‘Make more work’ or the ethos of accelerated picture-making
The intuitive depiction of the world, as contrasted to staged photography, forms different methodologies of approaching the subject and the surroundings to create a compelling narrative. Paolo Morales incorporates both approaches to capture the unfolding scenes or reconstruct moments that caught his attention. The triangular relationship between the artist, their subject, and the camera, which separates their worlds of interpretation, is one of the themes Paolo explores in his work. Staged documentary adds a layer of meaning, enriching the unseen, the context that shifts the viewer's interpretation, forming new connections to the world within the frame. Another layer is the emotion felt and created through the choice of the frame, the lens, and the positioning of the subjects, which creates a deep sense of loneliness and melancholy with a hint of care and love surrounding the individuals portrayed.
Paolo Morales is a photographer born and raised in New York. He received his MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and BFA in Photography from the Art Institute in Boston. He has taught in universities across the United States and currently teaches at Widener University. In the fall of 2024, he will teach in the Department of Art and Art History at Bucknell University. In this interview, we speak with Paolo about his choice of medium and the way the form dictates content and enriches the concept. Paolo explains, “Teaching has made me more invested in the medium of photography. I focus on photography and allow the form and subject of the pictures to shape content.” We discuss how photography enables the creation of a world that generates an emotional response from the viewer. Paolo shares that his current aspiration is to deal with the question of race in photography and the way a photographers' race could be acknowledged through the work they create.
Words by Nastasia Khmelnitski
‘As I reflect on my professional life as a teacher, the ethos of accelerated picture-making, or more specifically, learning through making, is something that grounds my courses.’
My Narrative
Hi Paolo, it’s very nice to meet you! How are you doing?
Let’s start from the beginning, your studies towards gaining an MFA in Photography from Rhode Island School of Design and deciding to teach in different schools since then. Could you tell about that shift from theory to practice to teaching and how it influenced your work?
Thank you for the kind invitation to participate! I studied photography in college in Boston and then as a graduate student in Providence. The programs focused on production, articulating motivations, and figuring out why the work mattered. I remember there was a sign above an elevator that said something like, “Make more work”. As I reflect on my professional life as a teacher, the ethos of accelerated picture-making, or more specifically, learning through making, is something that grounds my courses.
I’ve taught in a variety of programs, from independent high schools to art schools and universities. I lived in Virginia from 2015-2020. On reflection, living in the suburbs reshaped my life and work in ways that I am still trying to understand. I was born and raised in New York City and never intended to drive a car until I had a job that I could only get to by driving. In short, the suburbs taught me that I only want to live in apartments and that I strongly dislike driving.
Teaching has made me more invested in the medium of photography. As a student and participant in various artist residency programs, I’ve met many artists who focus on ideas and then choose the appropriate medium. I, on the other hand, focus on photography and allow the form and subject of the pictures to shape content. In other words, I consider myself a straight photographer.
In general, teaching has convinced me of the transformative, possibly profound, experience of the medium. The students that I have at least have short attention spans and don’t like to struggle. Developing film and printing in the darkroom teaches students to make mistakes and to take their time. Analog printing can be unforgiving, yet when it is done well is undeniably beautiful.
I’ve been fortunate to work for schools that have darkrooms, which has not only made me a more technically focused teacher but also an artist deeply invested in the production of beautiful, tonally rich silver gelatin prints. Almost all my work since finishing graduate school has been produced on black and white negatives.
‘Generally, I will ask the person I am trying to photograph to repeat something or to do a gesture again and then, I will move myself and the camera around the scene until I build a composition that intuitively feels complete.’
Memphis Tulips
In the series Memphis Tulips, you address life in a community by juxtaposing the state of togetherness with feelings of loneliness. While the viewer observes people, families, and friends being together, through silence that comes in the way of individual portraits or people paused in time without interacting with one another, the feeling of being alone emerges. What was your connection or communication with the subjects? How close or far did you want to be from them to get the right image?
I started photographing in Philadelphia in 2017 during an artist residency at the Philadelphia Photo Arts Center (recently renamed TILT Institute for the Contemporary Image). That summer, I met Shawn and his family, who were neighbors at the house where I stayed. Shawn became my closest friend in Philadelphia and also the star of the project.
