Contemporary Photography: Discover the Unique Artistry with Chris Grunder Artwork

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The Beginner Photography Podcast is a free weekly podcast hosted by professional photographer Raymond Hatfield who interviews world class photographers of all genres who share what they wish they knew when they got started so you can grow your creative photography skills faster! The podcast is brought to you by CloudSpot.io, the client gallery system that is always #EmpoweringPhotographers

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The Beginner Photography Podcast

Contemporary Photography: Discover the Unique Artistry with Chris Grunder

January 12, 2023 • Chris Grunder

#337 In todays interview we are talking with contemporary art photographer Chris Grunder

Contemporary art does not mean the same thing to 2 different people. If you don't know much about it, it can seem vague. Chris teaches photography as Sonoma State University and he is the co owner of Bass and Rainer a contemporary art gallery in San Francisco. So who better than Chris to give us a proper definition in todays interview.

In This Episode You'll Learn:

How Chris got into photography
How failing at his first few dozen rolls of film pushed him to shoot more
What is contemporary art
Why Chris moved to New York to work with commercial photographers after getting his masters in fine art
What makes up the difference between someone just started in fine art photography and an experienced artist

Resources:

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Thanks for listening & keep shooting!

Chris Grunder: 0:00

Because I'll have students in my intro to digital class where I'll ask them, is photography an art form and half of them raise their hands and the other half look kind of uncomfortable, because it isn't always an art form to them. second you pick up a brush, you load it with paint and you start twirling it on a canvas. You've made something that is art, but when you pick up a camera and take a photograph, it isn't necessarily art every time.

Raymond Hatfield: 0:25

Welcome to the Beginner Photography Podcast brought to you by CloudSpot, the easiest way to deliver and even sell your photos online. I am your host, Raymond Hatfield, and each week I interview one of the world's most interesting photographers to learn what it really takes to capture beautiful images and compelling stories so that you can start to do the same. Today is an episode from the BPP Vault. After years of interviewing world class photographers, we have built a rich library of photo tips and tricks that guests share to help you to get better at capturing amazing images. With new listeners finding the show every day, these Rewind episodes allow for new listeners to discover the gold nuggets of the past, and also allow long time listeners to revisit an interview with fresh ears and more hands on experience to draw from. So in today's interview, we are chatting with contemporary art photographer, Chris Grunder. Now, contemporary art may not mean the same thing, to two different people. If you don't know much about it, it can seem kind of vague, Now Chris teaches photography at Sonoma State University and he is also the co-owner of Bass and Rayner, which is a contemporary art gallery in San Francisco. So who better than Chris to give us a proper definition of what contemporary art is in today's interview. So with that, let's go ahead and get on into this conversation with Chris Grunder. Today, you teach photography at Sonoma State University. You host art shows as the director of Bass and Rainer. So art obviously influences your life. It's made a big impact on you. That's apparent. But I want to know, like, when did all of this art influence start for you? And when did you understand that photography was simply going to play a role in your life?

Chris Grunder: 2:02

Yeah, my mom's an artist. and, it's not something that's been her career. it's something that's just been kind of always present. And so there have been artists around, there's been art around. and I don't think I thought of it as a career path actually until fairly late anyway, until I was sort of in, in college. but it was just always present and always had an impact on me. and I couldn't, I couldn't draw to save my life. I couldn't paint. I couldn't sculpt. I tried to turn my hand at all the things and just didn't have, that ability to kind of mimic in the way that, art education tries to kind of, separate the wheat from the chaff a little bit, like at the elementary means for primary level. it just wasn't there, but I still had the love for it. So I studied art history in college and I remember like the exact moment It was such a weird, instance, but a friend from high school, had been taking photos and she was off at college and she said, Hey, check out this page of my photos. I was like, what do you mean page of your photos? and it was a Flickr page. And I looked at it, I was like, Oh, these are good photos. I like these. And then I started going through Flickr and seeing literally millions of photos in an afternoon. And they were all, Looking back, I mean, they were all horrible, but they were these amateur photos that were a level above what I had seen at, in, amateur, family photos. And they were not quite yet what I was seeing in the commercial world or in the fine art world. Like when I go to a museum, I, you know, seeing like a Thomas Demand or a Candida Hoffer or these like, or a Jeff Wall, these like big, beautiful things or a Avedon. And so I didn't understand the point A to point B prior to seeing Flickr. And all of a sudden I was like, ah, there is an in between and these people are getting better and becoming better photographers and moving towards this thing. This is how this skill gets developed. And it was sort of this moment of like downloading the internet into my brain where I could see, I could go through and watch these people progressing over time. I could see like, oh, this is where they figured out this thing. And this is all before I had a properly functioning camera, and so that summer, I want to say I went, back to Alaska, and mentioned this to my mom and she's like, well, I had, you know, there's a camera just sitting here. it's an old 35 millimeter camera. pick it up, here's, some expired film. It's been sitting in the closet and see what happens. And so I shot through 16 rolls of, Kodak gold, 400, got them developed. they were all over the place cause the thing didn't have a working light meter. And I bought 16 more rolls and shot those and then did that probably three or four cycles of that in the month that I was home. And by the end of it, knew how, like, based on lighting conditions, how to operate a camera. And I never stopped from there. It was just like, this is the thing. this is the direct path between the aesthetics I'm seeing in the world and loving. And my expression of them. you know, there's the Tarkovsky quote that, photography is just, the act of pointing things out elevated to an art form. It's like, that's what I was feeling. It was, I was seeing things and noticing things and wanting those to be codified. And so, That's the moment of its sort of transition, and where I thought, I don't have to be an art historian, I can actually be a practitioner of this as well.

Raymond Hatfield: 5:30

So this was just shortly after high school, correct?

Chris Grunder: 5:33

Yeah, this is like early in college, yeah.

Raymond Hatfield: 5:35

Okay, so, going back to kind of those earlier days when you were, um, learning, just art, and you kind of had this realization of like, you know what, maybe I'm not cut out to be painting and stuff. Yeah. Was that because you just assumed that because you didn't have this, maybe, quote unquote, natural talent, that it wasn't cut out for you?

