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Hello, I'm Mike Cannon, and this is conversation. This is a program tonight about one of America's most influential and innovative photographers. Jerry You'll Zeman. A member of the faculty of the University of Florida, he is graduate research professor of fine arts. He's known all over the United States and in many parts of the world for his creative photographs.

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They hang in many of the major museums. They have been published in numerous books. He is called a lecture and many different sites to explain a unique process that has made him one of the great names in American art photography. He has a new book out, Yeah, it free, it rehearses.

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Uh, The last three years of his work, from 1982 contains some of his more recent photographs. It's called Process and Perception, and it also contains information on how he creates his photographs. I know that you're going to find this fascinating as we look inside the book and have a conversation with Jerry.

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You'll Zeman when I return in a moment conversation from the University of Florida, a discussion of social, political, scientific and religious issues of the day. Your host is Michael V. Gannon, professor of history and ethics and associate dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Florida.

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Think Jerry, you'll Zeman Welcome back to conversations. It's good to have you here again. Pleasure to be here, Mike. After about six years or so three years ago, you published a retrospective of your work. You've been at the University of Florida for about 22 23 years.

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That's correct. Since 1960 now have brought out a new book process and perception, including some of your favorite photographs of the last three years and information also on how you create photographs. Could I ask you before we look at the first of your photographs? What is the process?

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Am I correct that you take a number of different shots and then sandwich the negatives together in order to get a combination of forms? I know that's a very simplistic way of stating it, but well, I do indeed use many negatives to compose. My images of one of the techniques involves sandwiching negatives, but most of my images involved multiple printing techniques where the negatives are separately printed on the same piece of paper.

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In photography, As with many art forms, you have a blank surface that you're trying to fill. The difference in photography is that the material is light sensitive, and there's ways in which you can control part of the paper, uh, preventing it from being hit by light so that you can then add an image at a later time.

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And I my images evolve in a process I call post visualization. But essentially, that's the same process that all artists are involved with. I mean, rarely do artists have the fully conceived image given to them instantaneously and, as you know, painters, printmakers, people in other areas slowly building image.

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And I worked with that same approach only with photography. So each of your photographs, when completed, is one of a kind. It can be duplicated by you, but only by you, because it requires individual application of the techniques that you describe. That's correct. There's not a single negative which would allow me to reproduce each of these photographs.

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So the clicking of the shutter is only the first stage in a long series of stages, and most of the creative work you do is not necessarily in setting up the subject under lights or out of doors, but within the dark room. That's correct. It, however, begins at the camera.

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The I mean, I feel very strongly about what can happen at the camera, and the camera for me is more or less a license to explore. It allows me to go out into the world. The important thing is that I do not have to have the fully conceived image.

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At that point, I can collect fragments that I find exciting, hoping that sometimes later I can use these separate elements to create an image that I personally find more interesting than the one that I, you know, literally see. I'm sure that some of our viewers will wonder when they see some of the photographs.

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Did you anticipate this combination from the beginning, or did it only occur to you later in the dark room? Well, there is a way in which they're sort of a cycle. You do build up certain anticipation of things that you would like to have happened. At the same time, you really have to be responsive to the conditions as they exist for you, and I really start with very few clues as to things that may indeed work.

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It's not unlike someone who is writing, and their first draft is a little crude and they're getting the ideas out and they work with him further and essentially, it works that particular way. The book was really an effort to explain some of the process, both technically and ideologically.

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I think that there's ways in which, uh, people feel artists have some privilege sensibility, and I feel very strongly that, you know, artists worked very hard at what they do. And if indeed my images are more interesting than many, it's because I work. I put a great deal of time and effort into doing that, that that's what my life, you know, indeed is about.

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Let's see what your life indeed is about by seeing some of the photographs that you have created and created in the best and highest sense of that term. If we can watch if you get in these slides together for this evening, I wanted to show the way an image can be built in the dark room.

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This is in one enlarger this negative of the boat and the next enlarger you'll see a sky negative and then in a third and larger there is a ring being printed, and it's a little difficult to explain how that's done. But the three together produced this end result, which I think has a certain kind of mystique to it, that the, you know, a shot of a boat by itself would not have.

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That you're trying to create something that is perhaps a greater metaphor has a greater, uh in this case to me, a spiritual quality to that. If we can move on with the slides, I'll show you the way in which once an idea does occur that frequently I can use these negatives again.

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Uh, in this case, you see a similar boat negative being used. When I discovered a way of creating these cube cube kind of forms, and I'm trying to inter relate, uh, the cube with the wave and the next photograph, you'll see that I've introduced a different cube on beside the wave, and at this point I'm doing some sort of personal research.

