Michael Wesely - on photography

Your photographs are long exposures that last between days and years. How do you protect the camera (keep the film from being over-exposed, the camera from being knocked around?).

the tripod isn't a tripod as you know. think more of a steel construction, really rigid and heavy, that is attached to an open location in the building. it is always a different style tripod, and i have to plan for it to sit there "unremovable" for many years, which requires certain structural planning.

 

neutral density filters keep the material from getting overexposed. but there is no way to calculate the filters, i have to experience the time before i can repeat the shot.

 

Have you ever come back to a project a few months later and found that the camera had been moved, or finally tried to develop a picture and have it not come out?

there has been little loss of images over all these years. but once in a while there are problems with the tripod, when the house is being renovated, for example. then all sorts of people run around the camera and touch it, hit it. this is why i also like to keep the construction a bit oversized; so that once you see the camera you get the feeling: "do not even try to think about moving me".

 

These projects seem to require a lot of waiting for the final product. Have you always been patient?

since i do so many other projects, it is very easy to forget about a camera for a while. but sometimes, in a quiet moment, i think about this or that camera. sometimes friends ask about certain places they have been (right now its mostly at the moma construction site in nyc, where i have 8 cameras). then i return to the place out loud and also realize how fast time is passing.

 

How do you think the time that it takes to produce these pictures changes the way you perceive them? That is, how much does the long exposure time enable you to see what time does to the image and to you? Is there a time when you set up a photograph and something happened to change the meaning of the photograph for you?

no change of meaning, but the moma project was kicked off right before september 11, 2001. and for that reason (in the end the images will be exposed for four years), there is an easy link available for talking about the things that have changed since.

 

i love collecting time, so these images give me a lot of satisfaction.

 

usually photography deals with the exposure time as something very aggressive, because it is about ripping something out of the flow of time. the click and action is very aggressive. in the "low end" photography I do, there is no decisive moment, no aggression, just a special light and a changed space. and this is a big part of my interest. and for that reason I consider my way to be soft and slow.

 

This system of photography seems pretty clinical and very organized, but the photographs come out both messy and emotive. Do you agree? Was that what you expected?

I like that regular life is "writing" the photograph. some lines are added every day and in the end it has a very precise logical appearance, even if it looks totally messed up. we cannot access this logical system, we can only guess. and this guessing is in large part the poetry that, for me, makes these images rich.

 

You seem to be on a project to shape visual culture. What are the political or social implications, if any, of the images you present?

if you analyze my work long enough, you will reach a level of moral understanding that is very important to me, but not very visible. in fact we all love images because of the voyeuristic qualities the medium gives us.

 

there are two main reasons we love photographs. one is the moral aspect: in real life no one can look at another person's face for more than a glimpse without being violating or aggressive, so photography is a tool that makes every detail accessible for an unlimited amount of time.

the other aspect is the time frame: the 1/100 of a second that it takes to make these moments are not accessible to us usually, since they are so short.

 

so the long exposure times especially, give other qualities to the images. people disappear, only the rigid stuff remains in focus, etc…so the less you see, the more has to happen in you hear. these works are a lot about fantasy, individual fantasy, and not so much about voyeurism.

 

What are the emotional implications of your work?

everyone is kicked back to the basic questions of life: the fragility, our limited time frame in eternity. these concepts go along very easily with the images.

 

There are a few fundamental differences between Germany and the US –in Germany the fairly large social state pays for university education and for unemployment, whereas in the US many art students are either being supported by their parents or go into large debt afterwards, without much promise of work. Even though the economics are different in Germany, is there pressure from families not to go into art programs for fear that there's no future employment? Was it hard for you to get employed after you graduated?

it is an international conflict, i think, of parents not wanting their children to become artists, for a variety of reasons. and some just say: okay, it's your own life.

 

in my family nobody said anything bad about me studying art. I was never employed, i worked as a photographer to survive, which is very easy once you learn the technique. but being paid for my work sufficiently took many hard years.

 

How was your university experience?

i studied straight photo technique for two years, and spent six years as an art student. it all happened in munich.

 

german schools are usually well equipped and you could work all day if you wanted to. the limitation is more inside of every student. the more active you are, the more fun it is to study art. that way you can get to know your soul mates and have fun with them. this is key: discussing and working hard and a lot.

 

 

Are you still constantly looking for work, commission, projects…?

always.

 

Are you still passionate about your work? Have you ever lost interest and regained it? How?

the wish to do good photographs never left me. this is the motor: creating really good images.

