Ward Long Exhibition “Summer Sublet”
2021年 9月24日（金） – 10月10日（日）
会場： gallery communeI did a little interview about my practice with Saltbox Studio. Take a look at their tumblr (which might be blocked?), or read it below:
SB: Introduce yourself. Where are you from? What is your background in photography?
WL: I grew up in Los Angeles, went to school in North Carolina, spent time in lots of places, and now I live in Oakland. I have a book called Summer Sublet about moving and living here, and it's coming out later this year with Deadbeat Club. My relationship with photography started when I stopped going to class in college and started working my way through the TR.654s in the library. After working weird jobs and shooting on my own for a long time, I studied picture-making with my heroes at the Hartford Art School. Now I’m grateful to be part of a vibrant and dedicated community of photographers in the Bay Area.
SB: When creating a body of work, does the idea or the images come first and when do you know your work is done?
WL: For me, it’s more about how the pictures and the ideas finally find each other—there are so many missed connections! There’s a lot of less-than-organized enthusiasm at the beginning. When I’m out taking pictures, it’s usually before I know what I’m seeing. I start writing to figure out what I’m thinking, and I’m always reading too many books at once. It comes together later as I make work prints, paste them into notebooks, mock up layouts, and hang things on the wall. Some projects develop slowly, but sometimes a trip or an experience cracks me right open and I need to shoot and write right away until I understand what exactly broke my heart.
It’s difficult to know when a body of work is complete. On one hand, it’s done when there’s no challenge left. It’s done when you start repeating yourself. It’s done when you know what you’re doing. On the other hand, it’s not done until you’re honest with yourself, until it’s not about you anymore, until the work has a logic all its own. It’s not done until someone else sees it, takes it in, and breathes a whole new life into it. It’s not done until it’s true.
SB: Why photography? What about the medium allows you best to tell your story?
WL: Taking pictures is an attempt to hold on to things that can’t stay—to the light, to the people in the frame, to the thoughts in your head. It’s impossible, but there’s a real grace in the gesture. Dreams are beautiful because they are brief, and photography is a way for me to embrace the loss of time and the mystery of vision.