F: So, Leigh, what would it be -- mortician or porn star?

L: I keep trying to come up with a witty third alternative.

F: It's a really interesting question. It's about survival.

L: Well, I would absolutely not want to be a porn star.

F: It'd have to be mortician?

L: I would have definitely said no; except I met the mortician at my grandmother's funeral. He was really a lovely guy, but I don't think I could actually take care of dead people all day.

So, it would be the witty third alternative that I haven't come up with yet.

F: Let's talk a little bit about your background. Where are you from? Where did you study?

L: I'm originally from Allentown, Pennsylvania. Grew up and lived in the same house nearly my whole life. I went to boarding school where I started studying photography.

F: How old were you? Fifteen?

L: Around 15. I was doing all black and white and completely in love with it. I've always been taking pictures. I've got albums from when I was a kid, just shooting 110 and instant cameras. Then I started really doing it, going out, and shooting volumes. Then I went to Hampshire College in Massachusetts. I studied photography there and learned color, learned different formats, and combined the two for my senior thesis.

F: You work in color now, don't you?

L: I work entirely in color. A lot has already been done in black and white, that it didn't feel original when I did it. It didn't feel fresh anymore. Once I started developing my own color film, making my own color prints, there was no turning back.

It's not a question of reproducing reality. It's not a question of wanting to make something look exactly like it is. It's just the qualities in the colors themselves. A lot of what I love to shoot is inanimate objects and abandoned buildings and the signs. They often don't translate well into black and white because shades of gray don't bring me in as much. There's so much color left on abandoned things. I prefer to pull that out and make that contrast. For my senior thesis, it was all about abandoned buildings and the notion of preserving the ruins. Looking at the presence and the absence all in one.

F: That's another question. Let's talk about your fascination with abandoned buildings

L: [laughs] I don't know all together why. I know where I started. There are a couple of abandoned barns in my neighborhood and where I went to high school. Breaking in with my brother and my friends, going into these places. The thrill of seeing what was left behind, not knowing what you're going to find.

F: Or how long you can stay in there …

L: Exactly. When I was at Hampshire, a friend of mine took me to an abandoned factory. It was actually the first cutlery factory in America. It's up in Greenville, Massachusetts. The place was huge. It had been built in different time periods, so you had the modern, concrete, four level building with all of the smaller brick buildings with old plate glass windows. I started going to it repeatedly with different films, with different format cameras, to see what other results I could get. I ended up finding lots of factories that I could get into in Massachusetts.

F: For me, what struck me when I first saw your work was an implied sense of loss. Something that was once strong. Something that gave back to the community. Did you look for that or was it something that came out?

L: I think it was something that developed. I don't think I went into pursuing abandoned buildings in particular. Part of it was that I needed to focus for a senior thesis and I focused on abandonment because that's what I'd been shooting most. The more I shot the more the idea fell into place. I didn't necessarily know where I was going but the pieces all started to fall together.

In terms of the notion of loss, there's something about the stillness that's left. It's like a pause, a holding pattern between activity and a change in the future. They're going to be destroyed or we don't know what's going to happen to them.

F: So, let's move to another question. What artists have inspired you? When I look at your thesis work, I don't automatically say, "Oh, Nan Goldin or …

L: William Wegman [laughs].

F: Have painters more inspired you? Have sculptors more inspired you?

L: In terms of inspiration and photographers that I love, number one Walker Evans and number two Robert Frank. Hands down. The pictures in particular are those of empty spaces and abandoned southern houses. Walker Evans taking pictures of old plantation houses with big columns or a big tree stump in front of it. There's a sense of beauty and a sense of hollowness at the same time.

Another photographer, or two photographers, are Bernd and Hilla Becher. They're German photographers who go around Germany cataloging similar building types.

Another one, too, is [William] Christenberry for his signs and his Palmistry House.

F: Yes.

L: I've been shooting in DC now. I've been shooting a lot of signs. Store fronts and windows and signs and letters, parts of words. I don't know if my work is turning more "American" or if it's just turning into something completely open right now because I'm doing so many things at the same time. I'm not focused on one thing. I'm trying to figure out what works aesthetically here in my new environment. They're not complete. In the same sense that when I do shoot abandoned buildings, it's only a part of it. I don't ever step back and shoot the whole building because it's not aesthetically and emotionally rooted on anything for me. What I like to do is zoom in on the details, on the more personal parts. So, I'm doing a lot of signs, and just doing parts of signs and storefronts, and just picking small pieces out.

F: That makes sense. I see that in your work.

L: I love the details.

