Kathleen Clark
I did something for the first time here, just now. I had a long two-paragraph intro for Kathleen Clark that I’d written before we were fully done with the interview - and I just simply deleted it without a second thought. They were glowing words for someone whom I look up to, and I’ll admit it was a bit gushing. I have to be honest though - it was fluff. As much as I’d put into it, I realized that it did not do justice to the person I was writing about. The plain and simple truth is that Kathleen Clark is a no-nonsense, no bullshit, kind of person. You only get straight talk and honesty from her, and that is the most valuable kind of person you could get to know. I will say that I’d mentioned that she is one of a handful of photo luminaries that I truly admire, and her straightforwardness, intelligence, insight, and honesty are the reason why. I value her words and her opinions, and if she were to tell me something I didn’t want to hear, I would take her words to heart, and still think quite highly of her. Sometimes it’s not what you want to hear, but what you need to hear. So I’m calling this intro done and moving on to what is most important - the words, thoughts, experience, and photographs of Kathleen Clark. Peace.
Bio -
Born in Vancouver, Washington, Kathleen Clark lives and works in Southern California. She received an MFA degree from the University of California, Irvine and a Bachelor of Arts degree from The Evergreen State College, Olympia, Washington. Her work explores themes of history, social justice, language and home. As a member of The Girl Artists of Portland, Oregon (1980-87), she was a recipient of commissions and grants for collaborative performance and installation works from The National Endowment for the Arts, the Oregon Arts Commission, Seattle Arts Commission and Portland’s Metropolitan Arts Commission. The group exhibited at COCA, Seattle, the Portland Art Museum, Southern Exposure, San Francisco, LACE, Los Angeles, and PCVA, Portland. Over the years she founded and directed several Los Angeles art and photography galleries; served as editorial photo editor at Los Angeles magazine, LA Weekly and Sunset magazine, and directed publicity at the NW Film Center in Portland, Oregon. She also served as photography faculty at USC and Art Center College of Design, where she continues to consult.
Interview -
Michael Kirchoff: Thank you for taking the time to be the subject of this latest interview, Kathleen. This one will undoubtedly be a little different than many of them, as you’ve worn many hats in the photographic world, and you offer up more than one way to see things, so to speak. I do want to start as usual though and ask you what it was that brought you into the visual arts in the first place. How did it begin for you?
Kathleen Clark: My mother could draw, and my older brother was (for the longest time) known as the artist in the family. We would all pitch in and help make an endless array of craft projects. Meanwhile, my father had learned B&W photography while stationed in Alaska in the Airforce and was a good color transparency shooter. I got my own Instamatic with flash cubes in 9th grade. It was just snapshot fun. I fell hard for ceramics in high school and was dedicated for a few years. I loved the craft, the science, the fire and the camaraderie. With photo and printmaking classes in college, I realized I could use glaze to photo silkscreen onto porcelain and things got interesting. It didn’t take long to decide I no longer needed the clay and I shifted to photo.
At The Evergreen State College, there were famously 11 darkrooms but not so many photo students. I had one almost to myself and my work-study job was managing the large campus open darkroom. From the get-go, I was trying to use photography to make atypical photos like cyanotypes and xerox transfers. Bea Nettles’ book on alternative photo processes was popular, so I made cyanotypes, xerox transfers mixed with pastels, and when color Xerox was developed, I used it to print. The colors were really saturated high contrast and after school, my first solo shows in Seattle and Portland were color copier portraits made on coin-op machines. There were also extensive critique sessions and reading art theory and criticism.
Years later, I learned to use 4x5 and medium format cameras. At UC Irvine in grad school, (where my friend Catherine Opie designed and ran the state-of-the-art darkrooms), I had a B&W mural lab all to myself for about 2 years. It had sinks that must have been 5 feet wide each and I tried printing enormous sepia tones and Van Dyke brown prints until I realized they were irrelevant for the concepts I was working on. There was also a giant remote-control enlarger on a railroad track. I was never very into tech, but I did love that thing.
MK: Is there anything from your past that you feel has had a dramatic influence on how you create images today?
KC: I think the most effective influences weren’t so much about photography, but more about learning to think ideas through and find ways to present them. There were people along the way who kindled a need to demand more from an image.