 

How does being in the business of visual production change human interactions? Do you feel judged (or encouraged) by the way you look, not just the way the photos look?

the definition of an artist is basically created by society. and it is the opposite of what simple people do: they go to work for at least eight hours a day (artists work sometimes), they have one wife (we always have a lot to make us creative) and they get paid some money at the end of the month (artists get chunks of money for some work), and so on. i survive pretty well.

 

there are days where i feel really weak and then the judgement of others sucks. usually i am fine and do not care. i cannot care so much about what other people want me to look like. i just try to follow my ideas, no matter what it takes. 

 

One of your current projects is photographing the construction site of the new Museum of Modern Art in NY. Is it exciting to work with MoMA?

yes. it is a strange project. we are together for such a long period of time (with preparations and so forth, it will be almost six years) which is very unusual. the photo department has almost become an extension of my family, since i go there twice a year to check my cameras.

 

What do you want to do next?
more photographs in
Brazil.

 

 

Steven Falowski – on bodybuilding

When did you start exercising and when you being concerned about fitness?
I started exercising when I was about 14 years old and fitness didn’t really concern me until a couple years later. I’m 24 now so it’s been about 10 years.

 

Why did you start? How did you begin?
When I was younger I tended to be on the chubby side so kids used to pick on me. And I guess one day I didn’t like getting picked on anymore and it clicked and I started exercising and losing weight. I had no clue what I was doing so basically I starved myself for five months until I dropped 50 or 60 pounds. I went to the gym because I thought it was the right thing to do, and I guess you call that weightlifting. But maybe two years into dieting, 10th grade, I got more into bodybuilding.

 

How did the way you felt about yourself change as you began bodybuilding?
The driving factor in the beginning was I didn’t want to be fat anymore, I just didn’t like the chubby people were treated. I became more comfortable with myself and what I looked like. Part of it was that I started looking better because I was lifting. But mostly it was that eventually you grow up and you don’t want to think like that anymore – always thinking of what other people think and letting comments bother you.

 

After doing this for 10 years how do you maintain your body?
I wouldn’t say I maintain now, I still try to get bigger. But this effort is time consuming. I spend an hour in the morning running everyday and then I spend about 3 hours or so in the gym, every day. I go six days a week and take off Sunday…

 

Do you eat out?
Not very often. I do go out with my friends a lot, but you’ll see me drinking water while they’re eating or I’ll order the grilled chicken. It’s mostly a high protein low carbs diet. There’s numbers and figures for the amount of protein you take in for the amount of carbs.

 

So how many calories a day do you consume?

It changes every day based on how much I work out and what my workout is that day. It ranges from 1,700 calories to 2,300 calories.

 

That’s not that much.

No, well, it’s summertime, so…In the wintertime I’ll take in as much as 3-4,000 calories day to try to put on as much mass as possible, while in the summer I’m trying to keep my mass as light as possible. It’s more for the looks in summer, and you put on as much size as possible in the winter. I still eat low fat, but instead of taking in 30 grams of proteins and 25 grams of carbs a meal, I’ll double it. Then by the time you get cut in the summer, you’re bigger.

 

What’s the difference between a body builder and a weightlifter?

It’s a question of workout and mentality. Bodybuilding is more like body sculpting, you want your body to look a certain way, you want each muscle to be shaped a certain way. If I think one side of my biceps is more rounded than the other, I’ll put more pressure on it for the next few weeks. That’s why I call it bodysculpting. While a weightlifter, he or she goes to the gym for staying in shape, getting healthy, having flexibility, something to that extent. The bodybuilder workout is a strain – there is a lot more weight for a lot less reps, so its just a burst of energy that tires you out.

 

Did you have friends that did bodybuilding as well?

I really was all alone in the process when I started. I didn’t have friends who lifted with me or dieted. I was very influenced by what I saw on television. And when I went to the gym just to get in shape, there were these big guys there and that caught my eye more than just being healthy and in shape.  

 

 Did you compete?

I started competing my senior year of high school. I competed four or five times a year, between my senior year of high school and my last year of college. The business, I guess,  is like anywhere, it’s corrupt. A lot of it is basically run by companies who want to get to the couch potato sitting at home watching the bodybuilding. And there’s lots of steroids. 

 

Have you used steroids?
Absolutely not.