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It was interesting to me to discover what images looked as though they were within the box, as the purpose does and which elements appeared to be on the surface of the box, as the wave does in the next few photographs, you can really see an extension of that essential idea that somehow within the cloud forms here we can create a shape that relates vaguely to the house structure on the ground.

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And then in the next photograph, you'll see, uh, sort of a sky box occurring over the ocean and a Nimitz like this. Ah continues to interest me because it seems to, uh, generate a lot of How can I say it. People project all kinds of resolutions on it.

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It's very open ended. It's not, uh, photography is not or art is not in a traditional form, very effective communication. It's not like you're making a specific statement. It's much more a poetic, uh, kind of statement. And again, I think this has, ah, mystery that does sustain itself.

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If we move on here, I'll show you again. Some of the things do happen when I photograph I was aware of the brightness of this wall. I realized that that area would still receive a second image. So in the next photograph you can see uh This is a photograph of the Historical Society in Atlanta.

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It happened to have been taken at an angle similar to the angle of the wall. And then by printing those two together, printing the wall on top, you have a building integrate. Excuse me in the wall, Ato. Later time I had another negative that I thought might be interesting on the wall.

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So here's another version of this particular photograph. Uh, next, with an embedded figure emerging, I think it's important that you explore all the variations, all the options that can occur to you. Uh, you know, throughout the process, if we could move on with these slides, there are some mawr variations that will occur.

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Next slide, please. Uh, this is the famous kudzu in Gainesville, and my first version initially involved printing a structure within that. And at a later date, I decided that I could create a more interesting foreground. And then the next photograph, you will see the addition of water and then the semblance of a, ah sort of a structure.

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It's almost like the essence of a building, in my opinion, where you get this suggestion of a man made structure yet it's totally embraced with the kudzu vines. The next slide will show use of the kudzu again. Uninterested thing is that I have photographed the kudzu for 15 years on that corner.

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And it wasn't until really about three years ago that I made these images, which I felt for the first time, effectively used uh, that incredible plant form. Um, if we could go to the next image, please. This is one version of the man on the desk in the study photograph that is perhaps my most well known one.

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But when I first printed it, I thought that this face might be interesting on the desk. I was not happy with that. And then the second version, which you'll see now, has a hand reaching out. And at the time, I really thought this was probably going to be the most successful version.

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Uh, however, it was late in the day, and I did have ah photograph of this man walking on the beach, and I was attempted to try it, and my wife encouraged me to try it. And then that has become the version that has been the most popular.

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I should mention that these photographs are reversed left to right on your TV screen. Uh, it's it's interesting when an image will somehow fit into the collective consciousness of a large audience. And that photograph has helped me a great deal. In terms of supporting my creative efforts, we can finish out the slides.

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I just have some more other versions of the same idea. This is again a, uh, cloud sort of room. I enjoy working with this sort of interior exterior environments. I like to give something aim or, uh, ambiguous kind of space that this is not then kind of room that one would, you know, literally perceived.

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We could move to the next slide. Here's that same bird this time going in a different direction. And, uh, I've used this sphere form, uh, when I first found technically a means of doing and I attended toe overuse it, that reminded me of a statement I'd read where the man said, If the only tool you have is a hammer, you treat everything like it's a nail.

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But I was determined to explore the possibilities of this fear of form. You'll see it again in the next photograph. Uh, it's that's a pure form. And in this case, I think it relates to the structure and it does add a definite element of mystery. Uh, I think mystery and enigma are a central part of art.

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From my point of view, I like I enjoy people that continuously, you know, engaged me with a sense of mystery. We can move on to the next slide. This is a version of first version of a new image, and then you'll see the next version. I've incorporated the spear form with some modification in the center of these last two photographs were from the sky, uh, down in Miami.

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This is a recent photograph. The more recent ones, they're a little more difficulty to talk about. I'm still exploring the options of this idea. Uh, this somehow to me to file it breaks from the traditional photographic surface and, uh, the inherent believability that photographs have where you have these hands poking through the sky.

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But I like this sort of implied message of the hands eventually clasping within the water. And to me, so much of life and so much of art has to do with a touching, reaching kind of experience. Uh, the next slide, uh, is a more or less numerous photograph.

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Uh, these are flamingos visiting Yosemite. I did this essentially as a joke. Uh, I have done several funny photographs of Yosemite that I've over the years sent to Ansel Adams, who passed away just a few years ago. But, uh, there's a history of famous landscape photographers traveling to Yosemite, and in this case, it's amusing because it does look very believable.

