Graham Wiebe is an open arms, down-to-earth kind of guy. He's got a playful and spontaneous vim that permeates through all of his photographic work. Wiebe knows what he wants in an image the moment he grabs his camera but he's open to whatever happens and ready to run with it. We recently got the pleasure of speaking with the Winnipeg based artist about his relationship with the piece of technology that helps him encapsulates fleeting seconds before they become mere stories, how this same device is more than a supporting collaborator in his work, and how he's trying to reconcile with the aching fact of slowly losing this device to obsolescence.
From a distance we hear footsteps approaching us. It turns out to be Sarah Epp, Wiebe’s studio neighbor. ‘Do you guys want to share some red wine with me?’ She offers. Yes, Of course! We agreed. Cheers! We grab our glasses and head back to Wiebe’s studio space. “Ok now this is a real interview. We got wine and everything” He remarks. [Laughs]
My eye scans through his studio and I notice two white and pinkish mugs sitting next to each other. “Honestly those are my two favorite mugs; mother of pearl Las Vegas and my doggie mug...he introduces them with such sentiment. “They’re always here with me. I love them.”
"Hang on I’ll take a picture of it" I assert while finicking with settings on my point and shoot. Taking a photo is too much pressure for me so just bear with me.
I don’t know anything about digital cameras man...Wiebe declares
In surprise I ask: you only shoot with film? yeah man, he answers.
Public Parking: How do you blow it up so big? I’m guessing photoshop is involved?
Graham Wiebe: I don’t really don’t know how to use photoshop that well. I know how to do colour adjustments a little bit but what I do is go to Martha Street Studios and I get them scanned there with their big $30,000 nice Imacon Scanner. And I get them the size I want. And you don’t really lose a lot of the resolution. Its film so it’s going to be a bit grainy anyway. But I don’t really mind it.
PP:What size do you typically print them to be?
GW:They are mainly 25”x35”. Although I would love to go bigger. But who knows maybe in the future I’d start to shoot digital. Film right now is so expensive now. I use to get it for $3 a roll at Shopper Drug Mart and I started going so much that they gave it to me at $2 a roll and that was perfect because I could do everything there. But they went out of business and they don’t do film anymore. Now, I’ve to take it Lab Works and it’s like $15 a roll.
Wiebe's Studio Space
PP: Why do think you are sticking with this technology?
GW: I am not sure. I guess it’s what I’ve been around for however long. It’s what I started with. I’m comfortable I guess.
PP: Do you think you’ll switch over anytime soon?
GW: Oh yeah, for sure. Eventually. A lot of photographers I look up to like Wolfgang Tillman used film—like a contact SLR—for the longest time and now he is shooting on digital and it looks equally as good. I think I would just have to get a really good DSL to get the same quality as I get with some of these images. But I’m very poor and lenses are really expensive and cameras are really expensive so for now I’m sticking with what I have. I like it. I like what I get from it.
PP:How long have you had this camera for?
GW:I’ve gone through a lot of these cameras. They are so fragile. When you drop them they just break. And you can’t use it anymore. This one [Stylus Epic] that I’ve is my favorite kind. They have a really good lens in them. And typically people don’t know that they have a 2.8 lens. They let in a lot of light, its sets the aperture for you so if I’m shooting low light, it’ll adjust better than say a Cannon power shot. When you are looking for cameras at like Value Village or something, they just get brushed off to the side but this is the good stuff. I picked it up for $4 and I shot a lot of work with it.
PP:Do you always have the camera in your hands when you are shooting as oppose to sitting it down on a tripod or the like? I ask because there’s a nice stillness and calmness to your photos
GW:Yes, I always have my camera with me. I keep it in my pocket so it’s easy access. I always just grab it when I need it and shoot. I’d go as close as I need to capture as quickly as I can. The whole process of capturing the image is very spontaneous and of the moment. I look and click. But that’s another thing I like about this camera. If I see something I want to capture, I don’t want to be fiddling with shutter speed and all that. There’s no time for that. I get in and get out. No second guessing. And some things don’t hold...you know? [He points outs to a framed image behind him] That is just an image of my friend with his dog but it looks like this weird biomorphic form coming out of his mouth. I remember his dog kept on licking him nonstop and I just had to get in. Things like that they don’t last too long.
