Dirk Anschutz: Upstream

Dirk Anschutz shoots a lot of things, but what strikes me the most are the faces of the people he photographs. From The Sultans to this project, you see people being uncompromising in allowing us to know them when we look into their faces. There is no self-consciousness.

Dirk's obvious compassion and interest in his subjects really shines through. When I saw this project I was curious to know how Dirk approached his subjects and how the project came about. The strong collaboration between photographer and subject is evident and made me want to know more, so I asked Dirk how it was for both him and his subjects.

Tell us a little bit about your background as a photographer

Well, I’ve worked for magazines and ad agencies, and produced stock. I shoot sports, landscapes and conceptual images, but what got me into photography and what I still love the most in this field are good portraits. They just never get old for me.

What about this upcoming exhibition?

The show is called “Upstream” and is a portrait series of young people with a range of developmental and cognitive disabilities.

How did you get interested in photographing these people?

Sometime late in 2009 my girlfriend’s sister, Julie Guidry, called me up and asked me if I was interested in applying for a grant to shoot an image library for her non-profit, Upstream Arts.
Upstream Arts is a Minneapolis based non-profit whose mission is “to enhance the lives of adults and youth with disabilities by fostering creative communication and social independence through the power of arts education”. The classes are taught by working artists, including painters, sculptors, actors, and dancers, who help their young clients explore different ways of expressing themselves. A pretty big deal for the participants, as it turns out.

Well, we didn’t get the grant, but filing the application started a thought process about how to portray people with disabilities. Most of the images we found out there were of sporty triumphs or happy-happy family moments, but almost nothing showed the complex human beings behind the disabilities. There was definitely a need for straight-on portraiture. The more we talked about the project, the more interested I became, and eventually we decided to go ahead with the shoot, grant money be damned.
In the summer of 2010 the misses and I packed up the car with a bunch of gear and made a little road trip to the twin cities.

Was it difficult to get what you wanted from the
portraits? Were they willing to do what you asked?

Over all, the shoot was intense but fairly easy. Most of the models were really into being photographed, except for the first person we shot, Caleb, who happens to be the stepson of Julie Guidry. His shoot was a bit difficult. He was not in a great mood and we had to be very patient with him. But we showed him the whole camera set-up, how the lights worked, how the pics showed up on the computer screen and so on, and whenever we did that he gave us about 45 seconds in front of the camera. Of course he is now on the postcard for the exhibition and on the cover of the Magcloud Magazine we made from this project.

The entire shoot happened in one afternoon at the Jewish Community Center in St. Paul. We photographed 17 people and there was a pretty constant hustle-bustle. A lot of the communication was non-verbal and many creative decisions were based on gut feelings and intuition. Most of the participants were very excited but managed only about ten minutes in front of the camera before they were exhausted.
I didn’t really give many directions but tried to create room for the models to show themselves.

There is such a lack of self-consciousness with these portraits, tell us about that

Yeah, I thought that was very interesting. When you photograph small children you sometimes get that lack of self-consciousness, but children are usually kind of boring (sorry parents) because they haven’t lived yet, they haven’t had many experiences. Once people have lived a little they become much more guarded.

What I like about these images is that you can see an incredible openness but these folks are not children, they’re young adults and they had (and have) to overcome many obstacles in their daily lives. They had to figure out many things on their own for their unique circumstances and had to face many challenges that I can’t even imagine. They’ve lived and experienced a lot already and I think it shows in their faces.

What have you learned (if anything) from this project?

Well, it not easy to put into words, but I have to admit that the first contact with a person with a disability is kind of uncomfortable. When Caleb first walked on the set I definitely felt a bit insecure and not quite sure what was expected of me. What helped though was that when we planned the shoot we decided to treat it like any other production. And so I treated Caleb like I would any other person in front of my camera. I talked to him, I explained what I was doing and why and I gave him room to collaborate with me while letting him know where he had to be and what he had to do for the picture to work. Surprisingly within a minute my nervousness was gone and stayed gone for all the other models, too.


Sometimes, when other people look at the Upstream photos, I recognize that same nervousness and discomfort that I originally experienced. But once we talk about the shoot, people seem to become more comfortable with the images.

On a larger scale, I think it would be good for our society to create more interactions between people with and without disabilities and to encourage a dialogue. Hopefully this project is a small building block in this process.

How do the people you photographed feel about their portraits?

From what I heard so far, pretty good. But I have not been in direct contact with them since the shoot, so it’ll be interesting to see most of them at the show and find out first hand what they think about the images.


Anything else you want to say about this?

There is a tremendous amount of work being done by non profits, schools, volunteers, and by parents, relatives, and caretakers, who all collaborate to provide these young men and women with safe AND interesting lives. It’s a great cause to volunteer in and/or donate money to.

When is the exhibition and where?
The show is at
Intermedia Arts
2822 Lyndale Ave. South
Minneapolis, MN 55408
612.871.4444

April 5th through April 18th, 2011
Monday-Friday 10AM to 6PM and Saturdays 12PM to 5PM
There will be a closing reception and Upstream Arts Benefit on Monday, April 18th, 6:30-8:30 PM

Julie Grahame is aCurator

When I met Julie Grahame I found we had very similar ways of looking at the photo industry, and when she went live with aCurator, I wanted her to talk about photography. Julie is smarter than most, opinionated, funny as hell, ambitious and accomplished—a person full of ideas.