Chris Grunder: 5:53

Absolutely. I mean, I think it was, entirely a failing of our educational system. I think it was, and of our, and our, sort of, Whatever, what our culture broadly values, you know, I mean, my parents are fairly cultured people, by the standards of Anchorage, Alaska. you know, my mom, I think now is actually tremendously cultured and my dad has actually grown into it more as well. But, you know, we're talking about the early 1990s when there wasn't, the media we have now. And so I think that the idea of, being an artist was tied up in the idea of, of kind of manual reproductive dexterity, this natural talent, or maybe it wasn't natural. Maybe it was, something you worked at, but if you couldn't draw a tree and have it look like a tree, then you weren't an artist. And of course, like now looking back, I'm like, that's a huge problem because that's the least important skill for any working artist at the contemporary art level. so shouldn't we be encouraging different behavioral modes in the education at the lower level, but it just hasn't caught up yet. So that's exactly what it was. It was the lack of that kind of dexterity with the skills I thought were necessary to be an artist, you know looking at a Caravaggio painting and thinking like I I couldn't ever reproduce that like I can't I couldn't master those brushstrokes. I couldn't do that. It's like of course you couldn't you know, yeah He he couldn't he wasn't the only person doing that He he like he had 10 hands on that painting and he also had a camera obscura So like, you know, it wasn't it wasn't just the manual dexterity so yeah, that's absolutely what it was.

Raymond Hatfield: 7:23

I remember. I was very similar at a very early age I wanted to draw I wanted to paint but found no natural talent at it and I remember You And it's funny, I didn't even think about this until right now that you had told that story, but I remember in fifth grade I went to Washington, D. C. and we went to go see like the Smithsonian's, and I remember seeing a Rembrandt painting for the first time and thinking to myself, like I'm, I'll just never paint again, like there's no way that I could ever do this. So why even continue to try? Yeah. Uh, when it came to photography for you, was it simply that gave you hope the fact that you had seen others through like a visual representation of their progression? Was that what gave you

Chris Grunder: 8:02

hope? Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, I think I had, it's funny, I had some slight inkling of photography as a art form, but just barely. I think, I don't think that's something that's baked in, into our culture. in fact, I know it's not, because I'll have students in my intro to digital class where I'll ask them, is photography an art form? And half of them raise their hands, and the other half look kind of uncomfortable. And they, then they slowly raise their hands, or some of them don't raise their hands. They're not sure that it is an art form, because it isn't always an art form to them. The second you pick up a brush, you load it with paint, and you start twirling it on a canvas, you've made something that is art. But when you pick up a camera and take a photograph, It isn't necessarily art every time, you know, if you're, if you're hunting around your house for the things that you need, at the grocery store, is that art? Is that expression? Like, not the same way that moving a brush around is, right? That's, something I go over with them. and so I think it was, yeah, I think it was that that like, was holding me up a little bit. And it was when I saw that, ah, there is this higher mode. There is this poetry that's embedded within this medium. that's actually like deeply embedded and hiding and not always, sometimes it's latent and not, not always there. that's when it like sort of came across. For a second, I want to go back though, because it sounds like I'm on the people who have manual dexterity and like, Recently, like I did, I did a zoom interview with this artist, Ray Mac, and she's a fantastic painter. And like, she was making a painting and like in three moves of her wrist had made a face that like made me want to, want to cry. not because I couldn't do it. Cause I was like, that's such an evocative face. I was like, that's magic. It absolutely is. but it's just that like, that's not the only magic, right. There's like settler magic at play.

Raymond Hatfield: 9:52

Right. Cause we're all. Just humans. We all have different backgrounds. And yeah, I know I get that. I get that. I want to go back to that example that you had painting versus photography and whether or not it's art, you know, obviously somebody who could I mean I have I have a wall right here that I need to paint.

Chris Grunder: 10:08

Yeah,

Raymond Hatfield: 10:09

but that's not gonna be art,

Chris Grunder: 10:11

right?

Raymond Hatfield: 10:11

So in that sense, that's not gonna be art in the same sense that I could pick up my camera and just simply take a photo of new, Dressing or something at the store and send it to my wife. That's not a form of art So at what point do these two things?

Chris Grunder: 10:24

Yeah,

Raymond Hatfield: 10:25

actually become art.

Chris Grunder: 10:26

Yeah. Well, I would argue that both of those things are unfortunately art as well. It's just they're not necessarily good. But they are both art. I have been pushing myself. This is one of those things. It's very tough where it's not second nature yet for me, because I've been indoctrinated by the, kind of neoliberal late capitalist society that we live in. but, when you look back at someone like John Dewey from like the 1920s, uh, and his lectures on, art as experience, I think that our world, that we live in is so specialized and it's trying to make art this specialized separate experience from life and it's doing that effectively enough that we see it that way but that's not actually the way that the world operates. Like we're working against the way that the world should operate. We're like everything we do should be suffused with art and artfulness and we should be aware of that. I mean the, the kind of the thought that really struck me like a bell was this idea of like We call it a work of art. And in doing so, say that the thing itself is not the art, it is the aftermath of the art. Right? It's a work of art. Art is the doing right? And a lot of artists will say that's the process. But honestly, I think it's living and it's the, when we're, when you say, I'm gonna paint this wall and it's not gonna be art, you're engaging in a defeatist mentality. Like, why, why shouldn't it be art? Like why shouldn't you be thinking artfully about it? In the same way, like, if you're trying to communicate with yourself about this, you know, bottle of salad dressing, like, why wouldn't you take a second to consider the proper aestheticizations, proper, like, physical form of that? Now, is that going to be the same as looking at the Pietà in St. Peter's? Like, no. But, I think ignoring, you know, that we all have the potential for those, for that artistry at every second, every interaction makes our lives much more boring and more bland. So it's, this is something that's like, philosophically, something I'm trying to like, live by more, because it's not, it's like, I think it's deep down suppressed nature. And so it's not like, Directly at hand because we're so used to the idea that we outsource that we outsource artfulness to other people Instead of doing it ourselves. We're thinking about it ourselves

Raymond Hatfield: 12:53

Yeah, you're right. That's an entirely new way of thinking about it. So obviously though this is relatively new realization to you. Yeah. Especially in, the timeline of you, uh, shooting and being involved in photography. so early on, when you didn't have, I would say, this mindset, right? I wanna go back to those 16 roles that you said that you had. And you said that they were just all over the place. But you still got another 16 roles after that.

