Since Simon Baker became the first curator of photography and international art at Tate Modern in London, his work has somewhat become an indicator of the trends in international photography. Baker shares his various experiences with us in Kassel (Fotobook Festival 2013), from organising photobook forums to curating a major joint exhibition by Daido Moriyama and William Klein.
自2009年倫敦「泰德現代美術館 (Tate Modern)」任命了該館首位攝影專職策展人Simon Baker，Baker的策展工作儼然成了國際攝影脈動新的另類指標。從舉辦討論個人出版攝影書浪潮的小型座談，到策劃森山大道和William Klein的大型雙人展，Baker在2013年德國卡塞爾攝影書節與我們分享他的策展人生與攝影觀察。
Interview by Hanyu Chen
Photograph by Pomin Wu & Vanie Wu
(from VOP#11 / 中文版訪談請見《攝影之聲》第11期)
VOP / Tate is one of the most important art museums in the world, and you are the first curator of photography in this institution. How do you see your role in Tate and your influences on world photography?
Well, obviously there is a new strategy for the Tate museum. And I think what is very important for us is that we make sure it’s clear to the audience that photography was always inside the history of art. So we don’t think photography is a separated thing, and I don’t see my job as just about photography. I see my job as reminding our visitors, reminding people who are interested in the arts that, photography was always there, whether we’re talking about 1920 or 1960 or contemporary times. We’re really talking about a medium. Photography is a medium which really has a home inside this history of ours, and I think it is a shame and it is sad that Tate has not been showing photography that much. To a certain extent we are correcting something that was wrong. But also we have some opportunities to do some very interesting things, so we have an opportunity to show great works to a very large audience.
I think the thing with Tate is that it is free, the museum is free, and has an enormous number of visitors–maybe 5 million visitors a year– and what we show in the collection are free. They were seen by so many people that it has suddenly become very important how we show the photographs, and how we fit them into the collection which is already there. So it is very exciting to see the audience coming to Tate, and seeing William Eggleston, Moriyama Daido or whoever that might be, or even younger artists in the context of the famous painters and sculptors, and to really make sure that everyone realizes that photography is equal with painting, with film, with sculpture, that it’s not a less interesting, less junior thing. It is leveled. It was really exciting to prove, by showing great works, that photography has a right to be considered an equal with everything else.
VOP / What’s your opinion or impression of Asian photography especially Taiwanese photographers?
The photography collection in Tate had just started 4 years ago. I’m the first curator of photography in Tate, so it’s a totally new program to collect, to show and to make exhibitions. We started trying very much to catch up with all the other museums, trying to work up—how to make a good collection. So far we have started researching in the Asia Pacific area.
The first thing we have done was to look at Japan, because there is a very strong, long standing culture of photography. But we also look at China, Taiwan, South Korea, and Vietnam. We look at these different areas, but I would say that we’re really only at the level of research, just starting to understand. But the only thing that we have in the collection now is Japanese photography. We have works by Moriyama, Ishiuchi, Araki, Takanashi, so we started with collecting Japanese photography works, then maybe a broader collection after that.
The great thing about Japanese photography in general–also why we are here in Kassel– is the amazing strength of the publications. And I think that one of the reasons we all know Japanese photographers is that we all got their books. We bought their books, and they come to Europe…that’s since 1960. That has been the case. They have been exporting these amazing objects, which enable us probably to know more about Japan than any other area and region.
So I think this idea of photobook is very important. People make magazines, and people make publications that can travel around. I think that is super important. So when we did the show last year, we did William Klein and Moriyama Daido. We did these two shows, and we highlighted their importance to photobooks. There was William Klein‘s book about New York that was very influential in Japan. And there is Daido’s photobook that is very important outside of Japan.
VOP / Photography has changed a lot in the last decades. With the emergence of digital images, of the Internet, of the wave of self-published photobooks, just to name a few, do you think being a curator has become more difficult than it used to be?
