INTERVIEW w/ ED PANAR

About a year ago, a slim, green volume of photography called Golden Palms caught my eye in a favorite bookstore. It was the work of Ed Panar, and published by J&L Books, an art press that puts out beautiful books of work by emerging and mid-career artists.

At first glance, Ed’s images seem casual and quirky, like quick snapshots taken by a passerby. Your eye searches for what’s usually the blatant intent of the image. What is this a picture of? With Ed’s work, you look longer. You notice an odd detail, sometimes buried in the composition. A carefulness of the mise-en-scene: A shrub overlaps a fence, the black circle of a tire fallen on a forest floor, the asphalt of a driveway crushed to gravel. Each image is a study in color, choice, and moment, and Ed’s eye seeks out the subtle, the absurd, and the profound in scenes that first appear familiar, even mundane. The work is surprising, bright, and deep, blooming slowly the longer you look at it, going from quiet to very loud.

After looking through his images, I wanted to ask Ed a lot of questions—about his process, point of view, et. al. And so, the first This is That interview began. The following conversation took place in three email dialogues during January and February 2008.


1. Freeze a Moment in Time and Save It for Later

This is That: I want to know a little of your background and history in regards to how you arrived at the work you're doing now. When did you decide to pursue photography, and how did it come about for you? Was there a moment, photo, artist, etc., that turned something on in your eye and made you want to go into this art?

Ed Panar: There really wasn’t a specific moment or artist that inspired me to pick up the camera, although there have been countless inspirational instances and individuals that have energized me and helped to propel me along the way. My interest in photography started long before I was aware of its existence as a ‘medium’ or as an art form. Like a lot of people, I was simply captivated by its basic principle: that you could freeze a moment in time, and save it for later. As a kid, this absolutely fascinated me. So I guess you could say that my earliest interest in the medium was strictly for its utilitarian purposes.

During high school, my good friend and I would wander around with a camera and take photos in between classes and sometimes during class, much to our teacher’s dismay. It wasn’t until college when I took my first real photo class, but it was not an “art” class, and as a matter of fact, the school that I went to didn’t even offer Photography as a major. The few photo classes they did offer were not part of the Fine Art department. I was actually a Communications Media major and eventually ended up graduating with an Interdisciplinary Fine Arts degree which basically meant I took whatever classes I wanted and was able to take a range of interesting courses. I had an incredibly inspiring photo teacher during this time that taught me some of the fundamentals about taking pictures. More than anything it was his passion for photography and his openness to the act of picture making that encouraged my practice.

Fast forward to 2000 and I’m living in San Francisco, working as a web designer during the dot-com boom. I started taking extension classes at CCA(C) and learned how to print color photos. I also learned more about contemporary practice and the importance of editing and sequencing groups of images for the first time. Also during that year, I went to Tokyo to participate in one of the first in a series of workshops led by the UK based art/design collective Tomato. I eventually ended up documenting these events and the annual pilgrimages around the world to attend them were immensely influential. In 2003, I left California to attend graduate school at Cranbrook, which provided a new geographic setting, access to facilities 24/7, and a community of inspiring peers. During this time I was able to develop and refine my work in ways that I probably never would have done otherwise.

TisT: Talk a little about your beginnings as a photographer—what did you shoot? What were you fascinated by? Did your early work start out with similar aesthetics and purposes as what you're doing today? And if that is now different, what occurred to change your point of view?

EP: Looking back it’s easy to see how my shooting has changed over time. I suppose one constant is that I have always been photographing the places that have personal significance to me. There have definitely been distinct phases when I was more or less interested in different subjects and ways of making pictures. For example, I was shooting primarily in black and white during undergrad because we had no color darkroom facilities. But if anything I feel that as time goes on and I learn more about my work and myself I’ve simply become better equipped—technically and conceptually—to actually make the pictures that I always wanted to take.

TisT: What is your process for taking photos? Do you carry your camera with you at all times, or do you go on "photo safaris," where you actively seek out your material and content?

