SmartShanghai | Interview: Ryszard Horowitz

Interview: Ryszard Horowitz

By Frances Arnold, Oct 20th, 2011 | In Art

Magic Rabbit (1992)

Part of the China-wide celebrations marking the Polish presidency of the European Union, a retrospective of renowned photo-composer and early pioneer of digital effects photography, Ryszard Horowitz opens today at Wheelock Square. Ahead of that, SmartShanghai caught up with the Polish-American artist to chat about what's next for photography, jazz as a muse, and just how he creates his surreal masterpieces.

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SmSh: First of all, welcome to Shanghai! Can you start by explaining your genre of art -- you call yourself a "photo-composer", what is that exactly?

RH: Since I was in young, my interest has been taking in creating images in front of the camera as opposed to taking them. For years I learned all the the routine stuff, how to use the camera, and that was really about capturing reality as opposed to staging imagery. I did lots of portraits of friends of mine – mostly jazz musicians and their concerts, but I was not really satisfied with that. I trained as a painter and grew up in that environment. I felt there was no reason not to use photography in the wider sense, that is assembling various pieces and photographs taken in different parts of the world and bring them together in a seamless manner as if they were one.

The whole process reminded me of what composers do -- they take a number of sounds, initially unrelated and put them together to create a harmony, to work as a unit. In the same way I take a bunch of images and put them together. I adapted the existing practice of photo composition to my own work. In time it stuck with me, so that's how I describe myself.

SmSh: You trained as a painter in Poland -- in what way is painting part of the photographic images you've been creating since then?

RH: I'm very conscious of colour, form and composition in exactly the same way as if I were working on a canvas or some other hard medium. With the immense control you can have over photography, there's no reason to give that up, to rely on an accident -- you can inject pictures with any colour, atmosphere, structure that you want to. It feels like I've come full circle from painter to photographer, but there's still that exchange and of course I still sketch my work first. It's about processes.

Nedda (1969)

SmSh: The control you talk about -- in the days before PhotoShop, how did you achieve that? Take Nedda, a work from 1969 -- how did you achieve that seamless effect?

RH: People always ask how I did it before the days of computers! I've always had this kind of crooked imagination I guess... Actually it was very simple: at the time I discovered that you can actually create a lot of very exciting images working with existing technology. With Nedda, it's all about depth of field -- using a very small aperture you can see a lot of layers in front of the camera in focus, so with this one I had a real egg shell close to the camera and the girl is laying about 10 feet away. Because of the lighting, it looks identical, they all merge into one.

It's possible to line things up in this way -- either as tricks or in a more profound way. It allowed me to create a style. Before computers I allowed myself to put many different photographic elements into one piece in a seamless manner -- not as a collage, not as a cutout, but all as one.

SmSh: And in terms of equipment, what are you using right now?

RH: I've been working with Canon cameras for quite sometime, not only because they're very good but also because I'm part of a prestigious group of photographers called Explorers of Light -- there's about 20 of us and in exchange for a number of images annually we get free access to their equipment, any lenses or cameras that we need.

SmSh: Lucky you! And what is it that inspires you to compose images in this way, as opposed to, say, photographing reality alone?

RH: I try to make visual statements, and not to ask the viewer to agree with me necessarily. All that matters is that they evoke an impression, some interest, that perhaps relates to the unexperienced, an unknown history, or reminds them of something. Many of my photographs prompt questions like what happened before, what happens afterwards... I try to make movement an intricate part of my pictures.

SmSh: Nedda in particular, but also later works too are decidedly surreal in composition – were the Surrealists a source of inspiration to you? Or does it come from elsewhere?

RH: [Surrealism] is definitely something that interests me. My imagination is like this. I grew up in Poland under Communism -- life was surreal, so many juxtapositions of all sorts of crazy things that now you'd find almost impossible to believe. Life was fluid, we didn't know whether we were coming or going, what was expected of us, we had to deal with all kinds of indirect ways of communicating.

Fake Dali (1970)

You know the saying reading between the lines? It was like that. You couldn't be direct in your expression and you could not be outspoken, so I was intrigued by literature or artwork that was indirect, not descriptive in a literal manner.

I grew up on Kafka and Beckett, for example, Luis Buñuel cinema and I admire painters like Magritte. Most of the ideas I have express an image within myself, but of course, whatever we do is a reflection and an experience -- I realised some time ago that there's nothing new, all you can do is elaborate, extract elements and rework them based on our own aesthetics. Surrealism was amusing! It's more interesting than making very flat statements. That's also why I found it so difficult to show purely what's there. Images that are put together, that aren't instantaneous can have a very surreal quality to them.

SmSh: And jazz?

RH: Jazz is extremely influential on me. I'm enchanted by beat, by rhythm, by melody and also improvisation. And also I'm amazed when I see jazz musicians regardless of their age how much they enjoy coming together, working both as individuals and also as a group -- the smiles, the warmth!

As a young student in Poland I had a chance to listen to Amercain radio. There was a show called Jazz Hour presented by a wonderful man called Willis Conover whom I was lucky enough to later meet. In communist Europe, where jazz was not really favoured -- at least in Poland -- it offered an escape from they grey reality that surrounded us. There was so much happiness and enjoyment in listening to it. I should also mention that I come from a very musical family and I always had a sense of rhythm, sound and all these things helped me to a great extend create my work. Even now I listen to jazz when I work, I find it incredibly uplifting.

SmSh: What's next for you?

RH: I always experiment, I can't stop working. I have this tremendous urge to do things and be creative. I love what I do and feel very fortunate that I can survive doing what I love. I'm very curious as to what others are doing, what's going on, new technology... experimenting.

Escape (2003)

SmSh: And what's next for photography do you think? You've seen so many advances in available imaging technology -- has that diluted the art?

RH: In a general sense, photography is in danger of becoming mundane, repetitive. People are driven by technology and for me, what will make it survive is content -- as long as people have something to say and understand the difference between working within tools given to them. People are keyboard motivated. Whether they do it here or the other side of the world, the effect is very similar because the tools and effects are the same: once they come across a filter that changes colour for example they might think 'Wow, that's fantastic, it looks so creative' but they might not realize that at the same time a 100 other people are of course thinking the same. You have to use it but you can't be motivated by it. You can't be driven by technology, it should come from the individual first, and then of course make use of all those magnificent tools.

I believe that in time only the best will emerge and that the general public will begin to appreciate the difference between something really creative, and something mundane and obvious. It's like the olden days with painting -- it was much more difficult to fake painting. You knew how to paint or you didn't, and if you paint well, you're more or less talented. Some painted masterpieces, some painted junk. It's the same with photography -- there's a lot of junk and once in a while you see something outstanding. It's a question of the general public appreciating the good stuff. Anyone can have a camera and Photoshop -- but it's what you do with it. It's very hard to control, but no, I don't subscribe to the idea that photography is dead.

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Photo Credits: Middle shot of artist, Celestyna Krol; Bottom image of artist with 'Nedda', Tim Mantoani.

Ryszard Horowitz in Retrospective opens at Wheelock Square today and will be on show until 8 November 2011. For more, check out his website here. It has quite an awesome intro.

Tagged: Photography Interviews Art