Chris Grunder: 13:18

Yeah.

Raymond Hatfield: 13:18

when you said that they're all over the place, Where were they all over the place, and what do you think it was that you struggled with the most?

Chris Grunder: 13:25

With that, it was just a matter of, difficulty from a technical standpoint. Mm hmm. Where I was, I, Didn't have any sense whatsoever of what an f stop or a shutter speed was like I mean I had I had a general sense of what the shutter speed was like, what does this f stop thing do? Like how does it operate? and so literally just went out into the world and like took a photo at each of each of the f stops and each of the shutter speeds and Was like that's one roll Great. Cool. And like took notes. And so the changes were like kind of empirical changes. but at, when I saw a photo where I was like, that's a photo I took. The exposure looks right. Everything's in focus. And it, like, it looks the way I want it to. Not just that it looks the way it looked, but like it looks the way I want it to. It expresses thing I'm going for. That was happening like once per roll, even from the start. But I was like, that's enough. That's enough to want me to get, make me want to get better at doing this process. and so that's why I bought a second set, you know? And that's why I went through, another several hundred photos. to get to that point of like understanding how the camera itself worked so that each time I would see something, I would have a certain amount of confidence I'd be able to, to grab it and capture it.

Raymond Hatfield: 15:27

So how did you move forward with those next 16 roles? Did you essentially just take the same approach or did you alter it up a little bit?

Chris Grunder: 15:34

Yeah, no, I mean, I looked, I looked and said, okay, this was, I took a note that this was a sunny day and that there weren't any clouds and that these settings are what I used. on five, six, whatever, photos in a row. And so this is the type of setting I should use in that scenario and try to sort of commit that to memory. obviously didn't do a great job of it necessarily because I just had to keep doing it, but I think also there's something really magical about, like film photography. has like, I've always thought it has a kindred nature with ceramics, because my mom's a ceramicist. And so she was dealing with the same problems I was dealing with while I'm taking these photos. It's also, I think, akin to baking a little bit where you do all this work on the front end, you try to get your formula just right. And when it turns out perfectly, you feel great, but not as great as, you know, It's like the distance between where you are and how good you feel isn't as great as how bad you feel when it doesn't turn out. So like if a kiln explodes and like, like all this work is lost, you feel worse than if it had, than the sort of good value if it had turned out. And the same thing for me was, was true with taking photos of film, like I missed that shot. I cannot do that again. It doesn't exist anymore. I can't take that photo again. It's gone. Like something about it. has disappeared. And that burn makes you really want to fix it and acts as a stimulant on your learning. I think like, I'm not going to mess that up next time. And so I learned pretty quickly, with regards to that. Now, obviously like, I had one camera and one lens, and kind of one speed of film, one type of film. So there was all sorts of other stuff that I needed to, to learn, fairly quickly to expand my vocabulary. Okay. But, just being in a situation of taking pictures and wanting them to turn out well and having them turn out poorly was all it took to, sort of encourage me to do better next time and take good notes and try to remember.

Raymond Hatfield: 17:30

How long would you say that you went through this process of? shooting and not liking your photos because eventually you went on to school for to get your master's of fine art. So it obviously wasn't terrible enough that you thought, I'm just going to give up.

Chris Grunder: 17:44

Yeah, no, no. It was, I think I adapted really quickly. because when the photos were good, they were good. They were already like, that's a good photo. That's an interesting photo. That looks the way I want it to. And looks, evocative. And in some instances, it like, it looks like what everyone else would shoot in the same situation with the same camera, but it was, speaking my language. which is interesting because I wonder, I always, and this is a totally different tangent, so don't let me go down it, but I wonder about the ease of photography, now and how direct the experience is now. and whether or not people have the same, Issue of like ever ever not being able to express themselves adequately photographically. but I digress. for me, that process,

Raymond Hatfield: 18:27

wait, wait, wait. No, I do want to go a little bit more down. Okay. Are you saying because digital photography is, essentially easy. We can, it's easy to expose an image that now because there's not so much of a learning curve. the mountain to get over to get there because it's not so high. The juice isn't so sweet on the other side that maybe we don't pursue it as far. Is that, is that?

Chris Grunder: 18:46

No, no, I mean, that is an argument that I think is, suited for a person 20 years older than me. that is absolutely like an old fogey argument. and I, I remember, distinctly an old photographer who I worked with saying, photography hasn't gotten any better in the last 150 years. It's just gotten easier. and I think there is something to be said for that. It is easier for me. It's, it's not that the juice isn't as sweet. it's the question of like, um, When I was growing up, I didn't have a camera. and so expressing myself photographically was something that I didn't come to until I was in my late teens, early twenties. I don't know that there are people who are in a position of not being able to express themselves photographically now with an iPhone. Like you can, maybe you can't. Write a soliloquy, but you can at least give me a laundry list photographically. Like you can pull out your phone, you can say, this is what's happening in my world I exist in. And here it is. And so the distance from zero from being photographically mute to being capable was huge for me and was part of why I wanted to have that journey because it was this revelation. It was really like they had, you know, I was, I'd been deaf or something and they had just turned it on. It's actually mute is much better. Like all of a sudden I got my voice. But if you're able to communicate rudimentarily, then is it worth it? it to hit that mountain? Like, does it, do you need to get to that point? And when you do, do you, like, do you sense there's some diminishing return? That's something I, I am trying to figure out while I'm teaching my students. Cause I'm trying to think about how to, like, how did I encourage them and how to push them and like, how, like, how far do they have to go? and trying to relate to their experience. So that, that's more what I'm thinking about with that.

Raymond Hatfield: 20:33

Yeah, you're right. I went somewhere totally different with that. No, no, no. I mean, I, I,

Chris Grunder: 20:37

I, no, no, no, no, no, no. That was, you, you picked up on the bread, breadcrumb. It's like, it's, it's, it's right next to the old fogey argument for sure. Like it really is. They're adjacent things.

Raymond Hatfield: 20:46

It's interesting because think about the same thing sometimes. I didn't get started with digital photography like you. I kind of got started with film and just kind of practicing. but, I also went to film school where like I was taught like how to expose. So I think it's a little bit different for me and I sometimes have a hard time connecting that with newer photographers as well. As to how to do it because the only answer that I can think of is like, well, just do more. Like, just go shoot more. You don't have to figure it out. So, you figure out some sort of answer, please let me know because I'd love to hear it. That's for sure.

