S4, E5 Bill Armstrong

Bill Armstrong in a photographer based in New York, USA. He is represented by Hackelbury Fine Art in London, UK. The episode was recorded on the 23 October 2024.

Website: billarmstrongphotography.com
Instagram: @billarmstrongphoto

Hackelbury Fine Art
Website: hackelbury.co.uk
Instagram: @hackelburyfineart

Podcast details:
Podcast email: artiststalespodcast@gmail.com
Website: www.artiststales.net
Instagram: @artists_tales_podcast
Threads: @artists_tales_podcast

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Welcome to Artist Tales. The podcast that features and celebrates artists from different walks of life. I'm your host, Heather Martin, and in this episode, I'm chatting with Bill Armstrong, who is a photographer from New York. He is represented by Hackelberry Fine Art. Welcome, Bill. Hello. Thank you for inviting me to join in this podcast.

Well, thanks for being on this podcast. I'm really looking forward to speaking with you and having a conversation. So tell me a little bit about yourself in terms of, you know, what you do as an artist and how you got into photography. Well, I'm getting on in my years and I've been a photographer for a long time and I started in my twenties and I was a straight photographer and had a lot of rules about, you know, cropping and.

No full frame and all that and no manipulation, no monkey business in the dark room. You know, I worked that way for a long time, and when I was 45 years old, I stumbled upon a new way of making images by making them very blurred, and I haven't focused my camera since, and that's been over 25 years. So, that's the basic trajectory, and I'll explain more about, you know, what that means, the blurred photography, as we, um, get more into the technical stuff.

Sure. But, um, maybe, before we get into that, maybe you could tell me a bit more about why you moved into making things more blurry? Well, it was, uh, kind of a random thing. I was not planning on it. I, I was taking a color printing, advanced color printing class at the International Center of Photography in New York.

And the teacher assigned us to go look at Uta Barth's show at MoMA. And I went to see it and the images were blurred. It was a series where she'd taken portraits, but then she'd taken the portrait out. So the background was showing and it was out of focus because it was shot, would have been shot with shallow depth of field.

conceptual project. And, you know, I wasn't, I didn't really love it, but I thought it was interesting. And at the time I was taking pictures of posters on the street. I'm making portraits, fake faux portraits from, from posters. And I just spun the focusing ring on my camera and took one and it came out. I thought I really liked the way it looked and then I was off and running.

And soon I began. Well, because I had decided it was okay to do this manipulation, I kind of threw, had thrown away all my rules. So I no longer felt the need to pound the pavement and look for these, you know, diogenes searching for the image. And I realized I could make, much more easily, make my images from magazines.

So I started collecting magazines. And shooting my close ups out of focus, and within about a year, I moved to cutting and collaging the magazines and cutting out figures and creating collages, which I then shot out of focus. And that's where the Infinity Series, which is what I call it, began and continued through many iterations.

So it does seem like a theme for you, this infinity kind of theme project. I don't know what to call it, but so I did see a recent exhibition in London at Huckleberry where it was infinity. So why are you drawn back to that theme word? Well, originally I was shooting with the infinity setting on, on a analog camera, which is not for extreme depth of field and sharpness.

And I was subverting the documentary expectation of photography by using that setting to shoot close up instead. So there was a kind of a, you know, a cool thing that it actually was, did have something to do with infinity, infinity in that sense. And I don't always use that anymore. And that setting doesn't even exist on a lot of digital.

lenses and I've used different formats where it wouldn't have worked. But anyway, that's the way it started. But way beyond that, there's a sense of ephemerality, universality of, you know, maybe a macro cosmic view or, or a micro view to, you know, blurred imagery that I think relates to some idea about the world.

the infinite. And at the same time, some of the subject matter that I have been working with has some reference to, to some, to spirituality. Sharon, tell me a bit more about the spirituality aspect of it. Well, I once was at a, an opening and I was talking to a Professor, philosophy professor, and he said that he thought my work was not about spirituality, but it was about spiritness.

And I think that's a good, a good term that I don't know if that word really exists. But there are many different aspects of the way this works. I did a lot. I've done a number of series that have to do with, say, mandalas  or Buddhism. with Eastern religions, and so they, they refer more directly to spirituality.

There's a lot of ghostly figures in my work, which refers to spirit photography of the 19th century, when photographers either thought they could communicate with the dead, or were hucksters who made fake photographs of ghosts. So I have that reference. So there's a lot of different levels and layers of where my imagery might refer to spirit or spirituality.

Yeah, no, that's quite interesting. And it's interesting that that professor kind of sparked something in you to, to explore that a bit more. And in a way, I guess it also ties into the infinity aspect of, of your work as well.  So how does your sort of current work, or your work from your mid forties differ?

