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Google is God? SEO Need to Knows!

Wednesday, August 26th, 2009

I am a photographer first, an editor second, a teacher, and these days, like many of us, a web developer. I’d like to share a bit that I have learned about a topic that many of you are interested in, search engines and how they rate your website.

There is a lot of talk about SEO optimization these days. (For those of you who do not know what that means, SEO stands for search engine optimization, or organizing your website in a way that will improve the way that Google and other search engines see it.) Much is written about SEO, and I thought I would break it down for in a way that people can understand and talk about some of the basics that have helped me in improving the results for my pages.

1) Common sense. As photographers we are identified our name. The number one element of SEO optimization is that you have a unique name for your site, so when you create your photographic identity, it makes sense to have a unique one. There are not going to be to many James Nachtwey’s out there, but if your name is Mike Smith, you may have some trouble. So common sense tells you that if you want to create a public identity, its better to be unique so that people can find you easily.

2) The title attribute on your home page is the single most important element in your search ranking. I am going to say that again, the title on your home page is the most important element in your search ranking. Choose your title carefully and once you establish your title, stick with it. You will be penalized if you change your title, whether this be on a website or on a blog. To see the title “tag” on any website, go to “view” on your browser and chose “view source.” Look for the title tag…..

3) The first words in your title count the most. Word your title so that it is interesting but also so that a machine can “understand it.” For example, photo and photography are similar words but a machine does not understand that, so perhaps getting both words into your title makes sense. If you are a corporate photographer, or a wedding photographer, you want to make sure that the words “wedding” or “photographer” are featured in the title. Make sure the description that follows the title reads in an informative and interesting way.

4) Create a website with quality content. Your photo essays may be among the best in the world, but if there is no content aside from images they may not do much for your searh results. Search engines like links in your page that connect to other high density content areas. So in some ways it might make sense for photographers to group together to create sites that are content rich rather than building individual sites, which are unlikely to have enough content to attract visitors. Think about content as something other than just your own photographs……think big.

5) Backlinks and Pagerank. These are truly the twin peaks of SEO, and you must understand what they are. Backlinks are links on other websites that refer to your site. As Google sees it, the more backlinks to your page the more important your page, as long as the page linking to yours has a “page rank” that is higher than yours. The Page Ranks go from 0-10, and you can see them in the Google toolbar if you install it on the Firefox browser. Below it is a pull-down menu to see which sites are linking to yours. These are the backlinks, and you need lots of them. Thousands.

The higher the ranking of pages that link to yours the higher your ranking will be. The higher your rank, the higher the more detailed information in your site, the titles of each individual page, the headers, and your word content will come up in searches.

6) All links are not equal. Many people think that by including their URL in many posts on various blogs, this will improve their Google ranking. Save yourself some time. It won’t. As the “bots” crawl over sites, they have an understanding, through the html and where the links appear on the page, of whether they are important or not…..a link that you enter in the comments section of a blog, has much less value than a link that appears in the context of an article on that blog. And the exact wording of the link text, that is, the highlighted words that feature the link are very important too. If a link to http://www.billsmith.com has the link text Bill Smith photography Google is going to associate that link with photography.

7) Publish, publish publish. Get your name on as many quality websites as you can, especially if they will link back to you. Then if you are careful with your title, you are going to see your rating improve steadily. This is the best way for a photographer to improve the SEO rating of their site.

7) Don’t spend too much time on keywords. Keywords are not factored in strongly to searches because they have been an area of great abuse. Since they are “invisible” on the site, ie, they are not real content, webmasters load them up with irrelevant critereon, and google knows this. Save yourself some time and stick to the basics. Make sure that all of the really important words is in your page title tag.

8) It is unclear to me if keywording each image is a good idea or not, but you should have at least a few jpegs that do reflect the general subject matter for the crawlers to harvest. Crawlers have issues with pictures because they can not verify what the pictures are. Google has actually created a game where viewers identify pictures in keywords, and play against other viewers. The goal of the game is to get people to help verify pictures on the web– without paying them, of course.