The visual description of being alone, or the feeling of loneliness, is something I am trying to project onto the world of these photographs. It is a deeply felt emotion that runs through my life as a person and artist. More broadly, figures appearing alone speak to the isolation I felt within and outside the community I photograph in Kensington. The people I photograph live in a working-class community that is quickly gentrifying, and many of the individuals I photograph are fearful of outsiders and change.
My pictures are the product of my relationship with people in the neighborhood. I go and visit Shawn, other neighbors and just talk and experience life with them. I have been fortunate to have been invited to many family events and have spent countless hours just hanging out. I take a picture when I see something visually interesting or when I see the potential for a photographic moment to occur. Generally, I will ask the person I am trying to photograph to repeat something or to do a gesture again and then, I will move myself and the camera around the scene until I build a composition that intuitively feels complete.
I’ll try and drill down on what an intuitively complete composition means. Photography is about putting a frame around the world and applying photographic description to alter the scene. An example of this is a shallow or deep depth of field. I am trying to make photographs that feel like complete worlds within a frame and that every element belongs to a coherent narrative. In another way, I seek to make photographs that reward repeated viewing and suggest an interior, reflective moment being experienced by the people in the pictures.
‘My preference is usually to stage so that I can slow down and frame, but often, I rely on my intuition and use my body to move around a scene to quickly make a composition.’
The Blind Leading the Blind
The series The Blind Leading the Blind touches on the topic of being part of the community while having different experiences that might leave a feeling of estrangement. It also connects to the idea of generations, the passing of knowledge, care, and relationships. The individual life passes by, and we see it through memories, images on the walls, and current events and connections to one’s extended family. What was your main focus when working on the series, and in what way did you combine documentary and staged photography to create the narrative?
I made these pictures in Queens, New York, where my grandparents lived. The work revolves around my late grandfather, who unexpectedly lost his eyesight in the final years of his life. The photographs describe an individual struggling to survive and how the people around him care for each other. The title The Blind Leading the Blind speaks to the process of making these photographs. My grandfather’s physical loss of sight led me in the blind, intuitive process of trying to make sense of the end of his life through photography.
When I was in high school and college, my parents and I drove from Manhattan to Queens every weekend to visit and check in on my grandparents. This became particularly important as their health declined. I used these visits to practice taking pictures. I would photograph my grandparents and cousins to try and solve problems in photography. For example, it was through these photographs that I learned to use handheld flash to solve the exposure problem of ambient interior light.
As a graduate student, I visited New York often to take pictures, and it was during that time that the project started to take shape. Staging or responding to the moment as it happened was simply a problem of what I had control over. My preference is usually to stage so that I can slow down and frame, but often, I rely on my intuition and use my body to move around a scene to quickly make a composition. This is why I like to use prime (single focal length) lenses; as my brain gets attuned to how the lens places edges around the world, I can react subconsciously when photographing. Making these pictures taught me to react quickly and always be ready to photograph.
I am reminded of how lucky I was to know my grandfather and the gift he gave me of these pictures. Every time I visited, I would take pictures because I was scared that would be the last time I would see him. This work is evidence of the ways my family taught me to care for and support others.
‘I recall nervously photographing an elderly couple, almost certainly tourists, in Hawaiian shirts taking a walk in Central Park. The brief collision of lives was invigorating.’
This Days I feel Like a Snail Without a Shell
What is interesting about the series This Days I Feel Like a Snail Without a Shell is that it is done in color, and it emphasizes people reaching out to each other, at times, towards a camera or the skies. The gesture of reaching out is a desire to connect, to expand one’s horizons, or even to seek help. It also draws a line between individual experiences and those of being in a group or part of the family. What have you learned about your work and the theme you chose to highlight in this series, which, in a way, serves as a connector between your previous work, Palm Lines, which focuses on people’s hands, and later works that shift to black and white?
This project was my MFA thesis in grad school. Like the project about my grandfather, I see these pictures as my education in being a photographer. There were several parts to how I photographed. First, I made pictures of a woman named Cindy and her family who lived about an 8-minute walk from my apartment in Providence. Second, I traveled frequently to New York and other parts of America to walk around and photograph. And finally, I would walk around Providence two or three times per week asking strangers to photograph them.