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The next slide, this is the last one I have to show this evening. And again, this is very recent. It was done within the last six months. And, uh, it's just a matter of embedding these human elements into this rock wall. And I guess a lot of my images have this, uh, sort of dialogue visual dialogue occurring between natural objects.

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And then the human figure or man made objects. Cherry. That's, ah, wonderful presentation of a very dramatic art form. You like the mysterious You like enigma. Would you say that this is surrealism? Well, it is, uh, when most people say surreal, I know what they mean.

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There is a movement in art, the surrealist movement. That's a very specific movement that these were not a part of, but the extent to which they present other levels of reality that, you know, indeed, there is a sort of a surface reality, but I'm interested in the reality that lies beneath the surface.

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Also, there's a tradition in art that has existed, Uh, certainly, Uh, for over 100 years in which we find it actually happening from the Renaissance on where the artists could no longer accept what is literally given to the I, There is the belief that the artists can invent a reality that is more personally meaningful than the one that is given to the eye.

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And ah, lot of my efforts are really along those lines, Thio To invent a a landscape to invent an environment that I personally find, you know, mawr engaging, more meaningful, an environment that is congenial to you. You feel comfortable with these figures and forms, and is there not a spiritual world that you find in the dark room that is comfortable for you?

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I think that I think the spirituals world is a very excellent way of expressing it. Uh, you know, the dark room to me is a very meditative place. I see it as a kind of visual research lab on I find, you know, it's a place where I can relax, and, uh, I'm willing to take chances in there that it's an exciting environment for me.

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Mhm. Could you tell me a little bit about the initial stages of this kind of work where you actually take the photographs? Ah, lot of photographers who are viewing the program would be interested. I know in the type of cameras that you use the type of film on DSO on.

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Well, I I have a very strong technical training and photography from Rochester Institute of Technology, where I did my undergraduate work and I initially worked with a view camera, which gives a very large negative. But it's a very cumbersome camera toe work with. I now work with two and a quarter inch cameras that they give a 200 quarter.

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It's negative, and, uh, with careful processing, you can still get very good results. I really work in what is commonly called the West Coast tradition, simply because Edward Weston and Ansel Adams, two very important American photographers, developed a very fine attitude of craftsmanship toward the full tone range, black and white print.

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And I, if you have an opportunity to see original Prince of Mine, go to great lengths to try to get the maximum amount of detail and tonal range that the photographic materials can give. And it's very difficult to get the kind of quality I enjoy with, say, a 35 millimeter camera Hassell.

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Glad, I suppose, is the type camera that you were describing. Yes, I actually used the Japanese equivalent, which is a bra. Nika. Hmm. And when one sees photographs of the photographers of the 19 twenties and thirties, one remembers the photographer under a black hood and looking actually through the negative.

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The the, uh, the lens is that correct and getting a very large negative as a result. And that's the tradition in which you're working. But with more modern equipment, right? The modern films really make it sense that you can effectively, uh, come very close to matching the quality of a view camera with, say, the HASA blad or Veronica or cameras of that nature.

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What kind of film do you use is there? Do professional photographers such as yourself use a special film that's not available. Thio. Here's the interesting thing. I think that there's, Ah, camera magazines in particular create a great mystique about the equipment and the materials. But to me, it's sort of like asking a writer, you know what kind of typewriter to use and what kind of paper.

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And, you know, there may be some difference if you have a word processor that you know may help you at the same point. It's a matter of knowing the materials. And, uh, you know, I use very standard materials. There are a lot of very fine films on the market.

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I happen to use plus X for most of my work. There has been in the past few years. Uh, the industry is finally responded to the concerns of the fine art photographer, and we now have a least four or five photographic papers that are superior to those that have been available for years.

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Photographic images black and white are made up literally of silver metallic silver, and there was a point at which they were cutting back on the amount of silver in these materials, which then affected the tonal range that was possible. But now many companies and the French did the initial research.

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And now the Japanese and even Kodak and the American market are producing very fine papers intended for people trying to create, you know, fine art imagery with photography. Am I wrong in saying that fine art photography seems in the main to be black and white photography?

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Well, I probably probably you get a distortion that from the fact that I'm on this campus, but I would say that there's, Ah tremendous renaissance right now in color photography color photography. Up until a few years ago, there had been problems with the difficulty of the process Number one.

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But there was great concern about the archival quality of color photographs, most color photographs that you have made snapshots. If you hung them on a wall where sunlight hits them in a period of a few weeks, they would seriously alter in their color. There are new color processes in which the dies air much more permanent, and there's a younger generation of photographers that are very effectively beginning to work with color.