Is it hard not to?
In all honesty it really was, because when you are around people who are doing it, a business that’s almost requiring you to do it, its hard, really hard, to stay away form it. But I believe that its really better to do it the hard way and appreciate it more. I can really say that now, after working out for 10 years, probably getting what I could have gotten after 2 years on steroids, it still doesn’t bother me, because I know I earned it, and there’s nothing better than earning it the right way.  

Are steroids expensive?
Depending on what type you do it can cost you from $100-200 to $1,000 a month.

 

When did you start feeling more comfortable with yourself? At what point were you willing to take of your shirt in public?
The funny thing is, the first time I ever took off my shirt in public was my first competition and I was not even comfortable with that. The first time I competed I was about 5% body fat and I swore up and down that I was fat. And its one of those mentalities that you never think you look as good as you do. I guess in a sense it’s the equivalent of women’s body dysmorphic disorder when you see fat where it’s not there, or you always think someone is bigger than you. I’m still not confident taking off my shirt in public…

 

Every morning, when I get up, I go in front of the mirror for about five minutes. I will literally sit there and pinch skin to figure out where fat is on my body. To me, it doesn’t seem like I’m exaggerating bout from what other people tell me, that’s what I’m doing. And you kind of have the mentality that you never think you look good enough, so in some ways its good because it keeps you going to the gym, in other ways its not because its not healthy.


You hear [that you look good] from your friends. Because you’re not going to tell someone outside your friends that you don’t look good. But when you talk to your friends you think they’re just trying to you. In the back of your mind you always realize that if you’re working this hard its got to be doing something. I mean I realize I’m not waking up completely unhealthy or obese, but at the same time I just don’t feel I look as good as I want to look. 

 

Are you afraid of becoming obese, that if you don’t do it all, things will fall apart?

That’s a constant struggle. There are some days that I wake up and think I am completely obese and don’t want to go out, no matter how big the shirt on me is. I can’t cover up enough. It keeps you motivated as long as it doesn’t consume you and as long as you don’t think you are fat, or "my arm got small today"

 

 But you’re a med student, right, it would be a miracle of science for you to become either really skinny or really fat overnight.
Yeah, but you can’t get it out of your head sometimes…What I want for myself and what I perceive as myself is different from what I see in other people. I see nothing wrong with anyone who doesn’t work out, but I see it wrong with me.

 

What would you do if you met your ideal body?
I don’t think I ever will. Maybe someday I’ll meet that point, but I don’t know if I want to. I might lose my motivation: stop dieting, going to the gym.

 

So if you could trade in for your ideal body right now, would you want to? Would you even know it if you saw it?
I don’t know if I even have one. I do have an image I want, but I don’t know if there is a certain size or a certain percent body fat I want to be. Besides I enjoy what I do, and I enjoy the challenge of working to achieve something.

 

Are there exercises you like particularly?

It’s been so long I’ve become accustomed to it. There are one’s I don’t mind so much. If I had to pick a favorite it would be bench press.

 

When do you feel most proud of what you’ve accomplished?
The only answer to this question is everyday. As each day goes by I realize I am one day closer to achieving my goals. My proudest moments is when I realize that I am balancing my desire of becoming a physician, my quest in bodybuilding, and fitting in a normal life in the sense of enjoying the many other interests I have. This is something I do everyday. There are many days when this becomes difficult, in fact it is more days than not. But when I see myself living through each challenging day it just makes me want to push that much harder.

 

What do you want to do next?
Right now I am at the point in my education where I have to decide what field of medicine I want to practice. I have always wanted to become a neurosurgeon. So right now my energy is focused on achieving that as my goal. I have also been working on cars and motorcycles for many years, and love restoring and customizing them. I have just started working on another car and so I plan on devoting time to that. Its important for me to always stay active, and interested in many different things, especially interests outside of medicine and bodybuilding since those are my main endeavors.

 

 

Dan Marrin – on activism and religion

You work for a Catholic Church doing social work, can you explain the organization you’re working for and what it does.

I work for the Catholic Church of St. Charles Borromeo in Arlington, as their social justice minister/coordinator.  The church is your ordinary seven-days a week church…The social justice ministry within St. Charles is a pretty organic and open-ended network of services, advocacy groups, and charitable organizations in the Arlington County, DC metro, and state area.  It includes services for Community Organizing, support for the homeless, hunger relief, advocacy for affordable housing, letter-writing to legislators, emergency aid, missions in Haiti and the  Philippines, services for the senior community, and prayer and education on pro-life and nonviolence issues.


What are the benefits, limitations of working within a religious institution?

