Kaleidoscope It Contemporary Art Magazine 31 New Radicals

Interview with Jack Pierson, Kaleidoscope #31–Winter 2017/xviii–New Radicals.

Gianni Jetzer: What are your nigh vivid memories of those "Hungry Years" you refer to in the title of your new book? How did you choice the title?

Jack Pierson: I had moved to New York in the early 80's finished school and gotten a chore at a gallery. By Christmas time the gallery hadn't paid me for a couple of months and I was frazzled. A friend suggested we get what was known at the fourth dimension as a 'drive-away car' people that needed their automobile someplace other than NY listed them with an bureau so you could get in, chose a identify you might want to go and they'd requite you the car and fifty-fifty I call back a stipend for gas. Then y'all'd have an agreed upon corporeality of time to get it there. There was one to Miami so, I managed to collect my pay in greenbacks and we drove south correct after Christmas. In one case we arrived we didn't have money to get back and then we took a 55 dollar a week room on the beach  and got jobs. It was heaven. I know y'all're probably thinking '55 bucks a week, on the beach?!' Simply there were a couple of weeks that nosotros returned to the room to find it padlocked because we were late with the rent. Nosotros is me and my friend Andre Laroche the young man on the comprehend.

The Hungry Years is the title of a great Neil Sedaka vocal from the 70's when Elton John had rescued him from oblivion and he had a few hits again. It'due south 1 of my favorite songs and has get a standard. The basic theme is 'it was pretty great before we had it all'.

GJ: How do you usually begin to work on a book? What did you lot do in this particular case?

JP: When making a book information technology'due south normally because there'due south a group of work I have that I can sort of tell a story with. Some of these photos were in my offset book called Angel Youth. In this case I was having a survey prove at the Aspen Art Museum this twelvemonth and seeing these photos on the wall once more made me realize they had never really been presented in volume form every bit photographs with a capital letter 'P' which to me means 1 per page with a lot of white infinite around them and the title. At the time I first began showing  these photos they were kind of in opposition to photographs with a capital P. They were printed by a commercial outfit for families that wanted their snap shots 'poster size ' each one price $9.99. I pinned them to the wall using bankers pins (I don't know why they're called that) they were something I used in another job I had in NY decorating windows for a surplus store. Then, in other words I was being 'anti' every bit photos in the tardily eighties early nineties were very big and very handsomely framed so that they could compete with paintings. Not only did that not appeal to me I only couldn't have afforded information technology.

GJ: In your "Self Portrait" y'all opted for a highly conceptual approach past retracing the life ages by fifteen photographs of beautiful immature men. What about "The Hungry Years"? What is the concept? What delimits these works? How many images from the serial did you exclude?

JP: I've never really consciously worked in series, that's another trope of Photography in the fine art globe that I sought to eschew. The Self Portraits were fabricated on editorial shoots for magazines and after a menstruation where I sort of owned 'bad photography' out of focus, over or under exposed and un level horizon lines etc, I began to work for magazines and because I had access to better equipment and assistants I tried to do it better. At the end I had all these pictures that because they actually looked similar magazine work, had an anonymous quality like these ones in The Hungry Years arrived having. At present they accept a Jack Pierson quality or a 'snapshot' quality. At that time in 1990 those things were new it was kind of simply me and Nan doing it and yes she did it beginning! Then anyhow I had all this piece of work and I actually liked it but it didn't look like art or Fine art. I created the idea of them being cocky portraits very merely, along the lines of 'every portrait is a self portrait '. It wasn't very thought out until after the fact.

The Hungry Years is not a series. Information technology's merely work I made at a detail time. Some of the images were taken in the early eighties some in 1989. They're dated 1990 because that'south when I first printed them.

GJ: "Swiss Rebel" a new book published by Steidl includes for the first fourth dimension the complete Panopticon of photographs that Karlheinz Weinberger took during his lifetime. From street photography in the 1950s to the portraits of rockabillies and bikers and pornographic portraits. Is in that location a chapter in Weinbergers work that you feel closer than others in relationship to your work?

JP: In that location's not really any aspect of Karlheinz' work I'm non a fan of. He was as equally fluent in the studio every bit on the street and he had a keen eye for the sculptural qualities of his subjects. We share a love of the 50's, 60's, Elvis Presley and teased pilus. Whether or non that connects our work, I'm not entirely sure.

GJ: It is interesting to come across the notorious "outsider" Weinberger equally part of Contemporary art today. Where do you position his work? Was he an artist or rather an ethnographer who used photography as documentation?

JP: I strongly believe being an ethnographer and an artist are not mutually sectional although I'm pretty sure both Weinberger and some other photographer not and so dissimilar from him, Mike Disfarmer, might have considered themselves artists first.

GJ: You lot often use your friends every bit models. Weinberger did that besides with the young rockers in Zurich as well as later with Hells Angels. He had his ain flat and invited them over to hang out. What makes the difference between friends and strangers? Are there moments were things beginning to be confusing because you mix professional person and personal relationships?

JP: I never actually actively thought I was using my friends as models, I guess now I'd have to reappraise that, at the time though it wasn't witting. At present I do more ofttimes photograph 'strangers', however I usually consider by the cease of the process that if not exactly friends, they are non strangers. I don't really believe in the concept of strangers, non to sound 'airy fairy' it's only non how I experience. Whether they experience the aforementioned I'g non sure.

GJ: If you describe the mood in this portfolio is it rather Stairways to Heaven or Appetite for Devastation? Promise or despair?

JP: Well I'thou just a brief fan of Led Zep or Gun's and Roses so far my part of it at least I'd say information technology's more 'Blue' or 'Hejira'. Hope and despair are a given. Despair at this point in my life has become optional however. I'd cite Footling Richard and Factor Vincent for Karlheinz Weinberger.

GJ: How would y'all depict the influence of Weinberger's images on y'all? What is his contribution to Contemporary photography?

JP: I think the more people, or Contemporary Photography, every bit yous say, learn that in that location are prototype makers outside of the chosen centers of culture the more than humble and considerate we all get. That's a proficient influence, don't you remember? More so than being a mood board for fashion, no?

GJ: Your work was created in the 1980s a decade where consumerism and creativity begun to form convergent lines. Practise your works correspond a subculture that resisted the commercialization of culture?

JP: I don't know that my work represented a subculture. I know I thought I was resisting the convergence of culture and consumption and still practise to a large caste. I know this is peradventure debatable given that my artwork enjoys success in the marketplace and my photos are published. I just need to feel like a rebel on some level, even at my advanced historic period, otherwise why bother? I'chiliad sure Jeff Koons does likewise and I wouldn't argue with him.

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Source: https://gianni-jetzer.com/projects/film/jack-pierson/

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