Vindauga

William Wegman has accomplished several things that I have always dreamed of doing. First, he has his name in the art history books. This dream seems more vain and less attainable as time goes by, but it is still a dream none the less. Second, he has made a living from his art. There are several ways to argue his accomplishment of this second point, but without becoming mired in the semantics of “art” I believe he has accomplished it better than I ever will.

The above encompasses the reasons and ways I respect and admire Wegman. I have several problems with him outside of the accomplishments I outlined. Many people say Wegman is a sell-out because of his Weimaraner photos, but I do not agree. He has many photos, even some with the dogs which are very good; unfortunately these good photos do not sell due to consumers’ interest in cute dog outfits or publishers reluctance to change the safe marketable product they have created. His first Weimaraner photos were very palatable, and aside from his limited success as part of the bad painting movement, they were his first publicly acclaimed pieces. Somehow he dug himself into this rut of dogs, and along the way he had this brilliant or horrible idea to dress them up like people. If you talk to Wegman you can quickly see that he doesn’t love dressing up his dogs. Oddly, he seems to really like photographing them, but not necessarily the playing dress up part. Or perhaps when I had the privilege of talking with him he was having some tough withdrawals (at the time there were some rumors Wegman had just finished a drug rehab program) that made him a little less than pleasant about anything. Who knows?

[I should disclaim that all of my interactions with Wegman took place about 10 years ago, so anything I put in quotes, or claim he said is just to the best of my memory, which is very fallible.]

When I met Wegman, I was still suffering from a misconception I still occasionally find myself slipping into; I assume everyone has the same thought processes I have. This misconception causes difficulties in communicating, and leads to many disappointments. I love photography and I frequently try to push it on others thinking they will enjoy it just like I do. Those who do enjoy photography, I expect to have the same feelings about the technical aspects and processes. These ideas and expectations have repeatedly been proven wrong. Joyce Tenneson and Wegman are two great examples of photographers who don’t share my enthusiasm for technical aspects of photography.

Wegman was scheduled to hold a workshop and have an exhibit at my university. As one of the few seniors whose art emphasis was photography, I was selected to be his assistant (this was a very big deal to me at the time). I had no idea what being his assistant would entail, and I was scared I was not qualified. The big day of the hands on workshop arrives, and I had scouted out a few locations for us to shoot and gained the appropriate permissions to do so. Everyone participating in the workshop has their camera in hand, including Wegman and myself, and off we go to the locations. (Now that I think about it, possibly part of the reason I was selected as his assistant was that we both shot with the same camera and I would therefore be more capable of menial tasks such as loading his film.)

This is the part where expectations and reality either diverged or collided. I love film testing. I am relatively picky about which film I use, and therefore I expect everyone else to be the same. Wegman wanted me to pick for him. I picked. He composed a shot and turned to me and said, “What should I shoot at?” Imagine a dumbfounded Wah wishing for the more complicated question; had he asked me how many lumens there were, I would have been more prepared. I regained composure and asked if he had a shutter speed or f-stop preference (thinking he tells me one and I will give him proper exposure with the other). Best I recall, he made some hand gesture to wave me off and repeated the initial question. Since, I have no idea what part of the image he wants to be in what zone (we were shooting black and white) and I am now scared to ask, I just give him ambient readings around 1/60th and let it go.

So Wegman is more about composition than exposure, no big deal. He is also more about having someone else process and print his stuff. I tried to ask what his preferences were for his prints, but the response was similar to the metering question. Despite some disappointments, assisting Wegman was still a really big deal to me, and I probably was still harboring my fantasy of him being so impressed by my darkroom skills that he would immediately hire me as his personal lab guy, which would pay tons of money. I spent most of the night in the lab processing and printing both my work and his work. We both had some pretty good shots, and I spent a substantial amount of time dodging and burning them until I was satisfied with the quality of the prints.

The next morning, everyone involved in the workshop met in the photo studio for a critique and discussion. I was there early so I could show him all of his prints. He wasn’t very concerned, he told me to set them on the table. Everyone was laying out their work on the table for the forthcoming critique, so I laid out my stuff and Wegman’s beside mine. We had a brief pseudo-critique and then Wegman gave away his prints to student’s who wanted them, and signed them as well.

The workshop ended the same evening that his gallery show opened on campus. I tried talking to him a little more that evening, but he seemed less than interested and almost annoyed.

Several months later I was at the house of another art student who participated in the workshop. Standing in his living room I was very surprised to see one of my photographs matted and framed hanging on his wall. I asked where he had gotten one of my prints (which I still have the negative for). He seemed offended and said it was one of Wegman’s, and that he had even signed it with a personal inscription. Eventually, after offering to produce the negative, and explaining I had printed Wegman’s work and placed it next to my own at the critique, I was able to convince my fellow student of whose work it really was.

The fact that he signed one of my photos and even believed it to be his own makes me a little happy and a little pissed off at the same time. Maybe even if I never become a famous photographer one of my photos can be sold as by a famous photographer, albeit not me.