9) Have quality internal links in your site– these are the navigational links that move your readers from page to page. If your site is all Flash, it can’t be crawled…. although some have gotten around this limitation by creating html duplicates of Flash site pages. I don’t like all Flash sites….but if you have to use one , make sure that there are html pages that contain the internal navigational links to your pages.

10) No one can give you tools that are going to help your search ratings other than an understanding of what is important about getting high ranks in search engines. If you have a high quality website, with content that people want to see, you will get high rankings. If your images are published on websites with a high page ranking and if you are featured on important websites that link to you, you will benefit much more anything that you can do locally on your site.

Want more? Here is a nice case study. Lee Celano is a New Orleans based photographer who works for Reuters and the NY Times and the LA Times among others. Using the terms “photographer” and “New Orleans” Celano’s name would rarely come up in the top thirty two years ago. But Lee’s site has made gradual process and is now consistently on the first page of the search results.
Why?

Although the backlinks shown on the Google toolbar show only five, if you search Lee’s name there are hundreds of listings of photographs credited to Celano, which is itself a very unique name–many of these are high quality sites that have a very high page rank score, for example, the New York Times which carries a score from a 6 to an 8. Lee’s page, although it has only five backlinks, has a page rating of 3. That is very good for an individual photographer’s page! Now look at the title of Lee’s home page…..get it?

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When a Photo Editor Calls…..

Saturday, August 22nd, 2009

I have two photographers call me this week with similar stories. Both had approached a major magazine, or whatever that passes for these days, with a controversial and high profile story, and gotten financial guarantees for their work. Both had visualized the kind of impressive magazine spread that their stories warranted……and now, after a few months, both were disillusioned and a little frustrated.

Plenty of things that can go right when a magazine, editor, or an art director takes interest in your work, but there are also things that can go wrong, and I would like to make some suggestions about ways that you can negotiate the best arrangement with a magazine (or anyone really) that you can.

Here are the some suggestions:

1) Never assume anything. Most photo editors are going to be very enthusiastic, especially if they want something from you. So be certain to listen very carefully to what the person on the other end of the phone or across the table is saying, and make sure that you are not filtering their words with what you would like to hear.

2) Know what they do. You should be familiar enough with the publication to know what the magazine has done in the past, and factor it into your negotiations. If you are dealing with a magazine that never runs a a photo essay without a substantial text, you should understand that when you approach them you are going to need a text. If the magazine that never runs black and white photographs, there is a pretty good chance that the essay you envisioned in black and white will probably have to run in color.

3) Know what you want. Do you think that you your work justifies a ten page layout? Make sure to make that clear to the editor, and don’t just assume that if they show interest in you, this is what they have in mind. They might have an entirely different agenda for your work, read Rule #1.

4) Try and get what you want. Its a your story, your work, its about a subject that is meaningful to you and important. Your subjects deserve it, and you deserve it too. Be polite, but be demanding. Your work is about quality, not compromise, and you expect to be treated with respect as a professional. I am not suggesting that you resort to prima donna antics, but I will say that some of the better photographers are known to pull whatever strings they need to get what they want.

6) Don’t try and be friends. This is a business arrangement, not a social interaction.

7) OK, everything has gone great. The magazine wants to use your work, and you are going to negotiate the terms. Negotiation is in itself, an art. Some are more blessed than others. But these are some of the things that you need to think about.

– Don’t leave your work without getting some commitment. This is exactly what the magazine wants.

– If you make a deal make sure to negotiate how long can the magazine sit on your work without publishing it. That $1000. is not going to feel too good if after 6 months your story has not run. If your work has not been published in that time, then you need to be free to offer it elsewhere– its an important story, you did it right? Start at 30 days.

– If its an exclusive story that the magazine really wants the sky is the limit. If the story is right, you can get what you want, not the typical space rates that they would like to pay. For really exclusive images, the fees can go higher– much higher. In the event that you have an image that the world is really clamoring to see– get a really good boutique agency like Polaris, Redux, or Contact, or whatever the equivalent is in your country, to negotiate for you. You can in turn negotiate an arrangement with them, perhaps 35% commission for them, or maybe 40% under a certain level of sales, and then a sliding figure down to 25% if the sales are over a certain level.

