Week 30: Tom Huber

The rotating gallery features the work of a young emerging photographer as well as an interview with him/her, and will change every Wednesday. The gallery is based off ‘collective curatorship’, where the photographer from week 1 chooses and interviews a photographer for week 2, week 2 chooses/interviews week 3, etc. There is only one stipulation to the process: Next weeks photographer has to be someone he/she has not had direct contact with yet. Ideally, this will take the gallery on a linked tour around the Internet, and exploring and unearthing new photographers as it goes.

This week, Eva Marie Rodbro was also traveling and could not interview a photographer, so she enlisted her extremely kind friend, Kathrin Klingner, to interview a photographer of Kathrin’s choice, Tom Huber. Thank you very much, Kathrin.

Kathrin Klingner: Before you studied photography, you were already making music. And -as far as I know- you are mainly making music now. How come you studied photography?

Tom Huber: It’s true about the music, but I used to do it only for myself. Back then I did not have the patience to work on a whole song. I kind of forgot how I ended up studying photography… I followed the pre-course at the art school in Zuerich and I was pretty bad in everything. My not-so-bad subject was photography. But the pre-course in Zuerich is also not really good. Then I ended up -more or less accidentally- at the Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam. Somebody had told me about it and I didn’t want to study at the Art School in Zuerich. And I also couldn’t study there, because they didn’t accept me.

KK: What are you doing at the moment and are you still taking photographs?

TH: I recently finished recording my second album, I hope it’s going to be released in the beginning of next year. For working on my music, I took a two year long break from art. Actually I wanted to stop completely with art, but in the end I couldn’t. It’s not so easy to do two different things, it’s never enough time to work on both of them. So two years ago, I decided to concentrate only on the music, also because I didn’t have the drive for art anymore.

Last spring I spent two months in Poland, and there I started making art again. I went there because I got a stipend, a studio-residency. I got that around the time when I had just decided that I wouldn not make art anymore. In the end it was good to get some distance to my music production. And I also discovered my interest in art again.

KK: What is normally your method of working? Many of your photographs have a seemingly private character. When you take a picture, do you distinguish before between “this is going to be a private picture” and “this is part of my work” or are there no borders?

TH: My method of working and my photography changed since I graduated from the Rietveld. Actually I don’t take private photos anymore and I don’t take the camera everywhere I go. When I take pictures, I go specifically with the camera on kind of a photo-safari. Maybe the impression that my work is private derrives from the combination of text and drawings.

Most of the time, I start with something, mainly influenced by the place where I am. Although it’s not my intention to document my sourrounding. I walk around and look for images, write texts and make drawings. And at one point, things get a shape and I know more clearly what I am actually working on. But I don’t do any staged photography anymore and I also lost interest in Photoshop montagen.

KK: On your website you write: “Formally, I can’t hold a formal style longer as one day, otherwise I would feel immediately like I am doing the same thing for my whole life.” Is that still the case? And after you became successful with your work, did you feel more pressure to have a certain line in your work? For example the gallery that represents you: do they just let you do your thing or do they expect from you that you deliver a certain style?

TH: I think as long as you have a certain attitude, you can vary your formal style as you like. Behind the work, there is always the same character. For sure there are styles that don’t fit to the character, but I don’t think a lot about my style. In the end, I know if I like something or not. I never felt any pressure from outside. And my gallery is very tolerant, also with me taking breaks from art.

KK: If you had to chose: Artist or musician?

TH: Musician. Music is more important than art. Music can move people emotionally and that issomething doesn’t happen a lot with art. At least not to me. Well, I’m basically not an art lover. There are for sure people who feel different about it. But art has the major disadvantage that it is so elitist. I hardly ever go to a gallery and I don’t really know a lot about the art world. So I’m not the right person to judge what is actually going on there. But most of the things I see don’t really interest me, I find find them pretty boring. Although… sometimes I accidentally meet someone who I find interesting. With music it’s different. When I’m interested in a musician, I want to know his whole story and all the music he ever made.