PP:Can you tell me a bit about some of your other individual images from the series...there’s one image of you with what looks like face paint and you are hugging someone.
GW: Oh yes I know the one you are talking about. The one with the black metal face paint [laughs]. That was on Halloween night. Halloween is kind of like a second adolescence; it’s a night people can go out and be whoever the hell they wanted. That theme was kind of floating in my head when I was putting the work together so a lot of the images where collected around Halloween. And we see a number of the photos with subjects in masks and different costumes etc. A lot of other ideas that later came up were kind of the different perceptions we can see from people when they are all dressed up and transformed by their costumes and masks.
PP: Color seem to be fairly prominent in your work...they appear to stand out more than they would if observed in the everyday and yet they don’t necessarily seem saturated per se
GW:It’s definitely part of the film I’m shooting with. It emphasizes a lot of things you would typically overlook. Yet another reason I like working with this kind of camera. But I do also always end up choosing something with color even with my night time shots there’s always a presence of color.
PP:I really like the relationship you’ve sort of formed with this piece of technology. It’s interesting how you work hand in hand with it to accomplish the work you collected...at the same time like you mentioned, there’s a sense of fragility to the device and its going away and it’s getting harder to have it and use it...but you are still holding on in a way.
GW: Ah yeah, yes. I totally see what you mean. And it’s just a love/hate relationship.
PP:How did you pick up photography?
GW:Not seriously till like my 3rd year in art school. I pretty much tried a little bit of everything before; painting, mold making etc. But when I really got into it was like “damn, I love this.”
Wiebe's Studio Space
PP:How did you view photography before that...how was your relationship photo taking...
GW:I always liked painting and I would always make paintings based off of a photo. Or I would try to get my painting as close as possible to the photo and I never could get it to be the way I wanted it to be. So then, I started with the disposables. I guess I grabbed the camera out of frustration with painting.
PP: It’s always interesting to hear artists talk about how they got to discover the way they work or the medium in which they make work...like what they tried out in order to land on their practice
GW: I never expected myself to be a photographer. It’s the last thing I saw myself doing. I would rather do sculpture or build something.
PP: What was different about when you transitioned into photography in a more considered way than when you would have grabbed a camera prior to that?
GW: I guess the process is different. It’s very quick, it’s not as methodical. I’m not as interested in being concise. I just kind of let things happen in a natural way; shot what’s around me, moments happening around me, things I find.
Gallery Install of Wiebe's work
PP:How does the selection process happen for you...you typically have people in your images but sometimes don’t, some of the images have really focused composition, I guess what I’m asking is how do you choose what you want to shoot? What’s your secret recipe?
GW:Well, I shoot a lot of photos. A lot of them are very fast even though some of them look pretty composed. I don’t notice it till after they are developed and I sift through all of them and I think that’s where most of the selection process happens.
PP:What was your experience like with the Laura Litinsky workshop?
GW:Oh she is actually so so smart. Sometimes in the critiques I’d get like really flustered and I’d start telling really shitty jokes because I didn’t really know what to say. The first day she made us read this 25 page theoretical text of this back and forth banter between these two theorists and we had to read it over our hour launch break. I was like “oh shit! she’s not messing around” and that was just the first day! And we got these assignments where I had to work digitally. It was kind of the first time I ever worked that way. It was fun and interesting but I really didn’t like the camera I was using. I suppose if I had a better one it would have been different. At the end of the week we had to show work that we’ve collected and select the ones we wanted so I made a photo book. Photo books where another point of reference for me when I started taking photography more seriously. William Eggleston; he’s kind of the king of photo books. I really like his work. He was one of the guys I stated looking at and there’s this other guy Alec Soth...he’s supposed to be the “new” Eggleston.
