PJ interviews Kyle Cassidy

As writers sometimes do, I noodle around on the Internet researching and looking for inspiration. I stumbled across a site: where i write: fantasy & science fiction authors in their creative spaces. Being a reader of science fiction and fantasy, I checked it out and found these fantastic photos of some of my favorite authors in their natural habitat, so to speak. Who was this great photographer?

It's amazing who you'll meet at a con if you have the guts to walk up and start a conversation. I was lucky enough to chat with photographer, Kyle Cassidy, at PhilCon '09. Not only did he shoot Where I Write, but several other projects I found fascinating. He's photographed Goths, Punks, Steampunks, Cutters, Politicians, Metalheads, Dominatrices, Scholars, Alternative Fashion and many more.

Since then, I've poked around his sites and followed his Morning Catfaces on Twitter. And now, he's agreed to let me interview him. Bwa ha ha ha ha!

Hi Kyle and thanks for agreeing to an interview with me! I first found your work when I was introduced to your project: Where I Write. I know it all started with Michael Swanwick and his Hugos, but can you tell me what it was like approaching some of the other authors and photographing their creative spaces?

It was pretty easy after that. Michael opened his rolodex and called Ben Bova and Joe Haldeman and Joe called Harry Harrison and then I called Piers Anthony and name dropped Ben Bova and Harry Harrison and I was out of the gate like a shot. The F/SF authors community is really tightly knit and most everybody knows most everybody else in town, so you call one person and they're on the phone with everybody else.

Ohio was kind of interesting as I made this great spiral through the state starting with C.C. Finlay and then going down almost to Kentucky and finishing way up in the north east photographing Cathrynne Valente's wedding — which was all wild and wonderful. Really after that most people have heard of what you're doing and then people are mostly "well, when are you getting here?" The Wired magazine piece and the Boing Boing did a lot to get the word out. So it really wasn't one of those things that you agonize over — it started with a bang and kept on going.

Was it difficult to work with the author's pets? I noticed you have a couple of them caught in motion.

Mostly not. There were a lot of pets in my previous book, Armed America, and I've got it somewhat down to a science. Which is you have your people look straight where you want them and pay no mind at all to the assistant who's dropping the animal into the shot. The assistant leaps out of the way and you take a photo. Of course some of them just WANT to be in the photo. And there were a few skittish ones that wouldn't participate. But Fred Pohl's dog, for example, just wandered into the room and jumped on the chair. That's often how it is. You're there long enough, the pets want to be where the action is.

I had the pleasure of meeting you at PhilCon 09 along with Michael Swanwick. In a later panel, I enjoyed your photos of steampunk and in fact, if one were to look up steampunk on wikipedia, one of your photos is in the article. Do you have a project planned for a collection of steampunk images or some of the other fandoms you've photographed?

I really like photographing fans — I think it fits into the overall arc of what I see my photography doing which is capturing groups of people as they are and putting them on gallery walls. I was at a science fiction convention a few years back and saw this guy with his hair sticking out to one side and a vest with 500 buttons on it and I thought "at the mall, this person would be extraordinary, but right here, right now, he doesn't even register: this is his tribe" and I was kicking myself for not bringing a camera to document it. Which turned out fine, because I called the organizers at Worldcon and they were all about it and I photographed a lot of people there.

Steampunk not so much so. Steampunk's an aesthetic of design — I'm happy to see the things that people have done with it, but it's a costume, in the exact opposite manner of that guy with the vest and the uncombed hair — he wasn't trying to be anybody but himself whereas people in steampunk outfits are most often using that to be someone else. I've found I'm not so much interested in photographing people who are in character, at least in large groups. So I see the two as really different things — photographing fans I see as documentary, even if some of them are in costume, but I treat photographing steampunk the same way I do photographing fashion. It's not about who your are anymore, it's about what you're wearing. So really I'm less interested in photographing Lord Blatherskythe Zerpforder the Zeppelin pilot and more interested in photographing Bernard Schram the guy who loves steampunk. Photographing lots of costumes is commercial work

You recently shared a pdf set of photographs titled "Air, Earth, Air: Photographs with an iPhone", can you tell us a little more about your iphonetography and if you plan to do more projects like this one?

