Through the Lens. An Interview with NYC photographer Vivienne Gucwa

Vivienne Gucwa chats with great weather for MEDIA editor, George Wallace

Warm Glow of the Sun on a Winter City Night small
Warm Glow of the Sun on a Winter City Night small

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WHO IS VIVIENNE GUCWA AND WHY DOES EVERYBODY LOVE HER PICTURES? 

The cover photographer for Great Weather for MEDIA’s new anthology, It’s Animal But Merciful, is Vivienne Gucwa. A NYC photographer and NY native, she grew up in Flushing and lives in Manhattan. One of the most followed new photographers on the NYC scene, she alternates between formal and mobile photography, has 141,000 subscribers on her FacebookPage, and her Instagram photos regularly pull hundreds of 'likes' within minutes of posting.

You may have run into her photographs on Flickr, ongoing, youtube or tumblr; on digital albums; in the National Endowment for the Humanities magazine, or on the Biography Channel. Her subject is Manhattan—and particularly the back alleys and bustling streets of Lower Manhattan, everything from the new Gehry skyscraper and Chinatown street scenes to the interior of the late great East Village dive bar, the Mars Bar.

Her work is known for presenting New York City as a multi-faceted character, "warm and welcoming one moment, angry and threatening the next," with a deft sense for the dualities of the urban setting—the relationship between what is durable and transient, what is fearful and awe-inspiring, what is opaque and hard-edged with what is unutterably alluring.

Here's a quote we like, from her website: "New York City is comprised of so many tiny urban worlds: planets and stars that inhabit a larger universe. Until I understood that fact, I couldn’t properly begin to understand how to explore it. When you come across a view that takes you out of your small urban frame of reference and plants you outside of that view and outside of yourself for a few moments, it’s a bit like finally coming to an understanding that the world you inhabit daily is just part of a larger picture."

SHE’S SO NEW YORK

GWFM: Whether it's people who have lived here or people considering it from around the world people look at NYC through their own lens, they bring their own preconceptions to it. What are some of yours?

VG: I've been on this journey in Manhattan for two years, so I think a lot about what certain scenes mean to me when I'm taking a picture. New York City is a complicated place. If you have a lot of money, it can be extraordinary. If you don't, it can be a vicious place. It's not easy to experience everything it has to offer on a limited budget, but it's still great because there's plenty you can enjoy without a lot of money.

But my photographs are definitely influenced by my view of New York City, and it‘s a complicated view. I'm 34 and I live in NYC now. But I grew up in Flushing, one of those kids coming into the cities in the 80s and 90s. It was my backyard then. My father was a pressman for the Daily News, he would take me in. Were there mean streets then? Yes. I remember being petrified. But that fear was mixed with a weird, romanticized view—the old New York, from Hollywood films. Sci Fi films. Woody Allen films.

So this view of my own place was shaped by my own experience and from popular culture Even music. You see I grew up as a musician, playing piano from the age of 3, with this crazy range of musical tastes, from Broadway and Cole Porter to weighty, emotional classical music. And rock— I wasn’t in a punk band, just rock.

So sometimes when I'm shooting, I'm calling on music for the pure emotion. Like Woody Allen's Manhattan, the opening sequence, with Rhapsody In Blue playing, how the music matched Woody's vision of New York City.

SHE’S NOT JUST NEW YORK

GWFM: You've mentioned in interviews your desire to do what you do photographically in other places around America.

VG: I haven't traveled anywhere else, yet, it's been New York City for me so far. Not that I mind, there's endless possibilities here. In a ten block chunk of midtown, in specific bodegas, in the same subway station every day, there's potentially an entire world going on there.

But it comes back to the fact that I really want to travel.

On one level, there is something that doesn't change based on the actual location, but when I take photos I'm thinking about everything that's gone into the scene I'm taking. The history, the cultural conflicts, the ways it might change. All this, and more, gives urban spaces richness and depth. So in every city, there are so many different places and experiences, a world of them.