F: Details are important. So next. I really love this question. Chose a piece of art or a style of art you'd be happy never to encounter ever again and why?

L: Roy Lichtenstein.

F: Pop Art?

L: Pop Art in general. The Warhols I can deal with, but the Lichtensteins. I hate it.

F: That's interesting.

L: I can't stand it. I'm sorry. I can't stand that stuff. [laughs] The comic strips, the florescent colors. I can deal with Rosenquist. I love Rauschenberg, but there are parts of it that are just air. It's very fake.

F: So, is there music that inspires you? Do you work to music? Have you ever created a piece because some bit of music inspired you?

L: When I do drawings or when I make collage and when I do other things that aren't only photography, there are a couple of things I listen to:
I've probably gotten the most inspiration, most consistently, from the Pixies. It's still something I turn on to listen to. Right now, I've been listening to a lot of Yo La Tengo.

F: Do you want to talk about the process and the materials you use in making your work?

L: Sure. I'm not a very "technical" photographer. I failed math many times in school and I'm not a technical person whatsoever.

I'm in love with medium format 6" x 6" square. I have a Mamiya C220. I've been shooting a lot of 35 mm since my Mamiya was broken for a few months. I just got a new Polaroid. It's a funny balance. When I shoot with the Mamiya, it's perfect. I do my best to make all the prints I shoot from that perfect.

F: You set them up?

L: It's very thoughtful. When I frame through a Polaroid, I'm no less careful, but I can't control the focus or the exposure. That's a way for me to relax and let things sort of happen.

F: Any comments on the state of the arts here in DC?

L: Sure. I've been here for less than a year, but my few humble opinions about it are ... the art scene here is small, but in a good way. The artists all seem to know each other. It's a tight network, which is great for a lot of reasons.

I've always felt that DC is a painting town. It's probably true in the art world in general. Although, I think photography is very much focused on in New York. When I see photographs for sale [here] in shop windows, and in framing stores, or in gallery stores. How many pictures of the Washington Monument do you really need? And the Capital. Come on. I personally haven't seen that much photography and I definitely want to see more.

It's also, and again this is probably the same everywhere, but it's also a very "male artist" town. A lot of the shows I've been to and in the galleries that I know of, there are mostly male artists. What I see in terms of the professional photographers around town, it seems to be 75% men.

F: It's hard to get away from. Even when you were talking about your influences.

L: I know. Because a lot of what I'm drawn to is from the FSA period, the 30s, 40s, and 50s. There's a lot going on now that I love, but I'm drawn to that [period] and during that time you had a couple of women who were really making images very well, but there was only so much they were allowed to do. It's been hard in a lot of ways for women to branch out, even for women to shoot industrial.

F: That's right. If I remember Margaret Bourke White had to get special permission to shoot Otis Steel Company [in Cleveland, in 1927]

L: Almost everything that I've seen that's been specifically industrial work, I think has been by men. Photography can be really gender specific. I don't choose my subject matter because of my gender, but I have a lot of my influences coming from a male environment. It just seems to me that here in DC, if not everywhere, photography still seems to be male [dominated].

F: Even now …

L: It's hard to get that respect as a female. I actually had a professor at Hampshire, who I love dearly. My first day of photography, he made a comment to me that what I was shooting was very masculine subject matter and, basically, that I had penis envy!

F: That's hysterical. It has to go on record.

L: He can remain nameless. He is a great guy and he may have been playing devil's advocate more than anything. At the time, I didn't know how to respond. I thought, "I would never do something because of that." It's just what I like.

F: That's the most important thing of all.

L: There's no better feeling I know than doing a shoot. For me when I'm going out framing things. I don't always come back with something that I like. I can shoot a couple of rolls and it'll be okay. Then, sometimes, you come back from a shoot. You process the film and you look at something so good you can't believe you took it. That's a feeling of excitement that's unparalleled.

F: Do you sometimes know when you take the shot that it's going to be "the shot.'

L: I get surprised more often than not, but there are some shots that I take, I know it when I see it. When it comes out it looks exactly the way I want it to and I know that it's good. The general rule is that if you get one good frame on a roll, you're doing really well. I say that I get more than that, but that's by my own editing and no one else's. I feel I'm doing something good.

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Faith Flanagan pays her monthly bills by working at The Phillips Collection as the director of graphic communication. She dreams of being independently wealthy with a last name like "Kennedy." Since that is highly unlikely, she's settled for being an aspiring art maven and for growing old gracefully without giving up live music. Her most recent project is MUSE, an art salon on the first Sunday of the month at DCAC resuming in September 2002. Faith is originally from outside the great city of Boston.