Gallery Install of Wiebe's work
PP:What did you find that you gained as a photographer that you didn’t have access to prior to Litinsky’s workshop?
GW:It sort of pushed me to make a new kind of work. One particular assignment she gave us was—we had to start with like a piece of paper, cut out the side of a 35mm frame and look through that instead and not take any pictures. So she was really getting us to look at how we look through a camera, what the camera is, the distance between the camera and the viewer...so there’s a certain space but there’s a relationship there as well. She was focus mostly on still-life because that’s what she does but she bases it in history. She referenced a lot of still life by Dutch painters...and she plays on this idea that she’s a woman photographer making these still life images informed by art history but at the same time pushing the scale of them. But overall I think she got us thinking about how to make images, why we are looking at things, what interests us about what we are looking at through the camera and also using the digital camera in general for me really pushed to try and see things differently. I really got to appreciate the convenience it has and like if you screw up on the aperture or something you can just go back and take other one.
“...I’m not the type of person that gets an idea and writes it down and that’s it. If I have an idea, and I think it is good enough and I want to pursue it, I will just do it.”
PP: Is there anything you haven’t tried out yet with your photography that you want to peruse next?
GW: I want to start a project now using the dark room and using photo paper; a lot of the prints come out so rich and a thing that happens is dusting on a computer you’d use photoshop; because there’s dust on the negatives so when you scan them you have to dust them which means that you just take like the magic eraser brush and you wipe away the dust from the computer but on that one you’d have to actually physically dust the negative and put it in the enlarger and so I want to do photos from these like false constellations using just the dust. I’m now playing with the process of it and later I want to integrate it into some of this stuff that I already do.
Courtesy of Artist
PP: Do you think you are the type of person that like self-motivated or is typically able to accomplish work without too but push or outside direction?
GW: I know for school, deadlines definitely kept me on track and kept me going but I’m not the type of person that gets an idea and writes it down and that’s it. If I have an idea, and I think it’s good enough and I want to pursue it, I will just do it. That’s everything...you know? I’ll take time off work if it’s necessary and take a road trip if I want to do something. So I think luckily when I comes to doing my own work, I’m pretty motivated.
PP: What kind of work where you doing back in high school
GW: Oh the typical high school shitty artwork but I had pretty good high school art teachers they exposed me to all these artists and I got to see work from all over.
Ok so bear with me on this but what is your life motto?
[Laughs] I don’t have one but if did...I’d probably say... I don’t know...just have fun! I think sometimes people forget to have fun. When you go into art school you get pressured into thinking academically about everything which is helpful in some ways but if you are not having a good time with the work you are doing you don’t get a lot out of it so try to always have fun!
PP:How would you describe yourself as dancer?
GW:Probably like Elton John’s Tiny Dancer. Or I probably just be really elegant like in ballet or something. [At this point he proceeds to demonstrates himself as ballerina]
[Laughs]
PP:If you could be any animal but that animal does everything that you do now; like that animal is a photographer which animal would you be?
GW:Ohh...wow that’s a good one. I’ve always been interested in underwater creatures and my biggest fear is the ocean. I like swimming in it and surfing but I’m always scared that I’m just going to drown or wake up and there’s just going to be water all around me. So I guess I’ll probably be an aquatic animal and take photos down there. Maybe like a dolphin or something.
PP:What was your first memory as a kid doing something creative?
GW:My parents have always been super supportive of me and my sister so they’d always get us drawing materials. And I remember always drawing Pokémon characters a very young age. My dad is super into Star Trek and sci-fi movies so like whenever we’d watch it he would pause it and I’d draw the still with like markers and crayons. I think I was maybe 4years old.
Special Thanks to Mary Rose. Check out more of Weibe's work Here