I think it’s difficult to be in touch with everything that happens. You know if you’re thinking about what happens online, there are some statistics about how many pictures go on Blurb or Twitter everyday; it’s tens of millions of pictures, so in one sense it is difficult to keep up, but in another sense it is easier, because everybody has a camera or phone to take pictures with. People are becoming more aware of photography– and more comfortable with it– because everybody now takes photographs. Even only ten years ago, not everybody had a camera. Now everybody has a camera, so I think now we have an interesting opportunity, because people are comfortable with photography, they’re more receptive and open to photography, so that makes our job easier, but the amount of material makes the job harder, so there’s a balance to find. But we like to think, particularly at Tate, we’re very happy to support and to show photobooks, for example, because this clearly is such an important part of photography. So we show historic photobooks, maybe from 1920s, but we’re very happy to show contemporary works too. So, when we did the Moriyama show, we had some works that are worth thousand of pounds from the 70s, and we had some that he published the days before.
And that’s an interesting thing about photography from the “collecting” point of view, that it is very democratic. If any of us don’t have thousands of pounds to buy art, we can still go on to buy a photobook for 25 euros, and it is still a beautiful object. So I think this democratic sense is both in the production of photographs and also in the access of beautiful things, especially when you think about small publishers. You can go on to buy a book from somebody for 30 euros made by a young artist or a young publisher, and you really have the opportunity to explore something new, easily. I think that is very important. It is why photobooks have this kind of nice feelings around them, on the whole (apart from here — I’m sure you can find expensive photobooks here). If you buy them when they come out, usually they’re possible to buy.
VOP / What do you think about Moriyama’s snapshots and street photography, while the current trend of photographing creation tends to be conceptual and deliberately art work?
I can say something very interesting about that, which is that if you think of “Farewell Photography”, which was being discussed in the lecture this morning, a lot of Farewell Photography are photographs of other photographs. They’re photographs of posters, or TV screens — photographs of other images. And if we think about conceptual photography, we think about the Pictures Generation in New York in the 80s, like Richard Prince, like re-photographing other photographs. We think of that as conceptual, but Daido was doing this 10 years beforehand in a different practice. What’s interesting about him is that his practice is his life, is photography– the two are completely blended. Each morning he makes a picture of the picture above his bed, the picture of another photograph…everything. He photographs all day long. Really it’s like a big conceptual project, if we think of it that way…like On Kawara, like painting a painting everyday. I don’t think the distinction is so great.
I think a very interesting thing is to think about a deeper understanding of the photographic medium. One of the things that conceptual art has done in general, is to suggest that photography can be done with no skills–no technical skills. So they use the term, in English, “de-skilling photography”… the very simple, with no skill involved, no technical ability (involved).
But in fact, photographers like Moriyama really suggest that it may look like he is very much interested in the technical part of photography, but he is not fetishizing it in any ways. It’s not like Ansel Adams; not like a perfect, crystalline image. It’s a different kind of photographic image, it is invested in what photography can be, and what it can do. So I think we could say yes, there is a tension between the conceptual and the snapshot, but actually they also have many things in common, because they are both arguing against classical photography. You could think of Ansel Adams, or Cartier-Bresson. Both Daido and Richard Prince are arguing against this older version of photography, but in different ways.
VOP / And how do you think this difference between the photography like Moriyama and other art photography?
Martin Parr said something really funny. Somebody said to Martin Parr, “How can we tell art-photography from normal-photography?” And he said, “If it is bigger than two meters, and it cost more than ten-thousand pounds, it is art.” –which is a funny answer. It is not true. But, I think actually one of the things we could say about Moriyama, which is really exciting, which is also one of the reasons we gave him a show, (and you can see it here), is that he is not only interested in taking pictures, in making books, but also thinks about space; so he is interested in making huge installations. And, if you want to say Wolfgang Tillmans is known for making huge installation of photographs, maybe he is famous for that. Daido is not. But, Daido does the same thing; he also makes these beautiful installations. And, Ninagawa Mika has made these beautiful installations on the wall with some big prints, some small prints, some things in frames, some things not in frames. So, you get a real idea of installation. I think that is really important. And that is something we usually identify with high-art photography, but it is also something that is shared by photographers and interprint artists.
VOP / Some young photographers in Taiwan, for example, are unlike Daido or Araki, who are already famous. If they want their works to be shown in galleries or be published, they seem to have to conform to some rules–like you have to have a certain amount of works or works of a certain size, to be taken seriously. What do you think of this situation?
