Craig Semetko
I really think that I need to bring this up right away, because it’s important. There’s a word that follows photographer Craig Semetko around like it was chained to his leg. Serendipity. There, I said it, and now we can move on knowing that this is a central concept in Craig’s work and life. He’s going to elaborate later in this interview, but I needed to preface it just a tad and take credit for bringing it up here first. It seems obvious once you view his photographs, and is something that I felt was prevalent upon my meeting with him to see them first hand, as well as something he wholeheartedly agreed with.
While this is the driving force behind the work, it’s clear that Craig is at the wheel. You can go a long way as a successful street shooter, and Craig is fully committed, traveling in fifth gear. With a background as a comedic performer and writer, humor is found consistently throughout his imagery. Not slapstick or over the top humor, but chuckle to yourself and nod approvingly kind of humor, infused with irony. There’s more though, as love, biting commentary, and an abundance of celebration are found by him as well - never inserting himself into the equation, but strictly a cultural observer recording the fleeting moments where humanity and diversity intersect.
I should make it known that Semetko photographs have quickly become some of my most favorite street photographs. That’s a tall order, what with his inspirations being Cartier-Bresson and Erwitt. In fact, the Almighty Erwitt is responsible for writing the forward to Craig’s first book, UNPOSED. Seriously, how does that happen?! Again, I’ll let him explain. Serendipity, indeed!
Bio -
Craig Semetko is an American photographer focusing on authentic human experience. Born and raised near Detroit, Michigan, Semetko became a professional comedy writer and performer after college and years later discovered photography as another means of storytelling. His comedic background has given him a highly developed sense of the absurd and ironic, resulting in a strong theme of humor throughout his work.
In his foreword for Semetko’s book UNPOSED, Magnum Photos photographer Elliott Erwitt writes, “Good photographs are tough enough to shoot. Really funny ones are even harder. Good and funny photographs observed in nature not arranged or manipulated but simply observed in real time with amazing consistency, constitute a minor miracle now presented in Mr. Semetko’s book…In my book, he is the essential photographer. That is, the one who sees what others could not have seen.”
Semetko was one of 10 photographers chosen worldwide by Leica Camera to be a part of its “10×10” exhibition celebrating 100 years of Leica photography. He spent three months in the fall of 2013 traveling throughout India for the project and the resulting work was displayed at the grand opening of the new Leica headquarters in Wetzlar, Germany, in 2014. His second book, INDIA UNPOSED, was also born of this project and was published by StreetView Press in the spring of 2014.
Semetko spent much of 2011 and 2012 working on a long term project on the United States. The project was partially funded by a successful Kickstarter campaign and Semetko is continuing work on the series.
Semetko graduated from Northwestern University’s School of Speech in Evanston, Illinois, and holds a masters degree in Consciousness Studies from the University of Philosophical Research in Los Angeles. He teaches workshops regularly for the Leica Akademie worldwide and his photographs can be found in private collections in Europe, Asia, and the United States. Semetko currently resides in Los Angeles.
Interview -
Michael Kirchoff: Thanks for joining us here at Catalyst: Interviews, Craig. I appreciate you taking time out of your busy schedule to help us understand more about how and why you make images. I know you came to photography later in life than most, can you tell us about how that happened?
Craig Semetko: For much of my adult life I was a professional comedy writer and performer for large corporate meetings. In the year 2000, I had a great three month job for Motorola that took me to England, Ireland, China, Japan and all over the USA. I was playing Elton John, Julia Child, and Austin Powers. At the time I didn’t own a camera, and I thought I might not see some of these places again, so I bought a low end prosumer Nikon kit. Outside Shanghai I took a photo of two peasant women going upstream transporting brush in a dugout canoe. When I saw the picture I realized it told a story and I had kind of an epiphany—“Hey, I’m an actor, I’ve got a lot of free time, maybe I could pick up photography as a hobby and tell stories in a different medium.” Shortly thereafter I became obsessed with the process and began photographing incessantly.
MK: Humor plays an important role in many of your photographs. Do you feel your background in comedy makes you hypersensitive to acknowledging or pre-determining that such an image may be coming your way? More often than not its a split-second decision that makes for success or failure. How do you think you’ve honed this skill over time?