– Don’t leave things hanging. If a period of time passes, call the editor or email before you start to feel uncomfortable.

– Trust your instincts. They rarely fail you. If it looks like a bad deal, then bail out.

Developing a good relation with a magazine or an editor takes a long time, and like any relationship, too much power for one side or another is not a good thing. So make sure to respect yourself and your work, be specific about what you want, and don’t be afraid to ask questions. No one will think less of you for it.

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Rewind: 100 Eyes Interview with Amro Hamzawi

Wednesday, July 8th, 2009

(This interview originally appeared in 2008– Hamzawi’s work is now appearing in Visura Magazine, link to follow the interview. )

“Iraqis Today” is the work of Amro Hamzawi a photographer currently living in Los Angeles. Mr. Hamzawi traveled around the Middle East, photographing and interviewing refugees from Iraq, and has created a remarkable body of work that is a stark contrast to much of the current reporting in the West. Over the past few days I have talked with Hamro about his life and work in the Middle East.

What is your background and how did you get interested in photography?

Born in Lebanon of Syrian parents, I spent a large part of my early adult life in France before moving to the United States to study filmmaking. I’m 34 and I can look back and so far I have lived a third of my life in the Arab world, a third in Europe and a third in the United States.

How I initially got interested in photography is kind of an interesting anecdote actually… My father, who was a business man in construction (nothing to do with photography), passed away when I was quite young. I was 10 actually. So, like many people who experience the loss of someone they love, when that happened I decided to keep a couple of items in remembrance of him. I’m not sure why, but I grabbed two items. One was a pair of his sunglasses…. the other an old Minolta camera, along with its prime lenses.

Is there any particular photographer whose work you admire or wish to emulate?

Certainly people like James Nachtwey, Marcus Bleasdale or Stanley Greene are great inspirations to many photographers I think.

Are you familiar with any Arabic photographers?

I assume you’re asking me whether I’m familiar with any Arab professional photographers (my father was a businessman, not a photographer!). I know of a few, but not many. And I would probably differentiate between does living and working in the Middle East, and those like me who have become citizens of a Western country (France in my case). I only make the distinction because the ones living in the Middle East often work in much more difficult conditions and deserve praise for their courage. There’s the case, for example, of Iraqi photographer Bilal Hussein who was jailed earlier this year and accused of providing support to insurgents.

Can you compare your experience living in the Middle Eastern and here in America?

I understand and appreciate each of the cultures for what they have to offer. There are a lot of things I admire about the United States and its people. The idea that a common belief in democratic ideals is what brings people together– not the belonging to an ethnic or religious group — is as modern and progressive a philosophy as there can be. From this perspective, it’s much easier to assimilate in the United States than in any European country.

Having said that, my experience as a man of Arab roots living in post 9/11 America is quite complex and I’m afraid it would require a much longer conversation to share my impressions and experiences… I would just say that my name attracts more attention today than it did 8 years ago.

Had you done other other work in the Middle East before your “Iraqis Today” project?

I did a series in Southern Lebanon last year entitled “Bint Jbeil, Martyr Town” which got a certain amount of attention… Like most Arabs and Muslims, I have an interest in the Middle East in general, not just Iraq. Iraq happens to be more in the news right now because of the cost of the occupation and the U.S presidential campaign… but let’s not forget the plight of the Palestinians for example. The Palestinians have been living in terrible conditions for a number of years and sadly the media, particularly in the U.S, seems to find it acceptable that an entire indigenous population lives under occupation, deprived of its basic human rights.

Tell me a bit about the Iraqis project. How did you conceive of it?

Like many people, I’ve been following the news from Iraq for a number of years. At some point, I guess I just grew so frustrated by “the official coverage” — and the apparent total inability of the major papers and networks to ask the hard questions — that I decided to travel to the Middle East and start my own project. The main idea was to expose exactly what the mainstream media doesn’t want to show and talk about… the brutality of war and the terrible suffering of civilians.