I think that’s probably always been the case. There are rules–some of them are explicitly stated and some of them are hidden. There are ways that galleries and collectors and museums identify value (of the artwork). But I also think that those rules quickly become superseded or overtaken by practice. And I think now, when you go to an art fair or exhibition, you are more likely to see photography being presented in many many different ways. And I don’t think those conventions–if you like–are as strong now. Certainly–I don’t know about Taiwan, but in Europe it is starting to be very different.
I think the main problem is that art galleries don’t make very much money selling young photographers’ work, because the prices of the objects tend to be quite low. If you are a painter, you might make one painting every month, and then the price is quite high, even if you are young. With photography, it is inexpensive, and galleries find it hard to make money selling younger artists’ work. So, they have to be extremely conservative. They still have to exist somehow by selling works… so I think it is very difficult. And I think you see that definitely in London as well; the photography galleries don’t show many young artists’ work because it is impossible for them to make any money selling inexpensive objects– which doesn’t mean that they shouldn’t do it, but it causes this kind of problem.
And I think that is probably one of the reasons why the photobook has become so strong: because that is the place where a younger artist can make an object which is valuable. And maybe that is why you were saying that they make limited edition books –because you get the sense of a very beautiful and very special object that somebody wants to buy, but it is a hundred-years-old instead of a thousand-years-old. So, maybe they are hitting a different kind of market, and are also able to produce very beautiful things; maybe instead of having an exhibition, rather than as well as having an exhibition. I think the great value of photobook is the fact that you will see curators and collectors looking at photo books, trying to work out what they might like to show in an exhibition. And we have acquired works for Tate, where we basically have seen the book, gone to the artist and said, “How would you like to show this in the gallery?”
And there’s a good example last year in London… there’s a book called The Afronauts. This was a very famous book. It’s very cheap, a very small book. And it suddenly became very collectable, and nobody can find a copy now. And after that, then she got an exhibition…and then she made this beautiful installation. Maybe at first, people were thinking, “The book is really great.” Once the book became very famous, then afterwards, people would say,”Oh maybe we would like to see this as an exhibition.” So you can see this connection, that at first she didn’t have the opportunity to have a show, but after she had the book, she got an opportunity to make the show. If she had done it the other way round, people might have said no to the show because it’s too huge a project; but once you’ve read the book and understand how it works, she might get an opportunity. They have a very close relationship, the book and the exhibition. The book can be extremely supportive; it can be a very, very good way of putting ideas across the first time.
VOP / What do you think are the qualities that a person needs to become a good curator? In Taiwan, there’s no schools dedicated to education in photography. What can you suggest for younger people to train themselves to become good curators?
It’s interesting… I didn’t study to be a curator. I studied to be an art historian. So I studied history of the arts. And I was a professor in a university before I worked in a museum. So my career didn’t go (where it was intended to be) –- it went strangely toward the museum. Actually, the practical side of being a curator is very easy. To actually put things on the wall, to decide how to install things, you can do that by looking at other exhibitions…looking at what looks good, and looking at how things work and don’t work. You can educate yourself about what makes a beautiful exhibition. I think the key thing is to learn your subject, you know, regardless of the exhibition. So, if you are interested in photography, you should learn as much about photography as possible. Go to see as many shows as you can. And afterwards, those two things can be put together.
I think the most important thing is to learn something about history in the past. Because, now, many people when they study to be a curator, they think it’s only about contemporary art. And I want to be contemporary art curator, right? I just want to show Leiko Shiga, and Rinko Kawauchi. I don’t want to learn about, like, somebody from 1950s. The important thing is to learn history– if you learn something about history, then you can make some judgement about the contemporary. I think, really, that’s so important, because it’s become very fashionable to be a curator or work in the arts. It becomes fashionable because contemporary art is very exciting. But, in order to understand contemporary you have to study the past.
So my advise would be to learn the history of the subject. If you are in Taiwan, then learn the history of photography in Taiwan. Then you look at lots of contemporary artist’s photobooks and exhibitions… you look at what is happening; then you try to bring the two together, understanding the past and the way it is now. I think you have to have both. Otherwise, it’s impossible to make a judgement; it’s impossible to say “Moriyama is interesting” if you don’t know what came before him, what came at the same time as him. I think that is really important.