CS: My background in comedy has definitely made me hypersensitive to irony and absurd things around me. I was walking through a park in Paris one day when I noticed a man in the distance walking towards me with what looked to me like a tampon sticking out of his nose. This seemed funny. I was using my manual Leica M and quickly checked my exposure and zone focused my lens to set the distance I’d have to catch him at. I slowed down and when the man entered the zone of focus I stopped walking, brought the camera to my eye, pressed the shutter and continued walking. The irony of this well dressed man walking confidently through Paris without a care in the world but with a wad of gauze sticking out of his nose was funny. My comedy antennae lit up when I saw him in the distance. I think you only notice this kind of thing if you already have a kind of absurdist view of the world.
Bob McNeely, who was the White House photographer for President Clinton, heard me talk at a photo conference once in New Jersey. Afterward he told me he knew a couple other photographers who hadn’t started photographing until they were forty but still achieved some success rather quickly. He attributed this to already having a clear world view formed by the time they finally did pick up a camera. Many of my photos are humorous because I’ve seen the world in a humorous way my whole life. So I’ve been honing this skill a long time.
MK: You’ve spoken of this in the past, and it also came up during our meeting at the Los Angeles Center of Photography Exposure Reviews recently. What we refer to as serendipity plays a major role in your process. After many years of making photographs that take advantage of this concept, do you feel that it is something that can be directed or nurtured in some way? Or, is it something so unpredictable that we must simply feel fortunate for its occurrence?
CS: It’s both. One way to bring more serendipity, or luck, into your photography (and life, for that matter) is to consider yourself lucky. People who consider themselves lucky seem to have more chance opportunities than those who don’t. But they don’t really have more chance opportunities—they just see more chance opportunities than people who consider themselves unlucky. Psychologist Richard Wiseman did a study in which he gave two groups of people—one group identified as lucky and the other as unlucky— a newspaper to look at with the instructions, “Count how many photographs are in this paper.” The second page of the paper contained a printed message that said, “There are 43 photographs in this newspaper.” The font size of the lettering in the message was over two inches high and it took up half the page. The “lucky” subjects noticed this message in seconds, while the “unlucky” ones took about two minutes to count all the photographs and never saw the message.
There are more studies that suggest this but generally speaking people who consider themselves lucky tend to be more relaxed, more flexible, and more open to new experiences. So consider yourself lucky and you will be!
There are, however, those times when serendipity comes and seems to have nothing to do with being open or feeling lucky. In those moments you just welcome it and be grateful.
MK: If such an idea exists, what does a typical creative day consist of for you? Do you consider yourself a workaholic, or do you keep a schedule of time for family, socializing, vacation, etc?
CS: That’s a tough one. I don’t have a lot of imposed structure in my life, and that is both a blessing and a curse. Not having a regular schedule is liberating but also inhibiting—I think creative people need boundaries to reach their potential, otherwise they’re all over the place. It’s a balancing act. I don’t have a “typical creative day”—I always have a camera with me so I’m always on the lookout creatively in that sense, but some days are spent editing, some sequencing…lately I’ve been spending a lot of time remodeling a condominium, which has nothing to do with photography, per se, but is very creative. I read books, I go to movies, I research things, I spend a great deal of time with family and friends…I would never be accused of being a workaholic, but I’m usually doing something creative and when I am working I work hard.
MK: How do you know if you’re ever really done with a specific body of work? Do you ever go back to revisit images or collections to improve upon what you felt was previously finished?
CS: Sometimes you just have to end it. At least that’s what I tell myself. I’m currently editing and sequencing photos for a project on the United States that was originally intended to last 18 months. Another major project and book interrupted the US work and I’m now finally finishing it after 8 years. Frankly, I could continue work on it but now feels like the right time complete it. Ultimately I’m glad it took so long; I think it will be a much better book because it spans the second decade of this century and that added time has allowed me to see the photos in a different light, making choices clearer.
MK: You have developed a wonderful relationship with Leica cameras, both as an instrument and as a brand. How did this occur and how has it developed over the years?
CS: This is about a 20 minute story but I’ll try to condense it. After I returned to the US from the trip abroad in 2000, I went to a camera store to buy a different zoom lens for that Nikon 6006 I had. The salesman asked me what I liked to shoot, and I told him I liked to photograph people and I traveled a lot. He showed me a Leica M and gave me a beautiful catalogue filled with famous Leica photographers and their work. I took it home and was up going through it all night. I had gone into the store to buy a Nikon zoom and walked out with a Leica M6ttl and 35mm Summicron instead. I immediately became obsessed with the work of Henri Cartier-Bresson and the fact that he used a Leica virtually his entire life. I traveled and photographed for eight years (I was still writing and performing during this time) when some crazy serendipity hit and I found myself in Durango, Colorado with my first exhibition at a photo gallery. It was called, “Street Photography: From Classic to Contemporary: Henri Cartier-Bresson and Craig Semetko.” It’s unbelievable, I know.