Chris Grunder: 21:19

Yeah.

Raymond Hatfield: 21:19

now, so you went to school for your master's, you got your master's in fine arts. and then you were in New York city for a while and you worked with some fashion and fashion designers. commercial photographers, right? what was your goal at that point as far as photography and what did working with those fashion and commercial photographers, do to help you along with that goal?

Chris Grunder: 21:41

So, first, we have to flip that order. I worked in the commercial industry and then I went and got my MFA. so it was like, that's the answer to your question is like working with them pushed me to then go and get my MFA. but yeah, I was in Seattle for my undergrad, university of Washington, studied art history and history. And it was, you know, in this sort of degree path when I came to this realization about wanting to take photos and sort of self taught for the most part, and then took a couple of classes at photo center Northwest, which is, this like Kind of wonderful little nonprofit, school gallery space, dark room space, in Seattle took some basic classes there, to sort of get into the more technical aspects of photography. and in doing that sort of realizing like if I want to get better at this, I should probably put serious pressure on myself. working in this field. I really want to get good at this, I should have, someone's livelihood at stake. And so I started assisting photographers and assisted in Seattle for about a year and a half or so. like as I was finishing college and then for about a year afterwards, and you top out in Seattle pretty quickly in the commercial world. and I mean, I wasn't at the top, but I could see that like, The photographers I was working with, like they were all kind of chafing against, what there was there. And some of them were moving. And so, I happened to go to New York, for a technical demo actually, on like medium format, digital backs, which no one was using in Seattle at the time. And fell in love with New York. I was like, I have to be in this place. This is the place to be. Especially for the industry I was in. And so moved there, not knowing anybody, not having any connections. and, sent out 50 emails a day, every day for a week and a half until somebody was like, yeah, come be on set and see what happens. Met a couple other assistants who I connected with really well. And they brought me on as second assistants on some jobs. And then. by four and a half years later, I was doing lighting design and doing digital tech work and doing, a lot of retouching work, shooting my own stuff, but recognized that the commercial side of things wasn't where I was going to hang my hat. and part of that was just, I happened to stumble upon, this group of photographers who were all. fine artists first. these people who were kind of, being brought into the fashion industry for the most part. So like Ro Etheridge, Alex Prager, Collier Shore, Marilyn Minter, Ryan McGinley, they were actually all being commercially represented by the same, agent at the time. And so I was just doing lighting for them and, and doing, stuff on set for them and being around them. The energy was so different than with a. typical commercial photographer. it was, in many ways, they were less capable. but they were so much more certain of what they wanted to do. they were so, so much less likely to take what a art director wanted to give them or a client wanted to give them. they had a certainty about themselves. and in talking to them over the course of a couple of years, it was just this realization of like, No, that's, that's kind of where I need to head. And one of the ways to do that would be to get, MFA. And at that point I was also getting burnt out on New York. So I was like, this is a great excuse to jump ship, find, you know, have a built in cohort, whoever, like whoever I go to school with is gonna be my friends. And. it's a reason to get out. And so, looked around, applied to a couple of places, and, fell in love with San Francisco in the process. So yeah, I want to know about

Raymond Hatfield: 25:12

that, that little area right there, because so many people, sorry, I totally screwed this whole thing up. My brain was going in a million directions. I remember I was so excited. To go to film school. I went to the film school right after high school. I went to film school and right as I got into film school, like the teachers were all like industry professionals at some point and they were like this is an industry where you don't even need to go to school Like you can just learn on set and you kind of took the opposite approach you learned on set But then you decided to go to school So what was it that you were hoping to get out of school? That you weren't able to get in the experience of shooting on set

Chris Grunder: 25:49

Yeah. man, a million things. though I think that, the truth is so much of what I thought I would get out of this of school didn't materialize. have a hard time with this because I absolutely would 100% do my grad school experience over again, 10 times outta 10. but I also wouldn't recommend it to most people. Hmm. Um. because I don't know that everyone goes in recognizing how hard they will have to work to get the resources that they're paying for. you don't get out of it what you put, what you pay into it. Like you have to be a kind of like extracting constantly. And I think I got that. I mean, the reason I ended up at Art Institute was at the time there was this roster of like, to me, amazing and legendary. Artists who like across a number of fields and like the, it's a very interdisciplinary program and who I was like, I'm going to get some exposure to them. Like I'm not going to go to a school that has like two professors and I've become an acolyte of that one. One of those two professors, like that's, it's not who I am also. It's just, I was so fearful of like what if I get there and they don't like me. but with this school, there were so many people who I could expose myself to and could sort of become friends with. I mean, there's. In my gallery right now, we have one of my grad school professors in there, like a show with a work of his and with his grad school professor as well. so it's this like, this kind of community that built, built out of it, that I think was vital. Like my gallery wouldn't exist without it. Like none of the jobs I have would exist without it. but I know plenty of people who weren't, who thought that it was going to be more of a passive learning experience where it's I will be there as a pupil and I will be taught things. And I think to a certain degree, I, I thought there might be some of that as well, but there really wasn't any of that. it was, however much you dig in to get, the sort of advice, mentorship and critique that you need, you'll get. so what I went in with were what I, what I, when in expecting, maybe is less material than what I got out of it. but the closest mashup for me, or matchup for me is, That I thought that I would get exposure to a lot of different kind of pedagogical strategies. I'd see how a lot of different people teach, so I could then get better at teaching myself. and that's exactly what happened. Like I, I think I borrow from a dozen different artists on a daily basis when I'm teaching.

Raymond Hatfield: 28:20

So when it came to these artists that you were kind of looking up to, that you were learning from, at some point to where you're at today, now you're kind of focused on contemporary art. Is that a correct assumption?

Chris Grunder: 28:30

Yeah.

Raymond Hatfield: 28:30

So for many people, including myself, I sometimes get lost in the different definitions of different types of art. So can you tell me, what is contemporary art and how would you describe it?

