Eric Cousineau
It's 2020, and we are in the midst of a worldwide pandemic. Not long after, it becomes the event that takes over the world and simultaneously seems to take over an immense amount of photographers as they start working on their "pandemic project." Some are works about the pandemic itself, and some are about basically anything else deemed worthy, just made while under lockdown. Not long after that, while reviewing portfolios, I came across project after project with this theme in mind, and well, I got kind of exhausted from it quite quickly. It was too much too fast for me, and I quickly became tired of the topic and the phrase. Then, I met Eric Cousineau through a mutual friend and discovered the "pandemic project" that he had made but was still working on to expand upon the foundation he had already built. I was intrigued, to say the least. So, of course, I thought, what better person to interview and came up with some questions for him. Then he took off for Michigan, and I waited to hear back for some months.
That trip to Michigan was the move that turned an already interesting portrait series into something more incredible, with the sheer number of wonderful portraits made during his time there. Fast-forward through a well-deserved breather after such a daunting schedule, and I got my interview—so here we are.
As you'll soon read, while it was an excellent idea for a project, it could have gotten off to a smoother start. Thankfully, with Cousineau's thoroughness and dedication, the whole idea turned out to be a truly significant body of work that documents a specific, if not terrible, time in our nation's history.
What's more, is that doing this many portraits in as many places requires the ability to think on one's feet like no other. Everything is different every time, and the fortitude it takes to gauge every subject and make something profound and personal in these portraits is quite astounding. Cousineau literally became a one-person portrait machine. This was clearly a project not for the faint of heart in more ways than one.
So, even though I've spelled out the fact that this type of project was something I wanted behind me, I find myself revisiting it repeatedly for all of these reasons. I was clearly wrong in my original thinking. Thankfully, this interview became the result of my admission and is now something you get to dive into and learn about what it takes to bring a body of work like this to fruition. You're a badass, Mr. Cousineau. Read on…
Bio -
Eric’s recent body of commissioned work, Essential Workers, highlights his award-winning black-and-white portrait techniques. Eric captures the spirit of the labor force in this collection, creating profound and resilient environmental imagery of the working class. Eric’s portraits of front-line medical workers in the COVID unit from September 2020 are on permanent display in the art collection at CHRISTUS St. Vincent Regional Medical Center in Santa Fe, NM. Photographs were sold through Form & Concept Gallery. Eric was the first person allowed in the hospital walls that was not staff or a COVID patient.
Eric began studying portrait techniques in 1999 with David Scheinbaum, Janet Russek, Debbie Caffrey, and Tony O’Brien. Over the decades, he has honed his work into a survey of everyday people at the crosshairs of late-stage capitalism. His work has been exhibited across the region and is currently in collection at Form and Concept Gallery in Santa Fe, NM.
Interview -
Michael Kirchoff: Every photographer experiences that spark that drives them into the direction of image-making. How did you get your start, and what were your early influences?
Eric Cousineau: I started photography my senior year of high school (1994-1995) because I had to pick an elective class for the last two periods of the day, which was pretty much a blow off class for me. I did do work, but for the most part, my friend and I would skip class and go hang out at the park. The teacher was retiring and was kind of checked out. We were the only two photo students in the classroom, as most of the kids that were there wanted to draw and paint, so we were overlooked most of the time. Plus, we were friends with the teacher's aid and she would mark us as present in the class even though we weren’t there the majority of the time. I got a D+ in the classes, and probably should have failed, but I think the teacher made it so I passed high school on time by the skin of my teeth, which I did.
My favorite classes were Autocad and Architecture, and that’s what I started with in college. I would go to punk and hardcore shows in the Detroit, Flint, and Kalamazoo area taking photos of bands in the underground scene in the mid/late 90s, and took my first darkroom class in the fall of ’97 at Western Michigan University, which I dropped out of the following semester. I moved to Hamtramck, Michigan, in the fall or winter of 1998 and switched my major over to photography while attending Oakland Community College in Royal Oak. This is where I truly picked up my love for photography, and we had an amazing professor (I think he was the only teacher), Rob Kangas. When he wasn’t teaching a class, he was hanging out in the photo lab, making himself available to students printing in the black and white or color darkrooms to help critique their work so they were making the best prints possible for classroom assignments.
While my shooting style might not look like some of these photographers, these are the people who had a big influence on me, and a number of them were my mentors. As mentioned above, Rob Kangas, David Schienbaum, Janet Russek, Nancy Sutor, Tony O’Brien, Steve Fitch, Richard Avedon, Yousuf Karsh, Robert Frank, Lee Friedlander, Irving Penn, Dorothea Lange, Sally Mann, Eugene Meatyard, Alex Webb and Ray Metzker.