EP: I like to do both. While I usually have a camera on hand at all times, I also forget to bring it a lot too, sometimes on purpose. For me the pictures themselves are simply raw material that comes to life when included within a larger edit or project. Once a specific project has been identified, I start explore it more deliberately and this may lead to a more conscious mode of shooting and editing. In general I try to keep my process as open as possible at all times.

2. The Potential to See the World Differently


TisT: I love that many of your photos have a sense of humor or irony to them, like the ones at top [blue pool and car on fire], for example. I'd like to know a little about the context of these photos. They seem to be instances or scenes that you've happened upon. Where were you in some of these? What struck you about them at first?

EP: Sometimes I’m laughing out loud when I see a certain picture, other times I think the humor is more quiet and subtle than that. Often I may not even notice it until I see the actual pictures and put them into the context of a group of images. I’m definitely not out and about consciously looking for funny things or trying to make humorous pictures. I don’t think that would work anyway, it just has to come together on its own. I’ve found it usually works best when the humor feels like an accident or a surprise. But everything is funny and absurd in some way if you think about it, so for me it only works if there is something else happening in the picture.

A little background on the two images:

[The blue pool]: Along Jacoby Street, 2000 - This was from one of my walks through my hometown of Johnstown, PA, back when I was visiting from California. I can’t remember much else about this one other than it was one of those unseasonably warm December days, and it was taken near where one of my friends used to live.

Greg’s Car on Fire, San Francisco, 2001 - This was one of those times when I was laughing out loud while shooting. I was with my friend Greg and he realized his engine was on fire after he saw smoke coming out of his parked car. We ran up and down the street going into businesses and buildings trying to borrow a fire extinguisher, but no one would give us one. Finally, we found one a few blocks away and ran back to his car, which was still smoking. He got the fire out in time and managed to hold on to his car for a while longer before it completely went up in flames a few months later.

TisT: How important do you think humor and irony is to art and photography? Talk a little about its purpose, in your work especially.

EP: Humor is a tricky element in photography, not only because it is extremely subjective but also because it can very easily fall flat. It works best for me when it amplifies the element of uncertainty and destabilizes the assumptions we bring to the image. I think it’s typical for images to fool us into thinking we actually know what we’re looking at with a quick glance. But of course there is always inherent deception in them, and humor is one way to play with this.

TisT: That notion of an image “fooling” us at first strikes me as something that could describe your entire approach to photography. What I mean is: for me, your images reveal more and more the longer they are looked at. Do you view photography as a way for you to provoke new ways of seeing in your viewer—and in yourself too? Can you expand on this idea of the "inherent deception" in an image, and why it's important to play with?

EP: I think what I was trying to get at with the “inherent deception” idea relates to that common discussion you hear a lot in photo circles: how, even though we “know” that a photograph is edited, subjective, biased, etc, we still instinctively look at images in a particular way. We have established expectations for images. I think it’s only natural in a media-saturated world, in which we consume hundreds of images on a daily basis. Most of the time we don’t really look at these images too closely, they simply fly by in front of our eyes. If it actually catches our attention we might look at it for a few extra seconds. It’s as if we’re seeing more and more images, but we’re not spending more time looking at them. Most likely we end up spending less time looking at more stuff. Who’s to say what’s lost or gained in this transaction, but I do feel that these viewing habits might be hard to turn off, and I think anything that can potentially help interrupt or put in to question our default reactions can be useful.

I think anything you see has the potential to make you see the world differently, it just depends how you look at it. So I don’t think that is necessarily one of the “purposes” of photography, but I suppose it is an excellent tool that can be used to help encourage the likelihood you may have that experience. And there’s no question that I learn a lot about the world through the act of photographing it. I wouldn’t consider any of it hard facts though. It’s more like a way to observe and record the patterns and ideas that happen to stand out to me at a particular time.

3. Overlapping, Being Forgotten and Then Remembered Again



TisT: I loved what you said about your process: "For me the pictures themselves are simply raw material that comes to life when included within a larger edit or project." Can you talk about how specific larger projects came about, like Drink from the Well or Same Difference?