Chris Grunder: 28:43

Yeah, that's probably the toughest question. it's something that I think is actually, the difficulty of describing it adequately is the most interesting thing about it. like, when you go to, to law school, if you ask all the students who are in law school, what is law, they can give you pretty good textbook definition. I think the definition of what is or isn't contemporary art, changes moment by moment. I mean, to say that it's art that is made currently or in the contemporary period, the sort of the postmodern period, I think is really inadequate because there's a lot of art that's been made during that time, that doesn't fit that definition. it's by and large stuff that's less concerned with contemporary art. Materiality more concerned with concept. I think that's probably the kind of best, definition of it that I can find. but even that, you see works that people like, you know, Liam Everett, whose, his work is all about the material and all about the process and not about the content and not about the, about sort of conceptualism at all, he's another grad school professor of mine and he just popped in my head out of nowhere, but that's like. He's a great example, and his work is absolutely contemporary, so struggle with the definition too, and I think that's one of the reasons that some people gravitate towards it is because it does fit this definition of like the avant garde. It's at that front edge, and so you shouldn't be able to define it constantly. It's like defining is for things that have already happened. So if things are done, you know, that's the, this sort of, I don't even know if it's actually a Kierkegaard quote. I've just heard it so many times, but it's like, naming is an act of limiting. You know, you're, you're, you're trying, to limit the number of things that I think can be, if you put place a name on it, and I think that's like where we're at with contemporary art for me, what's interesting is trying to figure out how that interacts specifically with photography. not to keep rambling with quotes, but, Charles Desmarais, who was until recently the critic for the SF Chronicle, maybe the only inflammatory thing he wrote in his time as the critic, was all art is either photography or considering photography. which like I thought was fantastic. And he means all art that's being made now, because we exist in a photographic world and it, you can't help, but think about being visualized or being seen photographically, your art is going to be photographed somehow, or you're going to reject it being photographed, which is in and of itself something photographic, but there's plenty of, of people who are making beautiful photographs that are photographic artists. and who are not necessarily thinking of themselves as conceptual artists or contemporary artists, like whose work doesn't slot into those categories. And I've heard people refer to that as like the photo ghetto, this sort of like separate outgrowth of artistic photography, but that isn't within the sort of canonical, progressive sort of structure of contemporary art. but for me, again, I don't really feel the need to be trying to place limits on it because I think that it's it can wiggle back and forth. and any given photographer can operate in both spaces constantly. Like as we move into this like very odd, new media landscape, like over the last couple of decades, it's like, you can be someone who's taking photographs that go into create, that become sculptures that go into a museum show, you can also shoot stuff for time magazine. You can also, you know, have an Instagram feed and none of those are truly less to the creator. They might be viewed differently by the consumer, but who cares about them? Like to the creator, it's like whatever, whatever path you need to take gets you to where you need to go. So for me, that's the most interesting part is that, especially with photography, it is trying seemingly actively to, push away any of these definitions. Thanks.

Raymond Hatfield: 32:38

you're right, you're right. And I guess that's what makes this kind of hard to talk about, especially on a podcast where it's mostly consumed through audio here, but, I know in one of the emails that you had sent me, you had said that, that you now lean away from quote unquote, straight photography and more towards photography as an element of contemporary.

Chris Grunder: 32:58

Yeah,

Raymond Hatfield: 32:59

so when I think just in my head, the definition of straight photography would just be camera, whatever's in front of you. Here we go. Done.

Chris Grunder: 33:07

Yeah.

Raymond Hatfield: 33:08

How does that differ from like, what would photography in a contemporary setting look like to those listening, trying to focus?

Chris Grunder: 33:15

I think that for me. And again, this is like really a strictly personal definition, but it's photography. Photography that is, is an element of a contemporary practice is photography that acknowledges its own subjective position. So straight photography is caught up in the illusion of photography as something that is objective. Something that, you know, sort of grew out of the sort of scientific industrial enlightenment revolutions. this concept of like, here is evidence of what really existed in the, in the world. And it is evidence, but it's not proof. And I think so often with documentary photography, with straight photography, we're saying this thing was in front of this camera, so it is real and it exists. And we're convincing ourselves this isn't a liable omission every time we look at a photo. The rest of the world. Doesn't count in that accounting. This is the evidence that was selected and the rest of it didn't exist. And I think that in. When photography is, embedded in a contemporary practice, it plays with that more, it toys with that more, it, obscures that completely, it pushes that away, or oftentimes it'll just acknowledge like this is, Photography as a diaristic form. It's, this is like my photographs. This isn't, this is the subjectivity of me being expressed. This isn't like the world as it happened. And in some instances that's like, that's. done in ways that are so subtle as to be very difficult to even notice. In other ways, it's just having incredibly selective focus, and taking photos of things that are more abstracted than you would take photos of if you were trying to really convey a strict message. You know, it's like, it's not Gary Winogrand walking down the street at, you know, F16, on a 28 millimeter lens so that he's got everything from front to back completely in focus. It's not that sort of, egalitarianism of the street photographer's lens, and if it is, then it's somehow being couched in other material. It's somehow conveyed in a way that shows you I'm not trying to convince you of a truthful world that isn't the world you're experiencing. I'm trying to show you me or what's embedded in my world. Does that make sense?

Raymond Hatfield: 35:33

It does. It's a very wooly

Chris Grunder: 35:35

definition.

Raymond Hatfield: 35:35

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I see that. But it does make sense. way of like, so, if we'll just take street photography, I suppose, as that's the example that I see in my head here. maybe, a photograph of somebody on the street would seem like straight photography. Here we go. This is a photo of somebody on the street, but perhaps. A body of street photography would be more contemporary because it's telling you more about the photographer than it is what's in front of the camera?

Chris Grunder: 36:03

be, absolutely. or, you know, someone like, Lee Friedlander, for example. It's like, I, like, I absolutely think of Lee as being a, contemporary artist. I mean, he's 90 something years old and he's been working in the street photography and road trip photography tradition for forever. I don't think that he's out to tell facts. I think he's out to tell truths. so I think that, it's funny, street photography is in this, space that isn't, fully defined. I think, If we said like photojournalism, right, then that's like when I'm thinking of street photography, that's what I'm thinking of. It's like people who are trying to say a specific message with a specific image and that they are illustrating something that they think was factual. And when I think of a street photographer, I don't think that that's what's happening. I think what's happening is like they're creating a poem out of overheard things in the world, right? So it's like so those overheard like someone did say that for sure, but you're recontextualizing it and that through that game of recontextualizing we get that rush of like that happened that those people walked by each other and they looked at each other that way and But that within the way that the sort of body of work is sequenced or the way that, it's final form is presented, or even just the way that like the text accompanies it, kind of contextualize it, we're given more of a sense of like, this is a record of the subjective experience of a person, right? And as long as that's being acknowledged, then I feel a little bit more comfortable about saying it's within that space of the contemporary.

