Chris Grunder teaches photography at Sonoma State University and is a Director at the Bass and Reiner art gallery in San Francisco. Today we talk about contemporary art and the role that photography can play within it. This is a fun and deep theoretical conversation about why we shoot what we shoot.

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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:

• Chris Grunders Website

• Bass and Reiner

• Lightroom 101

Did you enjoy this episode? Check out more recent interviews with other great guests!

Full Episode Transcription:

Disclaimer: The transcript was transcribed electronically by Temi.com and may contain errors that do not reflect accurately what the speaker said. Because of this, please do not quote this automated transcript.

Raymond Hatfield: 00:00:00 Today you teach photography at Sonoma state university. You host are chosen as the director of bass and Rainer. So art obviously influences your life. It's made a big impact on you. That's a parent, 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: 00:00:21 Yeah, my mom's an artist and that's not, it's not something that's been her career. It's something that's just been kind of always present. And so there've 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 until I was sort of in, 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 of the things and, and just didn't have that ability to kind of mimic in the way that our education tries to kind of separate the wheat from the chaff a little bit like at the elementary mainstream primary level it just wasn't there, but I still had the love for it.

Chris Grunder: 00:01:13 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 when she was off of college and she said, Hey, check out this page of my photos. What do you mean page of your photos? And it was a flicker page and I looked at it, I said, Oh, these are good photos. I like this. And then I started going through flicker and seeing literally millions of photos in an afternoon. And they were all looking back. I mean, they're all horrible, but they were these amateur photos that were a level above what I had seen at, in, you know, amateur, you know, family photos. And they were not quite yet what I'm seeing in the commercial world or in the fine art world.

Chris Grunder: 00:02:04 Like if you want to go to a museum, you know, seeing like a Thomas demand or a Condita offer or these like, or a Jeff Wall, these like big, beautiful things or, or Avedon. And so I didn't, I didn't understand the point a to point B prior to seeing flicker and all of a sudden it's 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, 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 went back to Alaska and mentioned this to my mom.

Chris Grunder: 00:02:56 And she's like, well, you know, there's a camera just sitting here. It's an 35 millimeter camera. Pick it up, you know, here's, here's some expired film it's been sitting in the closet and see what happens. And so I shot through 16 rolls of, you know, codec 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 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, 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 Szarkowski 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 where that's the moment of, 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: 00:04:18 So this was just shortly after high school, correct?

Chris Grunder: 00:04:20 Yeah. This is like early in college. Yeah.

Raymond Hatfield: 00:04:23 Okay. So going back to kind of those earlier days when you were learning just art and you kind of had this realization of like, you know, maybe I'm not cut out to be painting and stuff. Was that because you just assumed that because he didn't have this maybe quote unquote natural talent that it wasn't cut out for you?

Chris Grunder: 00:04:43 I think it was, it was entirely a failing of our educational system. I think it was. And, and, and our sort of whatever, what our culture broadly values, you know, I mean, grew up, 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, wasn't the, 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, it was, you know, somebody you worked at, but if you couldn't draw a tree and have it look like a tree, then you weren't an artist.

Chris Grunder: 00:05:30 And of course, it's like now looking back, I'm like, that's, 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 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 Caravaggios painting and thinking like, I, I couldn't ever reproduce that. So like, I can't, I couldn't master those brush strokes. I couldn't do that. It's like, of course he couldn't, you know, he, he couldn't, he wasn't the only person doing that. He like, he had 10 hands on that painting and he also had a camera Obscura. So like, it wasn't, it wasn't just the manual dexterity. So yeah, that's absolutely what it was.

Raymond Hatfield: 00:06:21 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, and it's funny, I didn't even think about this until right now that you, that you had told that story. But I remember in fifth grade I went to Washington DC and we went to go see like the Smithsonians. And I remember seeing a Rembrandt Rembrandt paint 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 when it came to photography for you? W 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 can you hope?

Chris Grunder: 00:07:04 Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, I think I had, I had some 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, in my intro to digital class where I'll ask them is photography and art form. And half of them raised their hands and the other half look kind of uncomfortable and they, then they slowly raised 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. You know, the second you pick up a brush, you load it with paint and you start twirling it on a canvas. You've made something to his art, but when you pick up a camera and take a photograph, it isn't necessarily art every time.

