Newsletter
- Spring 2001
Interview
Conversation
with photographer
Michael
Jacobson-Hardy
 In
the following interview with Michael Jacobson-Hardy, Marianne
Doezema discusses the photography workshop he conducted during
fall semester and the exhibition, Seeing Mount Holyoke College,
which will be on view in four locations on campus during April
and May, 2001 (see Exhibitions page).
MD: Today is the final
day of the photography workshop, which developed out of a conversation
the two of us had last spring. At that time, I was talking with
you about President Creighton's initiative to undertake a campus
master-planning process, and I suggested that it would be exciting
to organize a project that would focus on the campus as an environment
for living and learning. We both agreed that Mount Holyoke students
might learn a great deal about their campus using the camera as
a research tool. Do you believe that goal was achieved?
MJH: The students' photographs
demonstrate that quite clearly. In a few short weeks the participants
have produced an impressive body of work. Many of the students
had never been in a darkroom. They all printed their own contact
sheets and proof prints, as well as the 11x14-inch photographs
that will be included in the exhibition.
MD: Your background in
documentary photography and your interest in social issues broadened
and enriched the project from the very beginning.
MJH: At my first session
with the students, I talked about the fact that I hoped this project
would be more than pictures of flora and fauna. I wanted the students
to try to address what makes this college what it is.
MD: I know you see yourself
in the tradition of photographers like Lewis Hine who attempted
to raise the consciousness of citizens of this country about the
deplorable conditions in the factories and mines, as well as in
the tenement houses on the Lower East Side of New York City. Do
you see parallels between Hine's work and the photography workshop
you conducted here?
MJH: Absolutely. Lewis
Hine was teaching students about photographing in the world, which
was the world of recent immigrants and child labor, and so I think
he was driven by his social consciousness - in a similar way that
I am driven to work with students to study their own environment.
I asked all the students what they liked about Mount Holyoke and
then what they found difficult, in order to get them focused on
the issues. And each one had specific responses to these questions,
all of which were different. Each student came to this workshop
with an individual personal narrative about what it's like to
be a student here. Then I talked with them about how they could
make their photographs reflect their own narrative. I wanted them
to go out with a camera and say it with pictures.
MD: I've just had a
chance to preview some of the photographs you took during your
residency, which will be in the upcoming exhibition. You have
produced some powerful and moving portraits of students here,
but your photographs are not only documentary statements. They
reveal a strong interest in the aesthetics of the pictures you
create. Can you tell me a little about what you try to achieve
in your photographs and how that relates to your debt to Ansel
Adams?
MJH: The first thing
that fascinated me when I saw work by Ansel Adams was the sharp
focus of every detail. It was a revelation to me that it was possible
to make a photograph like that, where all the visual information
was there. I came from a background in physics, so I wanted to
understand mechanically how this was done. I went to Ansel Adams
books, and I also started reading about optics on the side. My
first camera was one that I constructed from a kit. So the entire
enterprise for me was about the mechanics of the large-format
view camera, with all the tilts and swings and perspective shifts.
So I mastered the tool first.
I did landscape work
in the style of Ansel Adams, but then I wanted more. I came to
the decision that I wanted to use photographs to move people rather
than simply to create lovely pictures. That's when I began to
take everything I did to create sharply detailed imagery of landscapes
and carried it all into the factory. Essentially, I decided to
have the factory become a landscape.
Also, I stopped the lens
down [closed the aperture to produce an image in sharp focus],
like Ansel Adams did, but I did it in factories, prisons, and
public schools, without bringing in much additional light. So
I was working with available light in sometimes dimly lit interiors.
MD: Do you foresee that
your work will develop in a particular direction in the future?
MJH: My work will continue
in the same direction. What I hope to do is use my photography
to create a dialogue about social class and race in this country.
So, each of the institutions that I photograph in becomes
part
of the discussion - part of the discussion about questions such
as how race and class operate in this country. Now Mount Holyoke
has become part of that discussion.
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