Raymond Hatfield: 37:38

So, I think that that was, that definitely helped to lay it out a lot more. now for those listening, thinking to themselves like, I like the sound of this, this is really interesting. What would you say would be, I mean, even the first steps for somebody who's interested more in contemporary art, but just has no idea where to start.

Chris Grunder: 37:56

Yeah, I mean, I think that it's, for me, the first thing to do would be to look at, New York MoMA and their photo department. they put on shows, annually, I think, that are new emerging photographers that they, find interesting. Now, obviously, like they're not that new and they're not that emerging if they're. you know, on the radar of recognized. Yeah, exactly. But it does give you a sense of what kind of, what themes, and what styles are happening within that space. And you, you see something like that. You see like, a body of work by, Paul Sapuja. And you're like, these photos are not things that are revealing to me, clarity. these are photos that are like making me less certain about what I'm seeing in this process. And that's fascinating. and then, I mean, honestly, at that point, we've got the internet, we're in a full like rabbit hole society. Then you're like, well, what other shows has he been in? Who else? Like, he's been in a ton of group shows. He's been a very popular artist the last couple of years. Who's he shown with? What are the other, other, what are the galleries that show his work? Who else do they show? And then you just start hopping from, Photographer to photographer. And then all of a sudden you're like, wait, I'm on, I'm at a sculptor now. Aren't, isn't this a sculptor? Like those are sculptures. Oh no, there's a photographs of sculptures. And the final form is a, like someone like Miriam Baum, where it's like, she's, it's a photographic print that you're seeing at the end, but like contained within it is sculptures made from other photographs or someone like Matt Lipps. And same thing where it's like, it's a singular plane of a photograph at the end, but there's. physical collages that were photographed within that. And The question of like, what is a photograph? Like, where does the photograph start and stop? It's something, a question that we're so, we feel like we have such clarity to answer it until we're, we're shown all these different things that are like, well, that is still a photograph, isn't it? Like, and so it's contingent. And I think that that's where I would start is I'd go to I mean a New York MoMA is I kind of the Iconic institution, but if you wanted to start anywhere you can start at the Milwaukee Art Museum You know, Lisa Sutcliffe does a great job as a curator there I just pick her because she's a friend but like she like her programming is fantastic and she runs the gamut like San Francisco MoMA has a fantastic a huge photo collection and thing is with Uh, to, you know, to their great credit. I think that they show a lot of work that is more canonical. they show stuff that's like already sort of in the advanced period. And that, like they bring in amazing stuff. Like they have huge Walker Evans show a big, they would Bay show or Susan, my zealous show. Like these are, these aren't figures who we're learning more about them certainly, but like, they're not new to us. They're not showing us like what also like they're, I think their range, they do a great job. Clement Shiro just left, but as an, in Sandy Phillips before him as like the lead curators. I think that they seem. And I, again, don't know either of them on a personal level, but they seemed to be acting under this mandate of photography in this realm, where like, they wanted to show a photojournalist as an artist, because she works photographically, and the product is something that absolutely looks like art. They wanted to show. found photographs as art. They wanted to show like the show that, that Clement put together called oops, I think it was, it was the oops and the art of the mistake. It was like photographic errors that had been kind of, allowed within, photography by photographic artists, like, you know, expanding it. but I think that makes it actually in some ways that might, might muddy the issue for an app, like an average person who's starting to get into the idea of like the photograph as a contemporary. Art piece. I'd also say like looking at, sort of, major galleries, and like looking at their roster of photographers. I mean, a great place to start from my standpoint is Frankel Gallery in San Francisco, which I think one of the great, photo galleries in the world. they have a roster of artists and works they show that, you know, covers the entire range photography, but especially the more sort of, the younger practitioners. I think that they, you get to a space where you're like, wow, that's really almost not photography anymore. I mean, I feel really blessed with this. Like San Francisco actually has a range of really amazing photo galleries. You know, Case Moore, is another gallery that's been really successful. friends of mine and they, they show, artists who are, all over the place from like, you know, Jim Goldberg and Todd Heido who are like various and Larry Sultan, who are very established, kind of recognized artists to like artists who are kind of just cutting their teeth, in the world. and so, Yeah, I think find starting point and then recognize how to dig from there. so that just to like finalize that thought, find someone whose work you like, and then figure out every show that they've ever been in. even if that means you have to like email them and ask them for a CV, just to like look through and then find the other people who are in those shows and keep track and like, have, I mean, I could show you, but I have like a thousand browser tabs open. In like, in like, in like three different browsers right now. It's like, I got this one for Firefox and Chrome and Safari. It's just like a thousand on all of them. It's like, I got all of them. And I can click on any of them at any time. same thing on my phone. Uh, so that's, that's like do a deep dive that way. That's what I would say.

Raymond Hatfield: 43:00

We got to help you out with some, tab management. That's just killing your computer. My goodness. I like that sentiment that you had about, the idea of this, show oops. I really liked that because there's been plenty of times where I've taken photos that were totally happy accidents. And yet I love them, but you can't teach that. You're right, you can't teach that. That's not something that, especially because I think we're kind of taught that art has to have some sort of intention behind it. And when there's a, when there's a total accident, how can you claim that as a victory of your own? if you had no, no part in it's happening.

Chris Grunder: 43:33

Yeah, no, I mean, that that show was actually a fantastic show and I think it's, you know, obviously, COVID, depended, I think the plan was that that show would travel actually, because they, they put a significant amount of work into it. So it would probably be at other institutions as well. But it's, the ability to take a photo accidentally. has been, and a good photo at that, has been, this like, constant, like, dark shadow, over photography for me, forever, of like, how much can you claim that the photograph is yours? In the first place, you know, you didn't design the camera. You didn't develop the film or sensor technology. Like you didn't, none of that is yours. Like you don't, like you don't have to understand optics or chemistry or electronics or computer science to be a fantastic photographer. Yeah. Some of the best photographers I know have, have issued all of that stuff. but like, doesn't that mean that like you're collaborating?