Chris Grunder: 00:07:59 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, not the same way that moving a brush round is. Right. So that's something I go over with them. And so I think it was, yeah, I think it was that like, was holding me up a little bit. And it was when I saw that there, there is this higher mode, there's 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. Cause it sounds like I'm shitting on the people who have manual dexterity and like, no, no, no. Recently, like I did is I did a zoom interview with this artist, Ray Mack, 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 it to want cry. Like not, not, not because I couldn't do it. Cause I was like, that's such an evocative face. It was like, that's magic. It absolutely is. But it's just that, like, that's not the only magic, but there's like settler magic,

Raymond Hatfield: 00:09:06 Right. Because we're all just humans. We all have separate backgrounds and yeah, no, I get that. I get that. I want to go back to that example that you had of, of, of painting versus photography and whether or not it's art, you know, obviously somebody who could, I mean, I have a, I have a wall right here that I need to paint, but that's not going to be hard. Right. So in that sense, that's not going to be art in the same sense that I could pick up my camera and just simply take a photo of a new you know, 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 actually become art? Yeah. Well, I would argue

Chris Grunder: 00:09:46 That both of those things are unfortunately art as well. It's just, they're not necessarily good. But they are both are I have been pushing myself. This is one of those things. That's very tough where it's not it's not second nature yet for me. Because I've been indoctrinated by, 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 in 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 to specialize, to 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, we're working against the way that the world should operate. Like everything we do should be suffused with art and artfulness.

Chris Grunder: 00:10:50 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, 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 that when we're, when you say I'm going to paint this wall and it's not going to be art, you're, you're engaging in a defeatist mentality. Like why, why shouldn't it be art? Like why you, 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, bottle of salad dressing, like, why wouldn't you take a second to consider the proper aestheticization the proper, like physical form of that now, is that going to be the same as looking at the PA in st. Peter's like, no, but I think ignoring that we all have 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 like it, 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: 00:12:25 Yeah, you're right. That's an entirely new way of thinking about it. So obviously though, when you, this is a relatively new realization to you, especially in, in, in, in the timeline of you shooting and being involved in photography so early on when you didn't have, I would say this mindset, right. You kinda, I wanna, I want to go back to those 16 roles that you said that you had, that they weren't just all over the place. Yeah. But you still bought another 16 roles after that. What were you hoping to, let me rephrase the question. What was, 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: 00:13:06 With that? It was, it was just a matter of difficulty from a technical standpoint where I was, you know, I didn't have any sense whatsoever of what an F stop or a shutter speed was. Like. I mean, I had a general sense of, of what the charges people, I suppose, like what does this f-stop thing do? Like how does it operate? And so I literally just went out into the world and like took a photo at each of each of the F stops and shutter speeds and was like, that's one role. 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 wanted to, not just the, it looks the way it looked, but like, it looks the way I want it to, it expresses the, you know, the thing I'm going for that was happening, like once per role, even from the start. But I was like, that's enough, that's enough to want me to get there, made 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, you know, 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 grab it and capture it.

Raymond Hatfield: 00:14:35 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: 00:14:41 Yeah, no. I mean, I looked, I looked in 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, you know photos in a row. And so this is the type of setting I should use in that scenario. I tried to sort of commit that to memory. Obviously didn't do a great job of it necessarily, cause 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 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.

Chris Grunder: 00:15:32 And when it turns out perfectly, you feel great, but not as great as they 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 I give a kill and explodes and like the, like all this work is lost. You feel worse than if it had the sort of good value if it had turned out. And it's the same thing for me was, was true with, with taking photos, with 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 is, has disappeared and that, that burn makes you really want to fix it and, and acts as a stimulant on your learning. I think of like, I'm not going to mess that up next time. And so I learned pretty quickly with regards to that now, obviously 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 learn fairly quickly to expand my vocabulary. 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, to, to encourage me to do better next time and take good notes and try to remember

Raymond Hatfield: 00:16:51 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 arts. So it obviously wasn't terrible enough that you thought I'm just going to give up on this.