The gentlemen who sold me that Leica eight years earlier—his name is Nigel Skeet—had become a close friend and remains one to this day. He suggested I mail the exhibition invitation to Leica Camera. I did, and to my amazement they invited me to exhibit at their headquarters which at that time was in Solms, Germany. This was January of 2009. In October 2009 I was asked to be the keynote speaker at the Leica Historical Society of America’s annual meeting, and my exhibition went to the Leica Gallery in Frankfurt in November of that year. In January 2010 the show was at the Leica Gallery in Salzburg and Hendrik teNeuse of teNeuse Publishing came to the show and asked me if I’d like to do a book with them. He told me my work reminded him of Elliott Erwitt’s (Elliott has also used Leicas his whole life) and that he published Elliott’s books as well. Nine months later my first book came out, UNPOSED, with the foreword by Elliott Erwitt. Not long after that Leica asked me to be one of ten photographers chosen to do ten projects consisting of ten images each. This became the 10x10 exhibition inaugurating the new Leica HQ in Wetzlar, Germany, and celebrating the 100 years of Leica photography. And because of my acting background, Leica has asked me to host a number of their events. If you had told me I’d have this relationship with Leica the day I bought my first one I’d have thought you were dreaming. I love the brand and cherish my relationship with the company and my friendships with the people that work there.
MK: Do you care to tell us about what you like to use the most? Film or digital? Favorite lens? Technicalities like these are also of interest in your creative process.
CS: I am shooting digitally almost exclusively now. While I will always love film and am extremely grateful I learned how to shoot on film, I find digital photography much more convenient. It’s unpleasant to travel with 40 rolls of film. Since I started in 2000, my preferred camera has been a Leica M. If I had to pick one lens to go on my M10-P it would be a Leica 35mm 1.4 Summilux. A close second would be a Leica 50mm 1.4 or 2.0.
MK: Do you feel that your use of these cameras and lenses has meant that you may not have been able to make the photographs you have with anything else? Are they now an extension of you?
CS: I do feel that way. I find Leica M’s to be the simplest, most accurate camera for me. As I said in a video on the M, for my personal work, it’s the path of least resistance between what I see through the viewfinder and a finished print. Once you get to know it, a Leica M is simple to use and perfect for working in the street. When people suggest that I could take my pictures just as well with a big Canon or a Nikon I point out that I couldn’t because they would never get off the shelf. The size and shape and quality of the Leica M has made it indispensable to me. I guess you could say it’s an extension of me. If for some reason I’m without my M in public friends and family will ask where it is. It’s the perfect companion.
Having said that, the Leica Q and Q2 are wonderful new cameras that are fully automatic. I could foresee using one of these for my personal work as well. I suspect I’ll be getting one in the future. The size and weight are even more diminutive than an M. For video and commercial work, I am using a Leica SL2. While larger than an M or Q, it has the simple Leica layout that is easy for me to navigate.
MK: Once you’ve achieved finding your particular style or voice, do you ever feel the need to break out and follow a different path?
CS: It’s funny you should say that as I’ve been wrestling with that question a lot lately. I’m known for being out in the street, shooting everything spontaneously. Who knows, maybe I’ll do a 180 and start setting everything up! I try to be open to everything and lately I’ve felt the need to expand what I do. Stay tuned!
MK: For you, what is it that makes for a successful photograph?
CS: When I teach I speak about “The Photographer’s DIET.” DIET is an acronym for Design, Information, Emotion, and Timing. It’s easy to get one or two of these elements in a photo, but if you get three or all four you’ve got a great shot. To me, emotion is the most important element. I’m trying to get a well composed frame that has a sense of geometry, context, timing that hits the viewer emotionally. It’s hard to beat an audible “wow” or laugh when someone looks at a photo. I’m trying to tell an interesting story in a single well frame.
MK: I’m sure that there are many over the years, but is there a recent story of interest that you’d like to impart on us regarding your activities while working on location?