The constant reassurance that whatever we do, it's alright if we fail or fall behind because this life is the pre-game show to what’s to come. That can be quite comforting when you hit stumbling blocks: to look up and perceive the eternity of God’s kingdom.

 

I don't always see it, but every now and then, that sense of permanence can be quite uplifting. The limitations? After having gone to a fairly liberal and open college, finding a hard time talking openly about sex, sexuality, cynicism towards your government and local authorities, and the constant need to apologize after cursing.  (I FUCKING hate that last part-sorry...)

 

How did you get hired for this?
I've asked myself that a couple of times now, and I think there are a couple of reasons.  First, I got along well with the office staff when I met them.  Next, there's the fact that I've been able, more or less, at this age to afford living on about 21,500 per year with health insurance provided. Third, I'm definitely more bilingual than my predecessors and get along well with the Latino population of the church.  Fourth, I was raised with a real sense that one's religion needs to be integrated with service, and vice versa. I often have become cynical if my faith didn't talk about social service, and rather bored or hopeless if the activism I got involved in didn't bring up faith.

 

 How long have you been out of college? Did you find it hard to get a job? What do you think helped you get employed?

I have been out of college since June 2001 physically, and probably mentally since November 2001 when I realized my parents expected me to move out of the house. 

 

The advice I was given was to settle down in DC and find a job to just get by on while searching for something more fulfilling.  So, I did that.  I went from a PT night sales job, while not having to pay rent at my uncle's house, to a job transcribing senate and government hearings for the AP out of Largo, MD.  With that job came some good experience in transcribing, great touch typing abilities, and an overwhelming sense of frustration and cynicism towards government that led me to quit by May, when I was by then living in an apartment with roommates in Clarendon. 

 

Two months of more PT jobs, and once again dealing with folks back in NY who thought me crazy, led to me finally finding this job in mid-June at Saint Charles.  Then in July Father Creedon called me on my cell to say I had the job if I wanted it.  It's had its ups and downs, but I still think I'm doing a good job at it. I just wish we could make more advancements against what I see as a tide of conservatism that attempts to fuck almost all of our daily efforts, outside of advocating against abortion.

 

I imagine I've gotten employed because I came to interviews with great energy, know-how, a good attitude, education, and flexibility.  Also, I was willing to live with relatively low-paying jobs, 28K no benefits, 22K with benefits now, due to my age and idealism

 

There seems to be two broad categories of opposition: personal and political. Personal is all the individual action (veganism, aesthetic non-conformity, etc.), while political opposition pushes for systemic change. How much do these categories mean to you?  Which do you find more interesting or imperative?

I had an ex-girlfriend who was a vegan and did it out of political opposition to the meat industry.  It's fine as a personal choice, I guess, but you're not going to bankrupt the meat industry (which I'm not in favor of in the first place) by losing a few radical vegans here and there. 

 

Personal changes are great, in that they make sure that as the Bible says, we're taking "the plank out of [our] own eye before our brothers," avoiding hypocrisy.  And it has to overlap, right?  I mean the Civil Rights movements grew out of bus boycotts in Montgomery, Alabama, people taking the individual choice not to ride the buses, and growing it into a political movement.  I would argue that the sweatshop movement is the best follow-up to that, the best method of making personal choice that is conscious, political, and moral, and that could move into a widespread movement. Unfortunately, the war on terror has distracted us from that effort, unnecessarily so.
 
At the same time, I'm not all that in favor of political change, mostly because I think there's so much more than can be accomplished in our lifetimes.  When it comes to politics, the "Think Globally, Act Locally" idea really applies: listen, help, and fix Arlington and my parish environment where possible, and once that's good, move to communities close by, with an awareness of global interconnections, immigrants, money, soldiers, products and goods, and things like the sweatshop products in our local shopping malls.
 

What do you think are the big failures of the American Democrats? Or the American left, more generally?

The American left's agenda is nowhere right now.  It's reactionary/opportunist, and it's best represented in the fact that guys like Sharpton still have political viability when they say the right thing at the right time.  
 

The NY mayor’s race in 2001 best illustrates this problem: You had a Hispanic candidate, a Bronx boy, who loses to Mark Green with the white voters, because he was willing to talk with Sharpton. Then Green loses to Bloomberg because not enough black NYers would vote for a mayor who wouldn't talk to Sharpton.