Not only cities—if you're from an urban space, you may not understand how life goes on in a rural area. But I would love to explore other American cities. I love the scale, especially on rooftops. It puts you in your place.

SHE DOESN’T JUST USE HER CELLPHONE

GWFM: You're known for your use in photography of a range of technologies—from high end digital equipment like the SONY SLT-A55 to your i-phone. What are the challenges and opportunities of using cellphone technologies?

VG: Not just cellphone! Actually most of the photos aren't usually taken with the phone, but with better equipment. I also sometimes use simple point and shoot cameras. But with the phone you can just kind of be somewhere, and very quickly your phone is on and you can capture that moment. The people moments. I'm lucky because I don't do people photography, there are people in the photos, but they're usually walking away, or in the distance, that's on purpose. I'm not as hindered as others who do people photography.

When I take a photo I have a rough idea of where I want to go with it, but once I sit down with the software and as I start editing, it becomes something different.

There are those who say you shouldn't alter the image, if you're using software to edit you're degrading the pureness of the image. I'm on the other side of the fence, I do a lot of altering. To me a lot of the artistic process takes place after I take the image. Why not? Working in a darkroom is similar, you're engaged in an artistic process after actually shooting a picture. And with digital the advantage is, in a darkroom you work with one resolve, but with software you can process it one way then on another occasion, another way.

Not that I've used a darkroom—I've never even attempted that. I use my iphone, I use seven different editing apps. I like how it's tactile, when you edit you're actually touching the screen. And the iphone has a lot of choices, they have filters that mimic film photography, you can make the image grainy, alter the exposure, add motion. You have to get good at what you're doing no matter what technology is available to you.

SHE'S REALLY INTO OUR ANTHOLOGY'S TITLE

GWFM: What’s our anthology name, It’s Animal But Merciful, mean to you?

VG: At first I thought that the phrase was trying to suggest a duality, as if "animal" is the polar opposite of "merciful." I mean you could imply duality because of the "but" in the phrase. But if you think about it, it's neither animal or merciful. An animal has multiple qualities. You could interpret the idea of ‘animal’ as something you need to become one with, or something you have to tame. There’s a lot of different possible meanings. An animal is an organism which possesses a totality of qualities—even the capacity for mercy, which the phrase suggests.

So It’s Animal But Merciful actually suggests to me the idea that it’s possible for a person to come out of an encounter an animal—the city—with the sense, out of that totality, for the merciful aspect. Of course a city can feel raw, dangerous. It can be hard to carve out your niche. Yet there’s so much to experience, and that can be wonderful. You’re meeting people and getting into situations all the time. There’s a whole universe of possible outcomes—you can come out feeling bitter or unhappy, you can come out jaded, but you can also come out with a sense of the merciful.

That’s how I happen to be feeling about New York right now. Some good things have happened to me after a lot of struggle for two years. So the way I’m feeling at the moment, I think the title It’s Animal But Merciful describes what experiencing the city feels like to me. Right now I’m feeling a lot of guarded hope.

To find out more about Vivienne, visit her website.

It's Animal but Mercifulis published by great weather for MEDIA in September 2012.

Mike Watt and the Harbor of Earthly Delights

Legendary punk bass player, Mike Watt, chats with great weather for MEDIA editor, Jane Ormerod.

Mike Watt - The Minutemen, fiREHOSE, The Missingmen, reformed Stooges, collaborator with every great artist you can think of - is in New York City to play an eagerly-anticipated show at (Le) Poisson Rouge on May 2nd. He is celebrating the release of Mike Watt: On and Off Bass, a collection of photographs snapped around the harbor of his beloved hometown of San Pedro, California. Kat Georges and Peter Carlaftes of Three Rooms Press cherry-picked the accompanying snippets of poetry, quotes, and anecdotes from 1,500 pages of Watt's diaries over the last ten years. The resulting book is  stunning, insightful, and downright full of surprises.

Jane: Looking at the photographs in the book, I was really struck by their solitariness. The air, the light, the feeling of peace. And then the diary extracts give a sense of wider community. The early morning peace is a contrast to your life in a band with the touring and sweat and noise.