Chris Grunder: 00:17:05 Yeah, no, no. It was I think I adapted really quickly because, because when the, 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, like it looks like what everyone else would shoot in the same situation with the same camera, but it was, it was it was speaking my language which is interesting because I wonder, I always go, 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, how direct the experiences now and whether or not people have the same issue of like ever, ever not being able to express themselves adequately photographically. But an aggress for me that process,

Raymond Hatfield: 00:17:59 Wait, wait, wait, no, I do want to go a little bit more down there. Are you saying because digital photography is, is, 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 the, the, the mountain to get over, to get there because it's not so high, the juices and so sweet on the other side that maybe we don't pursue it as far as that is that

Chris Grunder: 00:18:23 No, I mean, that's, that is a, that is an argument that I think is suited for a person 20 years older than me. That is absolutely like an old fogy argument. And I, I remember distinctly a 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 the juice isn't as sweet. It's the question of like, 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. There's, 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.

Chris Grunder: 00:19:17 Like you can like, 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, was huge for me and was part of, 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 had been deaf or something and they had just turned it on. It's actually mute as much better. Like all of a sudden I got my voice, but if you're able to communicate rudimentary, then is it worth it to, to, 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, because 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: 00:20:22 Yeah, you're right. That was a, I went somewhere totally different with that.

Chris Grunder: 00:20:25 No, no, no. I mean, I, I, no, no, no, no, no, no. You, you picked up on the bread breadcrumb. It's like, it's, it's it's right next to the old fogy argument, for sure. Like, it really is. They're adjacent things. Yeah.

Raymond Hatfield: 00:20:35 Yeah. It's interesting. Cause I, I think about the same thing sometimes I I didn't get started with digital photography. Like you, I kinda got started with film and just kind of practicing, but, but I also went to film school where like I was taught, like how to expose for film. So I think it's a little bit different for me. And I, I sometimes have a hard time connecting that with with newer photographers as well as to how to do it, because the only answer that I can think of is like, well, just, just do more, like just go shoot more and figure it out. So if you, if you figure out some sort of answer, please let me know because I'd love to hear it.

Chris Grunder: 00:21:10 That's for sure. Interesting. Yeah.

Raymond Hatfield: 00:21:12 Now, so you went to school for your masters, you got your masters in fine arts. And then you were in New York city for awhile and you worked with some fashion 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, to help you along with that goal?

Chris Grunder: 00:21:38 So first we had, we have to flip that order. I worked with, I worked in the commercial industry and then I went and got my MFA. So, so it was like, that's the, the answer to your question is like working with and pushed me to then go and get my MFA. But yeah, I was in, 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 was, when I came to this real 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.

Chris Grunder: 00:22:31 And in doing that started realizing like, I should probably if I want to get better at this, I should probably put serious pressure on myself by working in this field. Like I, if I, if 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 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 on like medium format, digital backs, which no one was using in Seattle at the time and fell in love with in New York.

Chris Grunder: 00:23:27 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, come be on and see what happens. Met a couple other assistants who I connected with really well. And they brought me on a second assistance on some jobs. And then, you know, by four and a half years later, I was doing lighting design and doing digital tech work and doing you know, 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.

Chris Grunder: 00:24:25 These people who who were kind of, you know, 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 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, they were 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 would, you know, they, 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 kinda where I need to head. And one of the ways to do that would be to get an 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 fi 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

Raymond Hatfield: 00:25:52 Yeah, I want to know about that that, that little area right there, because so many people, you know, 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 onset. Yeah. And you kind of took the opposite approach you learned onset, 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, of shooting on set?

Chris Grunder: 00:26:35 Yeah. man, a million things. Though I think that the truth is so much of what I thought I would get out of this school didn't materialize. And I don't, I have a hard time with this because I absolutely would 100% do my grad school experience over again, 10 times out of 10. But I also wouldn't recommend it to most people. 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 San Francisco, the San Francisco 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, and like the it's a very interdisciplinary program and who I was like, I'm going to get some exposure to them.

Chris Grunder: 00:27:50 Like I'm not going to go to a school that has a two professors. And I become an acolyte of that one. W one of those two professors like that, that's not, it's not who I am also. 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, 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.

