Tom Wynne grew up surrounded by bookshelves full of prints of martian landscapes, Los Angeles in the 1970s and images of machinery that were incomprehensible to him. His father was a photographer who worked professionally as a scientific photographer at a lab that assembled rockets and space observatories. Wynne didn’t consider pursuing photography because he didn’t want to live in his father’s shadow. After college, when it finally sunk in how much he loved photography, he began building home darkrooms and experimenting with the alternative processes that he’d learned from his father as a child, including cyanotypes and pinhole cameras made from cigar boxes. Now, Wynne is dipping his toes in the world of commercial fashion photography at a studio in Chelsea where he works the overnight shift. Wynne said that he was grateful that we gave him an opportunity to “blabber” about photography in an interview, below. We are grateful that Wynne shared some of his cinematic, moody and atmospheric photographs with PDNedu!
ALL IMAGES © TOM WYNNE
PDNedu: Can you describe your relationship with photography? When did it begin? Did you study it in school?
TW: I didn’t study photography in school, so I came to it a little late. But my father is a photographer and he encouraged me and my sister to take pictures. He showed us all kinds of alternative processes in his darkroom, which he built with his dad in the 1960s. We took bamboo leaves and eucalyptus from the arboretum for cyanotypes and made pinhole cameras from cigar boxes.
In our house, there was never any distinction between Bernd and Hilla Becher, Tina Modotti, Ed Ruscha and Manuel Alvarez Bravo: They were all on our bookshelves. I think this gave me a lot of room to dream.
I really started taking pictures for the first time when I was living in Germany because there were all kinds of old East German and Soviet-era cameras in pawn shops. Also, every drugstore in Germany still develops film.
I met two guys in Germany who literally had an apartment full of photo gear: cameras in bathtubs, lenses in the kitchen cabinets. I started printing, and then made a darkroom in a studio with a friend. At some point, I started feeling anxious when I hadn’t been taking pictures, and at that point, I guess I was really in it.
PDNedu: Where are you living and working now?
TW: I live in New York right now, although I don’t think it will ever feel like home. I’m too much of a West Coast-er. The past five years I’ve spent most of the time in Germany. I also spent a few months in the Mojave Desert. I’ve been lucky in New York because, most of the time, I’ve been able to find a closet or a bathroom that I can convert into an overnight darkroom. I’ve made so many home darkrooms, I’ve got a good system down. But I’ve also worked in Pioneer Works in Red Hook to make larger prints. Pioneer Works is fantastic; they have a real setup there.
PDNedu: Are there common themes that you see emerging in your work?
TW: I try not to think about common themes or motifs until I’ve developed a good body of work for a project. Every time I’ve gone out with a subject or project in mind, I get distracted, disinterested and depressed. I can only keep going forward when I can surprise myself. You always have to be on your toes because when something interesting appears, you have to have all of your wires open. It’s only later that you can see how you were feeling when you took a picture. Besides, what’s the point of taking a picture if you had an idea of what it was before? When you’re alone at night, trying to sleep, the world turns into one big abstraction. Photos are full of the particularities of life, and left to their own devices, most people would never be able to conjure up the moments that can be captured in photographs. At least I wouldn’t.
PDNedu: Are you currently working on any projects?
TW: I’m trying to learn how to see New York, although it’s probably impossible to “un-see” everything that’s already been done here. I’ve been trying to get away from the street and find more interiors here. I want to see the way people live here.
PDnedu: What are you currently doing for work?
TW: I work the graveyard shift at a photo studio in Chelsea, setting up for fashion shoots, and occasionally assisting on these fashion shoots. I’ve been meeting people and seeing how the commercial side of photography is done (and what all these expensive lights can do). I’ve always been interested in the fashion world, or the Hollywood version of it. I thought that it was going to be like somewhere between Funny Face and the Neon Demon. It’s nothing like that, but it’s fascinating.
PDNedu: What are your favorite subjects to photograph?
TW: I’m more looking for a mood when I take pictures. A lot of the time I’ll have a soundtrack in my head. I saw a movie recently where a hitman is walking through a park and thinking about turning himself in to police. He hears someone learning to play “Pavane Pour Une Infante Défunte” in their apartment, and now I think all my pictures are starting to sound like that (for better or worse). But that’s very cheesy. I listen to Molly Nilsson a lot while I’m printing, and I think my pictures have changed to reflect her music as well. I’ll go someplace that makes me feel desperate somehow, and then I’ll try to figure out why. I think Susan Sontag said that a camera is something that teaches you how to see without it.
To see more of Wynne’s work, visit his website: tomwynne.xyz or follow him on Instagram: @drugstorekafka.
Interested in having your work featured on PDNedu’s blog and our social media platforms? Send us a direct message on Instagram @hello_pdnedu or Facebook: facebook.com/pdnedu.
from PDNedu https://ift.tt/2CmMsbI
via IFTTT
0 comments:
Post a Comment