Plinth

The theme of the commission from Fujifilm was ‘home’. How did you interpret that?

That was easy. I simply stayed at home. I have always shot lots at home, from my earliest years. While most of my stories take me to faraway places, I still prefer always sticking close to my roots and home.

On the one hand, ‘home’ is a very clear idea; on the other, it’s necessarily hyper-subjective, too. How did you figure the challenge of communicating the theme to an audience who might not know your work or your story?

I always assume my audience is looking at the story and not at me. The whole point of documentary photography is taking something that you see and are part of and having it relate to others. I try to shoot what it feels like, rather than what it looks like. Of course it is always subjective, but that is what a storyteller does in any medium. Make it sing, make it lyrical, make it mysterious and magic.

How did you apply the medium of photography itself — on the one hand ‘immediate’, on the other manipulatable and allowing room for the contemplative — to guide your series to its final incarnation?

I always have a camera with me. Even when I go to the dentist or grocery store. It is a bit obsessive. Not only a camera, but my credit cards, passport... everything I would need to go on assignment is with me always. So I'm always looking at what is around me. I do not need an "event" to shoot. I love the so called ordinary. For me, life just looks somehow "better" when I'm making photographs. The act of shooting intensifies things for me. It is almost like a drug. I am sure a psychiatrist would see something "wrong" with me, with this pattern. Yet it is too late now!!

Magnum in particular, photographers in general, are perhaps more accustomed to looking outwards than inwards — documenting and observing experiences and existences other than their own. What was it like to turn the camera on your own life — if you did so?

I started photography at age 12 and of course shot only at home. So "home" as always been a topic. Even when I am looking "outwards" I am also always looking in the mirror. There is a bit of autobiography in everything I do. To photograph others, one must find some moment, some gesture, some glance that one can relate to... Otherwise it is a picture, but not a photograph.

Over the course of your career, are there other images you’ve made which could have slotted into the brief? If so, which are they?

Oh, I have dozens of prior photographs which could have filled this project. Since this specific Home project was over, I have continued working on it. As I said, I would shoot all of this anyway, with or without a commission. For sure my own book will come of it. My earliest work came from a very few miles from the outer banks where I sit writing these answers now.

What does ‘home’ mean to you? Has your answer to that question changed over the course of making the photo series?

Home is about people and family, not about place. However, I have both. The place where I live in the outer banks of North Carolina is very close to where I grew up. I know the fragrance of the trees, the songs of the birds, the smell of the sea, the weather patterns that develop over this thin strip of sand in the Atlantic. At the same time, both of my sons and their families live very close by. They are world-traveling filmmakers, yet all of us gravitate to this coast. It is simply a sense of belonging here. Nothing more.