Phil Bergerson Interview

MR: The book seems to have a balance of nostalgia for the histories of the people you are portraying through what they’ve left behind but also something very current. Do you have any a concept of nostalgia that is or isn’t specifically in the work?

PB: It’s interesting, I’m now able to absorb more and more of what I’ve got in the book that I wasn’t aware of before. Obviously you know the nostalgic aspect of a variety of things while you’re shooting but now I’m able to look at that issue for instance in the book. I’m realizing that personally that my family is so important. It is the thing that sustains you through all of your problems. I’ve met so many people who have had such crises in their family structures, marriages, etc. and just seeing that of the core of everything is this love. If you don’t have love everything falls apart and yet that such a syrupy thing to ever talk about but it’s really the powerful thing that we all need. And you see the people who aren’t loved how much trouble their whole lives have been. So, there are a lot of things I’ve photographed that speak about a gentler time. I wanted to touch this person through this display somehow. That whole thing, wherever that came from, that display… there are much harder things now out there all the time. There isn’t that empathy for each other that I’m finding in a lot of things. So it’s that empathetic quality of presence out there that I like. It’s not sympathy which is like putting yourself into some sort of superior position in viewing these tough things. And I’m not laughing at things I’m trying to understand what is there and what people are trying to say to be a conduit for them in terms of presenting them and relating them. So, the nostalgia is for that time when things were less complicated and warmer and gentler — which I have in my life right now.

MR: Do you think it’s a perceived nostalgia or a true nostalgia for a time that did exist? Or is it that idea that in presenting something that provokes an abstract nostalgia in people that they think of a place, a time that is their version of that even if that’s not what they’re looking at?

PB: We know that Father Knows Best is a bunch of B.S. in so many ways. But we also know, I know, that the love in a family… you can dump everything else, you need that. I understand that I can look into these things and understand it’s kind of kitschy, cutie, dumb. But underlying it all, even though the nostalgic aspect is kind of phoniness, deep inside it what somebody was trying to do in Father Knows Best in terms of the issues inside they were trying to bring to their audience, “Be good.” You know, all these fundamental issues I think are the things that spiritually are at the core and are real and really important. I’ve tried to present them in such a way, those nostalgic aspects, against other more meaningful things and the hard edge of everything through it and the sadness through the book. All that stuff is the reality. What I’m hoping through the whole piece is that there is that spirit through that is represented through what I’ve done that’s a healthy positive and kind of uplifting thing. Mark Twain said that thing about “There’s sad things and I don’t quite understand them.” That’s it you know? I don’t quite understand all that but I know I’m speaking positively somehow.

MR: What has the reaction to the book been? Do people see it as a positive book? I think if you look specifically at some of the images there’s a sense of melancholy but melancholy is tied into nostalgia as part of nostalgia’s wistful nature.

PB: If you look at the whole thing, there is that feeling of the troubled nature of America — the sadness of it, the struggling nature of it. I think that finally that’s what comes through in the whole thing. But inside it you see that it’s been shown through the eyes of somebody. I didn’t really understand this until recently, but I think when people go through the book they think of me, they think of, “Who made this thing? What is going on in the mind of this person?” And I think they see the joyous experience of making the thing, the threads of humour, and the threads of irony. They see that there’s somebody at work behind all of this just like when I’m looking at a display. In the display, I keep thinking of the person behind the display. You can’t go to McDonalds or someplace like that and have any of that feeling. But in these displays that I’ve gone to you get that feeling of the person behind them. Well I think when people look at my book, they think of the person behind it, making it.

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Phil Bergerson has been a professor of photography at Ryerson University in Toronto since 1972. His work has been widely exhibited internationally and can be found in many prestigious collections including the National Gallery of Canada and the Bibliothèque National in Paris. A travelling exhibition of images from Shards of America, organized by the Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography will tour North America beginning in September 2004. For more information, check http://www.philbergerson.com