As a student, I admired photographers whose work revolved around talking to strangers or engaging with communities they gained access to by happenstance. I recall taking a summer class at the School of Visual Arts when I was maybe 15 or 16 years old. My teacher photographed with an 4x5 inch field camera and often discussed the serendipity of the unknown photographic rewards of talking to strangers. He came into class one day dripping in sweat from his subway commute from Brooklyn. He carried a large backpack containing his field camera and multiple film holders and lugged along a heavy tripod. One day, he came in late because he was working on a story for The New Yorker. It was at that moment that I could picture myself doing something similar. He was an adjunct, the kind of academic job with no security or benefits, but his life teaching and taking pictures sounded like artistic bliss.
There was one assignment where we had to talk to and photograph a stranger. I recall nervously photographing an elderly couple, almost certainly tourists, in Hawaiian shirts taking a walk in Central Park. The brief collision of lives was invigorating because I suddenly had a photograph as evidence of the interaction. In retrospect, I desperately wanted and needed to have those experiences — to meet others and engage with people who I wouldn’t have the chance to talk to without the justification of the camera. The work is about reaching out to connect because that is what I longed to do myself.
I must have exposed hundreds of rolls of film over two years. I talked to many strangers, entered people’s homes to photograph, and made so many mistakes, but I learned from the experiences. The RISD photo program gave me the time, space, and resources to become the kind of photographer I so deeply craved to be like; one who obsessively photographs without any awareness of physical risk or consequences.
Relationships
The images you create point towards the theme of relationships and the meaning they hold. The relationships in this case are triangular, between the subjects in the frame, between the subjects and a photographer, and between the photographer and the camera controlling the environment and a story. Could you tell about this type of relationship formed and the connection that it creates for you with documentary photography?
As a teacher, I think about photographs in terms of interior and exterior information. Interior information is the visual fact within the frame, while exterior information is the context surrounding the image. To me, a great picture has a compelling interior and becomes more profound when the viewer learns about its exterior.
I consider my work to be subjective documentary-style photographs, meaning the pictures take on the language of documentary images but are not necessarily documentary in nature. To me, documentary or photojournalism has the fictional mandate that a photograph must be objective. Photographs can never be objective. Simply by choosing a lens, a shutter speed, an aperture value, and putting four corners around the world changes the way a picture looks and functions.
The triangular relationship is a fascinating issue in the work because it refers to implied (or exterior) information. I think of the relationships between the photographer and the subject, and also between the viewer and the picture, to be necessary to the production of the pictures. They certainly inform how the image is formed but do not necessarily inform the final content of the image. Instead, I think of interior information (or the relationship between subjects in a frame or between pictures in a sequence) to inform the ultimate reading of a picture.
‘My current work seeks to answer the question of if a photograph can be racialized.’
Upcoming Projects
What theme or narrative are you researching, and what can we expect from you in the upcoming months?
My current work seeks to answer the question of if a photograph can be racialized. This idea was formed in part by the history of photography that I love and admire. Susan Lipper and Francesca Woodman make what some might refer to as gendered photographs. Some might refer to the history of the new topographics landscape photography (John Gossage, Robert Adams, etc.) to be particularly male photographs. In another way, Sally Mann’s pictures of the South are in part about the history of slavery and the Civil War embedded in the landscape. Therefore, if gender and history can be felt in a photograph, I wonder how my race as an Asian-American male can be felt or implied in a photograph.
Baldwin Lee, another Asian-American male photographer who photographed in the South, made pictures in the 80s interacting with strangers while walking around with his 8x10 inch camera. I would argue that the way people look back at him is the product of his identity. I hope to make pictures in a similar way.
It wasn’t until I moved to Virginia at the age of 25 that I felt an insidious feeling that people were staring at me. I had this feeling that I was different; that people were staring at me and suspicious of me simply because of how I looked. My aspiration in photographs is to show, through interior information, how people react to me as an Asian-American male. I seek to make pictures that meditate on the question of how race can be felt and seen in a photograph. The world of my pictures is one where outsiders are not welcome but where people still seek to reach out and connect to others.