Raymond Hatfield: 44:31

In a sense, yeah. Collaborating with people who you've never maybe come in contact with. But it's kind of the same like with everything. I mean, construction. There was that uh, you know, obviously it was a few years ago now, but I remember, President Obama got in a lot of trouble for, I don't remember exactly what the context was, but somebody was talking about the business that they had built and he was like very successful self made man, quote unquote. He said, he called himself self made man and Obama's, response was, you know, Like you didn't do that, like your business uses, the roads that, we had to build, it uses infrastructure, it uses the internet, like you didn't create any of that. Yeah. Like you use these things as tools, but you're not self made, like don't call yourself self made. And that's kind of, what it is that we're talking about here, but we're just using the tools that are available to us. And I think thinking of ourselves as collaborators rather than maybe. working on this on our own is something that could potentially build a sense of community and maybe a maybe a higher purpose in the photos that, that it is that we're taking. I don't know. I kind of went off there. Do you have any thoughts? No, no, no.

Chris Grunder: 45:36

I have a million thoughts on that. My only issue is to not take it too broadly, but I do think we should be in a post competition and post individualism world. I think that's where, like, competition and rugged individualism absolutely got us to where we are. And as an individual, you get to decide whether you like that or not. I mean, the world's on fire around me. So I'm maybe like, that wasn't the best place for us to end up, but I do think going as a society, we can say collaboration instead of competition can rule the day and that cooperative community building and acknowledging our debts is more beneficial for us, in growing, than sort of strict senses of individual ownership. I make a photograph. And I'm like, I have the copyright to that photo. And it's like, I literally could have accidentally dropped the camera and it took a photo and it's like, that's more an engineer at Canon's responsibility than it is mine, but it's mine now. Right. I think that the, what's the reason that this is something that gets caught in my head so much is because when I'll talk about someone like, Jeff Koons or Damien Hirst or, Anish Kapoor, these like contemporary sculptors. who run, essentially, factories, for their works, and they'll design the works, and then the artisans that they work with, the craftspeople they work with, the other artists that they work with, will fabricate them. And when I tell that to students, they oftentimes are stunned, and then they think, that's not their work. that. So that's not, it's not theirs. And part of me is like, it is theirs. Like in the same way that your photograph is yours. Like you're not acknowledging the people who made your camera. but also another part of me points to the film industry and says like, it's like a director, except the difference is that a director is forced legally to have the credits. They credit every single other person who had a hand in the making of the film. And we don't have to have that in the rest of the art world. I think we should. I think, I honestly think as annoying as it would be if every placard next to every photograph in the museum had to acknowledge the camera manufacturer, I think we'd be better off. I think we'd, I would be thinking about this as. An endeavor that like, we're at the top of a thing that we didn't get to on our own. We, we like, we created, the shortcuts were created for us and we took advantage of them. And like, that's not, I don't want everyone to reinvent the camera. I don't want everyone to even understand optics. I think it's a waste of time. I think you should acknowledge the debt and then go forward. That's why the people made the things in the first place. So that you could improve upon what they've done.

Raymond Hatfield: 48:21

That, my friend, is a conversation for another day. for a whole nother series of podcast episodes and one that, I would love to have because it would just be such an interesting thought experiment into what that world would look like and perhaps what would come out of it. But, getting back on track here, as far as contemporary art, going on now, we've talked a little bit about the education, how to educate ourselves, how to find some artists that we enjoy now as somebody, educated like yourself, looking at lots of pieces of arts, what do you think are just some of the, Elements of photography that separates somebody who's, you know, Brand new in their journey. They're an amateur versus somebody who is a seasoned pro in specifically creating photographic art.

Chris Grunder: 49:09

Yeah. one more thing that popped into my head. I think Aperture magazine is, a completely underutilized resource. It's one of the best publications. of any kind in the world. The writing is amazing. The writing on photography is amazing. The photography is amazing. They commissioned new work. They show existing work and it's, it's at this wonderful, like, nexus between photography as art and just photography in general. So if someone was like, I really don't know how to use the internet and want to like, have a starting point. It's like call up Aperture in New York, get them to send you some copies, like get, get a subscription and then start, diving in through that and then use that as your resource tool. I think for me the biggest problem I see with, emerging photographers, I hate, hate to use the term amateur because, some of the best photographs ever taken were by people who didn't get paid a dime for them. My favorite

Raymond Hatfield: 49:59

photos I've ever taken are in the same sense. I get that.

Chris Grunder: 50:02

Exactly. Exactly. professionalism doesn't necessarily mean, good, but, early, early beginning photographers. How about that? We'll use, we'll use, that, they try to show too much. they want to get everything. They want it to be the whole thing. And that, I, as a viewer of photography, but also someone who's, who's critical of photography, I start to enjoy things at the point where I see that someone's made some real choices. so like, I think the biggest leap for, a beginning photographer is when they first get a lens that. Can open super wide up and all of a sudden very little is in focus and it's whatever they choose for it to be or they, whatever they forget that they've chosen it to be. And that's for me the, first point where I'm like, this is someone pointing to me. This is someone saying to me, look at this. And. I think it's, it's a vital step for people, to start to realize that what you don't show is vastly more important than what you do show. So that's, the kind of the point of, of turn for me is when someone starts to see. And sort of show things in a, like a limiting fashion rather than an expansive fashion. So

Raymond Hatfield: 51:18

how do you teach

Chris Grunder: 51:19

that? Some of that is just making sure that people have an understanding of what the tools that they possess can and can't do. That's sort of the

Raymond Hatfield: 51:28

technical standpoint. But yeah, from a technical standpoint.