Most of the work was actually done in the neighboring countries, not in Iraq itself. There are over 2 million Iraqi refugees outside of the country. These are the people I decided to approach… Iraq itself is way too unsafe right now to conduct that type of project over there. The country’s completely destroyed and there is no legitimate state to defend people’s basic rights, which is why the various militias have taken over.

It is very sad, of course, to see young U.S soldiers dying and being injured, but to a certain extent that story is already being reported in the press. It seems to me that the forgotten ones from the Iraq war are the Iraqis themselves.

Why is it too dangerous to do this kind of project in Iraq?

Well, first and foremost, it’s too dangerous for the subjects I was photographing and interviewing. Most of them left Iraq because of direct threats to their lives. So, logistically speaking it’s much easier to find people and get them to talk outside rather than inside. And with over 2 million Iraqis having fled their homeland, sadly there is no shortage of cases.

Secondly, you must realize that the country is in a situation that resembles anarchy today. People don’t know who they’re dealing with and who they can trust. Do you know how much a human life is worth in Iraq today? People kill other for 200$ a head.

How did you find people to interview and was it difficult for them to open up to you?

The hardest thing isn’t to find people — sadly there seems to be an endless number of sad stories emerging from Iraq — but to convince them to agree to be interviewed and photographed. Most people are suspicious and reluctant. Given the awful things they’ve been through, it’s hard not to understand them.

Were your subjects aware that there comments would be read by a Western audience and what does this mean?

Yes, they were. I, of course, explained to them very clearly what I intended to do, which is to relay their stories to Western audiences in Europe and the United States, so that the world can see the horror of war for what it really is. Some of them really wanted their stories to be heard, others were so disillusioned that they had very little expectations and were only interested in the immediate connection, meaning a chat and a cup of tea with another human being…

How can you be sure that the stories were not fictional? For example, is there a way to confirm that the man you interviewed was in fact the person in the famous Abu Ghraib image?

All of the people I photographed, I also interviewed at length. I think thorough interviewing is probably the best way to separate the real stories from the fictional ones. A lot of them also had written documents that validated, if not their entire stories, at least a large part of it.

The man you mention, for example, showed me documents that proved he had indeed been incarcerated at Abu Ghraib at the dates he talked about. I don’t think there’s a way to prove he is indeed the man from the infamous image, which is why I’ve been cautious in my wording.

Many here are fixated on the Sunni/Shia differentiation… what is your take on this? Were the people who you photographed from different religious groups? Do you think Americans tend to overemphasize these differences?

I interviewed and photographed Iraqis from all across the board. Sunnis, Shias, Christians, and so on. There’s a countless number of small sects in the Middle East; some of them even predate christianity… Even though they all acknowledged the existence of a certain amount of sectarianism under Saddam’s regime, the Iraqis I spoke with also agreed that it had no common measure with what is happening today. As a matter of fact, a lot of them felt that the Sunni/Shia divide was being cynically fueled by the occupiers in order to implement a “divide and conquer” strategy.

What do you think of the coverage, both photographic and written of the Iraq War by the US Press?

To a large extent, the press has failed to report the real issues and ask the hard questions. There seems to be an official line dictated by the administration and I don’t hear many voices questioning that official line. Lately, it has all been about the “success of the surge” and what it means. If you look at the news, you’ll see that we are being fed that line over and over, as a backdrop to the presidential election… but how can anybody with moral honesty talk about success when an entire country has been destroyed and we’re not even close to finding a political solution? To me, that just sounds like more brainwashing and propaganda.

Do you think that publications in the US and the press in general has done enough to provide Iraqis and Muslims in general, enough of a voice?

There are obviously differences depending on which publications you’re talking about, but overall I think there’s still a lot to be done. Not just in the press, but in the media in general. Evidently, there are still huge misunderstandings in the West about Arabs and Muslims. The problem in the U.S starts with the leadership. Politicians have deliberately created a “US versus THEM” mentality” to advance their own agendas… I think it’s up to Arabs living in the West, such as myself, not to forget their roots and make sure their people are depicted in a way that does justice to their history and culture, and the realities on the ground.