VOP / Do you have any photographer or publisher that you are looking for in this photobook festival?
It’s Toshifugu Yamawaki, DUAL1 & DUAL2. He’s an incredible self-publisher. You see the books are really totally handmade, all stuck together by himself. And I saw his book in the photo festival in Arles in France. I saw this huge book, and I knew nothing about him–I had no idea what he was, what he did. But it’s really amazing, and I’m so excited that he’s here, and to see some more of his books. So I’m going to buy all the other books by him, if I can find them. This is very exciting. And I think, actually, there’re lots of things here that are really exciting…because you’ve never seen it before. It’s an object that is handmade–that’s very special to me.
But there are also fantastic things from Japan. Publishers come from Japan for this festival because of Moriyama. So you have the Super Labo…you have Zen photo…they all are really good. And I saw also there is a book FAR, which is the first book by a new publishing company “ADAD.” It’s the first book, it’s a new company, it’s a young artist, and it’s great to see that alongside the very famous artists. I look forward to new discoveries as well.
VOP / Do you think there is a “theme” in contemporary photography, the main question, all the photographers are asking about?
No, I don’t think is one thing. I think there are many things that people are addressing. I think one thing is very interesting, I don’t think it is the only thing, is the impact of digital practice on the way people understand the analog and the objects. Maybe one of the reasons why the photo books are more and more important is because people, like you, could make this; you could publish this online as a blog. But then you wouldn’t have these beautiful insert pages, you would not have these texts. So maybe what change the internet is to let us to really start to respect the objects. You can say that about photography prints and publications. Maybe one of the reasons why we are all so excited with objects now is that there is a threat coming.
I remember a few years ago people were saying, “No one is going to be buying books in ten years’ time. Why would you buy a book? You can get it on your iPad… you can have everything on your iPad.” But strangely, in arts, we all still want (books). I want to have the book. It’s an object, with nice paper, with nice reproductions…like your magazine, with something beautiful inside. And this remind us of what we might lose, if everything becomes digital. Because the digital has become so easy to use, it reminds artists what they loved about analog film, about the Polaroid, about printing themselves black-and-white prints. They remind us about screen-printing, and bookmaking. It’s like a slap. It remind us what it is that we might lose. If we just say, “Ok, I don’t care. I have digital photographs on a screen, I don’t want any books.” We’ll lose so much. So I think it is this moment…the interesting in photography is the re-appreciation of the physical object. I hope that’s a good answer. (laugh)
VOP / How about your daily schedule as a curator?
E-mail all day. Just emails. We sit at the desk, we answer emails all day long. It’s the new fascism, this e-mail.
The nice things we do, to me, are that there are artists to talk to, to look at objects, to look at works…but that takes such a small (proportion of) time, actually. It is really great we get to work with artists, and look at objects… this is great (the happiest part of my job) to come to Kassel, and to look at these books, to work with Daido and to do this. This is fantastic. But actually, even now, while we are having an interview, I’ve probably got 30 emails in my blackberry. So, after this interview I have to go away, have to do my job. (laugh)
But the really good part of the job is to travel, to go to different places. I’ve been really lucky in my job–I’ve been able to go to Japan 4 or 5 times in 4 years; I go to America twice a year; I go to Europe, to Paris Photo–which is really important to come to other festivals, to Arles. So traveling and meeting artists and seeing works is really enjoyable, and are really important things to do. But actually, that isn’t what we do all the time. To balance the exciting parts with the less exciting parts.
Simon Baker, born in England in 1972. He lives and works in London. Baker is the first curator of photography and international art at Tate in London. Prior to joining Tate, he was Associate Professor of Art History at the University of Nottingham, where he taught history of photography, surrealism and contemporary art. He has published widely and curated many exhibitions.
Simon Baker，1972年生於英國，原為英國諾丁漢大學助理教授，教授攝影史、超現實主義與當代藝術，2009年成為倫敦泰德現代美術館首位攝影及國際藝術策展人。現於英國倫敦居住與工作。