David Campany: So present, so invisible : Conversations on photography

Photography is the easiest thing to talk about, and for that reason it can be the most difficult.

There is a lot of casual chat about photography, justas there is a lot of casual photography. But there havealways been articulate voices, able to see past the obvious,around the distracting, and through the trivialto say something about the more profound aspects ofthe medium. Many of those voices have belonged toimage makers.The critic and exhibitions curator David Campany,often invited by photographers and museums towrite about their practice during his career, talkedwith world-class artists – Adam Broomberg and OliverChanarin, Daniel Blaufuks, Robert Cumming,LaToya Ruby Frazier, Lewis Baltz, John Stezaker,Paul Graham, Rut Blees Luxemburg, Jeff Wall, LucasBlalock, Susan Meiselas, Victor Burgin, WilliamKlein, Stephen Shore – to interrogate them abouttheir past, the various creative phases they crossedover, and above all their rapport with photographicmedium and reality. That is why these conversationstranscend the dimension of the simple interview toreveal the close connection between art and authorphotography, between photography and the world,between thought and speech.Because, as noted by the author in his introduction,“whether long or short, nearly all these conversationswere open-ended. Neither party knew wherewe might be going or where things would end up. Forme, that is always the real value of a conversation, asopposed to an interview (or a questionnaire). There isrisk and excitement, a sense of mutual explorationand speculation”.