Have you approached any Western magazines with your work? What were the results?

I have approached a number of them, both in the U.S and in Europe, with little luck so far. But I’m hopeful that’s a just a matter of time before someone picks up on the importance of these stories. I understand that they may be seen as politically sensitive, as anything related to the Middle East, but I’m trying to appeal to people’s moral consciousness and engage them into a humanitarian debate, not a political one.

It seems odd that we are fighting to provide Iraqis with democracy, yet we seem to be unable or unwilling to hear their voices. How do you think we can get more reporting from an Arab perspective into our publications?

Whether “we are fighting to provide them with democracy” or not is open to debate. A lot of terrible crimes have been committed by powerful empires throughout history in the name of civilization, freedom and democracy… so I think it’s important to be cautious when using such expressions. Colonialists have always used “freedom and democracy”, as an excuse to exploit indigenous populations.

But to answer your question more specifically, I believe that change becomes possible when people start asking themselves real questions, when they start to challenge themselves and challenge their leaders, rather than silently accept the status quo. Photojournalism — and journalism in general — can help raise these questions.

What do you think of the photography that comes out of the embeds?

Some stuff is more interesting than other, of course, buts its limitations are obvious.

What is your assessment of Iraq today? Is it even possible to simply summarize the situation?

I met with a wide range of Iraqis, people from different religious groups, with different views and opinions… the one thing they all agreed on is that the security situation in Iraq is a disaster today. Basically, as long as the country is under foreign occupation, it will remain nearly impossible for the Iraqi government to find the political legitimacy it needs in order to be able to govern. At the same time, there is concern that a reckless withdrawal will generate a dangerous vacuum effect…

I think that there needs to be a wider regional solution that goes beyond Iraq alone and involves countries like Syria, Iran and Saudi Arabia directly. The long-due creation of a Palestinian state is definitely part of the solution. It will have a deeply positive impact on the psyche of the Arab street… but there needs to be a U.S administration with the courage to address the real issues.

Although Iranians are seen in the media as America’s enemy, it seems as though in many ways the countries have mutual interests, especially in Iraq. How do Iraqis view Iranians, and what role do you think Iran will have in the eventual outcome, if there ever is one, in Iraq?

This is a crucial question; one that would require a much more complex analysis than I am able to provide here. It is basically a question of which is stronger, the national identity or the religious identity… Is a Shiite Iraqi an Iraqi first or a Shiite first? And what about Sunnis?
Iraqis would probably give you a different answer depending on what their background is. To simplify things, I would say that — because of historical, religious, economical and social reasons — the Shiite majority in Iraq is overall more approving of closer ties with Iran than the Sunni minority, which continues to view the Iranian regime with great suspicion. You have to remember that the two countries fought a brutal war for over 8 years…

No matter what perspective you choose, there’s no doubt that Iran has an important part to play in helping to stabilize Iraq, as do all the other neighboring countries. Again, I think that this is a regional crisis, not just an Iraqi crisis. Which is why I urge the West to help create a Palestinian state today rather than tomorrow.

What role do you think photography can play in bringing people together?

What I’ve always liked about photography is that it’s very immediate and allows to raise complex questions rather than give simple answers. I’ve always thought that raising the right questions was the best way to begin finding solutions…like I said before, photography has a part to play in that it can help expose realities that the public may not necessarily be aware of.

Thanks, Amro! I look foward to seeing more of your work in the future.

Check out Hamzawi’s work Visura Magazine

Tags: workshop
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Cine Institute Film on Carnival in Jacmel, Haiti

Wednesday, July 8th, 2009

Jacmel Carnival

from Ciné Institute on Vimeo.

Check out this piece from students from the Cine Institute in Jacmel, Haiti filmed at last year’s Carnival…..great stuff David, keep in coming!

