New Photograghy 2009, Leslie Hewitt 2010: An Interview

Leslie Hewitt is a photographer and sculptor currently represented at the Museum of Modern Art's New Photography 2009 exhibition (through January 11, 2010). A short video interview with Leslie by Eva Respini (Associate Curator, Department of Photography, MoMA) is available on MoMA's website. The following posting is my own interview with Leslie, which I asked her for in order to answer some questions I had about her work. Once we got started, I immediately abandoned the notes and questions I had prepared and simply let the dialogue proceed frankly.

Leslie Hewitt is perhaps one of the most elegant, educated and thought-full artists working today. She is mature, articulate and has time on her side which is evident in her youthful curiosity, patience and control of the temporal elements in her work. Leslie received her BFA from Cooper Union in 2000 and her MFA from Yale University in 2004. I am very pleased to present here a phone conversation we had yesterday while she was driving back to Harvard University where she is currently a Radcliffe Fellow. This text was slightly edited during transcription in order to clean up the stray habits of discussion and make it more readable. What is missing, however, is the sound of her smart, clear voice and her candid laughter.

Drew:
I went to MoMA Friday night and saw your work there. Congratulations on the exhibition.

Leslie:
Thank you.

Drew:
What was the selection like? Were you part of the whole process or did they just announce that you were going to be in it?

Leslie:
My experience thus far is that the curator contacts you and there is a certain level of engagement that has to happen. I do not think I have ever been in a show when that was not the case. I met Eva Respini about four years ago and she saw my work at the Studio Museum exhibition Frequency. And then we met and had several studio visits and conversations. I don’t think I was always privy to her interests in curating a show eventually with me included. But we did have a series of conversations around the work that I was doing. And then in January we had another studio visit and she let me know she was working towards the next New Photography exhibition, which they always do and is always the last space after you go through the collection with some of the more historic works...and then you end with contemporary propositions. So she was looking at artists and I was one of them.

Drew:
So are those pieces that are there in the show part of the collection now?

Leslie:
There is only one that is part of the collection.

Drew:
Is that the “Ebony” one? (Riffs on Real Time)

Leslie:
Yes.

Drew:
OK, because there was a triptych on the left and then a diptych to the left of that. Is that right?

Leslie:
Yes.

Drew:
So who chose the other work? Was that something you got to choose or did they look at your work and say “I want this piece”?

Leslie:
All of the photographers in the show also work in other mediums so we went through a phase where she was also interested in some other works but then towards the midpoint she realized the show would be most effective with two dimensional works. So it was a give-and-take. Initially I did not want the Riffs on Real Time series but she really fought for that, to have that present. And I guess I am only saying that because that is an older one. So that was the compromise.

Drew:
Did you know the other photographers/artists in the show prior?

Leslie:
I know Walead Beshty pretty well. Not personally but I have had the longest awareness of his practice than of anyone else in the show. Sara VanDerBeek is another artist who I knew prior to the exhibition at MoMA. But Walead’s work I felt like I followed a bit more.

Drew:
I guess what I want to ask about is that the name of the exhibition at MoMA is New Photography 2009 and yet I feel like a lot of your influences come from the 60’s, such as Joseph Kosuth’s One and Three Chairs or even earlier artists such as Magritte and Duchamp...or David Hockney, who is later. What are the influences? I am referring to your set-ups that remind me specifically of One and Three Chairs by Kosuth.
Leslie:
Well I would definitely say I am aware of it but for me a lot of my references come from outside my art practice. A lot of my references or inspirations come from French New Wave Cinema. I also love Third Cinema. The risks they were taking in narrative is important for me on the subjective position. Many of the films...like Godard’s early films...were, in that era, fixated on the importance of the personal narrative. The subtext is always political. It’s on the periphery. The center is always this personal aspect. And I would say the reality of Third Cinema gives me the courage to take certain risks. That is where my initial interest comes from in terms of a visual narrative. It is more visually playful and imaginative. This lineage promotes freedom to project a personal narrative and give it a frame that is political or a frame that is social. A frame that is socially and politically aware.

Drew:
And also your narrative is both the context as well as the temporal elements in your triptych. When I went to see your work at MoMA I was much more engaged than I thought I would be. I watched the interview online first with you and Eva and you were talking about the triptych being upside down. That almost seems like an art joke. But when I went there, I got to see what you were trying to do. There was something with the quality of the plants that looked quite different because there was a different sense of gravity. Was there any tongue and cheek in that aspect?