I mean, apart from being out of focus, how does it differ really from what you were producing before? Well, it's completely different. I've used this technique of making a collage and blurring it, and by doing so, the edges of the collage disappear, and it appears to be an integrated image that could exist in the real world.

And so there's some level of mystery or confusion when, uh, viewers look at it that they think, Oh, gee, maybe this was done in the studio with gels or something. But at the same time, you can see that there's, there's something wrong with this picture. It's just, you know, it's not right. So that's key to the whole, my whole strategy is to make these images, which would appear to be, seem like they could be realistic, but then they really aren't.

But that, that process of, Making a collage with, at first I just did it with figures and backgrounds and magazines, but over time I've done it with many, many different subjects, many, many different goals, and it's just, luckily or happily for me, it's turned out to be an idea that's, you know, really, I've been able to really expand in many, many different directions.

And a lot of the work is made from art history, from Renaissance images, or from Roman sculpture, or from As I said, uh, Eastern religions, you know, a lot of different subjects. Turned out, worked really well with this process. Yeah, and it, I mean, the work I've seen more recently that you've produced at, as I said, in London, I do find it really quite interesting.

But I'm also wondering if you're, would you be happy to talk about sort of what you did before? What sort of things were you producing before that shift? Well, I started out, you know, a straight photographer in my twenties and I was just learning photography and I shot landscapes, tried to make, you know, abstract compositions and you know, various things with some degree of success.

At some point I started shooting reflections of glass skyscrapers, which had these distorted appearances and that was pretty interesting and I did that for a long time. That was kind of like moving into creating a. a world that's not the real world with photography, even though it's straight photography.

And then when I was at some point, I was in Italy and I saw these incredible torn up posters, you know, pasted on the walls. And I started, you know, doing, making inadvertent or found collage from those. So I was, and I did that for like 10, more than 10 years, 15 years. And that was, you know, it was, thinking about collage, it was thinking about reusing existing images, and so some of the ideas that ended up becoming the base of the Infinity series, although, you know, totally different.

And, you know, it was kind of, I kind of felt like if I could make a better collage, which had more, better colors, more meaning, inadvertent meaning that, you know, they would all work out. But in a way it was kind of a dead end because they're done enough so that it wasn't really original enough, I don't think, to really take me to the level that, of course, everybody wants to go to, which is high level.

So I did make a couple of changes in what my style and instead of collages I started shooting portraits that were disfigured posters where they'd been torn up or they had some Something glued on them or maybe they had some gum, some of the fixed gum to it or some mischievous  inadvertent hand had disfigured them in a way.

And those, those were a little bit fresher and I actually had a pretty good show of them in the city, New York. And I had a really pretty nice review on the Village Voice, which was really like, that was like a huge step forward to actually being considered as a real artist. And it was, but it was at that point that I, as I said, kind of randomly came across this other idea, which.

proved to be a lot more fruitful. And it was successful pretty quickly. I mean, it really hit a, touched the nerve of these ideas about identity that were really afloat at that time in the 90s. The Whitney Biennial was a famous one that was all about identity. This was way before the current diversity identity movement.

So that was, it was pretty timely. You know, I started getting shows in galleries and getting published, you know, really in the first year or  So it sounds like you've had quite a diverse career, which is really quite fascinating. You've been kind of in the art world for quite some time now, and I guess you've seen changes, and I'm just conscious of, you know, you started out on film, using film cameras, and I presume now you use digital.

So how does that influence you, or how does it influence you using digital? Well, I stayed with film for a long time because I didn't feel that Digital printing could manage the transitions of colors, blurred colors, particularly well without having banding or posterization, which flaws. I was, I taught color printing at the International Center of Photography, you know, over 20 years, and I had access to beautiful darkroom, so I printed my own color prints for a long time after everybody else thought, Why is he doing that?

So eventually I, I, Really did have no choice. They, they closed the darkroom and it became really hard to get the materials and everything about it became Problematic and I switched over to digital and the biggest change that happened is that I've made Maybe three different portfolios bodies of work where I used long exposures And I moved the camera to create the blur or the mystery or the vibration effect That would have been really hard to do in analog because you'd have to, you know, I would shoot like, you know, 50 different exposures before I would get the one that I thought was doing anything useful.

And you could see as you're going along what, you know, what was happening. But with film, you would have, I would have to shoot a whole roll of film and then wait until I got it back and then, I would have had to record what my shutter speed was and remember, you know, how much I'd shaken the camera in order to, you know, recreate that if once I found the right combination.

