized chronologically and really know what you've done, and be aware of what you have. Don't ever throw away the old negatives or transparencies...How important do you think it is, now that you've been teaching at school and been around the academic world, for a potential student who is interested to really get involved in photography as a major at school....

Jerry Uelsmann: I think that there's a range of photography programs out there. I guess I would like to see programs that have a very diverse approach, that on one hand you can get real practical, authentic skills that would give you survival techniques, and at the same time be introduced to some of the contemporary theory about what's happening in the fine art scene. To me, a broad based--I mean, intelligence is part of it and just awareness of your culture, where you're at, what's going on, so I feel very strongly about a person having a good education. At the same time, there are programs I think are very narrow and restrictive. Anything that says this is the one path I'm very dubious of.

Robert Farber: Your school went from you being the only instructor in photography...how comprehensive is their photo program now 30 years later?

Jerry Uelsmann: I always part of an art department, so there was never any emphasis on practical skills, and I frequently dealt with people who were majoring in design or painting, and it was just to give them an awareness of what the camera could do, sort of teaching them the sensitivity of seeing and sort of giving them an aesthetic perspective that the camera allows to happen. Now we did have photography majors, but most of the time the emphasis was on personal self-expression. Some of them went on to teach. A few of them actually worked commercially and said when they went out and showed their portfolios that many times they were interested because they did have this personal, creative portfolio that didn't look like all the other commercial photographers had. But it's difficult.

Robert Farber: What advice would you give to photographers that are serious about their fine art work and putting together some form for gallery presentations or portfolios...in what form?

Jerry Uelsmann: I used to be romantic about the fine art scene, and think it was without any ethical problems. I really think if you want to have any degree of success in the fine art area, first of all you have to be true to yourself, but you begin by submitting work to all those little shows. Gradually, if you keep at it long enough, usually doors will open to certain galleries. You must have work that's distinctive, but you can't just walk in off the street and expect someone at a major New York gallery to say, "hey I want to handle this work" because they also have to have work that is marketable to support the cost at that gallery, and it usually comes about through reputation. I remember years ago, Lee Witken, who was my gallery dealer for years, he said most of his sales were with dead photographers. Well that's a career move I'm not eager to make.

Robert Farber: As far as--if the viewer or the listener really wants to explore your work and what you feel you're most about, which of your books would you recommend them looking at?

Jerry Uelsmann: I still have in print, there's one book that's been out for quite awhile called Process and Perception. It deals a little bit technically with the process. Then there's a book called Photo Synthesis--two separate words--came out about five years ago, and it's somewhat a retrospective. And then the most recent book is Museum Studies, and it's in an interesting form--it's in a plastic box--they're mainly images that were made in museums, although they're all altered. And then I just completed a book which will come out in March called Approaching the Shadow, and it's probably the most difficult book to talk about because it deals with some of my darker images, images that are more cryptic that I still find somewhat disturbing, but I'm really pleased with the form of that book and eager to get it out there.

Robert Farber: Well, Jerry, thank you for being so informative and sharing about you career with us, and we look forward to seeing more of your books and your images. Thanks for sharing this with our Photoworkshop people.

Jerry Uelsmann: Thank you. My pleasure.

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