Leslie:
No. One could say that is embedded in photography. There is an aspect of photography that does connect to that effect. There is no mystery that both of those effects come along at the same time. Thinking about knowledge and awareness of optics and how our eye works and how vision works and how photography plays into that. It’s definitely not something that I have to try hard to engage with. But for me I was really thinking more in terms of gravity…thinking about perception and making it a physical experience…making the experience a visual experience but something that is a process of working through even in one photograph and I think I do that in different ways like in Riffs on Real Time it's through all of these layers. So in essence you are looking at a flat surface, so there is no trick of the eye, really, by allowing the frame or the edge of the photograph to always be visible in the second photograph. To me that is another dismantling of the illusion of photography. I feel like a lot of my work is a bit dry in that way...that it reveals the mechanisms that are at play. So, yes it's turned 180 degrees but you also have a sense that there is a human hand in it. There is this dialogue that I am hoping, at least visually, that happens between me-the composer of the still life...or the narrative...and the viewer to put together, take apart and then put back together. For me it's more about slowing down the visual process than it is about creating an illusion. I kind of reveal how it's being done.

Drew:
I think the reason it did work for me when I saw it present was that you are taking pictures of objects and by having it upside down you are almost saying that the end product is not the photograph that MoMA or anybody wanted in the New Photography 2009 show because it's still an object and you can turn it right side up if you wanted to....it's still a physical object you can play with. When I first saw your work I thought I was too distracted by the concept-the conceptual delivery and not understanding, as you say, the political/social message in it. How do you balance the message and the delivery so it doesn't just come across as minimalist and so you don't lose somebody either way?

Leslie:
I don't ever think it could be void of it. Not to go overboard with Third Cinema...because for me Third Cinema really represented that...and I think French New Wave did too, because you need both, right? If you are trying to tell a story a certain way that's evocative of something, a previous form may not be suitable for it. So in a way you do have to engage in aesthetics. You have to engage in the way something visually looks in order for the work to be evocative. So I think I also value that and I value the aesthetic quality of the work that I am making but I also hold it accountable, and I hold myself accountable, by thinking about the social and political context that I am in. Because I don't necessarily think that we are ever void of that. So even if it is a completely minimalist sculpture it's still made in the year that it was made, right? It's still in context whether the work engages it directly or not.

Drew:
Right...and also you are using a lot of found objects, either books or headboards and these are very domestic objects. I didn't see, when I was looking at your work online, any industrial materials. And then I also thought a lot about the minimalists: the male minimalists versus the female minimalists, like Eva Hesse, who was a minimalist but she had a completely different approach to minimalism. Hers was one of loss as opposed to the absence of the adornment. I think your work evokes more her approach for me than say someone like Duchamp or someone later like Tony Smith.

Leslie:
I agree. What I really like about Eva Hesse's work is that it is very evocative of the body without representing the body. And there are other artists who I really look towards. I really love Carl Andre. And I also love Gordon Matta-Clark...even though he is not necessarily considered a minimalist, it's how he engages with architectural space in fragments and how he deals with time and entropy.

Drew:
While we are talking about Eva Hesse...what I really like about her work is that she is able to grasp a lot of social issues without being obvious. She never really shows the female body, for example, she's using tubes and cubes and different things and she doesn't play on her background at all, she's always in that minimal state. So what I want to ask you, as an artist, is how you edit yourself by saying "No, this might be too much if I do this" or "I need to do this if I have to get my idea across"? You had one piece with all the Roots books together, which I really like. It could be anything from a grave to a raised garden bed...it had so many different meanings to it. So how do you edit yourself and say "I need to have Roots here" as opposed to just books?

Leslie:
That particular work was really specific. I would not create that piece again.

Drew:
Why is that?

Leslie:
Sculptures take on a different quality for me. There are some sculptures I have made, like Grounded, that don't have a direct reference embedded in it. The Roots sculpture was a little bit different because I was thinking about the archives in a really specific way...and also about recalling the first edition of it and I was thinking about the original and what the original means. That was such an emblem of so many different things that I really needed to use it, physically as an object in that particular piece. I have done other work where that's not the point so the reference doesn't need to be there. In the Riffs on Real Time work, where it is a larger series and there are very potent and latent references that come in, I pull back. And then there's some photographic works where's there's nothing, where everything is opaque and everything has just its form-formal presence. So I think with the photographic works I allow myself the push and pull to go back and forth because in a series duration plays a different role. With the sculptures my intention is to make an autonomous object. And the Roots sculpture was where I made that exception.