Chris Grunder: 51:31

yeah. And I think that's something that is so fascinating to me about photography is that it is such a technical medium. and the magic of it has all been sort of, has been compartmentalized scientifically, in a way that like painting is also incredibly technical. It's just that it's, it hasn't been compartmentalized in the same way. It's a little bit more hidden. It's not as programmatic. But so the technical side though, does absolutely change what you're capable of showing, what you're capable of doing. it's like any other tool, like you can't, you know, you're not going to, perform open heart surgery with a hatchet, and you're not going to cut down a tree with a scalpel. and so knowing that that tool in your hand is only capable of certain things, or it's capable of all sorts of things, but at a really base shallow level. That's something I think that is, I ease them into that usually because they oftentimes just spent a ton of money on a new camera and they've got a kit, they've got a kit lens on it. And they're like, wait, this is supposed to do everything. It's like, yeah, it's a Swiss army knife. It really is. Do you want to do open heart surgery with a Swiss army knife? Do you want to cut down a forest with a Swiss army knife? Like, no, it's like you've got this do everything tool that doesn't do a great job of anything. and so giving, showing them visual examples, like to give them a sense of like, these are things you can't do. with what you have, know if that's important or not to you, and try within the boundaries of what you have. but also like, for me, it's, forcing them into specific territory. In a digital one class, every student has a zoom lens. They don't have prime lenses anymore. And so saying, okay, now we're going to set it to this specific focal length. and this aperture and you're only going to shoot things at this focal length and this aperture for the next week and you're going to limit yourself and if you want to get closer to something You have to get closer to it. If you want to get further away from it, you have to get further away from it. You have to be more aware of where you're standing. As a result, you have to do all those things. And at that point you start to think, what am I leaving in the frame? And what am I taking out of it? Cause otherwise what you see is, I mean, I'll look at their entire, their entire memory cards and I'll see that they shot 15, 20 photos of the same subject. From the same angle at different focal lengths, thinking I'm getting the whole thing into, you're not, you're not, yeah. I mean, you're like, you're not going around it at all. You're not seeing it from other sides. you're just getting more or less of the world around it in the shot. and as a result, none of those photos are good or usable usually. You're not considering the object at all.

Raymond Hatfield: 53:56

Okay, so I think that was a perfect explanation, and I'm trying to figure out, because I know that we're at the end of our time here, but I got one last question for you. Take

Chris Grunder: 54:05

as much time as you want, man. I'm not, I'm not stressed. Don't tempt me. I will, I will

Raymond Hatfield: 54:09

do that. I will do that. as far as, you know, when it comes to teaching photographers, what is just some common, commonly bad information that you hear being taught to, to those new to photography?

Chris Grunder: 54:22

Oh God, all sorts, man. Um, let me think. yeah, I mean, I think one of the things that, comes up all the time is that, um, They think that they have to have a big and expensive camera for it to be able to take good photos. And it's funny because I do think having a big expensive camera is a great platform to learning about taking photos. to have all of those options so you can test them all out and you can try them all out and so you can understand how different lenses work and, what things look like when they're at, huge high resolution and how to make big prints. If I had my, my druthers I'd give everybody like the absolute top of the line Nikon with a full suite of lenses at the beginning of semester to try out absolutely everything that they can with that one camera. so much. And I'd have on hand other cameras as well. But The truth of the matter is the only camera that you should be shooting with is the camera that is the most comfortable for you for that situation. And oftentimes that's not a big bulky camera. Oftentimes that's a small, simple camera. In fact, sometimes it's an iPhone. so I think you have to have those options in order to like understand what they do. But then once you've done that, I think you should absolutely like scale back and have just what you need and think about things within that. Also it's, I think it's super helpful because you do still always have your iPhone on you. You know, I think I was in New York. I was shooting. Like I was walking around the street with a friend shooting, and I had like fairly like weird lens to be on the street shooting with. I had like an 85 millimeter, like F one four, I think. which isn't like, it's not long enough to be doing creepy telephoto stuff. It's not wide enough to be doing street shots really. And my friend was like, well, like, why aren't you shooting with a zoom if you want that like, then you can get everything else to, I was like, no, because this, this limits me and like, I like having parameters and, and also I obviously like, I've got the, the depth of field to contend with is like, but what happens if like an alien lands and like, you're too close to it to like, be able to get the whole thing. And it's like, You know, it's a really interesting question. I have my iPhone though. Like if I want, if I need the like, Oh my God, something unprecedented is happening. I have to capture this. I always have that thing literally in my back pocket to pull out and get the whole thing. And I'll get it in 4k video actually the whole time. Like it's not what I need to be taking. photos of with my walking around camera. and I think that that, that recognition that we're not all out there as photo journalists trying to capture the highest risk photos of like day to day events, like the things that are like newsworthy, unless we are that, I think that's something that is, it was a critical realization for me. And I think that. A lot of my students still don't understand. Like they assume that they should walk into the street with three or four cameras on them at all times and be prepared for everything. And it's like, no, you should actually like, maybe go out with just one tool and have me the right tool and miss some shots as a result, but get the shots with that tool that are exactly right.

Raymond Hatfield: 57:27

I couldn't have said it better myself, Chris. that was perfect. And I think that that was the perfect thing to end this interview with. I have to tell you that I really appreciate your time and sharing this really kind of deep conversation that we had about photography. It was a little different than normally what we do here, but I enjoyed it and I hope that the listeners will as well, and if they don't, well, then they can tune this one out. So exactly. I know that I, and

Chris Grunder: 57:47

I had a great time too. Thanks for having me on. And I can talk about this sort of stuff, all the time.

Raymond Hatfield: 57:52

Well, maybe you should start your own podcast because I'll tell you what, you got at least one listener for sure. I will definitely, before I let you go though, if anybody's listening and they want to learn more about you, can you share where they can find you?

Chris Grunder: 58:04

Yeah. my website is chrisgrunder. com pretty straightforward. my gallery is bassandrainer. com, which shows you a very different side of me in a way. and then, I'm also on Instagram, at Grunder. Thanks so much.

Raymond Hatfield: 58:19

I really hope that you enjoyed today's interview with Chris Gruer. I would love to hear your biggest takeaway, either a light bulb moment or something that you are going to implement into your photography. You can share it with me by reaching out via the contactPage@beginnerphotographypodcast.com. From there, you can leave me a voicemail. Voicemails allow me to share your thoughts or your questions in your own words, right here in an upcoming episode of the podcast. There's nothing to download. And of course you can preview what you say before you hit send. So head over to beginner photography podcast. com to send me your voicemail. Now until next week, remember the more that you shoot today, the better of a photographer you will be tomorrow.

Outro: 59:00

Thank you for listening to the beginner photography podcast. If you enjoy the show, consider leaving a review in iTunes. Keep shooting and we'll see you next week.