Mike Watt: That’s right. It is a contrast. And that’s what life is about. Taking turns. Leaving my San Pedro town and visiting other towns. As your Mr. Shakespeare said, “Life’s a stage.” You've got to play different roles.

Jane: Talking about Shakespeare, your lyrics on Double Nickels on the Dime were influenced by James Joyce. What other literary influences do you have?

Mike Watt: Ha! I don’t know if D. Boon was reading much Joyce. I was just twenty-five  years old and was just very caught up in that book,

Jane: Are there any other literary figures standing in the wings?

Mike Watt: Well, for my second opera I used Dante’s Commedia – it totally paralleled my life. In the first opera, I used part of Ulysses too, but I also bought in this novel, The Sand Pebbles, by Richard McKenna. I used a lot of literature stuff. I find it very important to be inspired, enabled, springboarded, by other artists. I’m kind of afraid of other musicians because I don’t want to rip off their licks, but if I need imagery  I use it. Like in my latest opera (Hyphenated-Man), I use the imagery of Hieronymus Bosch.  I think there’s another level of abstraction, and I feel little more safe than using another musician. It allows me more respect, you know, because I have to go through process and abstract it into the music, but the other thing is “Goddamn! Did I steal his lick?” Ha! Ask Led Zeppelin about that.

When I start riding the bicycle, the kayak, these experiences link up too.  I compose. I don’t compose with the fucking bass in my lap all the time like I used to. I actually do the stuff in my head  and then I bring it home. And I have to realize it instead of the other way around – which is doing what you already know how to do.  So I do these other things. The same thing when I try to steal someone else’s artistic approach. Like I was in The Prado in Madrid and I saw Bosch's The Garden of Earthly Delights and the first thing I thought was “Wow! So many little things to make  to make one thing - it’s like a Minuteman album.”  So you see, there are parallels and I feel more comfortable about that. I’m not really interpreting their stuff. A lot of times I’m just using it for my own means. I want to talk like a fifty-four year old punk rocker. I don’t think Mr Bosch was probably in the same place, but he helped me a lot. Some people think those little amalgamations, those little creatures, might be just visualizations of proverbs and aphorisms but I don’t know six hundred year old Dutch so I made up my own shit.

Like that movie, The Wizard of Oz. I thought that for Dorothy it’s a coming of age story - but I think the only love interest is the fucking dog. She’s checking out guys to see what they do to be guys. You notice when she comes back that the scarecrow, the tin man, and the lion are the farmhands? “Oh, you were there and there” and I was thinking about this – like a middle age thing – and I was thinking what is it to be a man? Well, Dorothy was tripping on that. You can be a flying monkey man, a munchkin man, you can be a tin man – or you can be the man behind the curtain man. And notice his spiel, right? “Oh, where I come from if you’re brave you get a medal,  where I come from if you’re smart you get a diploma, where I come from if you have a heart you get a clock.”

Jane:  Ha!

Mike Watt: What he was saying is all this shit is validation! You don’t have to make up your mind anyway! So see what I mean? I use these kind of images. Almost all my works, I borrowed from other artists. Springboards to help me tell my story with the bass.

The pictures are much different. The pictures came about with the invention of digital cameras. In the old days you had to pay for film, for developing, but with this digital shit you were just shoot shot shoot, click click. At the same time, I bought my first bicycle. I didn’t ride a bicycle for twenty-two years.  I got into riding around and said “Look at all this shit!”  It’s different than songs, operas, compositions.  You can’t simply set this shit up - it just happens. And if you’re together enough, maybe you can capture some of it. But that’s a big part of being alive. It’s not controlling and setting up things because things can be happening in your town where you pedal, where you paddle.

Jane: Where you pedal and you paddle.