Chris Grunder: 00:28:31 But I know plenty of people who weren't, who thought that it was gonna be more of a passive learning experience where it's like, I will, I will be there as a pupil and I will be taught to things, 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, 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 way, what I went in expecting maybe is less material than what I, when I got out of it. But the, the closest mashup for me, or match up 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 teaching same 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 art. Is that

Raymond Hatfield: 00:29:42 A correct assumption? Yeah. So for, for many people, including myself, I sometimes get lost in the, in the different definitions of different types of art. So can you tell me, you know, what is contemporary art and how would you describe it?

Chris Grunder: 00:29:59 Yeah, that's probably the toughest question. It's something that I, I think is actually the difficulty of describing it adequately is the most interesting thing about it. You know, when you, 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 a 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 of sort of the postmodern period, I think is really inadequate. Cause there's a lot of art that's been made during that time that doesn't fit that definition. It's, it's by and large stuff, that's less concerned with materiality, more concerned with concept. I think that's probably the, the kind of best definition of it that I can find.

Chris Grunder: 00:31:01 But even that, you know, you see works that people like you know, Liam, Everett who's 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 into my head out of nowhere, but that's like, he's a great example. And his work is absolutely contemporary. So I, I struggle with the definition too. And I think that's one of the reasons that people, 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 since things are done, you know, that's the, this sort of I don't even know if it's actually a character guard quote, I've just heard it so many God damn times, but it's like naming is an active limiting, you know, you're trying, you're trying, you're trying to limit the number of things that I think can be if you put a name on it.

Chris Grunder: 00:32:00 And I think that's like where we're at with, 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 Demorais who was until recently the critic for the Chronicle the, maybe the only inflammatory thing he wrote in his time as the critic was all, all art is either photography or considering photography which I thought was fantastic. And he means all art that's being made now because we exist in a photographic world and 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 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.

Chris Grunder: 00:33:10 And I've heard people refer to that as like the photo ghetto, this sort of like separate outgrowth of like artistic photography, but that isn't within the sort of canonical PR 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. Cause 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 Crete 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 valid, valid 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, is that especially with photography, it is trying seemingly actively to push away any of these definitions.

Raymond Hatfield: 00:34:30 So where does, so you're right. And 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 no. 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 art. Yeah. 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. Yeah. How does that differ from like w what would contemporary, what would photography in a contemporary setting look like to those listening, trying to fool?

Chris Grunder: 00:35:13 I think that I think that for me, and again, this is like really like 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 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 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 that this isn't reliable mission. Every time we look at a photo like that, the rest of the world doesn't count in that accounting.

Chris Grunder: 00:36:16 This is the evidence that was selected and the rest of it didn't exist. And I think that in when photography is, is is embedded in, in a contemporary practice, it plays with that more it toys with that more, it, it obscures that completely, it pushes that away, or it, or oftentimes it'll just acknowledge, like this is photography as a, 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, 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 like, it's just having an incredibly selective focus and, and, you know 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 F 16 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 photographers lens it. And if it is then it's somehow being couched in other material, it's somehow being 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? And it's, it's a very wooly definition.

Raymond Hatfield: 00:37:51 Yeah, yeah, yeah. I see that. But it does make sense in the, in the way of like, so, you know, if we'll just take street photography, as opposed as cause 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: 00:38:23 It could be absolutely. Or, or you have someone like like Lee Freelander, for example, it's like, I, I absolutely think of Lee as being a, a contemporary artist. I mean, he's 90 years old and he's been working in the street photography and road trip, photography tradition for, for forever. I don't, 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, in this space that isn't fully defined. I think if we said like photo journalism, right. Then that's like, when I'm thinking of straight 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, I don't think that that's what's happening.

Chris Grunder: 00:39:20 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 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. But that within the way that the sort of body of work is sequenced or or the way that that it's final form is presented, or even just the way that, like the text that accompanies it kind of contextualize it, we're given more of a sense of like, this is, this is a record of a 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, of the contemporary.

Raymond Hatfield: 00:40:15 So if I think that that was, that, that definitely helped 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: 00:40:35 Yeah. I mean, I think that it's the first thing to do would be to look for me, the first thing to do would be to look at at New York MoMA and their photo department they, they put on shows annually, I think that are new for new emerging photographers that they, that they find interesting now obviously, like they're not, they're not that new and they're not that emerging if they're you know, on the radar. Yeah, exactly. But it does give you a sense of what kind of, what themes and what styles are are happening within that space. And you, you see something like that. You see like, you know, a body of work by a pulse to Puja, and you're like, this is not, these photos are not things that are revealing to me. Clarity. These are, these are photos that are like making me less certain about what I'm seeing in this process.

