Your photos suggest a certain intimacy with your subjects. As a photographer, how important is it to establish a relationship with the people you are shooting?
For me, emotions and feelings are the key to good photographs. It moves you (as a photographer) and your images (vision) to the next level. If an image does not communicate, provoke and make you wonder, then it is simply another picture. Images must be a result of your thoughts and must communicate to the wide audience, whether or not they understand it. It is always important to establish somewhat of a relationship with your subjects, make them trust you, and make them be a part of it.
The filmmaker Stanley Kubrick was fiercely close with the actors and technicians he worked with while making a film, but after the filmmaking was over, he often would never speak to the people he worked with again. Do you feel the need to distance yourself from your subjects after shooting them?
I think people in the art fields are good at manipulating people and surroundings to get what we want. This doesn’t necessarily mean that we really have to continue our relationship with them afterwards, but at the moment of creation, we must make them believe that they are everything and without them, the result would not occur.
Who are more beautiful to you—men or women?
That’s like comparing salmon and steak—both are equally healthy and delicious. Depends what you are craving at the moment...
Was it difficult getting your book Rare Views published?
Not really. I have been working and shooting in America for quite a long time and people know me. Getting a book published just came naturally. It is just another step in the process—after stock images and greeting cards, what was left to do but a book?
You have had some of your poetry published here in Thailand. Have you ever thought about incorporating text or poetry—either Thai or English—into your photographs?
I am actually doing it now. I am publishing a book with RS Promotion. It is a photo book with poetry and short pieces (in both Thai and English) incorporated with my images. It should be out in the fall.
Are men traditionally your subject matter or is that just the theme for this book?
Well, yes and no. I photograph both men and women, but I feel the need of promoting men because books of women are practically everywhere. I want to share my vision that men can be beautiful and intimate, too.