MK: What is the one thing you wish you knew when you first started making photographs?
EC: I doubt many photographers react this way, but for me early on I didn’t like my work being compared to other photographers. There were three that got said a lot. When people saw my early black and white portraits they compared them to Richard Avedon. At the time, I didn’t know who Avedon was, so that’s how I discovered him. When I started doing more color work, people compared it to William Eggleston and sometimes Alec Soth. More recently, my black and white portraits have been compared to Chauncey Hare.
I think I didn’t like it because I wanted my photographs to look like only my photographs. In hindsight (and after a friend pointed this out), it is a huge compliment to have your work, especially early on, compared to well-known photographers.
MK: We are highlighting your work with the Essential Workers project. What was it that inspired you to decide upon this particular project and how did it begin?
EC: It started when someone from CENTER, in Santa Fe contacted me in late March or early April of 2020 to propose an idea they had to fit a photographer with a project. And since I was a portrait photographer and I was an essential worker at a grocery store at the time, I was a perfect fit. I was the prototype photographer for this new idea they had of fitting photographers with a project, and I’m not sure if it’s something they are still doing, but I think it’s a great concept. Anyway, the original idea was for me to photograph workers at various essential businesses and wheat paste the images on the windows and sidewalks of the businesses for people to look at as they waited in line to get in.
For a few weeks we tried to get permission from businesses to let me come in to take photographs and display the images on their properties. I think because it was early on and everyone was in a panic, getting permission wasn’t happening. In fact, most of them didn’t even respond, and if they did, they stopped responding after a few phone calls and emails. So I decided to go out and find businesses that were considered essential on my own, and the project turned into what it is now.
MK: Daily life had come to a screeching halt for so many, yet you were out there making a statement with this work in a very substantial way. What were some of the challenges in making these photographs during such a critical time during the pandemic?
EC: The biggest challenge was getting permission to go inside the hospital to photograph the workers there. I have never worked for a newspaper or magazine, so I didn’t have the connections to convince them to let me come in and photograph. But I had a friend who worked in the administrative department there, and she got me in contact with the HR department. After that it was a lot of emails and phone calls back and forth. It took about four and a half months before I got to go in and photograph the workers in the COVID Unit of the hospital. I was the first person allowed in St. Vincent’s hospital who wasn’t an employee or a COVID-19 patient, and to me, that was a pretty good accomplishment since I had no idea what I was doing or getting myself into. Also, the gallery that represents my work, Form & Concept, sold eight of the portraits I made there to the hospital, and they are on permanent display in the main lobby.
MK: Your last phase of making this work was done while photographing workers in Flint, Michigan. Do you feel that in doing so, you’ve given the project more of a voice, as well as the workers themselves? It seems that this being such an immense part of the overall body of work, I have to wonder if it changed its trajectory at all.
EC: I think the trajectory started changing from the beginning without me realizing it, but it didn’t come to light until I spent a month in Flint photographing essential workers there. The biggest thing was the people working or volunteering at food banks, shelters, vaccination sites, grocery stores, bus drivers, people who drove the elderly to and from doctor appointments, or delivered food to people who didn’t have transportation; all felt their essential roles were being overshadowed by the doctors and nurses in the media. Therefore, they deemed less important when, in fact, what they were doing was very important in day-to-day life. The people that were volunteering blew me away the most because they were not paid to be there – they chose to be there.
MK: Is there any sadness associated with finishing such an extensive project as this? It had been with you for so long, and now you are looking at exhibiting it in a very big way.
EC: I would have to say this is the one project that I am not sad that it is over. In fact, I’m glad it’s over, and we are back to a normal life – well, a new normal. The only sad part is I wish I would have photographed more people for the series. There were other professions that I found out about along the way that I just didn’t get to. The two that come to mind are funeral homes and air traffic control. While I was in Michigan, we were working on getting permission to photograph in the air traffic control tower at Bishop's Airport, but we couldn’t make it happen before I had to drive back to Santa Fe. I was going to make another trip to Michigan to photograph more, but after that trip, I was completely burnt out. I didn’t even photograph more workers in New Mexico. I never had really taken the time to process how the pandemic was affecting me, and I think when I got home it all came crashing down on me.
Yes, I am looking to exhibit all the portraits I made of essential workers in one big show. Right now, I am in the process of finding a place to do this and getting funding for the exhibition. When and where it happens is to be determined. I would like to have an exhibition in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and Flint, Michigan, where all the portraits were made.