Chris Grunder: 00:41:39 And that's fascinating. And then, I mean, honestly at that point we've got, we've got the internet we're in, we're in a full like rabbit hole society, then you're like, well, what other shows is he been in? Who else? Like, he's been at a ton of group shows. He's been at like very popular artists the last couple of years, who is he showing with? What are the other, other, where the galleries that show his work? Who else do they show? And then you just start hopping from photographer to photographer. Right. Then all of a sudden you're like, wait, I'm not, I'm at a sculptor now isn't this a sculptor? Like those are sculptures. Oh, no, there's a photographs of sculptures. And the final form is like someone like Miriam bomb where it's like, she's like, it's a, it's a photographic print that you're seeing at the end, but like contained within it.

Chris Grunder: 00:42:21 Yeah. It is sculptures made from other photographs or someone like matte lips and same thing where it's like, it's, it's a singular plane of a photograph at the end, but there's physical color that were photographed within that. And the question of like, you know, what is a photograph? Like, where does it photograph certain stuff, but something we're. So we feel like we have such clarity to answer until we're, we're showing all these different things that are like, Oh, that is, is still a photograph. Isn't it like? And, and so it's contingent. And I think that that's where I would start is I I'd go to, I go to New York MoMA is I kind of the iconic institution, but if you want to just start anywhere, you could, you could start at the Milwaukee art museum. You know, Lisa Sutcliffe does a great job as a curator there.

Chris Grunder: 00:43:06 I just pick her because she's a friend, but like, she like her, her programming's fantastic. And she runs the gamut. Like San Francisco MoMA has a fantastic, a huge photo collection. The thing is with SF MoMA 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, already sort of in the advanced period. And that like they bring in amazing stuff. Like they have huge Walker Evans show or, or you know, a big they would, they show or Susan Meiselas show like these are these aren't figures who like, we're learning more about them, certainly, but like, they're not they're not new to us. They're not showing us like what also like their, I think their range. They do a great job you know Clement, Shiro just left.

Chris Grunder: 00:43:54 But as an, in Sandy Phillips before him as like the lead curators I think that they ha they seem, 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 expand expensive realm where like, they wanted to show a photo journalist as an artist because she works photographically and the product is something that absolutely looks like art show found photographs. Okay. As, as art, they want to sure. Like the, the show that that comment put together called, oops, I think it was, it was the oops in the art of the mistake. It was like photographic errors that had been allowed within photography by photographic artists, like yeah. You know, expanding it, but, but I think that makes it actually, in some ways that might muddy the issue for, for like an average person.

Chris Grunder: 00:44:44 Who's starting to get into the idea of like the photograph as a contemporary art piece. I'd also say like looking at you know, major 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. I think one of the great photo galleries in the world they have a roster of artists and works. They show that covers the entire range of 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 that's really almost not photography anymore. I feel really blessed with this. Like San Francisco actually has a range of really amazing photo galleries. You know, caseworker could be, is another gallery. That's, you know, friends of mine.

Chris Grunder: 00:45:38 And they, they show artists who are, are all over the place from like, you know, Jim Goldberg and Todd Hydo, who were like various and Larry Salton who were very established kind of recognized artists too, like artists who are kind of just cutting their teeth in, in the world. And so yeah, I think find, find a, a starting point and then recognize how to dig from there. So 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 tracking, like, you know, like have ma I can show you, but like, I have like a thousand browser tabs open in like in like three different browsers right now. It's like, you got this one for Firefox and Chrome and Safari. It's like a thousand on all of them. I got all mobile and I can click on any of them at any time. Same thing on my phone. So that's, that's like do a deep dive that way. That's what I'd say.

Raymond Hatfield: 00:46:39 We got to help you out with some, to some tab management. It's just killing your computer. My goodness. I like that sentiment that you had about you know, 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 loved them, but you can't teach that you, 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 an oven, there's a total accident. How can you claim that as a victory of your own if, if you had, if you had no you know, no part in it's happening.