I've always been very influenced by DIY and making art with what's available and I so often see people complain "Oh, I don't take photos because I don't have a good camera" or they think that some new lens will solve all their problems. And a lot of times, that's actually true — your work will likely be better with better equipment, but the very first thing to approaching any type of art is an inventory of what tools you have and knowing their strengths and weaknesses. You know, if you show up to photograph a speech by a politician and you only have a wide angle lens you either need to figure out how to get Really Close to the stage, or you photograph something else, something you can get to — you photograph the crowd, or people, or you figure out if you can get to a place that the speaker is going to have to walk past — you find the thing that your tools are capable of and that's where you start.

That's what drew me to making photos with the iPhone — because it's really the lowest common denominator. So finding what I can photograph with that becomes the challenge and, hopefully, it also encourages people who can't afford a lot of equipment to work with what they have.

You have a documentary photography book called Armed America: Portraits of Gun Owners in Their Homes, awarded amazon.com's "Best 100 Books of 2007″ "Best 10 Art Books of 2007″ medals. Do you have a particular memory that stands out about the road trip across the country, meeting the people and learning their stories?

That book really changed my whole life — everything about it. I photographed something like 260 people for Armed America and walking through the doorways of 100 strangers homes must change you — nobody could have that experience and not be a different person. Most of what I learned was about me. The big lesson I think was realizing that I judge people. I'd thought I didn't, I thought "I'm the most open minded person I know, people who do this don't bother me, or people who do that, or people who do whatever." But I realized over those two years that I make judgements about people based on the way they dress or talk or what kind of car they drive, or where they live, and this process of having your stereotypes shattered over and over and over and over was eye opening and, I think, really good for the soul. There's nothing quite like being proved wrong repeatedly to get you to drop some of your preconceptions. And as a result, I think I'm now more open minded than I was, by a long shot, and probably even better is that I no longer think that I'm completely unbiased — it's easier to look in at myself and say "why do I think this about that person? Is it because they're wearing that hat? I think it is." It's a lot easier now to see the other side of an argument that I don't think I agree with.

For the aspiring photographers seeking publication, how did you get published?

I actually wrote a long blog post about that — which you can read here: http://kylecassidy.livejournal.com/561862.html

The two minute version is find publishers who do work similar to what you want to do, write an amazing query letter with lots and lots of research about your topic, send this to the publisher, who will reject you, then do it again until someone doesn't. It's like a beaver chewing down a tree. You just keep at it and you don't give up.

War Paint is my favorite project of yours to date. Could you share one of your favorite images from the project and the person's story?

Robert Dorn is from Missouri. When he was 17 he joined the Navy and got a tattoo while in Pearl Harbor. He got it because he wanted to be tough like all the other, older sailors a "fouled anchor" tattoo — it cost him three dollars and he might not have gotten it if he was old enough to go to the bars, but all he could do with his money before turning twenty one was get a tattoo. So he did. He talked tough and couldn't wait to get to fight the Japanese. You couldn't hold him back. And then on April 5th, 1945, off the coast of Okinawa his ship was involved in a relentless attack from mainland Japan — it was hit by three Kamikaze fighters and caught fire, everything was burning. A ten foot hole blew out the side of the ship and half of it was flooded, but it didn't go down. They made it to the harbor in Kerama Reeto and the ship was repaired. Robert Dorn survived the war and came back to Saint Louis where he's now a school bus driver. He thinks about the fact that he's alive every time he looks down at his arm. He carries a photo of his ship in his wallet.

And I understand War Paint is still ongoing. For any readers here, how can they get involved?

I'd love to get email from people who work with veterans groups or hospitals or VFW's, I'll be traveling around finishing this one up so I'm really still looking for people. WWII vets in particular.

Psst, you can email Kyle at kyle(at)kylecassidy(dot)com

Is there anything else you'd like to share?

Maybe some advice. I've found that the key to artistic success lies not just within one's own ability, but also within the sphere of influence of your peer group. Surround yourself with the most creative people you know, in whatever field — there's nothing quite like the motivation of being the only one in the room who hasn't done something cool in the past 24 hours to keep you working and striving to be better.