from the series Owner of This World © Shawn Records
Shawn Records is a Portland-based contemporary photographer. His work is in the permanent collections of the Portland Art Museum, LightWork, and the Museum of Contemporary Photography and has been published in The Wall Street Journal Magazine, New York Times Magazine, Contact Sheet, and DoubleTake. He was recently interviewed by Amanda Musick for our Contemporary Photographers Series (CPS).
Your family is found in many of your projects, it is evident that family relationships are important to you. Your sons are frequently seen in Flaming Energy Ball 2, your project centered around basketball. In At a Loss, you are photographing scenes and moments related to significant changes within your family. How do you take moments that are so personal to you and make them relatable to viewers?
One of the main driving forces in my work is simply the authentic curiosity / fascination / sincerity of my relationship with the subject. One of the things I’ve learned along the way is simply that one trick to making work that people are actually interested in is simply being honest enough that they believe you. Flaming Energy Ball 2 was a little scary to put out into the world, simply because I thought the concept, on the surface anyway, was so self-indulgent and possibly even dumb, that there was no way anyone would care. I put it out there anyway, simply because the more I thought about it, the more I realized that it was honest and mattered to me. The work itself became a therapeutic exercise in a way. I was really pleased when Blue Sky Gallery chose to show that work a couple of years ago.
Who are some contemporary artists that inspire you, or from what other areas of life do you draw inspiration?
Within the photo world, there are many who I still pay attention to and regularly find myself inspired by - Alec Soth, Ron Jude, Joel Sternfeld, Mitch Epstein, Doug Dubois, Zoe Strauss, Gregory Halpern, Melissa Catanese, Ed Panar, Robert Adams, oh man, I could go all day… I’ve also got a few friends whose work regularly challenges and inspires me - Alexis Pike, Nicole Jean Hill, Doug Dertinger, Laurie Blakeslee… Outside the photo world, I’d say that I’ve listened to enough hours of This American Life and Radiolabthat there’s definitely some sort of influence there at least in the sort of narrative structure that I’ve been playing with for years. I think there’s also something in that narrative structure that comes from the world of graphic novels - Chris Ware, for example.
from the series Flaming Energy Ball © Shawn Records
Your work, both commercial and personal, has a poetic thread running through it. You seem to observe moments and situations similarly, but I’m wondering if you approach your commercial work differently from your personal projects?
When the stars align, the approach is one and the same. Unfortunately, the stars are rarely in alignment. I’ve got one great commercial client who, in hindsight now, represents the perfect commercial relationship. They're a local real estate development company, who reached out through word of mouth years ago. They needed someone to photograph their buildings, but didn’t want the standard architectural pornography with its saturated colors and extreme angles. So, we’ve kind of figured things out over the years and now they give me lots of freedom to basically just do whatever I want and make on-demand books for each of their projects… I photograph each of the projects they work on before, during, and after construction. But the work’s not just exteriors and interiors- it includes portraits of the workers as it’s going up and lots of still life and detail shots. Basically, I get to put on a hard hat, shoot whatever I want at these sites, and then make books out of the pile of pictures. I do need to keep their final goals of marketing in mind, but really, this has turned into a really fantastic situation for both of us as they’re getting something unique and special and I’m getting some pleasant and steady work out of it that can then help hone my skills and finance my more esoteric projects. On the art-side of my photo life, my financial goal has always been to simply break even. I've had a couple of years where I ended up with a little extra in my pocket at the end of the year, but that’s pretty rare.
Another example of when everything is perfect is years ago when I did a commercial job through Wieden & Kennedy… a big ad agency here in town. They were great to work with and did things exactly as I realize now, they should work- they simply brought me in, showed me a half-dozen of my own photographs that they’d pulled off my site and said that they wanted to spend a couple of days driving around to some specific locations and making photographs that look like those. I was terrified the whole while, but really, it was great. Since then, I’ve learned to relax a little more.
That said, it’s not always that dreamy. Sometimes assignment work is simply too far removed from what I’d normally do that it requires more of a stretch of comfort. I try to avoid those situations by being really upfront with potential clients about how I work. For example, I tend to show up as just a guy with a backpack and a tripod… not a guy with two assistants and a van full of gear. I make that clear when I talk to editors and art directors. When they hire me, they’re not hiring a big crew and a production, but a guy with a camera bag and a tripod who’s happy to spend all day figuring things out.
from the series Hero © Shawn Records
I've read that your project Hero was about trying to find a connection between your own life and the journey of a classical hero that is often found in literature and film. Owner of This World also has a strong, more obvious, connection to cinema. What films and/or literature do you most draw inspiration from?
Inspiration suggests an apparent link. I’m not sure that I can name one, with the exception of Seinfeld or Curb Your Enthusiasm. Really I think there’s something inspirational in those shows in the way that they a) draw attention to the mundane and b) play with narrative, jumping from one thing to another, and eventually circling back to the starting point at the end. These are definitely things I play with, but without a laugh track. I’ll admit, sometimes there is a punchline though.
from the series Owner of This World © Shawn Records
Do you have any advice for an art student, specifically a photography student, who is about to graduate college?
Sure - don’t worry so much about what to make work about. Instead, tap into what you actually enjoy doing and care about and let the medium follow your life and interests. That is, quit worrying so much about being a photographer and just photograph your concerns about being a person. If you work on living the life you want to live, the curiosity and analysis you put into that will give you something to make work about.
On a more practical level, I’d also advise that there’s absolutely no shame in having a pleasant, low-stress day job to pay the bills.