Chris Grunder: 00:47:18 Yeah, no, I, I think that that's I mean that, that show is actually a fantastic show and I think it's, you know, obviously COVID dependent. I think the plan was that if that show would travel actually, cause they they'd put a significant amount of work into it. So it would probably be at other institutions as well, but it's the, the ability to take a photo accidentally has been an, a good photo at that has been this like constant like dark shadow over photography for me forever of like, how, how much can you claim that the photograph is yours in the first place? You know, if you didn't design the camera, you didn't develop the film or sensor technology. Like you didn't, you know, 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. So 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: 00:48:29 Yeah. 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 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 a self made man. And Obama's you know, reference or is not as referenced, but his response was like, you didn't do that. You know, like your business uses, you know, the roads that, you know, 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 kinda, that's kind of what it is that we're talking about here, but we're just using, we're just using the tools that are available to us. And I think thinking of ourselves as collaborators, rather than, 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, 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,

Chris Grunder: 00:49:46 No, no, no. I mean, I have a million thoughts on that and I think my only issue is to not take it too broadly, but like I do, I do think we should be in a post competition and a host individualism world. I think that's where like competition and, and, and rugged individualism absolutely got us to where we are. And you, 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 forward as a society we say

Chris Grunder: 00:50:28 Collaboration instead of competition can, can rule the day and that, that cooperative community building and acknowledging our debts is more beneficial for us in growing then the sort of strict sense of individual ownership. Like I make a photograph and I'm like, I have the copyright to that photo. And it's like, I, I literally could have accidentally dropped the camera and it took a photo. It's like, that's more an engineer at Cannon's responsibility than it is mine, but it's mine. Right. I think that, that, what's the reason that this is something that gets, it gets caught in my head so much is because when I'll talk about someone like Jeff Koons or, or, or Damien Hirst or initial report and 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 craft will, they work with the other artists that they work with will fabricate them.

Chris Grunder: 00:51:31 And when I tell that to students, they oftentimes are stunned and then they think that's not their work, then 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. So you're not acknowledging the people who made your camera. But also another part of me points to the film industry and, and says like, it's like a director, except the differences 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.

Chris Grunder: 00:52:20 I think I would be thinking about this as an endeavor. Like we're at the top of a thing that we didn't get to on our own. We, like we created the shortcuts were created for us and we took advantage of him and that, and like, that's not, I don't want everyone to reinvent the camera. I don't want everyone to even understand optics. It'd be, 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: 00:52:50 That my friend is a, is a conversation for a whole nother series of podcast episodes. And one that I would, 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, 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 that we enjoy now as somebody, you know, 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 brand new in their journey? They're an amateur versus somebody who is a seasoned pro in specifically creating photographic art. Yeah. One more thing that popped into my head,

Chris Grunder: 00:53:46 I think app after magazine is is a completely under utilized resource. It's one of the best publications of any time in the world. The writing is amazing. The writing on photography is amazing. The photography is amazing. The commission new work, they show existing work and it's, it's at this wonderful, like nexus between photography as art and, 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 Avature 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, the biggest the biggest problem I see with with emerging photographers I, I hate, I hate to use the term amateur because some of the best photographs that were taken were by people who didn't get paid a dime for them. And that's

Raymond Hatfield: 00:54:45 Some of my favorite photos I've ever taken are in the same sense.

Chris Grunder: 00:54:48 Exactly, exactly. Professionalism doesn't necessarily mean a good, but early, early beginning, photographers. How about that? We'll use, we'll use that. They try to show too much. They, they want, they want to get everything. They want it to be the whole thing and that I, as a viewer of photography, photography, but also somebody 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, 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 as in focus and it's whatever they choose or to be, or they, whatever they forget that they've chosen it to be. And that's for me, the, the, 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, to start to realize that what you don't show is vastly more important than what you do show. So that's, that's the, that's the kind of the point of, of, of, of turn for me, it was when, when someone starts to see it sort of show things in a limiting fashion rather than an expansive fashion.

Raymond Hatfield: 00:56:16 So how do you teach that?

