The Boys by Rick Schatzberg in Conversation with David Campany

This was an incredibly interesting talk that was suggested to me by fellow student Mark. I almost didn’t attend this, but was so glad I did. Having David Campany as the facilitator was an obvious draw card, but Rick Schatzberg’s work was really interesting.

Schatzberg decided to create this body of work after two of his lifelong friends passed away. He was part of a fairly large group that had kept in touch since high school and they were all very close. That type of friendship is quite rare these days. The body of work alternates between a collection of vintage snapshots, text and portraits. It was only part way through his presentation that I realised that his work is an excellent example of heteroglossia in photography.

Schatzberg uses vintage photos which were taken by various friends in the group, so visually employs different points of view or authorship. The text is written by Schatzberg and also contains comments by his friends – again heteroglossia. Schatzberg makes use of his friends’ differences in speech and diversity while maintaining his own authorial intent and creative style.

The structure of his photobook lends itself to the concept of heteroglossia as well. Aside from pages with vintage snapshots, each friend has his own “chapter”, introduced by a two page vintage snapshot spread which opens out as a gatefold which in turn features an internal two-sided portrait page with accompanying vintage portrait on the gatefold – almost like a book within a book. Schatzberg showed a video of his book so that the viewer would have a better idea of the physicality of the book. The page through is from 4:52 – 7:31 of the video below for easy reference.

The cover of the book is embossed and has a very muted palate. Schatzberg explained that the photograph on the cover, while representing one of the groups favourite hangout places, was also a scene of a rather grizzly murder and this fact helped to inform his choice why he wanted a darker cover for the book. On the inside of the back cover is a sleeve containing another smaller book. This contains an essay by Rick Moody.

The portraits were all taken with a 4 x 5 camera and some of the friends had agreed to pose without shirts in order to show the effects of aging on their bodies. A few were uncomfortable doing this and Schatzberg felt he didn’t want to do a typology of ageing men’s bodies so left the choice to his friends. He also included himself in the series. His intent was to do the portraits in natural light and he wanted them to be emotional to “force the viewer to confront the old guy”. They were proud to show their scars.

The book is also about suburbia – it carries a universal theme of space and place. Mainly it is about friendship and this is well represented in the choice of vintage snapshots which were chosen for the project. When asked Schatzberg revealed that he allowed his designer choose which vintage snapshots to include. As Campany remarked old photographs usually come with a certain pathos, but he personally didn’t feel this nostalgia except for the passing surface acknowledgment of the old photographs. So there is no cliched experience.

Relevance to my practice (CS and BOW): As mentioned above, I believe Rick Schatzberg’s project forms an excellent example of heteroglossia in photography and I look at it in more depth in my Contextual Studies. The interweaving of the authorial voice alongside those of the friends is quite similar to what I do in my BOW. The archival images that I use represent the others’ voices alongside my contemporary landscape and photomontage images (my voice), show dialogic interactions in a body of work and also across time and place.  Schatzberg’s body of work delivers a prime example of how heteroglossia borrows off the past and how memory and the archive interact with other people creating new meanings.

Bibliography

Virtual PowerHouse Books Launch: The Boys Rick Schatzberg in conversation with David Campany (2021) Directed by POWERHOUSE Arena [Online Video via Zoom] At: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4T6EwsRFPdo (Accessed  24/01/2021).