MK: In addition to your photographic work, you also had an illustrious editorial career as Photo Editor at the famed L.A. Weekly newspaper and Los Angeles magazine. How did this come about? Was this a better move for you while still staying in the photographic realm of working. Was it photography first or photo editing first?
KC: That seems a bit long ago now. More recently, I’ve been freelance editing for a mix of photographers as well as research and assigning photography on occasion for Sunset magazine’s Travel section.
I was pretty busy with art long before I went into editorial. I had some solo shows as well as a lot of exhibitions on the West Coast with the collaborative group of performance and installation artists (The Girl Artists), I worked with for 8 years through the 1980s. After getting my MFA in 1993, I had a photo exhibition at the Eye Gallery in San Francisco, and I was poised to keep going. I also had to survive though, and my part time job as Assistant Director at LA Film forum, wasn’t cutting it. I had been interested in curatorial or teaching, but when the Photo Editor position at LA Weekly opened, I went for it. I really enjoyed the work. I designed a darkroom and found I loved the assigning. I loved matching the right photographer with a story. I loved the stimulation of working with writers and editors and discovering the many, many layers of Los Angeles. I also got to shoot a little, so that was great. I paid off my student loans and could afford to live in L.A. and eventually buy a house and have health insurance, etc. The drag was that it took my brain in a direction very far from art. As a result, for 15 years or so of editorial gigs, I lost my exhibition momentum.
The silver lining is that when I stopped the all-consuming editorial work, I instantly had ideas again for image making. Some good, some not so, but still, it was nice to know I could think again after a long time away.
MK: What led to you engaging the photographic art community as a gallerist for the Clark/Oshin Gallery, and then the later Spot Photo Works? I don’t remember the timeline of all of your endeavors specifically, though I believe there was often some overlap with all of these duties. Am I correct in that assumption?
KC: Who can keep track? Most of my life, I found I was most gratified when making something happen. I had been Artistic Director at The Woman’s Building before going back to grad school in 1991 and was familiar with running a gallery. When the economy tanked in 2008 and journalists and editorial photographers were out of work or under worked, I knew I needed to create something. I could make a really nice exhibition program and build a good spot for a community to gather. Selling wasn’t my strong suit though. At Clark/Oshin and Spot Photo Works, I found that, 2 years was my limit for each gallery to donate my time for free and also to ask artists to take a chance on me. I could build it and they came, but they rarely bought.
MK: How do your methods differ concerning how you respond to photographs in either of these positions as a photo editor or gallery director? Is there any connection in how they have informed your photographs?
KC: They just have different agendas. There is an aspect of commerce to editorial photo editing and an aspect of serving a larger narrative. A publication also has to sell. That said, since I came from art before editing, I always tried to make editorial work more creative or have more of an edge. Photo editing for other photographers is different, because I am not controlling the content or how to conduct the shoot. I’m more often editing their existing images to make the overall appearance of their work look stronger for web site or portfolio or whatever. There’s a certain amount of seduction, I suppose with both art and editorial. With a gallery, I didn’t want the work to look like commercial work. I sought compelling work with ideas that stood on their own.
MK: Yet another aspect that I have overlooked is the fact that you also were part of the faculty at the Art Center College of Design. Was this as beneficial to you as any of the other careers you’ve had?
KC: Before Art Center, I ran a Visiting Artist Lecture Series and was a Teacher Assistant in grad school (for Daniel J. Martinez, Pat Ward Williams & Anne Walsh) so teaching was happening already. Then I taught night classes for 3 years at USC while working at LA Weekly. When I graduated in 1993 with my MFA from UC Irvine, Robbert Flick called out of the blue and offered me a job teaching Beginning Photoshop and later B&W Photography at USC. I have a distinct memory of Robbert giving me a tour of the new classroom filled with shiny Macs and probably Photoshop version 2 and mentioning something called the “information super-highway.” I knew Al Gore was its champion, but the internet was a new frontier. It was 1993 and it had no role in our lives yet. Funny to think of now that it’s so ubiquitous, but that’s how I got my first teaching job.
At Art Center, I had some wonderful students and I’m still in touch with many of them. The first course I taught was a book class, which wasn’t really book specific, though books were made. It was more about working in a series context, which was right up my alley as it encouraged thinking in long form. I still work occasionally for ACCD jurying shows and reviewing work and may teach there again.