MK: Is there a long-term goal for the Essential Workers? I understand that there are more than 500 portraits now. Is that correct?
EC: There are 500, give or take. 50% of them were taken over the course of about a year in New Mexico, starting in May of 2020, and the other 50% were taken in Michigan in four weeks’ time. Getting large or small exhibitions is the long-term goal, and hopefully, a book, which journalist and author of The Viral Underclass, Steven W. Thrasher, has agreed to write a foreword for the book. Also, Steven and his publicist have approved excerpts from The Viral Underclass to be used alongside my images for a future exhibition. Other than a few local newspapers and online publications, this series has never been seen in printed form.
I have never had a physical exhibition outside of New Mexico so that is another big goal of mine with the project, as well as my other projects that need to be completed.
MK: Any exceptionally interesting stories from one of your sessions?
EC: This is a hard one to pick because as I sit here reflecting on them, there are quite a few that stand out. I guess I will go with the first shoot in Flint. After driving for three days with my two sons and two small dogs from Santa Fe to my parent's farmhouse just outside of Flint, we arrived a little past midnight. The next morning, my dad woke me up at 7:30 am to go to the first location, which I was told was the Genesee County Sheriff’s Office in downtown Flint. Mind you, I haven’t been in downtown Flint since the late 90s, so I didn’t know exactly where the sheriff’s office was or what to expect, and I was extremely tired from the three-day drive in a heat wave. After we parked, we started walking towards the building about a block away, and I realized we were going into the county jail, which the sheriff's office is on the main floor of this four or five-story building. After I was introduced to the sheriff, I was asked if I wanted to photograph some of the corrections officers. I wasn’t saying no to anything because my goal was to photograph as many people as I possibly could. As we go through the building we eventually find ourselves in one of the cell blocks where two correction officers were. I wasn’t expecting to go into a cell block, so it threw me off a little bit. My only instruction was not to photograph any of the inmates that were walking around on the floor.
MK: Why black and white imagery for the Essential Workers project? Actually, it seems that most of your work is in beautiful black and white - is this simply a part of your overall aesthetic?
EC: I tend to gravitate to black and white for most of my photo projects. My American Motel series would have only worked in color, and the Calf Canyon fires, the largest wildfire in New Mexico history, is a mix of color and black and white, but mostly in color. I do have one more project that I plan on doing in color that is going to probably end up being mixed media.
MK: With regard to creativity and the projects you take on. Do you feel it is better to create work that fits a particular style for yourself, branch out, and try new things, or simply leave yourself open to possibilities that happen organically?
EC: I like to leave myself open and take on projects that I find interesting.
MK: Do you engage in or see value in social media platforms like Facebook or Instagram for promoting your work to new audiences?
EC: This is something that I grapple with all the time. I see the value in it, but I’m not very good at keeping up on marketing myself with it. It is only in the past two years since I quit my job at Trader Joe’s that I have been able to fully focus on my career as a photographer. I have found volunteering at Review Santa Fe every year the most beneficial thing to promote my work. Being able to show my prints to people when I have the chance face-to-face has proven to be the best method for me. But it is a long and slow process.
MK: Over the years, the tools we use to make photographs have changed in dramatic ways, not to mention the vehicles we use to promote the final works we make. How do you keep up with these changes and do you see there being any further significant change as we continue to progress?
EC: I just recently started using Capture One to edit my photographs, and I absolutely love it. There is so much to learn, and I feel the tools within it make my photographs look so much better, and in a way that I envision them. I have only scraped the surface of what I can do in Capture One. I’m also kind of digging what you can do with AI technology in Photoshop and Capture One.
MK: What’s next for your photography? Any new projects you have in the works?
EC: For right now, I am going to focus primarily on my commercial work. I also want to go back to old projects that I have started and try to finish those. For future projects, I have two big ones I want to do, but both are in Michigan. One is from an idea I had 15 years ago. Also, the future projects I want to do will be about positive changes and things going on in our society.
MK: Thank you so much for taking time out of your busy schedule to accommodate my questions, Eric. Now felt like a good time to reflect on what you’ve been doing, so I appreciate the effort.
EC: Thank you, Michael, for giving me the opportunity to talk about this project. This is the first interview I have done on the Essential Workers series since I wrapped it up in 2021. There is so much more I can talk about as it comes to me, but I think I will stop with what I have.
You can find more of Eric’s work on his websites here and here.
All photographs, ©Eric Cousineau
