A Conversation with Errol Sawyer

Jul 15

Written By Caesura

Excerpts from Mathilde Fischer’s interview with Errol Sawyer (2000) are republished here with permission. You can find the complete version, as well as selected works by Sawyer, on the artist’s website.

What do you think of the old Chinese saying: “A picture tells more than a thousand words’?

I think it’s true if the picture is good… and a picture is good when it leaves room for you to imagine. A good picture results from a subconscious dance between being present and not being present. A photograph, or any image for that matter, should not only articulate a point in time and space but simultaneously provoke a re-evaluation of that particular point. It should stimulate our perception of what we take for granted about physical phenomena. That’s why it’s so important to leave a picture as it is…

What does it take to be a ‘good’ photographer?

Personal integrity.

Coming to terms with the Beast within and possessing enough strength of character to accept what you see. Assuming that what you see is worth noting and having the courage to presume that it would arouse the same interest in someone else.

On a romantic plane: following your own voice, your own vision, and working at it.

Ideally, one should go out every day, camera in hand, and attempt to capture every interesting person and event that crosses one’s path. However, my experience has taught me that it is beneficial to leave my camera at home from time to time. The pause allows me to refresh my perception and provides insights about our condition that exist beyond the photographic perspective.

Most photographs are realized by chance encounters in day-to-day intercourse with life.

Themes arise after realization of a number of images within a certain time frame. The most important thing is to find an image that strikes you. That’s it.

A pattern forms over time and, if alert, you can take note and attempt to ‘go with the flow’ at least until you or someone very close has had enough.

To catch the significance of an event in a fraction of a second, ‘the decisive moment,’ as Henri Cartier-Bresson expresses so accurately, is what makes a snapshot into a real picture.

I don’t think anyone is going to argue with that statement.

Most describe it as giving order to chaos.

However, I prefer to define it as ‘Real Intelligence.” That’s when the mind and the heart function as a unity, not separate entities!

The result leaves the impression, as in any piece of personal self-expression, that by virtue of some cosmic alchemy, we are communing with forces beyond description whose presence resonate in our beings to a degree as sure and ethereal as when we are moved by great music.

I admire not only the work of Cartier-Bresson, but, just as importantly, his philosophy. An idealist.

Like Ingmar Bergman, he knew when to stop and possessed the strength of character to carry on in another direction when the Muses failed to respond. Recently, I had an opportunity to enjoy a documentary on the man and his work. What struck me most was the early footage of him wearing a long dress coat, topped by a medium-size beret, playfully winding his way through a herd of Sunday strollers, like a butterfly amidst a field of flowers, whose finished prints are as close as we can get to a visual symphony of craftsmanship, was shown lumbering his massive frame into a modest kitchen and, without missing a beat, placing ‘test prints’ into a microwave oven.

It’s interesting because both seem to be above the process of taking themselves too seriously, and yet are at the same time totally engaged in their work.

Do you belong to a group of photographers?

For the time being, I am not affiliated with a group of photographers. As an American, I was drunk on the virtues of ‘liberal individualism’ and held as suspect any type of group affiliation, much to my personal detriment, I should add. Given the onslaught of ‘globalization’ and its pernicious side effects: the emphasis on speed and form at the expense of reflection and substance, I realize that in order to evolve as a craftsman it is imperative that I communicate with like-minded spirits.

Walter Benjamin wrote an essay [called] “The Work of Art in the Time of Mechanical Reproduction” in the book Illuminations. He stated that the birth of photography made a big change because of the original being a negative from which you can print pictures, endlessly. Now there is the internet. How does this affect your work?

We learn from Walter Benjamin that, although the ‘exhibition value’ of photography begins to displace what he describes as the ‘cult value’ of original art, by the same token, it is critical to keep in mind that this displacement is not absolute.

The ‘aura’ of original art, as well as its ritualistic effects, remains embodied within the ‘cult’ of remembrance: of loved ones, absent or dead; places or events… no longer accessible. This property offers a last refuge of the ‘cult value’ of a picture.