CS: I was in Varanasi, India looking at a wall on the banks of the Ganges with an amazing philosophical poem written on it called, “Ask Yourself Who Am I?”, I took a couple photos just to document it for myself but then thought this could be a good picture if it had some life to it, something dynamic in the upper left quadrant to fill out the composition. I thought maybe I’ll wait for a cloud or something…and I’m not kidding, the instant I had that thought a black dog appeared out of nowhere and ran—he didn’t walk, he ran—to the spot I’d hoped something would appear, and stood there with an expression like, “Well, here I am, take the damn picture!” I got off two frames and he was gone as fast as he came. Serendipity came and completely freaked me out. I stood there for a while, wondering what had just happened. I later learned that dogs symbolize spiritual guides or liaisons to the afterlife. Considering what was written on the wall, this blew my mind further and made this a definite story of interest for me, at least.
MK: This story is but one instance in your career. Have any events taken place where you might question what it is you are doing as a street photographer, either negative or positive?
CS: That’s a very pointed and timely question—something exactly like this happened to me about a month ago in Chicago. I was walking down the street and a woman with her preteen grandson were walking past. The woman and the boy were both heavy, and their faces and hair looked strikingly similar. I took one frame from my chest as I walked past—I never brought the camera to my eye. I continued walking and when I was about 20 feet away I realized a woman’s voice had been saying, “Sir? Sir!” It took me a minute to turn around and realize she was talking to me as I couldn’t believe she would have noticed me taking the photograph. I walked back to her and she said, “Why did you take my grandson’s picture?” This left me temporarily speechless. She didn’t say, “You’re not allowed to take my grandson’s picture” or “Delete the picture you just took of my grandson”—I’m always ready with answers to those questions or comments—but she seemed to simply want to know why I took her grandson’s photograph. I stammered and stuttered a little and told her I was a photographer who worked in public places and I photograph people and she and her grandson looked interesting to me so I took a photo without really thinking consciously about it. Which was true. She said, “Oh. Okay. I just wanted to know why you took his picture.” And we smiled and said goodbye. But this encounter really made me think. Why DID I take that picture? It happened so fast it was more reflex than conscious thought, but what activated that reflex? The truth is she was holding his hand and they walked side by side with a similar gate, similar body shape, similar hair and similar faces, and this looked oddly funny to me. So I took the picture. Later, I saw this photo was not very good technically or compositionally so I deleted it. But her question lingered with me for days and made me question my motives in photography and comedy for that matter. I’m still thinking this one through.
MK: When we met, and I learned of your process and successes in the industry, there was something more that I witnessed. With all of your travels, endorsements, books, and following, you still have the exuberance for what you do that someone who just discovered the passion for this art form has. I suppose we call this passion most of the time, but it can often wane after some success. For you though, it seems to have grown more in you than so many I’ve met. How do you keep this feeling alive to such a degree? Do you think that this is where you will be at for the rest of your life? (I”m sure many would hope so).
CS: I’m flattered! Look, everybody has a different metabolism. When I was much younger and strictly an actor a physician told me that people in show business were “wound a little tighter.” It’s a generalization of course, but I think, at least in my case, it’s true. When I get interested in something I go full steam ahead. This was particularly true of photography. But as Cartier-Bresson said, “Photography is nothing—it’s life that interests me.” I view photography as simply an extension of acting and writing. As long as I have a passion for life, I hope I’ll have a passion for documenting what I see.
MK: In speaking to future generations of photographers, do you have any words of wisdom to those setting out to make their mark in the photographic world?
CS: It’s so hard to cut through the clutter now, I have great sympathy for those just starting out. The most important thing is to have a point of view. Don’t copy the latest trends, find your own vision and voice. This comes with life experience. I didn’t start photographing until I was 40, and as I said earlier I had already formed a unique way of seeing the world and it transferred to my photographs rather quickly. Make photographs that are authentic to your vision. To paraphrase filmmaker Jim Jarmusch, originality doesn’t exist, be authentic—authenticity is everything. And have at least one other source of income. Sad but necessary these days.
MK: How do you see your work progressing into the future? Do you have anything new you are currently working on that we should be on the lookout for?
CS: As I mentioned, I’m finishing up work on my USA project. I expect a book on it will be coming out in 2020. I’m scheduled to have an exhibition of the USA work in the summer at the Leica Gallery Boston. After that, I’m open to ideas!
You can find more of Craig's work on his website here.
All photographs, ©Craig Semetko.