MK: I keep referring to each of the past positions you’ve held as individual careers, but isn’t it just one well-rounded career in the photographic arts? Do you see these all as just the steps you’ve taken to give you a much wider view of the possibilities that exist for photographers?
KC: I’d say everything was connected in some way. I think of all of it as a series of stepping-stones, one thing gradually giving way to the next.
MK: Any interest in ever returning to a previous incarnation?
KC: As much as I thrived in editorial, it was a huge ball of stress. It may have been different in NY where photo departments were fully staffed, but at the magazine it was really just me and half of an assistant. I loved the work, but not the excessive pressure or the struggle to bring integrity to shoots when publishers often just wanted something bright and shiny that sold high heels and hamburgers.
MK: Your most recent photography project is The White House China. You’ve self-published this as well, and now some recognition is starting to take place for this body of work. Can you give us some background on what inspired you to take on this project? Do you feel this work, in particular, is that which you most desire to receive attention?
KC: I travelled to Washington D.C in the Spring of 2016 thinking I’d immerse myself in the graphic elements of government and historical depictions of federal philosophy. I was interested in the grand presentations of patriotism and all the contradictions that went into making the country. I was hoping to come up with an idea for art, but I didn’t have any clear notions at the time I was just livid with the hideous ways the GOP was subverting America in speech and divisiveness.
For a few days I dove into everything I could see and experience while in the Capitol, which turned out to be a lot. I was both inspired and a bit overwhelmed.
I continued making photographs based on American History, but one day the china idea just popped into my head. I have a case of slides of antique illustrations on the history of slavery, purchased at a flea mart years ago. The images reminded me of family china patterns and I suddenly saw how the marriage of the slavery illustrations could join with patterns of china and they would look at home together.
About publishing: the work took 4 years to make – the last months of the 2016 presidential campaign through the bulk of the 45th presidency. By the time I was done, I felt it needed to be released immediately and I didn’t want to waste time chasing publishers. I do feel the book could handle a broad release and transition to other-than-art markets, but I just wanted to do what I could control in the moment.
MK: The White House China is only the latest step you’ve taken in addressing the political and social landscape in your work. How do you feel one body of work has informed or led to the next? Is it important for you to explore the different themes within the context of this subject?
KC: Much of my work in art has been informed by social justice or politics: gay rights, nuclear proliferation issues, Reaganomics, labor rights and equal pay for women, HIV, sexism in general. My collaborative work often incorporated humor to help dogma go down a little easier. The White House China is both beautiful and somber though. This time in America is serious business and required serious work.
MK: I also wanted to ask about another body of work that you’d done previously, Lost Language. I remember seeing some of these photographs a while back and being immediately drawn to them for the beauty, simplicity, and quite personally, their intention. Let’s just say that I can relate to this work, and I wonder if you’d like to share some insight into these photographs as well? Forgive me for making this a more personal question, but I think that work like this reaches a place, for some, that other work may not. Why does this happen?
KC: I made Lost Language in response to what I think of as the disintegration of my mother, which included a breakdown of her ability to recall words or combine them effectively. It’s a common symptom of memory loss and in the year following her death, I wanted to address the issue in a way that conveyed that what is known or familiar just sort of spills out. Not only was she in a stage of eroding language and speech, but as witnesses to the gradual process, those of us around her were in constant modes of confusion, justification and rationalizing, of frustration and almost vertigo in our constant search for intended meaning.
The abstract way I chose to create Lost Language was also a reaction to the overwhelming plethora of photography happening by 2012. I would swear that every vacant lot, dumpster, nuclear sign, and dog had been photographed and I wanted to try to make something fresh and build the images in such a way that they conducted sensation along with the ideas. I didn’t really intend them to be particularly recognizable as much as I wanted to express a thought.
MK: Moving on now to some more general questions about your process. On the technical side of things, what are the tools you are using to make your images? Are you a film, digital, or both kind of photographer? Does it matter what you use?
KC: These days I’m all digital. I like it. I like that it can be beautiful, cheap, immediate and I’m not dumping or breathing chemistry. I’m also the one who sits in the back of lectures and cringes whenever anyone asks a question about technical stuff. I say I don’t care, but of course I care enough when I need to figure out how to make something. I just think tech is so freaking boring to waste time talking about and in photo specifically, there’s an awful lot of reverence about methodology. I think of a camera as a tool. A camera, a hammer, scissors, a shovel, a paint brush, a pencil, a computer (all of which I used to make The White House China). They carry the same weight for me. It’s what one does with it that matters. Sometimes I say I’m a photographer, and I’ve used photography forever, but more often I think of myself as an artist as it encapsulates more.