Just as painters, once they adjusted to the initial shock, overcame their fear of photography and even began to use photographs to assist them in their work (Francis Bacon, Breitner, and Picasso come to mind most immediately), I’m seeing more and more of my contemporaries employ various aspects of the digital evolution (as opposed to ‘revolution’) in their work, although the “jury is still out” as to the ultimate benefit.

As a romantic I hesitate before the explosion of technological advances that overwhelm our senses, daily. I measure myself as a craftsman in proportion to the degree of consciousness I bring to bear upon a given event at its inception, not at its conclusion!

That is the reason I refrain from the use of Photoshop and the like.

Is the idea of making a statement in a picture appealing to you?

Yes, the idea is appealing, but after many failed excursions in that direction, to put it simply, it was not meant to be.

“New myths are born beneath each of our steps,” Louis Aragon once wrote in The Peasant of Paris… It’s a part of the process to comment on what you see around you.

I dismiss the notion that photographers in particular and artists in general can escape responsibility for incorporating some part of their experience into their work, regardless how small.

The moment a word is written, a line drawn, an impression made in clay, metal, wood, or stone it reflects YOU and, as I stated earlier, you had best come to terms with that if you expect to evolve.

Paul Valéry made this lucid statement about his relationship with the works of art displayed in museums: “A work of art provides me with ideas, teachings, not pleasure, since my pleasure is doing, not having things done to me.”

He also wrote: “the purpose of a work of art is clearly and simply, to make people think…”

Why did you work in the fashion industry?

Because I had something to say, and because I assumed other people would be interested. You should understand, it seemed at the time, late 60s early 70s, still possible for a photographer to have a positive influence on popular perceptions of “beauty” via the fashion industry.

Wasn’t it Nietzsche who said: “No artist would be satisfied with the world as it is for one moment.” I appreciated that minorities, despite their fervent pursuit of fashion trends and substantial consumption of cosmetic products, were being poorly represented in advertisements, publications, and catalogues. The exceptions fed upon racial stereotypes and caricatures of the minority experience. I attempted to redress the imbalance but I succeeded only marginally.

Although I benefited from the support of many people of good will on both sides of the racial divide, and devoted myself to a degree that is impossible to measure, ultimately, by commercial standards, mine was a Pyrrhic success.

Reger, a self-described critical artist, in Thomas Bernhard’s novel Old Masters, assaults The Romantic with these words: “The so-called free man is a utopia and the so-called free artist has always been a utopia… You will not find a single so-called old master who has a good character and good taste, and by a good character I mean quite simply an incorruptible character.”

My fifteen minutes of fame aroused personal demons that proceeded to occupy larger and larger portions of my spiritual life; the same spirit that gave birth to the perception I had of myself as an artist. While I earned substantial sums of money and enjoyed virtually all the trappings of success, inside I was wasted. Ironically, it seemed that the more I worked the less I could express myself, out of fear of jeopardizing the gains I had made commercially. I took an extended sabbatical in order to return to my roots, which is where I reside at the present.

Do you agree with Susan Sontag’s opinion in On Photography?

Without going into specifics, let me summarize in this way:

Susan Sontag is a ‘cultural critic’ and novelist and I am a photographer and ‘critical artist.’

She leads with a formidable analytical mind and then permits her imagination to take flight while I rely primarily on my intuition to guide my expression and then attempt to interpret the meaning of my condition against the background of my environment.

Although the two are not necessarily incompatible, often, perhaps too often, the one displaces the other and confuses the issue of our purpose in life.

After I first read On Photography, as excerpts in the New York Review of Books during the early 70s, I felt useless.

As though someone (Sontag in this instance) had punched me in the stomach, relentlessly, without giving me a chance to take a breath.

Now, after thirty years or so, I appreciate that, indeed, I have gained from the experience and take heart in my awareness that I have learned from her perspective. Which obliges me to sing in reverence to Emily Dickinson:

I died for Beauty — but was scarce

Adjusted in the Tomb

When One who died for Truth, was lain

In an adjoining Room —

And so, as Kinsmen, met a Knight —

We talked between the Rooms —

Until the Moss had reached our lips —

And covered up — our names — [1]