So it really was not, it was almost impossible to do with film. So there was an actual real positive change in my working method that was facilitated by using digital technology. And I like, you know, I mean, now I've got a pretty good size printer at home, and I miss the darkroom, though. Darkroom was really fun.

Yeah, so do I. One of the things that, you know, it's like everything in the world. Darkroom was a community, and in international photography, color darkroom was really, there was a time when that was like the place to be. People were coming in from all over the world to make their prints and stuff. It was really cool.

Really fun. There was a lot of really, really great people, and now everybody's off in their little cubicles the way everyone's off in their, on their phones and not having, you know, contact. Yeah, no, it's, it's very different now. And it's, I think also harder, as you said, to get darkroom space, you know, even in London, I think, I don't know about color printing, but I, certainly with black and white, there, there are a few left, but not many.

But I, I also do miss, you know, the darkroom as well. Cause I've, that's what I started off with as well, but more of the black and white rather than color. What other changes have you seen over your career as a photographer? Well, one thing that's weird and that, you know, I don't really understand and, and I don't know if anyone does is that.

I was looking at a Photograph Magazine, which is a New York based magazine that was around in, and I, I had a copy that was from 2000 or 2001, and I was looking at it recently and there were over a hundred listings of photography exhibitions in New York at that time. And that was like the real peak of photography and the real advent or acceptance of color photography at that, around that time.

And now Photograph Magazine just actually went out of business about a month ago, I think. But. Now their listings are like 10 shows or something that, that, you know, it's strange, but there's so few photography galleries, um, compared to what there used to be. And I think it's kind of odd. I don't really understand it.

But, you know, certainly in New York, one of the problems is that, you know, the prices of collectible photographs is just so much lower than the possible. prices of paintings, that it's really hard to even, you know, manage it and manage the space and pay the rents that, uh, you know, an art gallery that sells huge paintings.

So there's a lot of different factors, and I guess it has something to do with it being a digital revolution, but it's kind of weird because there's so many more photographs out there, but there's so many less, so many much fewer, many fewer galleries. Yeah, and I guess there's kind of waxing and waning in terms of what is popular art wise and what, what's in favor, what is out of favor.

Yeah, I mean, and you don't know in the coming years whether photography will have an uptick as well. Right, I mean, ceramics are really big now, and fiber arts are really big, and, you know, I went to Frieze London, and there were like three photographs in the entire exhibit. That's exaggerated a bit, but it was, I couldn't believe how little photography there was.

In terms of you being an artist, what kind of motivates you, what, you know, drives you as a photographer, or what are you drawn to? Well, I'm not, I'm either always working on a portfolio or trying to figure out what the next one's going to be. And this is, I've been doing it for a long time. So it gets harder and harder because, you know, you pick the right fruit, uh, in the beginning, all of the easy ideas that are really good, you know, have already been done.

So it kind of gets harder, but I always try to get it, do at least one portfolio a year. The last few years, that really hasn't been true, but I did have a new goal. body work last year and I'm working on one now. You know, I think after a certain time period of inactivity, I just feel like I should be coming up with a new idea and making something. 

I guess that leads on to my next question of, where do you find inspiration? You know, what inspires you or who inspires you? Well, I think seeing other art that I think is good is really, kind of, kicks me into gear in a way, or, you know, makes me realize that I need to, you know, up my game. So, I think that's probably the biggest thing.

It turns out, in retrospect, that most of my work is really a personal history. There's bodies of work that are about my father's death, about my mother's death, about you know, so many different aspects of my life that I didn't know at the time that that's what it was. So not once have I decided, Oh, gee, I need to make a body of work about this experience in my life.

But it turns out that in retrospect, there has been always some subconscious motivation, which leads me to do something that I only see later, maybe sometimes even years later. So like, Oh, now I see why. So I would say that's, that's a real, um, kind of interesting, and in my case, it turns out there's some subconscious motivation, um, for most everything I do, and, you know, it'd be interesting to see what other artists say about that.

So I think, you know, it's very interesting, you know, you're, you're finding that you're weaving in sort of aspects of your personal life, and I think often it's hard to divorce as an artist your personal life with your art. How much of that do you think plays a role in driving your, your art, or influencing your art in, in some ways?

Well, I think that most of the series that I've done have, in retrospect, it turns out that there was, was a specific, um, subconscious motivation, but I didn't know what it was at the time. You've kind of alluded that you do go to, you know, art shows and exhibitions and things. Do you do that quite a lot? Is it something that you're kind of drawn to doing?

You know, I've been living in New York for a long time and recently I moved to the suburbs where I'm still only a half an hour on the train from Grand Central. So I really do try to go into the city and go to the museums and the galleries as much as possible and try to keep up with the art world, which is a huge task because it's really big.