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But my vocabulary, I feel, is definitely in black and white photography. When I think of Ansel Adams I think of black and white photographs. You mentioned his name. Did you have the chance to meet him? And Oh, yes. Well, uh, Ansel and I were friends, Uh, for many years.

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I first, uh, met him in the early sixties, and then I'm on a yearly basis. Uh, went to California, and I taught workshops with him. They have a staff teachers, and I saw him just a few months before he died. Last year, he had a remarkable technical mastery of the craft.

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I paused in a photography store one day. Why, while buying film to peruse a little book on developing solutions. And it was a very technical manual by Ansel Adams. And he was not a person who just wandered out into the countryside with a camera and had a lot of blood taking photographs.

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He was a master of the that. The technical requirements of his craft and art. Well, he really more than any individual, uh, set the craft of photography ahead in the last 20 years. I mean, there's no equivalent that I can think of because he had both Ah, good.

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I in terms of creating exciting imagery. But he was also concerned with getting the utmost out of all of the equipment and all of the materials. And, you know, he ended up advising many of the companies on their materials and how they could be improved. When you see Ansel's photographs, you can certainly recognize the qualitative difference.

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Each one of your fine arts photographs is unique. Oman. Are you also one of a kind, or are there others following after you imitating your, uh, innovation? Well, I think that some of the techniques that I have explored and promoted are becoming Mawr accepted. But I really believe that, you know, the serious artists works from within, and at some surface level there may be people producing images that air similar to mine.

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But in the long run, they will produce their own kind of imagery. Uh, there's really a tremendous reinvestigation of the means of photography today. There's a revival of some 19th century processes. There's a lot of combination of different processes occurring, and at the time I came along, what I was doing was considered very, very radical.

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There was a very purist tradition in photography that had emerged in the fifties, and I challenged that in the sixties. Well, now, in the eighties, we really have, uh, such a broad aesthetic happening in photography today. You can see anything from traditional black and white photographs at a photographic exhibit toe images that you have difficulty determining whether they're photographic or not, that you know what kind of material was used in them.

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You seem to want to invest nature with human qualities. You see a tree trunk and out of it you want to build a cathedral, which is a work of man. You see a wall and you have faces coming from it. You seem to be an animist finding human nature in all of the, uh, the trees and rocks and walls and and the Seascapes and skies of the earth.

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Well, I mean, I'd have to agree with that. I think that there's I really a time, you know, people will ask me how I do these things, and I can answer technically ah, lot easier than I can sort of spiritually and psychologically. I do know that when I'm creating these images, the blocking systems that I have at various times their reluctance to be playful, to just sort of try things, but I really seek to amaze myself.

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If there's a if there's a goal there, I mean, if something comes up that looks familiar, I know I've been there before, and so I do try to integrate various elements that I feel comfortable with. I do think images that have a human reference tend to have more appeal for me than others.

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You know, you just identify with your own kind. Um, but it's not. It's not a conscious calculated, Ah, thing that I'm doing. And one last technical question. How long does it take you, on average to create one of these fine arts photographs? Well, uh, that's a little difficult to answer that once I have the negatives and I'm going to use in a particular photograph.

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I can complete that image in a day in the dark room. You know, four or five hours, they would vary in length. You do have the time in which you go out and photograph. Yes, I'm more interested in the dark room time that I spend a lot of time in the dark room.

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But I have a very comfortable, dark room. I think this has been a neglected area for photography's. I truly see it as this visual research lab. You know, I have a stereo and I have, uh, carpeting on the floor, and it's a place where I could spend a lot of hours without feeling claustrophobic.

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And there's so many options that are truly available at that point that have been overlooked by photographers. Really, uh, that, I think, should be explored, since we're constantly in a state of sort of seeking new ways of commenting on the world that is newly understood. To me, it's important.

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Particularly. I try to encourage my students that you build your vocabulary. You try to have as many options available as possible. And, uh, initially some of them may function more or less is a gimmick. But eventually you find a way in which you can use a particular visual phenomena or particular technique and make a meaningful image employing it.

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Jerry thank you for Ah, fascinating tour through Process and Perception, your new book published by the University of Florida Press and available throughout Florida and the Country. Process and Perception. The Photography. The fine Art Photography of Jerry You'll Zeman, graduate research professor of fine arts on the campus of the University of Florida.

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Jerry, Uh, let's, uh, do this again sometime. And let's not wait six years. Let's do it real soon. Thanks very much for being with me on conversation. Thank you, Mike. Mhm. Yeah. There. See, E?