 

Bloomberg, meanwhile, is himself a former Democrat who goes on the Republican ticket just to oppose these guys.  When things like that happen, you've got to wonder whether being a Democrat really can mean any one thing anymore, or whether it's a series of reactions and strategies of opposition.
 
I actually voted for Nader in 2000, because I thought that the guy was talking from his heart and had smart ideas.  In the years since, I realized how stupid I was, though with my heart in the right place: the Green Party has, as far as I can tell, no representation in Congress besides Bernie Sanders, who still runs as a Democrat, and hasn't built up statewide offices.  So, how the fuck can they expect to advance an agenda at the national level?  That campaign to me was about IDEALS, all reactions, signs, and symbols, musicians like Vedder and Patti Smith, poets, and artists without political clout, pragmatism, or a concrete plan. 
 

…we're not all that bad, but clearly we've failed in our campaigns of the last 6 years. Bush's party won overwhelmingly again in 2000 and 2002, even though we protested his party, platforms and the theft of the election. We're not doing our job.

 

Do you consider yourself morally conservative? Is this different from people you work with, or people with similar political views?
"Do I consider myself morally conservative?" is a far more interesting question than "AM I morally conservative?" it's much easier to say where I  stand as a "conservative," or "progressive" politically, than morally.  If a moral conservative would expect people to have more control over themselves, exercise greater personal responsibility, discipline, that'd be me.  However, does a moral "conservative" believe in hitting back at one's enemies, as political conservatives often do, or do they believe in self-control?  It's a tough question.
 
I think I'm personally pro-life and pro-self defense, and politically pro-choice and anti-handgun.  Does that make me morally conservative, maybe hypocritical?  I can tell you that many people who share my politics are less religious than I am, and in some ways that puts me on the morally conservative edge.  At the same time, I'm pretty progressive for a Catholic, so it's hard to judge.
 
The biggest difference between a moral conservative and a morally liberal or progressive person is whether they stop to ask the question "Who are you to judge?" in the course of examining the behaviors of people around them, whether they remember Jesus' words about the one who is WITHOUT SIN being the one to cast stones. I could never be the church's "sexual justice" minister, only its "social justice" minister, because I disagree with many Catholic attitudes around sex and sexuality.  For one thing, I know that I'm bisexual, though not actively so, and so many of the judgments conservative Christians make about homosexuals I feel are misguided (though I think I felt that even when I was 100% straight.)  For another, I think pre-marital sex is not immoral if done with someone you love, and that condoms should be used if you want to avoid childbirth.  The church is totally against me on both counts.  Here's an area where I'm definitely not a "moral conservative," though again we're talking about how I believe OTHERS should be free to act, not how I conduct my own life.
I'm in the middle camp of trying to avoid certain things, and trying at the same time to accept and learn from those who go the other way, whether it be alcoholics, addicts, people who indulge in promiscuity, homosexuals, convicts, et cetera.
 
At what point do you think your religious ideas are now? I feel like a lot of teenagers-20 somethings that are religious are in somewhat of a lust phase - really idealistic about the rightness and validity of their religion. Do you feel as impassioned as always about your belief? 
The lust phase, huh?  I don't feel as impassioned about Christianity as I know I was back in the summer of 1998.  I had been to this Bible Camp at the start of that summer that I entered with reluctance and completed with gratitude.  It was great, and I began reading passages of the New Testament on the front porch with my coffee in the mornings before my summer job.  That was great.  Since joining the church as an employee, strangely enough, it's been more of a struggle to have the same passion in my faith.  
 
I seem to spend so much more time doing damage control and planning than I am doing group prayer or really exciting Bible work, or faith sharing that is genuine, not mandatory as it often is in our staff meetings, that my faith has "dipped" a bit.  There's this feeling of utter relaxation that I have gotten in the past from three things: the voice of Bob Ross (the Joy of Painting) while I lie at home, the voice of Garrison Keillor (Prairie Home Companion) as I drive at night, or a good morning prayer service.  Just a feeling of utter relaxation, my whole body in peace, my eyes closed, feeling the tingle of the hairs on the back of my neck, and I believe that's what I call a state of grace.  I'm searching for that these days, and given the often fragmented and unfocused nature of my job, true grace can be hard to find.
 
What do you want to do next?
Specifically?  It'll probably be grad school after this job, either for film studies or maybe journalism.  Generally?  Be a light: I heard one morning the Fordham University graduation speech in which a guy said something akin to "There is a difference between violence and strength, between sex and passion, and between money and wealth.  Be a light."  I'd like to do that.

 

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