Andrew Moore

This year George Eastman House is celebrating ten years of the “Wish You Were Here” travel photography lecture series. But if you know the Eastman House, these are not the kind of postcard memories the title of the program may evoke. The series is known for presenting the work of photographers who consistently challenge our understanding of place and the people within them.

Such a photographer is Andrew Moore, who in our brief time together used words like “bittersweet” and “cyclical” to describe his work. Moore’s father was an architect who presented him with a respect of space at an early age. He would eventually choose photography and while at Princeton University he had the privilege of learning a great deal from photographer Emmet Gowin. Of course, through his work, it may seem that he has become an architect of sorts anyway. With minimal process, he interprets those places that seem to exist somewhere between what has been forgotten and what defines a community. His latest work is an exploration of the seemingly empty and fallen city of Detroit, Michigan. I met Andrew about 20 minutes before his lecture. His plane was delayed and the evening’s schedule was rushed a little, but you would never know from his welcoming, honest demeanor and generosity of time before the evening’s presentation of his work.

When did you first become aware of George Eastman House? The Eastman House was the first public collection to acquire my work, in 1986, an early montage piece. In fact, it may actually be 2 montages. I was studying photography in the late 70’s and was aware of Eastman, Rochester, the museum. I had a private dealer and she sold a couple of pieces to the Eastman House. So it’s kind of like a homecoming for me.

How did photography find you? My father was an architect but also was a kind of amateur photographer and I shared a little darkroom with my brother when I was 13 and took a lot pictures. I got into painting when I was in high school. Then when I went to college, I thought, “Okay I’m going to be an architect,” but at that time post-modernism was really in the forefront and that was mostly paper architecture, it wasn’t really about building things, it was more about design and drawing, ideas and theories which was great, but I really wanted to make things. So when I was at Princeton I had a very good teacher named Emmet Gowin who was a professor there and I was his apprentice for about three years. I learned the 8 x 10 wide format, how to handle sheet film. Color came of age at that time, we had a color darkroom and I used to put the prints into color chemistry by hand, so I had a great education. Photography really combined all of my interests. Architecture, travel, print making, painting and narrative could kind of eventually get wrapped up in it.

When I first saw your work, it was clear that capturing “the space” is the most important thing and that your respect for the space is what makes the photographs so powerful. The work is very much about the space. I don’t see structure as constraining space but bringing it to life. Whatever I’m looking for, the first thing I’m looking for in the picture is how alive that space is.

Would you rather people come away from your images with a feeling for the beauty of what has been left behind or a statement on where we might be headed? I think it’s a little bittersweet. Hopefully it’s not just purely nostalgic or sentimental as in “oh, what a shame what’s happened.” More about a spread over time, almost an empathy for where it’s been, what it’s come to today and maybe a little bit about where that might lead to in the future. But what it’s really about, time goes through the cycles, busts and booms, ups and downs, civilizations rise and fall and to capture a little bit of that cyclical feeling in the photographs.

Was the timing of the Detroit photographs and the economic downturn an accident of sorts? You were originally going there just to shoot some old theaters at first. Yeah sort of, the serendipity of getting there just at the right time. And now it’s become hugely popular to work in Detroit. I started working Detroit before the economy crashed so everybody only thought about Detroit having some bad parts to it and it was still just limping along.

How did you find some of these places? I work with local people, often kids, the 16 and 17 year olds sometimes, who really know the city. Or often times, through people who are friends of mine who are essentially outsiders and explorers. So the really young urban explorers, and then I also do research on my own and contact the business men and real estate guys, and so forth, those people who really have the power to get access to places that are obviously locked down but still functional

How much time do you spend in a given location? Once you’re in one of these abandoned spaces you could be in there for days, which is kind of cool and you can take your time. Sometimes there can be a level of anxiety that once you get in you can’t make too much noise or the light is changing. I’m very dependent on natural light. I don’t use anything artificial so that one of the great compelling forces of a given location is the shifting light. One of the biggest technical problems I have these days is the film popping on overloaded exposure. I’d actually like to talk to the technicians at Kodak to see what they might have changed with the actual density of the base. It has a tendency to kind of shift more now.

As the tools do constantly change what have you resisted and what have you enjoyed about the technical improvements of photography? I’m a second generation guy. I grew up with analog and optical printing, later in my career I have shifted over to digital, but I’m still shooting on film. I feel like I’ve gotten the best of both worlds, shooting on film, great lenses, and then scanning it. Part of my training was in print making so I love making prints these days because I can just sit in my studio and print all week until I get it just right. It’s nice to know how it feels and I think print making is a big part of my process. Digital offers certain freedoms that you could never do before. I shoot digital for assignments, and with people, you have to know that you have the image, but there’s nothing like a beautiful 8x10 negative. Especially for making a giant 70 x 90 print.

Because you’re aware of how space influences us, do you have any requirements for a gallery showing your work? I just recently had the Detroit show at the Akron Art Museum and the curator up there painted the walls a sort of deep blue and bright, rust red, and it looked great against the white borders of the prints. So that’s the first time I’ve actually had somewhat non-standard walls and for that show it was superb. And now that I’ve seen that, I’m more interested, especially if you can get a little darker hue on the wall, even a middle grey and the colors can look incredible. One of the things I like doing now, I like showing the prints without glass - the print is mounted either die bond or aluminum and then it’s framed but there’s no spacer and there’s no glass, no plexi, no laminate, it’s just literally the naked prints surrounded by a frame. And so there’s no reflection, no glare. That’s an ideal way to show a photograph. I much prefer my pictures without glass.

And finally, being at Princeton when you were, are you looking forward to the lost tracks of Springsteen’s “Darkness On the Edge of Town?” (laughs) Sure, although I much prefer, ah, what’s the White Castle movie?

Harold and Kumar? Yeah, for the first one they shot up there in Princeton. That’s funny.

###

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention his reaction to a part of the Q & A that followed his lecture that evening. A museum patron asked if he had ever considered the decay and ruins of New Orleans for his next series of photographs. His answer felt like an honest definition of what kind of photographer he chooses to be. Moore continued that he felt the sorrow of that tragedy had been explored in such a capacity already, that he did not want to produce any work that might betray the extent of that sorrow. It seems Andrew Moore discovers where his camera is needed versus capturing something less than what the art form asks of him.

www.andrewlmoore.com

Where to buy Detroit Disassembled

To learn more about the upcoming Wish You Were Here guest lecturers, click here to go to the George Eastman House website. For more information on how to get involved with the Eastman Young Professionals, please contact us at eyp@geh.org, or find us on Facebook.

Tweet