Derelicts in the Desert

Though based in New York City, photographer and filmmaker Peter Sutherland spends a fair amount of time on the road, shooting subcultures ranging from skateboarders and grafitti artists to mountain men and members of New York City’s Chinatown Soccer Club. Sutherland has guest-edited this issue of Theme, choosing subjects who “approach their work by just going out and finding stuff, the opposite of the controlled-studio thing.” He sat down with Tim Barber, the founder and curator of the online gallery and image archive tinyvices.com, for an interview on his own work and processes.

Tim Barber: Where are we right now?
Peter Sutherland: We’re in your apartment on Forsyth, I can see a soccer field outside and we’re having some tea.

Didn’t you used to play soccer on that field?
That’s my original New York soccer field, but we’ve since moved up three blocks.

With the Chinatown Soccer Club?
Seven years, three million games later, we’re still going. It’s pretty good. We play three to four days a week.

Hitch Hiker, Palm Springs 2009

Do you work out too or is that your workout?
I try to depend on that for the workout, but the upper body definitely struggles to keep up — I ride my bike a lot, and play soccer and that’s sort of it.
So from the waist up you’re frail.

[laughs] Total weakling. What do you do, you don’t do anything?
I move my mouse around.

That’s it, just the right hand?
It’s getting pretty strong.

Nice.
So, this issue is called “Strange Birds”?
The original title was Freaks and Weirdos. It was a concept that Theme came to me with. I think they saw that in my work and I thought it sounded good, but I wanted to call it something else. So it changed to Strange Birds.

They saw in your work you shoot freaks and weirdos, or that you are a freak and weirdo?
I don’t even shoot that many people, so maybe it’s that I’m a freak and a weirdo. I don’t know.

Fire! 2009

The people that you shoot aren’t necessarily what people think of as freaks. You shoot athletes a lot, and… hicks.
Derelicts in the desert. Funny enough they thought of you to interview me for the Freaks and Weirdos issue.

So I’m the freak? I’m a weird, strange bird… ok. So that’s the concept and you worked from there to bring together different artists for this?
Yeah, mainly photo-based artists, and others like Frederick Wiseman. He’s a documentarian, an early cinéma vérité guy. I chose a group of people that approach their work in a similar way, people who just go out and find stuff, the opposite of the controlled studio thing.

A “from the ground up” process?
Yeah. One of my favorite films ever is the movie Gimme Shelter by the Maysles brothers. It’s visually stunning, the music, the era, everything they got there — there’s the conflict, the human interest, the romance, there’s everything in that movie. And I really love the way they approached making it, how it just seems like they got cameras and started shooting and they got all this amazing stuff. I kind of admire people that approach work that way, and it’s sort of the backbone for how I make my own work, so it’s interesting to me.

Stabby Man 2009

Ok, speaking of that, the “dudes in the desert,” how did that project start for you?
I like the idea of people who are survivalists, not necessarily homeless, not necessarily camping, but sort of permanently outside…

Grappling with nature...
Grappling with nature. It goes back to when I was a kid, there were these trails behind my house. And there were rumors that people lived up there, like “don’t go over the hill”…

The hills have eyes?
Yeah, I never believed it, and so as an adult I went back. I’ve still got friends who live there and they were able to introduce me to people who lived in the hills. There’s a guy named Moth who lived in a cave, and I was able to photograph him. Colorado is seasonal, they don’t do it all winter, so Moth comes down from wherever, and he lives in a pay- by-the-week motel when it’s cold.

Ice Tree Lawn Art, Utah 2009

One step up from a cave.
And that was a project where I really liked just not knowing what I was going to find. It was a really hard way to produce work because you’re just out there hoping for the best, you have to approach people you don’t know, and they may or may not trust you. You just see what happens. Usually the guys that actually live out there, the people I find who don’t pay rent, they live near a town. They need some sort of income, they need to do laundry, so they’re not that far out, they usually wouldn’t have a car. They still need all the conveniences of a town, having a job, etc..