If you haven’t checked in with aCurator (she posts several times a week), and the blog you’re missing some wonderful photography.

Julie has already featured everything from portraits of queer kids by M. Sharkey to Ashok Sinha’s Uyghurs of Xinjiang, Dirk Anschutz’ BMX trick biking, Karaoke with Ingvar Kenne, and Jade Doskow’s World’s Fair Projects as well as other work.

If you’d like to be featured on aCurator, email julie@acurator.com with sample jpgs and if she’s interested, she’ll send you submission info.


Tell a bit about your photography background

I ran a C41 dev-and-print line at 16. Went back to college for a diploma and began working in the library of photo agency Retna in 1990. I was running the UK office within a year and begging to be sent to NY a year later. Been here in NY since 1992 and we sold the agency in 2006. I worked at ZOOZOOM for a couple of years,

I manage a few websites other than aCurator, am doing social media for a few photographers, and I still represent Yousuf Karsh in North America.


Who are your favorite photographers, past or present?
Brandt, Doisneau, Lartigue, Mapplethorpe, Avedon, Abbott, Cunningham, Parr, Frank, Hank Willis Thomas, Burtynsky, Arbus, Salgado...

Are you a photographer? If so, what do you shoot?

I took one paid job out of college, an architecture shoot of all things. Couldn’t sleep all night worrying about the film and decided I’d be better working with photographers than being one.

What made you start aCurator?

I’ve always wanted to edit a magazine and as the editorial print market is going down the dumper without embracing what the screen can offer, with things like the Boston.com Big Picture being great, but still a scrolling up and down column of images laid out around text. The time seemed ripe for something like this.

My husband, Mike Hartley of bigflannel, ran ZOOZOOM for years - way ahead of its time, a Webby Award-winning full screen online fashion magazine. So we knew people loved to see full screen images, and that photographers were eager to be featured in such a format.



What is the quality of the submissions you’ve seen so far?

I would say I am pleasantly surprised, they’ve been from excellent to not bad.

Do you prefer one genre over another?

I’d like to be as open-minded as possible. But I’m definitely a lefty and I assume that affects my choices.

What haven’t you seen that you would like to see?

I wouldn’t mind seeing more political work. As you and I have discussed, there’s a lot of work on “the recession” out there that consists of images of empty rooms with an old tissue in the corner of the frame and a drawer hanging open, for example. And (separately) more humour.

Are you optimistic or pessimistic about photography these days?

Both. I’m pessimistic for those who knew the days of decent day rates, expenses, rights retention and resale, and verbal communication, and built their business accordingly.

I’m optimistic because clearly the number of potential licensors of images, and the chance to reach them online, is increasing. If we can just get to the place where people pay for content, maybe there will be an industry that supports us.

I’ve found that not even the large companies, MSN for example, have been interested in differentiating themselves from blogs and fans by using ‘better’ or just different content (from the all-you-can-eat service model).
I hope this changes. I’m not thrilled that we might make money in pennies instead of dollars, but I am realistic about it.

What do you want aCurator to do?

To give photographers who value the web and how it can complement their work an opportunity to publish features that look fantastic online; and indeed other organizations who don’t have a good presence online to benefit from the space; and for a wide variety of viewers to enjoy it.

I hope to expand to physical exhibitions, print sales, collaboration and sponsorship. Ultimately if there’s a chance to make money and pay something to the contributors that would make me really happy. But first we have to get the number of viewers way up.

How do you feel about the ubiquity of photography and its effect on the professional market?

It’s been a pain in the arse really. It’s understandable where the industry has been headed, between the advent of digital photography (which, regardless of what anyone says, was and is a costly nightmare), the state of the economy, the acquisition of photo agencies, the general downturn in publishing - all support a turn toward cheap and voluminous. But I’m a bit surprised by how photo editors have embraced the agency deal (paying one fee for a month’s images, for example) because I think it’s incredibly short sighted.

If buyers don’t pay either a decent license fee or a decent day rate, in 5 years all there will be is stock and it’ll be crap. And I’m also surprised that Getty would concentrate on editing from Flickr. I go through these conversations in my head: “I love that image of blah blah - are there more from the shoot? Can I see the Raw files?”

Any pet peeves about photographers or photography?

Nah, nothing that I can condense to a couple of sentences, anyway.

Any idea where things are heading?

10 years ago I thought image buyers might pay-per-view of an image - indeed I tried to cut a deal with a major organization but they weren’t capable of tracking clicks.

5 years ago I thought fees would be driven down and never come back. This might well be the case. Pay-walls might help up fees or respect for photography.

We’re moving away from local hard drives to app-based cloud computing. I think there will be an ongoing burden on the image maker to stay up to speed - eg. now we’re having to repurpose websites for the iPad. Not free or simple.

Moving away from protecting and managing copyright in the same ways (eg. Creative Commons; Orphan Works).

What else do you want to talk about?

Just to say that I hope there is still a place for great photography, that we see broader and more in-depth publication of images online (with the photographers getting paid actual money), that people in general do want something fine amongst all the lowest common denominator rubbish being forced upon us culturally, and that there’s enough of an industry for photographers to actually make a living - but I encourage everyone to add skills to their repertoire.