Week 38: Jeff Barnett-Winsby

The rotating gallery features the work of an 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, Mandy Lamb interviews Jeff Barnett-Winsby.

Mandy Lamb: Apart from being a photographic champion, what do you do?

Jeff Barnett-Winsby: Lets see, I am an adjunct professor, a commercial photographer, a cinematographer, a baccarat table tester, and a newly minted steel worker. I guess I alternate between paying the bills and trying to figure out this whole image based media thing.

ML: Have you ever photographed a stranger who didn’t like you by the end of it?

JBW: That’s hard to say. I guess it depends on when the end of it really is. I imagine that if there was any ill will it was more about their disappointment in what it meant to them to be photographed, and perhaps a let down regarding the resulting image.

ML: Your projects are dominated with images of strangers; Safe Harbor, Carter Burden Center, Marriage Portraits, Upon First Meeting, The Nightwatch.  The portraits of your loved ones and acquaintances feel more haphazard.  Do you prefer photographing people you don’t have personal relationships with rather than photographing your friends?

JBW: That is absolutely the case. I am less interested in revealing something about my relationships with my intimates than I am about a larger intimacy that happens in discrete encounters. Something like a one night stand or witnessing a car wreck or maybe a UFO landing. I want to talk about the possibility of that intensity and its fleeting nature.

ML: If I assembled 3 of your friends in a room and asked them about you, what would they say about you that you would say is not true?

JBW: Depends on which 3 friends and which birthing story I told them.

ML: Where did the idea for the Craigslist series, Upon First Meeting come from?  How did you decide how much money to offer?  What surprised you most about people’s responses and the actual encounters?

JBW: It came from a particularly lonely time in my life. A long-term relationship I had been in had recently ended and I found my nights free and empty. I started my obsession with the internet at this point. Up until then I really was not all that interested but for whatever reason I began to search for community and I found it. I found tons of people lonely and interested in doing something different or new to them. Anything really that wasn’t routine. So I started placing ads and meeting people. I wasn’t entirely sure what everything would look like in the end but that is magic of projects like this, they just evolve and meander and take you somewhere new.

As for the money,  I decided based on how much I could reasonably afford to offer. In reality, the time invested and the cost of printing was much more expensive the $15 but that seemed to be what drew people in the most. What surprised me most was most peoples disappointment in the final images. I think they all had ideas about how they might look and how this “professional” camera could make them look. In the end they had very little interest in how I saw them, their only concern was how they saw themselves and with a few exceptions they were mostly disappointed.

ML: It is rather implausible that you were photographing a prison program where the woman who created the program then broke out her inmate lover; that you forged a relationship with both and were able to stay in touch via letters and interviews and to photograph their hide out.  I’m not insinuating that you masterminded their escape, but why are you so special?

JBW: I think questions like this come up all the time to photojournalists and folks who make pictures that are of seemingly impossible moments one after another. I think the answer is that if you put yourself out there, and you are paying attention, life happens (and life is totally weird). What makes you special (if that is the right word) is your willingness to record it.

ML: Did you consider taking formal portraits of each inmate to go along with their cell in Marks of Intention? It’s part of what makes Upon First Meeting so brilliant, those intense portraits of strangers within their own space.

JBW: I did, but ultimately it just didn’t seem to work with my concept. First I felt as though the portraits would distract from the cells partially because they would be more engaging. Second I saw identity production through owned items as a portrait and so wanted to avoid redundancy. Finally I felt as thought it would be difficult to do something other than an obvious typology where I was asking you to compare or look for consistency among prisoners. At that time it was just something I was not prepared to do.

ML: It seems the prisoners were absent when you photographed their cells, were they at dinner or something?  How much time did you spend with them, if at all?

JBW: They were often standing right outside of the cell with a guard while I photographed. The way it would work was this:  We (myself and a chaperon) would walk up and ask an inmate if they would be ok with me photographing their cell. If they said no we would move on. If they said yes, the door would open, they would step out and I would spend about 5 to 10 minutes in their cell. That was it.

ML: Has your history with commercial photography influenced your choice for such a sterile background in Safe Harbor?  They remind me of elementary school portraits, even more so than mug shots, but galaxies beyond school portraits and mug shots.

JBW: I suppose it did. I think I also thought about Avedon and Martin Schoeller. I wanted faces and I wanted full lengths together. I was interested in creating something with the faces where you could just make out a uniform and a grouping but couldn’t say exactly what it group it was that these men belonged to. I think there was slightly more information being revealed in the full length portraits however I felt they stayed true to a focus on what I thought was important. These are people and this is something they are doing worthy of note with dogs. It was really that simple. Further these images were never really created as gallery work. They were made to celebrate a difference these men had made in their lives and the lives of others through the Safe Harbor Prison Dog Program. They all got copies for their families and large prints were made for the walls of the prison. Ultimately the simplicity ensured accessibility which was very important to me.

ML: The way the two series are (devoid of inmate/devoid of background) it makes my brain try to match the convict with his cell and crime.  I guess what I’m saying is that the lack of information allows the viewer to speculate wildly, which they will due to the lurid possibilities.

JBW: I hear that. The most common group of questions I get about any of this prison work is about the crimes committed. I think however it is important to sometimes remove that from the equation, even if that removal is artificial and temporary. Remembering that criminals are still humans and will have to become members of society is an obvious but overlooked aspect of our societal relationship with them. In addition these people have families and friends and histories sometimes intertwined with their crimes and sometimes unrelated. Simply remembering that they exist and are in very dynamically stressed psychological situations is an essential part of the contract between jailed and jailer. My work is not about what is wrong in prison but about creating a visual way to engage with what most jailers will never see.

ML: Will you retire after the success of your upcoming book or do you plan on taking more pictures?

JBW: I am not sure. I might make a film. I feel pretty open and excited these days. Thanks for choosing me.