William Greiner Interview

by Davin Risk

MakingRoom: To leap in with what I'm sure is a huge topic... Your work is intrinsically related to Louisiana's culture and vernacular. So while you have been engaged in sharing your view of the place you were born for years, has that become more of a mission since Katrina?

William Greiner: No. I don't think I really have a mission; it's more like an obsession. I had noticed early on (during art school), that it appeared many photographers traveled to photograph. I decided to do the opposite, and that was to photograph where I lived. That decision caused an opportunity and a challenge. The opportunity, being that I could make pictures almost anywhere and at anytime! The challenge, being that it is harder to really see familiar surroundings, it requires one to be vigilant. Of course, this is not a hard and fast rule, my rule really is to photograph wherever I am and whatever strikes me as being good material.

To get to the heart of your question though... Katrina. I would photograph back in New Orleans reluctantly and with pain in my heart. I mostly used these pictures to illustrate my blog. Since I have been living in Baton Rouge, I have been photographing here! (Big surprise?). The series is called Baton Rouge Blues and the Uni of Alabama Birmingham has just published a small book of the work.

MR: Your work seems to be strongly about capturing the feeling and emotions of a place. Much of that is close to home but travel is clearly very important to you as well. Do you see your images of London or cruise culture as very different from your work in Louisiana?

WG: That's a good insight. I don't try to be funny when I make pictures, but people tell me all the time they see the humor. I think that is just me being me, and it is honest work. Just like the pictures made in Baton Rouge may be seen as melancholy, sad or angry — all of those things were emotions I have had during this time and while making these pictures. The fact that I have done work in Los Angeles, Miami, London, on cruise ships, is just an extension of who I am, what I see, and what interests me.

MR: You had an understandably difficult time returning to New Orleans as a photographer after Katrina. Has the practice of photography shifted for you entirely since August 2005?

WG: No. It really has not changed much at all. However, the whole experience (Katrina) has probably made me realize how tenuous life is, how temporary our world and space is, so I am probably more adamant about doing my thing — however un-cool, or unpopular. I am just going to do what I do and hopefully some folks will find the pictures worth considering.

MR: As a somewhat more technical consideration, many of your series over the years have used rather lush saturated palettes. Your more recent New Orleans images are not somber but somewhat more neutral. Has this been an intentional process of coming to terms with a new vision of where you live?

WG: I have gotten more and more intuitive in making pictures as I get older. I call it the Blink factor. Malcolm Gladwell wrote a book titled "Blink", about intuitive decision-making. After reading the book, it was nice to find out that simply because I was not consciously making decisions in making a photograph, did not mean I was thoughtlessly making photographs. Our subconscious minds are very bright, very active, if we tap in to it.

MR: It's no shock that you would explore Baton Rogue visually as you would anywhere you were dropped with a camera. Is it home to you now or still somewhat like playing the outsider's role? Baton Rouge Blues seems tinged with melancholy in some ways because there is more literal distance between you and your subjects.

WG: I have adapted the motto, "Bloom where you are planted". The first year in Baton Rouge was very difficult. People would ask, how do you like living here and I had to think about it.

My response then became, "I feel like I am in witness protection program, except my name didn't change". Now more than a year and a half here, things are becoming quite familiar and comfortable. I am something of a creature of habit, and I enjoy familiarity. I had lived most of my life in New Orleans (41 years) and I never thought of or wanted to leave there.

The pictures are a reflection of how I am feeling.

MR: Your work suggests hours moving through familiar and unfamiliar locations. There is a growing modern urge in some to document and share their surroundings. You engage with the culture and aesthetics of wherever you are. Are you a walker?

WG: No! I am a driver! I keep cameras with me wherever I go. At one time, I would set out on a given day to make photographs, now I just make them as opportunities present themselves. I am always on call!

MR: Do you do editorial or assignment work? If so how does that structured finite work balance with your longer-term personal projects?

WG: I had thought I would enjoy doing assignment work, but it has never seemed to materialize. I have had some close calls with magazines contacting me and then it not happening. I have done a bit of that work, but not much to speak of.

I have allowed quite a bit of my personal work to be used for commercial purposes though.

MR: If a 'trained' intuition leads you to take photos, at what point do you begin to think in terms of editing and series? Is that a fluid process as well — just happening upon your own trends and fascinations? Or do you impose a bit more structure by editing down a larger volume of work?

WG: I do a lot of editing! I make lots of bad pictures or, more accurately, pictures that just don't seem to have all the elements of a successful picture. I have always seemed to sort of finish a series, which dovetails into another series. The Baton Rouge Blues idea was already in the making, i.e. I was making pictures here and realized my state of mind was guiding me through this work.

So yes, I do impose structure by editing. I am trying to condense the whole process down to a hand full of coherent images.

MR: Since late 2005 you've kept a blog that follows your life since Katrina and also acts as a source for stories about Louisiana that might be overlooked (ignored?). How has starting the blog effected you and your work?

WG: The blog was started really as a venue to vent about Katrina. It was such a surreal time in my life; the blog gave me an opportunity to share thoughts, ideas, images and emotions about what was (and still is) going on. Sometimes I would wonder if anybody was reading it, but then I began to get emails from people all over the place who were reading it and getting something from it.

It has been an incredible opportunity to share a lot of work that would otherwise never be seen. I have found the Internet, websites and blogging to be really liberating and educational.

MR: The topic of colour fine art photography has been stirred recently online in part by Charlotte Cotton's essay The New Color: The Return of Black-and-White. What seemed like a decades-removed notion of colour photography somehow being less intentional or too transparent has come up again. What's your take on using colour in your own work and how in a more generalized way you think it works differently than black and white?

WG: I don't think I have ever made a B&W picture that I like, although I never gave it much thought or effort. I admire it (b/w) but never aspired to make images in that vain. I assume this has to do with the fact that my childhood was on the cusp of watching both B&W and color TV. I also got a heavy dose of National Geographic magazine! Sports Illustrated was always on my mind as well, since my original aspiration was to do sports photography. I was inundated with color!

I also was a great admirer of Ralston Crawford, Edward Hopper and Milton Avery — especially Avery. Color is so critical to that work.

And in some strange way, I believe making color photographs is more difficult than B&W. This may be unfair or inaccurate? I think my photographs look dead or ordinary reproduced in B&W.

I am not surprised that there may be renewed interest in the medium? Things always seem to ebb and flow, swing back and forth, if that makes any sense?

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William Greiner is a Louisiana native currently based in Baton Rogue. You can find his blog at fotoarttoo.blogspot.com or for more information, check williamgreiner.com