Phil Bergerson Interview

MR: Not to be too literal but when you began to shoot more and more images through glass or almost at glass a lot of the time, was there that idea that you and the world behind you are reflected while you’re also framing this seen that’s in front of you? You physically aren’t in many shots and it’s fairly purposeful when you are like in the LOANS / Last Supper photo.

PB: Yeah, in one of the pictures with the Venus, censored, I used my head to construct the section around the figure. That’s the funny slow thing. That’s the beauty of deciding to let things come to me as opposed to forcing too many things. It’s just so important to go back and forth between the intuition and the analytical even when you’re standing on the scene. See the thing. Photograph it as quickly as you can. And then stop and reflect on it and think “What else can I do? What is it that I just responded to? Have I got it in the picture? Have I framed it?” So the more you do that, the more you realize that one of the things is the reflection. You’re always thinking, “I want to see the stuff that’s in there.” So I cut [the reflection] out with this big drape. But all the way through you keep thinking, “I want the world to be reflected in this. I want me to be in this. I want that person going by to be in this.”

MR: There’s one photo, I’m focusing only on the reflection and I can’t even remember the picture, where there are two workers in reflective jumpers watching you.

PB: Yeah, it’s the kiss. It’s a little statue with two people kissing in the foreground. As soon as you started speaking about it, it’s the only one like it in the whole book so that’s great that you were able to pull it out. So, I’m setting up to photograph this thing and I keep seeing these guys across the street working and then at a certain point they stopping and they’re talking about “What is that guy doing over there?” I took a little while to set-up, I realize I’m out of film, I load and they’ve finished. There’s nothing there. The guys are gone and it’s one of those rare situations where that was my picture. It’s now changed. So, I see them down the street and I go down the street just leaving all my stuff just sitting there and I ask them if they’ll come back. So they just take up a position and I shoot this thing. Then I have to decide, “Can I include this picture?” because it’s different than everything else. But then finally you realize that by just moving the camera from here to here it’s like I’m altering it. But it’s very important to show that this stuff exists. So there’s two levels of questioning that photograph: first of all it’s got people in it. Do I want the people to be in there? They’re the strongest people in the whole thing that are represented. And the next thing was that I’ve actually brought them back. So, bringing them isn’t a problem since they were there and had I just shot it faster I would have got them. The next thing is them. There’s something about them being street workers. I refer to a lot of the people who are living on the street as street people more than homeless people because I think about it and I’m on the street, I’m kind of a street person in photographing for this many years on the street. I know the street, I know the people on the street, I mix with them and I enjoy them and them with me. So, these are street workers and there’s something kind of nice about that. The kind of garb that’s on them is somewhat of an “X”ing that on them. They’re not just them, they are who they are.

MR: They are sort of an archetype.

PB: Yes. And it’s kind of like those people are standing for all the people that look at the book too.

MR: Can you talk about how you came to name your book Shards of America and what role “America” plays?

PB: When I found the word “shards”, not “shards of America” but “shards” that was it, oh my god, perfect. Perfect word. And I called it “Shards of Civilization” at the beginning. And that’s the way I flowed until I realized that I’m actually saying something about America also. It’s this broader thing which is great but it has been through this vehicle. So it is about America.

In the book, “Do I put any Canadian photographs in there?” that’s a big deal right? One of the big, important books in my life was Walker Evans’ American Photographs, done in the 20’s and 30’s, and he has photographs from Cuba in it. And it’s called American Photographs. I had this long dialogue with this guy who’s taught me so much about sequencing, Nathan Lyons in Rochester, and he was saying, “Yeah, well, it’s because he’s American. American Photographs get it? He’s American. He makes American photographs.” So there are two photographs from Canada in the book and know one has said this to me yet. That’s the element of how I see America, the shards, when they hit the ground, they fracture out and there is this great impact on us and we are also Americans. There are many things about us that are different and there are many, many things that are similar. And now I’m going to do a project on Canadian shards and see how those photographs lay up against these others as I continue to photograph in both countries now. But I’m now tuned to up to a point where I think I can photograph more and better in Canada but it’s a harder go. It’s easy in Toronto but when I go to Winnipeg for example. The people are not so much ready to speak about their lives, their views in those displays. So it’s harder to find those things. There’s fewer of them and then there are fewer towns and the big space. But the main thing is that people don’t speak so directly about things.

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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