There's a lot going on. And, um, That's, for me, that's the reason I live in New York City. And that, you know, all of that stuff, the galleries are free and the museums are, I have a faculty card. I can get into a lot of museums and that's why I'm near, near New York. That's it. I don't have any other reason to be there.

Yeah. And I think a lot of big cities like New York and London and probably elsewhere have a really good art scene because I find the same in, in London. I guess you've really seen some different trends in, in the art world and particularly not just Doing your, you know, photography and your artwork, but also going to exhibitions.

How much do you think that influences you in terms of how you work on your projects or portfolios? Influences me a lot. I mean, I'm always looking for new ideas and new things when I, you know, go to art shows. Again, a lot of it's, you know, more subliminal, subconscious motivation. But I, you know, I find that a lot of times when I meet people who are not from New York, that they just don't know as much about what's going on as you do if you, you know, if you live in New York and you go to the galleries.

That's the way to keep up to date. I mean, or, you know, London, of course, is the same, or Paris, but, you know,  It really helps. You don't have to try so hard. You just, you know, there's places, millions of places. I know you, you exhibit internationally as well. So you've been to London and I think you've been to Spain as well, recently.

So we're recording in October 2024. So when you're traveling about and having exhibitions in, you know, in other cities, do you make a point of also going to local galleries? Oh sure, yeah. I went to Freeze London when I was there. I went to Tate Modern and I went to V& A. I was in London four days. I went one day to the gallery and three days to different museums and art fairs.

And I have a show up in Barcelona now at the Palau de la Musica Catalan, which is a really fantastic, um, opportunity. And I was there for five days that the openings coincided there in the same week. That's really rare for me. I'm lucky to have one, one show a year, two in Europe in the same week. It's a high point, but, um, I've never been to Barcelona and that's fantastic.

You know, really, Try to see as much Gaudi as possible. Yeah, no, I agree. I went to Barcelona and I think I got Gaudi.  Made sense. Very much, yeah, it's very much influenced the city. What challenges have you faced or have you faced any challenges? Well, the big challenge with a fine art photographer is simple.

It's trying to figure, trying to make enough money, you know, to have a subsistence living, which is, you know, you'd think if you looked at my resume, you'd think that I, you know, was financially comfortable, I think, but it's not the way it is. You know, you have to, it's really hard to get a hustle. Really hard to sell your work.

Yeah. You know what, the first person who said that is, you know, it can be quite a tough industry to, to make, you know, a decent living in, even if you do have a really good CV and a very strong CV. So yeah, I think that a lot of artists face that and I think you don't necessarily get into art to make huge amounts of money, to be fair.

I mean, I do better than some people because my, my work is very beautiful and you can actually put it on your wall. A lot of artists who are really good artists, their, their work's really not very saleable. So at least mine is, mine can be sold. I mean the numbers, you gotta sell a lot of prints. So my last question is, what's next?

What's on the horizon for you? Well, I, I'm embarking on a big project. I'm trying to put together a book of my imagery. which I'm going to self publish and, well, I might find a publisher at the end, but I'm going ahead as if it's going to be self published. I'm working with a designer named Bob Foldish from San Francisco, who's really good.

I've lined up some people to write some stuff and I've been putting together the images and it's coming along. It should, I don't know, when it'll be done, maybe in the next, hopefully the next six months. And how are you finding that process of doing a book or publishing? Well, I'm learning a lot and I, I'm, you know, like many people, I thought I'd design it myself, but then I just realized that I really don't know anything about it.

So it's interesting and I, I don't know where it's going. It's some, some cool ideas have kind of unfolded and make me start and make me think, Oh, this is actually going to be pretty good. But, um, you know, we'll see how it goes. I mean, it's really interesting to hear your response, but I'm also conscious that, you know, a lot of my friends, particularly photographer friends, are starting to do books.

So I was just wondering what the process was, you know, how you're finding it, or how are you approaching doing a book as opposed to, like, a portfolio? Well, it's not that different in a way. Um, I'm showing a lot of different portfolios and it's going to be fairly straightforward in its design. It's just going to, it's going to be kind of boom, boom, boom with the images.

There are a few frills we're working on to try to make it a little special, but. It's just, to me, it's, you know, it's relatively simple in that sense that I'm trying to translate the portfolios into a presentation and a book. Sounds like a very interesting project. So I'd like to thank you, Bill. It's been really wonderful speaking with you and good luck with doing the book and your future projects.

Well, thank you very much. It's been a pleasure and it's all good. Thank you. