Presence Interview, Part Two

This is Part Two of my 2010 interview with Andrew Hetherington on the Presence book project. Read Part One here…

The interesting thing now is that, like with the Shatner one is, he’s probably hiding behind the hay somewhere. It really gets interesting.

For me it’s not really about where they are in the picture. It’s pretty unsatisfying to play “Where’s Waldo” with this series. Partially because you will never find them, but also because in most pictures there is really only one or two places that can be hiding an adult person.

When people question me about it, they realize that I have a lot of little rules about where someone can hide and how I talk about the project, like I don’t tell where people are.

Another one is I tend to hide people in obvious places, it is important for people to be upfront and close to the camera, not way back in the shot.

They are always a portrait sitting, in that the subjects are always cooperative. I can’t just see Julia Roberts walk into a building and then photograph that building facade and title it “Julia Roberts.”

Did you make up a list of “rules” before you started shooting? To give yourself some boundaries.

I had some sense of what was “fair” and what wasn’t from the outset but some of the specifics had to be worked out through the actual shooting.

For example, one of the early shoots was with the actor John Krasinski; we were shooting at the Billiard Room at the Friars Club in Los Angeles. It is unique for its sand floor (which works as a giant ashtray for the members). We shot a portrait set-up for the magazine there and then we shot one for my series. The room is small so it felt fine to put John just behind the wall visible in the shot, but when I showed the picture to people they assumed that he was buried in the sand. So since then they have to be in the same room as the camera, and sadly Krasinski is no long in the mix.

This hard rule gets ambiguous when shooting space is less defined (like with Kathy Griffin, or Masahura Morimoto), but ultimately, it’s important to me to stay loyal to the spirit of the project as much as the technical boundaries.

Have there been any others that you had to abandon for other curious reasons?

Well, the least curious reasons are that the pictures are uninteresting. I have a pretty long list of interesting people who I got unengaging images with: Jeb Bush, Arianna Huffington, Barney Frank, Paul Dano, Timbaland, Zach Galifianakis, Harold Ramis, Jonah Hill, Christopher Guest, Pete Wentz, Bryan Ferry, Nathan Lane, and David Fincher. But my favorite story is meeting Bo Diddley at LAX and failing to achieve the photo that I was after.

I was at the airport in Los Angeles and I was at my gate and I see him at an adjacent waiting area. I walked directly up to him, “Are you Bo Diddley?”

He puts out his hand and says slowly in a deep voice, “Yes, I am.” I’m standing there shaking his hand and he looks amazing - all in black but with white shoes, and he wears this big black cowboy hat.

I started to tell him about the Presence project and how I’d like to shoot him for it – like, right now! My flight begins boarding in eight minutes and he’s there with his girlfriend (who must have been forty years his junior) and I’m trying to explained it to them but he’s an old man and I’ve only got a minute now.

My shot gets two or three people in the foreground and some phone stalls, and I have him around the corner, but I can see him and I’m like, “Mr. Diddley, you need to step back more, I can still see you.”

But he’s fucking Bo Diddley, he wants to be seen and also, he doesn’t really understand, and literally, my flight was boarding. So I got a couple of frames but they don’t really work.

Do you really think that he was reluctant to hide?

Perhaps, but only because he’s such a showman. Wasn’t he the first in popular music to regularly name check himself in his songs?

William Shatner was the first person that you asked, what was his reaction?

I said, “Okay, so I need to see nothing of you.” So he got in the shot and I can still see a quarter of him and I’m like, “ Mr. Shatner, I can still see you.” “Oh, you want to see nothing of me? Not an arm! Not a hand, finger, nothing!?!”

He is like, “Just do one for me! I want it!” So we did actually one with his hand showing, which I still have somewhere.

Sometimes I’ll give the subject somewhere easy to hide and they will chose a harder place. It shows how much people really get into it.

Although sometimes the difficult ones are almost more fun than the easy ones.

Jack Nicklaus fought me, he’s like, “But I’m not going to be visible!” I had to give him an explanation how conceptual art works. He came around and seemed to enjoy it in the end.

We actually asked to shoot him with this bear for the magazine assignment and he wouldn’t do it, he didn’t want to deal with the animal right’s people writing to him. He would pose with it without being visible, even though the photo is going to be titled “Jack Nicklaus.”

David Lynch was the opposite; for most people I have to explain it in detail for them to understand that they are in the shot but are not visible, just so they know what to do. But with Lynch I started to give my explanation and he cut me off, “I understand.” He then walked over and stepped into the frame perfectly.

I imagine that the more creative folks take to it easier. How was Snoop Dogg?

We did two shots for the series and he initially didn’t see the value in it. But he was obviously thinking about it while hiding in the first shot because as we were getting him into the second one and he’s said, “Yeah, I’m going to make a new record and we’re going to have the best producer and make all the detailed, you know, the photography, and the liner notes, and do a full packaging and put it out and when you play the disc, there will be no sound.”

I didn’t want to break it to him that John Cage already did that.

Top Image: Presence, David Lynch

Second Image: Presence, John Krasinski (disqualified)

Third Image: Presence, Snoop Dogg

Bottom Image: Bo Diddley, a Presence near miss.