Drew:
Where was that shown?

Leslie:
It was shown in an exhibition in the Thomas Dane Gallery in the UK called Civil Restitutions.

Drew:
I remember seeing the volumes and around the volumes was a border. What was the border signifying?

Leslie:
It was wooden planks. It was Cypress wood. It hovers a half an inch from the ground. It is not necessarily supposed to signify anything...it was holding the books together but not necessarily. So, in my mind, I was thinking about a book shelf that fell. In this instance you couldn't even take a book out because it would change the balance of what was remaining together.

Drew:
Hmmm...so this is completely different than what I wanted to ask you, this whole interview, which is good. Can you just talk about some other references, you've already talked about cinema. I think it is great that you are not just feeding on ideas from the art world, I think that dilutes work because it's too referential to other art. I like that you are reaching out to other media. Is there anything in literature that has been a big influence on your work?

Leslie:
I do have a lot of references to books in my work and though I can't say that I have a favorite essayist or novelist I will say that I do definitely engage in that way. I think about how text functions. I view it also as another time-based form. So obviously photography is another time-based medium...as is film...and I also understand the narrative as we experience it. I don't deal with it in terms of an oral context but definitely as a narrative in terms of text and how it plays out over time, which is a really important aspect to me. I think that also influences me in terms of how I relate to the viewer. I see that as a really intimate relationship. I think that many novelists and essayists are not concerned with an audience in its grandeur but individual readers. I also think about viewers in that particular way.

Drew:
So what are you working on now, what's your direction? This show at MoMA is looking at you as a photographer. I assume you are still doing sculpture and photography and other media. What are you interested in now? Where do you want to go next...in the next couple years?

Leslie:
I am still working photographically but I am doing a bit more research on optics...optics from the 17th century and also from the 10th century. I felt really fascinated with what was going on politically and socially in the mid-century in the United States and internationally and how that changed our view, or way of looking, and so I am actually going farther back and thinking about the 17th century world and specifically how it relates to how optics changed the view, and the same with the 10th century.

Drew:
So when you say the 10th century are you referring to the House of Wisdom and the Arab studies with glass bulbs filled with water?

Leslie:
Yes, I am really talking about The Book of Optics from the 10th century in what we would call Iraq today...in Baghdad, where a lot of these studies took place. I am interested in the camera and photography and how Optics played a role in it. So that is the particular research I am doing now in the Radcliffe Fellowship where I am and hopefully working on another body of photographic work. Not necessarily retelling the story but using it as platform to address where we are now because we have always lived in a global world so there's a quality I think I am searching for by researching this...and obviously that will then affect how I photograph. So this next series will be in black and white.

Drew:
Are you actually shooting in black and white or are you just taking the color out?

Leslie:
Yes, shooting in black and white.

Drew:
What technically where you doing in the pictures in the show? What kind of cameras were you using? Is it film you are using for those shots?

Leslie:
Yes, I always use film.

Drew:
And that's a whole other temporal issue, that you have to wait for it to be developed or to develop it yourself. I have also been shooting film recently and it is amazing to wait up to a week just to see what you were shooting and it actually makes you think much more about how you are going to set something up.

Leslie:
It's very true...it's very true. With the works at MoMA I used a medium format camera.

Drew:
Everything in MoMA was big and glossy...and not just your work, everyone's. Your one photograph was probably one of the smaller photographs. Is that just a size you need to do or are you thinking about the surface and the size of the pictures when you do these new projects? Or do you just feel like it has to be that size that you are showing now?

Leslie:
Well no, I think I always make things in relationship to the body. So it's important for me especially when there is a snapshot involved that it's larger than what it was...where it can exist along the lines of being something uncanny. It's so familiar yet unfamiliar. So I gauge that depending on the work. I always work in the range of thinking about the body. Not thinking about something smaller than the viewer can imagine engaging with, almost in a confrontational manner.

Drew:
Leslie, thank you very much for your time. Good luck with your fellowship at Radcliffe.

Leslie:
Thank you as well.