KK: Is that the reason why you graduated from art school with a book instead of three squaremeter big C-prints that somebody might buy? To be not elitist?

TH: Probably yes. In the meanwhile, I also went through a phase of showing 2 squaremeter-prints. But I don’t really get these oversizes, I don’t know what you are supposed to do with such a big photograph. And I find it absurd how the price of an image changes in relation to the size.

KK: I never saw your work in an exhibition and I also couldn’t find any installationviews. Could you talk about how you normally present your work? And do you always present it in the same way?

TH: Mostly I show my stuff in different sizes and I treat photos and drawings the same way. And I don’t hang the work linear. My exhibitions are somehow more like installations or something like that.

KK: Do you maybe have a picture of an installation?

TH: No… I always forget to photograph them. Or I secretely don’t feel like it. Hmm. You are making an interview with an anti-photographer. But well…. I think I’m one of the top -let’s say- 10 best photographers in the world.

KK: You think you are an anti-photographer? What is the definition of a photographer then?

TH: Well…. when I go on a photo-safari I am a fullblooded photographer, packed with equipment and all that. But the art-photography-thing gets on my nerves a lot. Actually I’m talking more about art in general. Not specifically about photography. Although that is in most cases the most boring art form.

I think there is far too much art, and not enough artists that really live for their art. Who are selfcritical enough not to bore their audience (me?). Today it’s far too easy to be an artist, I’m also a good example for that: every two years a few images….

Because of that, a lot of art is too conform and mainly made for the business. There are too many art-partys and not enough loners. For the majority it seems to be all about participating in the art world, being part of a certain circle.
I only like the loners, who work on their stuff by themselves. Okay, they can have a few mates, but not too many.

KK: When I saw your work “Best of Forrest” for the first time, I had to laugh out loud. Emotionally moved, so to say. And I was wondering who the naked guys in the trees are. Can you tell something about how you took these photos?

TH: The older guy is an exhibitionist, who reacts on every newspaper advetisement that has to do with nudity. So he also reacted on mine. The rest are my mates and me. Back then, I mainly asked my friends to be in my photos, but that’s of course different now that I don’t do staged photography anymore.

KK: Do you still like your old work?

TH: I do. I have quite a distance to my old stuff. But I can still imagine why I made these works at that time. I like them, they are somehow very innocent, although it’s partly a bit too much slapstick.

KK: Almost all texts about your work mention the word “humor”. Do you think being funny is easier in an image than it is in real life?

TH: No, it’s more difficult to have humor in a photo. Because it has to last longer. In real life, you can quickly say something funny, and it’s forgotten after a minute. A photo that works like that is most of the time terrible. But my goal in art is not to be super-funny.

KK: If you like somebody’s photos is it mostly photography that is similar your own?

TH: No, I like images that are on one side aesthetic and at the same time tell a story that is evoking something like irritation in the beholder. If a photo doesn’t do that, it doesn’t interest me. But there are images I really like that I couldn’t have taken. For example footballplayers in action. I’m not too crazy about football, only about the images.

KK: When you graduate from an art school, you are almost automatically part of a certain circle. You went back to Zuerich right after graduating from the Rietveld. How was that? And did you want to continue with art at that time?

TH: I was not at all part of the art scene in Zuerich. I really wanted to continue with art, but I had no idea how, what, where. Somehow I just kept doing it, participated in a few competitions, applied for scholarships and then the gallery offered me an exhibition. I think I had a bit of an advantage because I did things differently from the people who came from the art school in Zuerich. My applications had the style of the Rietveld: messy, capricious and a bit amateurish. And this definition is meant in a positive sense… I never wanted an education as an intellectual artist who knows how to present himself with his portfolio.

By now, I lost my innocence a bit when it comes to presenting my work. I am more neat, accurate, calmer. And a father. Everything is a bit more grown-up, but that’s alright. Too much mess would not work with the formal changes that have happened in my work.

KK: Could you maybe sent me a new picture? Something you like, that you made recently?

KK: Thank you for your time!