Posted in blog, photography | 2 Comments »

Interview with James Estrin of the NY Times

Monday, June 29th, 2009

James Estrin is a New York Times photographer and one of the editors of a new on-line feature called Lens, a blog dedictated to photography. 100eyes was recently spotlighted on Lens and I thought it would be interesting to learn more about the new site and get some added insight into photography at the New York Times.

Q. How did Lens evolve? Was this something that the had been in the works for a long time, or is their a new awareness at the paper of interest in photography?

Photography has been increasing in importance at the New York Times for the last decade , particularly since Michele McNally, the Assistant Managing editor for Photography ,arrived in 2004.
I proposed a photography blog a little over a year ago. I strongly believe in the importance of photojournalism . Because of the rapidly changing journalistic environment I saw a need to highlight our own photography and promote great photojournalism from around the web. I quickly got my colleague Josh Haner involved and we worked on a prototype. David Dunlap joined us a few months later and the three of us put out the Lens blog with the assistance of many others.
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Q. Sure, I have been a friend of Michele’s for many years. She would always remind me that photographers were their own worst enemies. I was never sure what she meant by that.
One would suspect that there are turf wars at any large media company over territory. For a long time there was a differentiation between the style of photography at the daily paper and the magazine, perhaps by intent. Where does Lens fall in this spectrum? Are you going to be concentrating more on the traditional “pictures of the day.” or will Lens try to bring in a broader spectrum of work

Though we are focusing on photojournalism and documentary work we are open to all types of photography. I want to show work that I find compelling. I’m particularly interested in work that is getting less attention.

Q. Are there any new features being planned that might make Lens even more interesting?

Yes.

Q. Is there a possibility that in the future Lens may commission work?

Right now there is no budget for the Lens Blog It woulf be great if we had the opportunity to commission work.

Q. Can you tell us anything about the process for finding work? Are your people out there scouring the web for interesting stories or pictures, or does the work find its way to you?
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I do search the web but a lot of work comes to me from recomendations or direct submissions. Bruce Jackson’s wonderful wideluxe pictures from the Arkansas prison came to me in an email from him.

Q. What is your own backgound in photography?

I’ve been a staff photographer at the New York Times for 17 years . Before that I freelanced for the Times for 4 years. I started out at the Jackson Clarion Ledger in Mississippi in 1981. Later I freelanced in New York before hooking up with the Times.

I have seen in the last few months a few features where readers sent in their own pictures. In the last case I believe it was for an article about the resurrection of Polaroid photography. Is this something that is going to be a regular feature?

Yes it is. We are soliciting cell phone photographs right now.

Q. We both have been in the business a long time and seen a lot of changes. Where do you think photojournalism is headed? Do you think that there is room for the freelancer, or are we ?

It’s not clear to me what the business model for photographers will be but I believe that we are becoming more important not less I see problems for both staffers and for freelancers. Staffers are losing their jobs and freelancers are finding it harder to make a living. I believe it’s important, for our society, that photojournalism survives and thrives. Good photojournalists are the best storytellers.

I hope the Lens blog can promote good photographers on the web, and maybe , in some small way, help to figure out a viable economic model for the future.

Q.There are so many images on the internet, and there is a lot of very good photography. Much of this work is viewed very quickly, we click through images that are often quite small, and make snap judgements often. Do you think that we are losing the opportunity of holding up that special image and really appreciating the uniqueness of that frame, as opposed to a stream of images that tend after awhile to blend into each other?

You’re right. Photographs are not precious objects on the web but the appetite for images is voracious. I probably have a smaller attention span on the web than in analogue.

Q. A lot of the readers of 100eyes are people just learning photography or folks who want to make their work more meaningful and especially visible. What suggestions do you have for them?

Try to stay true to yourself and do work that you believe in. I think if your process is pure the product takes care of itself.
Also it’s never about the equipment. No one cares what kind of typewriter Hemingway used. One last thing. Don’t be afraid of the changes in our business, embrace them.

Thanks James. You can check out the New York Times Lens blog by clicking this link.

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Call for Submission: Sex Crimes Committed against Black Girls

Wednesday, June 24th, 2009

From Shantrelle Lewis:

A multi-media exhibit about Sex Crimes committed against Black Girls.
Curated by Shantrelle P. Lewis

I am currently looking for work from emerging female artists of African descent that addresses issues of molestation, incest, rape or sexual exploitation of young black females. This show is inspired by Hortense Spillers? essay, ??The Permanent Obliquity of an In(pha)llibly Straight??: In the Time of Fathers and Daughters.? I invite artists to submit provocative and dynamic work of all mediums – sculpture, photography, painting, printmaking, illustration, installation, graphic design, and video. This exhibit seeks to shed light on a particular byproduct of racism and patriarchy that generally remains ignored within the Black community.

Exhibition Dates: Spring 2010

The George & Leah McKenna Museum of African American Art
New Orleans, LA

http://www.themckennamuseum.com/

SUBMISSIONS

1. Please submit 5-10 jpeg images with a descriptions for each piece (title, medium, dimensions, etc.).
2. CV
3. Artist Statement
4. Bio
5. For video art, send dvd or cd. (Must be quick time compatible)
6. Additionally, please submit a description of the meaning behind each piece (no more than 250 words).

We will accept resized images via email that are less than 1MB at 300dpi. You may also send a URL of images.

SUBMIT IMAGES TO:
info@themckennamuseum.com

DEADLINE
June 27, 2009 ? (for consideration in 2009 show)
July 31, 2009 ? (for consideration in 2010 show)

Posted in blog, photography | 4 Comments »

Timothy Archibald Interview with Andy Levin

Thursday, April 23rd, 2009

Archibald

Q: Timothy, you describe “Echolilia” as a collaboration with your son, Elijah. Can you tell me more about that?

A: Around the time Elijah turn 5 we started making photographs together. I’d kind of initiate it with some direction, he’d do something that seemed unexpected…something I’d never have been able to think of…we’d look at the images together on the digital camera and try to refine them…try to improve them, try to take them in other directions. The idea of turning the creative control over to a child, while I operated the camera, allowed me to make images that seemed to have this sense of discovery to me. There was also alot going on at the time with Elijah…behavior things that we couldn’t make sense of.

Q: Can you tell me a little more about him?

A: For sure. He was always a kid who went to the beat of his own drummer….had a fascination with doors, mechanical gears, things that had a repeating ritual involved with them. After the project was begun we had him tested and he was diagnosed as being on the autistic spectrum. It came as a surprise…he’s not what we think of as traditionally autistic. He is a real communicator, but I think these days the spectrum encompasses alot of things. My wife and I still don’t know if we really agree with the diagnosis some days. But I do feel that the question….the search to understand what makes him tick, combined with his unique way of being in the world has fueled the project and given it it’s shape and structure.
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Q: It sounds as though this was your way of playing together? Was that part of the relationship here? How specific was he about the way in which he wanted to be photographed?

A: I wouldn’t use the word play, it sounds too passive. A friend of mine would look at the work and could tell which images were being led by Elijah, it’s hard to get a kid to do anything he doesn’t want to do…like brush his teeth, for instance. The shoots last ten minutes at the most, but its ten minutes of hyper focus on his part. Sometimes I lead, sometimes he leads. And now it seems like we’ve learned what each other would want out of a shot…so its a collective brain a bit. I think he knows that we need to make these images, to like…figure something out. A friend asked me why Eli was doing all of this stuff with me and I didn’t really have an answer beyond him intuitively understanding that there is something serious going on here, we aren’t just goofing around. I think he knows that we need to make these images, to like…figure something out.

Q: Is communication an issue? What are Elijah’s verbal skills like?

A: No…this is a normal seeming kid who has a grand vocabulary and goes to public school and gets good grades…but he is different.

Q: So is the work autobiographical or fantasy, or a combination of both? Are these images about your son, or something else?