Mike Watt: There was a guy here in New York City. Harry Smith, I think his name was. He would hang the microphone out the window, and just tape fucking sounds. No scripts or nothing. Field recordings. This is where I’m coming from with the pictures.  If you want to get into philosophy, there’s  something about the fucking crack of dawn.  That orange-yellow light. I think it’s there at sunset too but we’re on a peninsula. We’re weird for a west coast town. We’re like that part of San Francisco that faces Oakland. So what it means on a philosophical plane is potential. What is going to be done today? This is the beginning, you know? It’s the most enabling part of the day.

Now the music world is all about nighttime, you know, but nighttime for me is kind of scary. But morning is like everything, man! The whole day is in front of me. It’s not hard for me. Another thing about middle age, your body changes. You get tired earlier. It’s reality. There a weird sense of reality about these pictures.

Jane: That really comes across.

Mike Watt: I have to deal with practicals and rhythms in music but there’s a lot more Dr Seuss going on in the music than in the pictures. The pictures, I don’t really filter or do manipulations with them. I just try to capture.

Jane: So they are what they are.

Mike Watt: Yes. Laura Steelink, for the Track 16 Gallery show, she  called the photographs “Eye-Gifts”.  Peter Carlaftes got the book title “Off and On Bass” from my emails because I signed them “On Bass, Watt”. If I’m doing this shit right, I’m not on the bass. I’m kayaking with the camera. That was very clever of him. In fact in the first opera, on the  track called “Pedro Bound” you can follow my whole pedaling route. You can tell where I turn left and right. Eye-gifts.  You don’t set these things up. Hopefully you’re just together enough to capture it.

And I can feel like I’m collaborating with my fucking town. My town is weird. We get raccoons and sea lions, pelicans, dolphins. Meanwhile you see all these hammerhead and docks, boats. It’s a weird mix. My father was a sailor. I came here in ’67 and never left. I leave on tour but the bungee cord always snaps me back. Like Don Quixote. You roam, you roost, you roam, you roost. I need this. I think it’s healthy.

What’s interesting for me is that I have to take turns. Like the little images in the Bosch, the amalgamations, the different parts. Some people think it’s a disgusting compromise and so they go postal  and shoot everyone at work, kill the kids, dress up like Santa Claus. I think sometimes like this about middle age, but middle age doesn’t have to be this way. Asking the big questions, I think, is intense and important. Middle age is about reconciling a lot of things, especially things of your own making, but there are other things that can’t be reconciled like how we treat each other sometimes. And that’s when nature seems so, so beautiful. But then she’s kind of a tease too. I’ll be in that kayak and suddenly woo, a twenty-footer! Respect! You mustn’t panic or freak out – you’re not running the show. This is what I’m getting out of this thing. At first I just thought I was sharing my town but maybe I’m sharing a little bit of me too.

Jane: I grew up by the sea, I know the feeling.

Mike Watt: So you understand how incredible it is. There’s one part of my bike ride where I get off my bike, and I sit on the rocks, close enough where the spray  gets me but I don’t get soaking wet, and I’m looking out at Catalina Island right there. And the sounds just go hrrrrrrrrrr. You know, Japanese ladies used to harvest abalone here with Vaseline in their eyes, no masks. There’s intense history in my town. Actually all my music stuff is here. I can go by there all the time, go by my first apartment. They cut down the tree where D. Boon jumped onto me, but I can go to these places like where Black Flag had their first gig. So music-wise it’s got a lot of history, but the town itself -  without Watt - has it too. We were the murder capital of America in the ‘40’s. One murder a night. It was a very, very rough town. Liberty Hill where Upton Sinclair gave a famous speech. On the other end, I have a lot of personal history. I don’t even think I could live in another part of southern California to be honest with you. There’s something about Pedro. Bukowski, who’s buried here in the same bone-yard as D. Boon, picked it out of all the places and lived here for fourteen years. You know what it says on his gravestone? It says “Don’t try.”

Yes, things are what they are, you know?

“Mike Watt: On & Off Bass” by Mike Watt (ISBN 978-0-9835813-0-7, Size: 8 x 10, 112 pages, full color, Three Rooms Press 2012).