MK: Do you engage in or see value in social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram for promoting your work to new audiences?
KC: I have used all three. I value Facebook as way to stay in touch. I think of it as being both more intimate and more of a vehicle for activism. Instagram is like a cryptic visual conversation. Many of the people I enjoy seeing there each day are people I’ve never met but conversations were triggered either by my book for some other shared visual connection. I try to make pictures specifically for Instagram. For one reason, I don’t want stuff stolen as its launched into the world and also, I get really bored when everyone posts the same thing on FB as they do on Insta. Why would I do that? It is helpful to promote art and against my better judgement, I have included some images of The White House China there as I need to expand the project’s reach.
MK: Is there another artistic medium that informs your work and process? Music? Film? Literature?
KC: In the late 70s I discovered Duane Michaels’ series work and then in the 90s I was affected by the images of Carrie Mae Weems and later Kara Walker. All the artists’ work was cinematic and told stories beyond a single frame. There are a handful of artists and photographers I respect, but I’m not sure anyone has really shifted the way I make images. I’m inspired by cinema and live performances, love theatrical sets, and have found stimuli from opera or dance even though I rarely see either anymore. With opera, I just loved that they put everything and the kitchen sink into it. I’d find myself imagining all sorts of things. For my recent works and because of the lives we’re living, I read a lot of journalism and texts with historical content play a heavy role. Many genres of music affect me. Mostly, I think it influences a desire for rhythm and pacing in visual work – like punctuation.
MK: Anyone working in an artistic field has matured and grown over time. Is there anything you’ve discovered lately that you’d like people to know about you or your creative process?
KC: In terms of my process, I do a ton of research – some of it is superficial, of course. I’m interested in history, but I’m not a historian so I have limits. I tend to hunt and gather and when I have the right material, I work in a flurry to make each shot.
When I’m in a groove, I dream the work.
MK: I love that thought, “dream the work”! Such a wonderful place to be. So now, in addition, I always like to ask those with a lifetime of experience in photography if they have any thoughts or advice for those willing to take the plunge into photography as a career. Any words of wisdom?
KC: Hopefully my lifetime has a little more gas in the tank, so I’ll only speak to the road travelled. I had the benefit of hearing a visiting painter speak in college and she mentioned that basically 2% of working artists will ever support themselves. In other words, get a day job.
I took workshops in grant writing which allowed me to get work in non-profits. In the 80s I landed at the NW Film Center, which was affiliated with the Portland Art Museum and began doing publicity. That experience has been immensely helpful in all other things I’ve done. In the seven years I was there, I maintained a parallel and very active exhibition life making collaborative installations and performance art with The Girl Artists. I made more art working in proximity to a creative venture than I ever did in a creative role in an editorial job, Editorial took a bit too much creative energy which made it a challenge to be artistically productive outside of the job.
MK: What’s next for Kathleen Clark, the photographer? Will you expand current bodies of work, or perhaps continue with all new work?
KC: The day after Republicans voted against hearing evidence in the Impeachment trial of #45, I began a series of portraits called Mourning in America. Informed by the 1960s funeral photographs of Jackie Kennedy, Coretta Scott King and Betty Shabbaz, the series is an expression of collective grief and a refusal to be powerless. I took fourteen portraits between February 1st and March 4th of 2020 with the intent of taking many more. I paused the series because of the pandemic, so it remains unfinished. For a while, I tried to conceive of other sorts of images to integrate with the portraits that I could work on in solitude, but I stopped for now. The meaning of the mourning has completely changed. What began as one kind of national grief has exploded into a much deeper and more expansive sorrow.
MK: Where might we find you next?
KC: That’s the million-dollar question. I was in talks about an exhibition, but here we are. It may be a good time to invent new methods of presentation, or new to me anyway.
I’ve been dreaming of sculptures. I’m not sure why, but I’ve had a few lucid dreams with sculptural objects. Who knows? For now, having people stay healthy feels like enough.
You can find more of Kathleen’s work on her website here.
You’ll find your own copy of The White House China here.
All photographs, ©Kathleen Clark.