A: I guess I ask myself that question a lot. I always thought that the project had this element of role playing in it. My wife looks at the images and has always said that it looks like I’m trying to exert some type of control in the photos that I don’t have in real life…so I’m having us act it out for the camera.
For me the work is about a relationship, and I always think of a relationship having three components: him, myself, and then all that is shared…the shared intangible. With the project I always saw the photographs as what we did together, the scans as my voice, looking objectively at the documents, and then the thing we get when we look at all of the stuff together is the channel, the tone that defines the project…the echolilia thing. There are feelings that go along with your relationships with your kids: powerlessness, idealism, and just these moments when those you are raising just seem so alien…so foreign. And moments of transendent beauty as well. In doing a series about a relationship, I didn’t want to short change it, or dumb it down. I wanted it to have the complexity of emotions, the range, and try to touch on the emotions we don’t have the words for yet.

Q: The image of Elijah in the plastic tub, how did that happen?

A: Around the time I did that shot I had been shooting Eli doing curious things with his body but the locations of the shots were just not thought out…its like I’d shoot him where he happened to be. I showed the work to a photo friend and she essentially said that I’d need to try to find locations that were more…intentional, more able to look metaphorical. It made sense. I had been noticing the light coming thru that window at that time of day and we had an empty large plastic toy container in the room. I think my wife had an appointment that afternoon, cuz I recall I picked up both kids from school, but had my camera and tripod out, hoping to make some photographs. We came home and ate lunch. I asked him if he wanted to make some photographs in the plastic container in the sunshine. He thought it looked interesting and stood in it and then we just tried different things: standing, hiding beneath it, sitting up in it. We then realized that it could contain him lengthwise if he curled up a bit. He got in that pose, clothed. We looked at it and I suggested he take off his clothes so it would look like he was like in an egg, and was about to hatch out. He took off his clothes and got in and started aligning his body in ways that looked like the final shot. ” Move a foot…lift your chin…now close your eyes…ok, this looks real nice. Come out and see what it looks like. ” We’d look at the images on the back of the camera, he’d see what it looked like, and try again. At some point we got it and ended. We didn’t try other ideas then, just moved on to other non photographic things. I think his younger brother was in the room trying to watch a video….so it was chaos, but we got it. And then, the nudity: I really think of these images trying to be archetypal ( archetypes? sp?) , I want the feral child to be there. I don’t want to see a logo, a style, a t shirt with a ninja turtle on it. And then he’s in his school uniform alot, so it helps the idea of this looking like the child in someones brain or memory. Ahh…thats the goal.

Q: Over how long a period of time were these images made and where is this project headed?

A: We started midway thru his fifth year and now he is seven. The project is still going, we are still shooting, but I am trying to pause at this point and try to assemble the work into a book form with some text. Oh, I guess I should add that I’m pausing on the project to kind of evaluate it, see if the scans and photo idea works together, and try to come up with text that gives him a voice in the project. I’m using the format of a book to give it shape. Its more for the growth of the project than an attempt to get a publishing deal or something.

Q: You have a keen knowledge of the history of photography. How do you think your work fits in with that of other photographers who have done work with their family?

Emmet Gowin had shot his family in a series of photographs that always had this sense of intimacy that I never could understand or replicate until I had kids myself. It just had this sense of .hauntedness that made it seem like a childhood memory. I can’t replicate that, but there is some quality of memory I’m trying to tap into…like my own childhood memories. Elijah looks like me, so that may be fueling this all as well. Currently, I gotta say I respect the anxiety and sense of anxiousness in the family work of Tierney Gearon. In her work you can see the intimacy, but its wrapped up in this modern day angst, anxiety, mixed emotions that are honest. Its like anti- romantic, and it seems to give the complexities of the role of the parent its due. I mean, that’s what I see in the work, but maybe I’m projecting what I want to see. I want my project to tap into that anxiety, parent/child anxiety…and I think it does…but it needs to be more universal as well. These projects need to try to speak to everyone, not just people with kids.
Gowin and Gearon hit that sweet spot for sure.

Thanks Timothy and good luck!

Andy Levin April 2009

You can see Timothy Archibald’s work by clicking on the photo above or in 100Eyes: The Magazine along with work by Stephen Shames, Rebecca Drobis, Nicolas Axelrod, Yoon S. Byun and others. His website is http://www.timothyarchibald.com

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