Chris Grunder: 00:56:19 Some of that is just making sure that people have an understanding of the tools that they possess can, and can't do that. So a technical standpoint from a technical standpoint. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that's something that is so fascinating to me about, about photography is that it is, it is such a technical medium. And and the, the magic of it has all been sort of has been compartmentalize 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, as programmatic. So the, the, the technical side though, does absolutely change what you're capable of showing what you're capable of doing. It's, it's like any other tool like you can't, you know, you're not going to perform open heart surgery with a hatchet, you know, and you're not going to cut down a tree with a scalpel.

Chris Grunder: 00:57:21 And so knowing that that tool in your hand is only capable of certain things or capable of all sorts of things, but at a really base shallow level, that's something that I think that is, I ease them into that usually because they oftentimes just spend a ton of money on a new camera and you'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 the Swiss army knife? Do you want to cut down a forest? Like, no, it's like, you've got this, do everything tool. It doesn't do a great job of anything. And so giving them, showing the visual examples, like to give them a sense of like, these are things you can't do with what you have, no, if that's important or not to you, and, and try within the boundaries of what you, what you have.

Chris Grunder: 00:58:07 But also like for me, it's, 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 vocal length and this aperture, and you only going to shoot things at this vocal, like in 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 get further away from it, you have to get for the right. You have to be more aware of where you're standing as a result, you have to do all those things. And then at that point, you start to think, what am I leaving in the frame of what it might take me out of it? Because otherwise what you see is, I mean, I'll look at their entire you know, their entire memory cards.

Chris Grunder: 00:58:50 And I'll see that they've shot 15, 20 photos of the same subject from the same angle at different focal links thinking I'm getting the whole thing in. You're not, you're not, yeah. I mean, you're like, you're not going around. You did it all. You're not seeing it from other sides. You're, 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. Okay. So I think that was a perfect explanation. And, and I'm trying to figure out,

Raymond Hatfield: 00:59:22 Cause I know that we're, we're, we're at the end of our time here, but I got one last question for you.

Chris Grunder: 00:59:28 Yeah. Take as much time as you want, man. I'm not, I'm not stressed. Don't tempt me. I will, I will do that.

Raymond Hatfield: 00:59:33 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: 00:59:45 Oh God. All sorts, man. Let me think. Yeah, I mean, I think one of the, one of the things that comes up all the time is that 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 until you can understand how different lenses work and you know, what things look like when they're at huge high resolution and how to make big prints. If I had my, my, my, 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 the semester to try out absolutely everything that they can with that one camera and I'd have on hand to other cameras as well.

Chris Grunder: 01:00:52 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. Cause you do still always have your iPhone on you. You know, I think I was in, let me see here. I was, I was in New York shooting like I was, you know, walking around on the street with a friend shooting. And I had like a a fairly like weird lens to be on the street shooting with.

Chris Grunder: 01:01:45 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, doing street shots really. And my friend was like, well, like, why aren't you shooting with a zoom? If you want that length, then you can get everything else too. I was like, no, cause this, this limits me. And like, I like having parameters. And also obviously like I've got, you know, the depth of field to contend with and he's 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, if, if I need the like, Oh my God, something unprecedented is happening.

Chris Grunder: 01:02:28 I have to capture this. I always have that thing, literally my back pocket to pull out and get the whole thing and I'll get it in four K video actually the whole time. Like it's not one of you to be taking photos of with my, my, 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 in the street with three or four cameras on them at all times and be prepared for everything. It's like, no, you should actually like maybe go out with just one tool and having the right tool and miss some shots as a result, but get the, get the shots with that tool that are exactly right.

Raymond Hatfield: 01:03:21 I couldn't have said it better myself, Chris, that was that was, that was perfect. And I think that that was the perfect thing to, 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 we do here, but I enjoyed it and I hope that the listeners will as well. And if they don't we'll, then they can tune this one out. So I know that

Chris Grunder: 01:03:46 I had a great time, too. Thanks for having me on, I can talk about this sort of stuff all the time.

Raymond Hatfield: 01:03:51 Yeah. Well maybe you should start your own podcast because I'll tell you why you got at least one lesson there. 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 online?

Chris Grunder: 01:04:03 Yeah. my website is Chris grunder.com pretty straightforward. My gallery is bass and rainer.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.