of the Photographer as Photo Laureate

The persons asking and answering the questions are both photographers, the former Photo Laureate and current Photo Laureate of St Petersburg. To make a portrait of what it means to be practitioners of this way of seeing, its degrees of perspective, they have agreed to opposite sides of the interview. Through the lens, the viewfinder of questions has been removed but the frame of answers remains.

I got my first camera when I was eight, third grade, when I lived in Huntington Station, a suburb on the north shore of Long Island, 30 miles outside NYC. It was a Kodak Brownie Starflash that had a built-in flash, the kind that used one bulb at a time, burned your fingers if you touched it too soon, and blinded everyone in its path.

My mom was a creative art director for a Manhattan firm and could sketch anything in a second. I couldn’t draw at all. My dad, a musician, had a Rolli (Rolleiflex). He shot black and white as a hobby and sent the film off for contacts. Mom would grab sheets of tracing paper from her basement studio and make cutouts, cropping the photo proofs per her taste. Looking back, she took the photos seriously like she was critiquing some artist’s work. It’s funny because I never saw my mother pick up a camera––never. But the way she went over dad’s photos was like the director on a movie set. This made me think photos were important which they were, especially in the 60s.

I always had Kodak Instamatic cameras, point and shoots, a Polaroid in high school. Frozen moments fascinated and haunted me. I took a photo of three friends in our garage; we watched it develop before our eyes. I looked at it again, alone, that night and thought, “My friends look like the people in our high school history book. Sitting Bull, Abraham Lincoln, all dead.” I have this epiphany that time is relentless, nothing stops it, and we’re all doomed! My photography comes in part from an obsession with death.

Working in an orphanage in Germany, a waiter in Spain, a college semester in Ireland working weekends in a pub, a sailing ship in the Caribbean, I took my Kodak Pocket Instamatic and its tiny 110mm negative cartridge film with me everywhere. It even made me an instant wedding photographer in the small Filipino fishing village where the Peace Corps sent me after college in 1976. That self-inflicted hardship ended in 1978, but a year later I returned to marry my girlfriend, and I brought my first completely manual, 35mm Fujica. During the 24-hour flight to Manila, I clicked the shutter at least 300 times and read the manual the rest of the time.

A big tree had been uprooted by a tornado somewhere between Lakeland and Fort Meade, Florida. It laid flat, next to a barn. When I got there, I asked an older man if there was a way to get on top of the barn. He said there was a ladder on the other side. I climbed up and shot down on the spread-out tree using a wide-angle zoom. The chief photographer loved it. They had sent a regular staff photographer to shoot it, but my shot was used. Later, the photographer asked how I got on the roof. I told him I just asked if there was a ladder. I learned a lot about being hungry to make the best photo, following an idea or an instinct, and to never be lazy.

Well, basically, I would describe my current work as portraits of people and light. You must think of light. The camera only records light. It doesn’t see faces, recognize whether you have Jack or Jill in front of the lens. So, I see light and think what might work in black and white. You can’t make an intimate portrait, no matter how much pressure you create on yourself. Once you understand aperture and its relation to shutter speed you can foresee images in your mind, but you must get the right subject at the right time. And there is really no controlling that. You keep trying and failing. That’s film. It is a tough teacher.

Any photograph––except for its ability to show a “likeness” of someone––is an illusion. Generally, with portraits, I’m on the eyes. They acknowledge me; I acknowledge them.

Not necessarily always looking at the lens, but what the eyes are doing: they might be glancing downward or sideways, displaying contemplation, sadness. But the face speaks a certain language if you’re listening, visually. I don’t waste time pursuing subjects because it doesn’t work when they don’t give. It’s a gift when someone really gives his or herself to the lens. When it happens naturally, I love blur, especially when combined with a stationary part of the photo. This is something cinematography can’t do, but photography can, showing motion in what is a still photo.

Some people just don’t have faces that give you anything even when they agree to be photographed. My first good portrait was of a guy on a rock in the Philippines. So, I look for interesting faces. The more a person has gone through in life, the more they bring to the lens. Most people lock other people out. Meeting someone on the street is usually a collaboration to get a decent photo, subject and shooter experiencing each other in life in a moment in time. Even when no words are spoken, there must be mutual openness. I would describe my face as older, asymmetrical, but not quite decrepit yet. I am 71, so how people see me has changed. I am aware of older people’s reluctance to be photographed.

I am not crazy about color photography. Black and white is more interesting, more emotional. There is so much color from digital, all the phones. It is much easier to shoot color than black and white. It took one smart person to invent digital photography, but a lot of real devils to promote it. Black and white takes practice. I see in black and white when I am shooting. So many images in color just wouldn’t work in black and white because color differentiates easily, and we see in color. But there are times when I would like to shoot something in color that I know won’t work in black and white. Also, I see a lot of color photographs that have been printed too vibrantly. It’s visual stimulation, like TV commercials. I like muted color, or shots that contain only one or two colors. I find it peaceful and serene.

The deepest and most supreme photos are spiritual. They involve luck, accident, and effort. The slowness of the darkroom helps to bring out the spiritual, especially when listening to music. There is an Al Green song where he sings “…love is a dimension between time and space…” I first heard it sitting alone in my dorm shortly after returning from my father’s funeral. I felt the lyrics very deeply, and they apply to photos. The photos of mine that are spiritual, that border on the surreal, are the ones I don’t remember catching in the viewfinder, the ones taken by the unconscious. These, I believe, preserve the soul. A photographic portrait is a way to see into someone who will one day pass. They stare into the camera in a solid way, in complete confidence, no fear, and come alive in the future for the empathetic viewers who stare back. Portraits are nostalgic to me. In the end, we are products of our environments––with a good dose of genetics. •

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Ric Savid was born in New York City in 1954, attended Rollins College, Columbia University, and moved to Florida in 1982. He is the author of “Portraits from My Darkroom” and was named the Photo Laureate of St Petersburg by SPMOP (spmop.org) in 2024. His exhibition, “Darkroom Silver Linings,” will be presented at the Florida Museum of Photographic Arts (FMoPA), April 29–June 1, 2025. His website is www. ricsavid-photo.com. 

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