What do they consider themselves?
I think it’s always different. I found one kid that was like 19, and he literally made a shelter out of sticks and I think it was just this challenge for him, like could he do it?

An ‘Into the Wild’ kind of thing?
He was a squatter, just wanting to live that alternative lifestyle, like “I don’t need a house.” But there are also other people who I think are a little mentally unstable, who do fall out of the “friendly neighbor” category. And then I found people who were just straight up alcoholics or had some sort of chemical dependency problems, and didn’t want to pay rent, out of practicality.

Didn’t want anyone to interrupt their drinking.
Yeah. And then I did find one guy that lives in Utah, that literally did the whole thing, hand-built home, lives there all winter, even through feet of snow and had done it for fifteen years.

Moth, Colorado 2007

Full hermit?
Full hermit, mountain man. So there’s the whole range out there.

Is that project finished? I know you put out a book, do you feel like that was the end and you could close that book and do something else, or are you going to keep working on it?
I feel like that’s the end, but the interest is still there. I could always go further out. The last few months I’ve been shooting hitchhikers.

Oh that’s cool, kind of like those mountain dudes coming back to civilization..
[laughter] Maybe. It could be seen as some part of their journey… What have you been working on?

Well I just moved and I’ve been starting to build a new website for my work. It’s a ton of work, basically going back through every photo I’ve ever taken. Re-organzing, editing, scanning, all that. So actually, moving was a good thing to do to start that process, because I had to physically deal with everything. So that — and shooting a bunch of commercial stuff this year, catalogues, and look-books and things like that. The TV Books project has kind of been put on hold for a few months but I still have a huge list of books that are in the works. As soon as I feel like I’m finished with the new site I’m going to get back to work on the books, which is exciting, because with the books comes book-launches, and shows, and traveling, that whole process, so hopefully that’ll happen later in the year.
Do you think with this whole little era of photographers around our age, our peers… do you see anything that fastens it all together?

I probably see more of it than anyone from running tinyvices, because everyone sends me their stuff, which is great! As far as something that ties it together, there’s definitely trends, and you can see the influence of people like Ryan McGinley and Terry [Richardson], and you know, all the photo-forefathers of the generation. And the influence of the digital point-and-shoot camera is huge! But I’m constantly amazed at the diversity of what I get sent. Part of tinyvices for me is to avoid showing any one kind of thing. For instance, I just posted this portfolio last week of this guy Aaron Huey’s photos of a Native Indian reservation. He’s a National Geographic photographer! He’s totally the opposite end of the spectrum from an art-school snapshot kid shooting photos of his friends partying, but there are parallels! And I love it that he’s interested in sharing his photos with me, showcasing them on tinyvices, and that his work helps to kind of balance out the site, with these exquisitely beautiful reportage images of this heartbreaking thing.
I checked those out, I was pretty blown away.

Yeah, they were mind-blowing, right? Did I answer your question?
Yeah, you did… Here’s another one for you. If you take a picture of something, what’s important to you about it? Is it a document of the thing you shot? Is it a vessel for an idea? What are you showing us?

“Yeah, I welcome all creative challenges. Like this — being the guest editor of a magazine — is cool. I like that about making work, you find new opportunities, you meet new people, you travel to new places.”

Well I think that’s the great thing about photos — they are so flexible and can be a lot of different things. So much depends on the context, what you show before, what comes after. I always think of photos more like fragments, like pieces from a bigger picture, and hopefully the viewer gets to have a little trip in there, that it takes them somewhere, tells a story, or a piece of one. I’m definitely not very literal with my photos. I feel like I’m constantly building on that same narrative that I’ve been building since I started taking pictures. Like it’s just one long story. And those are the kind of photos that I’m drawn to the most as well, the ones that are open-ended, where it could be this or that, but it’s not definitely anything. Speaking of tying things together, what are you tying together here for this issue? Other than “strange” or “weird” is there a kind of larger theme that’s happening? And how many different people are you showcasing?
I think there’s six emerging photographers, three or four non-photo artists, Perks and Mini is one — that’s a high-art/fashion/everything kind of collaborative. Frederick Wiseman — I guess if you look at the whole thing, there’s definitely a do-it-yourself approach with everyone. I like that idea of things, if taken out of context, might mean something else. Like the glow of a lamppost, if you look at it the right way might look like a UFO, and I think it’s something that you can find in photography, and see in people’s work. I thought it would be cool if there was a loosely connected group of people where there’s some parallels you can see, but it’s not like just one school of people. I don’t think most of the people in the issue know each other. I like work where it looks like you’ve been given special access to something. I find that really exciting, like let’s say some kids are into backyard wrestling — that could be cool to see the video that they make versus the exposé on “60 Minutes.” I like the real-access, and I think that’s easier to come by these days, because of the inter-webs and all that…

