Michelle Watt Interview, Part 2

This is the second part of the Michelle Watt interview, read Part 1 here.

It was ten years ago today that I met Michelle Watt. She came to work as a second assistant on an editorial business shoot, and immediately made an impression on me. She was soon my default first assistant and worked on my set in New York and elsewhere for the next eight years.

She was an extraordinary photo assistant: smart, thoughtful, hard-working, and very present. One time I asked her, “Why do you stick around? Most of my assistants move on when I see how endlessly difficult and complicated my shoots are.” She replied with a laugh, “That’s the best part! I’m learning so much.”

She made me look good, so of course I thought that she was exceptional, but when she stopped assisting and focused on becoming a photographer herself everything changed. She went through a revolution, bringing everything she knew, from her craft, her education, her cultural background, to create almost out of thin air these magical images.

What were you not able to learn on other people's sets that you've learned to do in your own shoots?

The insane amount of pressure that happens on set that's on the photographer and the photographer alone.

Did you not sense that before?

I knew that you were experiencing it, but I didn't feel it. All I could do was try to come up with as many tasks I could to take any pressure off of your shoulders.

But I had nothing to do with talking between the agency and the client, convincing talent to do things. I didn't see that. I was never in those conversations.

What's the surprising part about that to you now?

That I'm capable of doing it at all. [Laughs.]

On my last big tableau shoot, the client and agency weren't agreeing on the same things. Talent was being difficult, someone started crying.

There was motion and stills to be done. We were already going into overtime, and then just staying calm, and being the diplomatic person that has to access all these different empathetic aspects of my personality … then code switching between all of them and convince them that it's going to be fine.

And how'd it go?

I remember getting home that night and just sitting in the darkness for 30 minutes. [Laughs.]

Why do you think you were able to pull it off?

Probably because of my mom. I took care of my family or growing up in an emotionally unstable household and dealing with lots of characters.

Being hypervigilant constantly, even just being an Asian woman in America, specifically white America, where you're constantly code switching and learning what makes this person comfortable. What kind of tone?, What kind of intonations? What do they like? What do they not like? How do I get them to like me? How do I get them to respect me? (Which are different.)

You mentioned how your relationship with your family is part of how you were able to navigate complicated on set vibes. You're bringing your experiences into your work, even if it's subtext.

I try to find fun ways to talk about difficult things so that it makes it more approachable and easier to tackle, even though the subject at hand is traumatic. In these commercial shoots, subject matter is usually not traumatic or triggering, but they're complicated.

There are fun ways to interpret that or visual layers that you can apply…

There's that liquor ad you did where there's a dad taking a photo with his phone.

There was a disconnect between him and the other models that seemed to be about family dynamics playing out in public.

Yeah, for sure. [Laughs.] It's a cultural thing, and maybe an age thing too, where sometimes they're not aware, or when your parents are embarrassing you. But they're just so into whatever they're doing at the moment, especially if they're proud of you, which is, it's subtext in that one.

It's cross-cultural, which is really fun. I want to bring specific Asian elements to the non-Asian audience in a way that can be understood in a non-stereotypical way. It's like, “Oh, your parents do this too!”

My mom loves high tea rooms. I think it's a British Hong Kong thing, and it's something that I was exposed to early on, and it was always a special thing.

But it's not like I use that as a trope across a lot of my work. It worked for that particular brief because it was about Lunar New Year.

The best compliment I got for that series was how culturally accurate It was. It was from another Asian American. They were like, “I don't know if I like associating the wasteful or profligate luxury with Asian people, but I got to say, props to how culturally accurate this is.” [Laughs.]

Cultures are complicated, and they have contradictions that can't always be aligned.

I like to take those things apart and look at them in ways that are approachable.

When I first met you, you didn't necessarily feel strongly connected to Asian culture. You seemed to be rejecting that part of yourself and instead making yourself at home in the mainstream American world.

How do you think back at that time and where do you see yourself now?

In 2020, because of the pandemic, I went back home to take care of my family. I had never tackled 20 years’ worth of issues. I was living with them and just to make it bearable for myself meant that there was a lot of healing and going into those deep things. “Why am I embarrassed of X? Why am I uncomfortable with Y?

And then at the same time all the Black Lives Matter stuff was happening. So, I think it forced a lot of people to face their racial identity within the greater America. Those two things kind of catalyzing each other; I faced a lot and I learned a lot. The pain that I sorted through, that's where a lot of those projects sourced from.

Because of that I feel more confident about who I am now - not 100 percent - but knowing better where I stand. How to stand up for the people and the values that I care about, even though I'm still tackling that sort of internalized racism every day.

You also would say, “I’m not a typical girl – I act more like a boy.”

I was avoiding the problems that I had with my mom for so long, I was also avoiding female relationships.

Ninety-nine percent of my friends were men - and it was just easier, more comfortable. At some point I realized this, and I tried to find a solution for it backwards.

I was like, I'm going to start hosting dinner parties and only invite women. I'm going to try to go out with more women, and then that somehow brought me back to my mom.

There were newfound ways I could approach her because I'd learned this from my relationships with women, and then I could apply it to my mom.

What brought the change with you two?

It was understanding where she was coming from, how much she did for us despite how terrified she was, not knowing anyone here in the US, not being comfortable here. Understanding that a lot of the instabilities that we experienced as kids were because she was just surviving as an Asian woman in America. I didn't know that, and that's probably why I was so angry.

It was a lot for her. In realizing all of this, just understanding why she is the way she is and then rationally processing that when she's reacting in front of me today. It gives me a better sense of how to approach the whole thing and to say, “Okay, I know you're scared.”

Top Image: Michelle Watt, summer 2022, by Chris Buck

Second Image: “Lunar Geisha” for Blanc Magazine, by Michelle Watt

Third Image: “The Wait” for Blanc Magazine, by Michelle Watt

Bottom Image: Jessica Wang & Rémy Martin, by Michelle Watt