Well, I spent about a decade researching a photographer for my PhD. I went through archives, I interviewed people, I read all that was published about him, pored over his contact sheets, but I never got the chance to speak to him directly because he died the year I was admitted into the program. Here are some thoughts.
- It takes a long time for people to tell you interesting things. Initially, they will either consider they don't have much to say, or they simply won't understand what you want to know. So it's a kind of double blind, and it can lead to very awkward first contacts.
- If you're lucky to have a second contact, or to chance onto someone who also gets you quickly, you will learn interesting things, but it's mainly the canned version. Everybody has their canned biography/statement/views, the cassette you start whenever someone broaches a specific subject. Not a bad thing to have, you need it anyways.
- But the real interesting things happen once you have enough to talk about, and when that allows them to tell you something original. Which means that you, yourself, must be interesting to the person you're talking to. That's highly variable.
- Many artists are very quiet, not the wordy kind. Both the awkward and the cassette are to be expected. And that also goes when they talk to each other. Big-name-A won't be discussing the finer points of aesthetics when meeting other-Big-Name-B: it's most likely they will get plastered and talk shit. They will think clearly and deeply about ideas in the actual process of making something, and even then, there's a lot of automatism going on.
- Which isn't to say that they're illiterate or that they don't care about concepts and ideas. Au contraire, these matter a lot to them, but they won't always spend the same time talking about them than applying them. Some people are incredibly well-read, profoundly curious and original, but it might be a slog chatting them, especially if you're a stranger.
Do I regret not having chatted the photographer I worked on? Yes and no. Yes, because it would have been unique, but No because it could have been an utter, useless failure that would have discouraged me, and never allowed to complete and publish my research.
Like Nièpce did with View from the window at Le Gras