How are you coming by these artists? How do you know about them, is it people that you know?
I find out about work mostly online I guess, and I’m really into books. I think books are sometimes the best way for showing photography, even better than galleries. And a lot of it’s word of mouth — people will say “if you like this person, you’ll like this person...” and a lot of artists these days do different things. Like how someone might just stumble onto the TV Books site and think oh, there’s this book publisher guy, but then they realize that this art photographer’s behind it, and he does all these other things too. So I think that’s exciting, that it’s a cool time not to be pigeon-holed and just do whatever you want. Do you think so?

Totally, I visit a lot of art schools, and that’s something I’m constantly trying to stress to all the kids, because the art school system really loves to encourage kids to do one thing, and be really great at taking “studio portraits,” or something specific like that. And so they do four years, and they end up with a portfolio of studio portraits, and it’s like… don’t do that to yourself! Try as many different things as possible!

Speaking of different things, what’s up with the movies? Are you working on any movies? Was the last one that you did the Tierney Gearon one?
Yeah the last film was the Tierney Gearon documentary called “The Mother Project.” I did that with a partner, my friend Jack Youngelson. The documentary thing is hard, because it’s a ton of work and it’s expensive. It’s beyond zero money down into negative money, even if you do sell the work and get distribution. For the last few years I’ve been filming with Richard Prince, which has been cool. He’s another artist where he doesn’t limit himself. He makes cars, he makes photographs, he does paintings. He’s really inspiring, he gets joy out of producing work. I got a lot out of being around Tierney too, just seeing her approach to life, and the pace that she does things. Enthusiasm.

Right, it’s a cool enthusiasm. I loved that about the movie, that you could really see that about her, the love of the work and the enthusiasm that she brings. She has this thing about going forward, that’s her thing. Are you interested in making a scripted film?
Yeah, I welcome all creative challenges. Like this — being the guest editor of a magazine — is cool. I like that about making work, you find new opportunities, you meet new people, you travel to new places. It’d be fun to do a narrative film some day. I don’t know if I’d be good at it because I feel like I’m good at working with things that are already there, whether it’s like arranging images or collaging or taking pictures or doing documentaries. The future is always uncertain and that uncertainty is kind of fun. In two years I could be doing something else. Work is always evolving and it’s fun to step back and see what’s influencing you. If it’s your friends, music, other work you like, where you live, what you eat…

When you start a project, are you thinking about the book as the final product?
Usually when I’m shooting it’s sort of an escape feeling, it feels good to be productive. But it’s almost like I shoot a lot and whatever comes out, comes out in the edit. So maybe I’ll want to shoot a bunch of four-wheel drive trucks, and I’ll be like, yeah I’m shooting four wheel drive trucks! And really what I like about them is something else in the picture, and all the rest will fall away and I’ll end up using those.

You shoot a lot of things with wheels, trucks and bikes, four-wheelers...
Yeah, I noticed that, and I don’t know why that is. I guess I just like traveling. I mean it started with bicycles, but then I even found myself shooting these kids playing a motorcycle game and I shot my mom wearing a motorcycle helmet. And I shot beat-up cars and new cars. I guess I like the kind of freedom you have on a bike, or in a car.

There is a kind of built-in romanticism...
Yeah it’s just that idea of going over the next hill, forever…

Finding the Moth-man in the cave over the next hill?
Exactly.