EP: Drink from the Well came from a group of images I made during several visits to Japan, between 2000 - 2006. During most of those trips I was taking part of a series of workshops led by the UK-based group Tomato. The conversations and experiences I had during those trips were immensely influential, and the title actually comes from one of those moments. I was frantically taking notes during a talk by one of the artists and he suddenly stopped talking, looked at me, and said: “Drink from the well, not from the bottle. I am the bottle.” Somehow that moment seemed to throw everything into vivid perspective, and for a split second everything seemed to make perfect sense. I also thought the phrase was apt for photography, as a photograph could be seen as being both the well and the bottle at the same time.

This is also an example of a project—similar to Golden Palms—that came to life over time and well after the fact of the initial shooting. I was always disappointed with my pictures from Japan; they never seemed to feel quite right, especially when compared to the rich and complex experiences that were fresh in my mind. None of that seemed to be in the images at first, but over time I realized that there was a project there after all. It just wasn’t the one I originally expected to find. Sometimes I need to remind myself that our thought process is not always in sync with where our images are at, and this disconnect can be confusing at times.

A project like Same Difference is more about exploring and even emphasizing the disparities between images as a way to build connections between them. It’s a strategy that comes up in other edits on my website, like the Falling Asleep and Relics series. I view each of those projects as having something in common, and part of that is their starting point as completely un-related images from my archive. I regularly pore over boxes of old and new images, many of which I’ve inevitably forgotten. I enjoy sifting through stacks of photos and finding new discoveries there as much as being out in the world making new pictures. Because, of course, as you change over time, the way you see and feel about certain images changes too. And I always loved that expression, “same difference,” so I took it as a sort of jumping off point and instruction for the edit. These edits are ongoing and subject to change, so appearing on the web primarily seems to suit them well.

TisT: What I like about your photos is their expansive sense of content: you use seemingly disparate subjects to tell your story. How do the "stories" coalesce for you—does it all come together after you have dozens of images in front of you, or does something begin to occur even with, say, one image or moment?

EP: My process is very messy, so it’s sometimes hard to pinpoint exactly where the projects actually begin. I tend to be working on several projects at any given time, and during the natural pauses and spaces I usually turn my attention to something completely different. Developments and ideas from one project will often inform and enlighten the others. More often than not the projects seem to come about largely of their own accord and are related to other things in my life at the time.

Also, a lot of my projects tend to grow slowly over long periods of time. A lot of these end up on my website primarily, as I see the web not just as a means to deliver a portfolio, but as a tool to explore and share my process in new ways. The web helps me put things together in ways that probably wouldn’t happen if I was only thinking about presenting the work on a wall or in a book. Much of the work on my website doesn’t actually exist in any other form than what you see online.

I like to think of my projects as composites of a lot of different ideas and experiences. The stories are always developing, overlapping, being forgotten and then remembered again. The initial spark can start anywhere. Sometimes a single idea or image will inspire a whole series, or I will re-discover a group of images I made a few years ago but never got around to putting together. It’s all fair game, as far as I’m concerned.

TisT: As a photographer too, I pull a lot of my ideas about how things should look and what photos should accomplish from other disciplines. I'm always fascinated at where other artists get their inspiration. Are you of a similar, interdisciplinary mind? If so, where do you get your ideas and inspiration, and does it ever surprise you that something "un-photographic" appeals to your photography?

EP: I find inspiration in everything. I am absolutely fascinated with how photography interacts with and relates to other disciplines and cultural spheres. You can find photography everywhere. Isn’t that one of the distinguishing characteristics of the medium? So I am not at all surprised when I find inspiration or connections in a wide range of things, because I feel that is simply how the world works. I am generally interested in a wide range of things and it’s inevitable that these interests seep into my thoughts and eventually my work. So I guess you could say my work begins with everyday life, which is a collage of experiences and ideas which are constantly in motion.

--
For more of Ed's work, check out his website, and his portolio on Tiny Vices. I'd like to offer my sincere gratitude to Ed for his participation with the interview.

And stay tuned for more interviews on the way. Next up: Estelle Hanania.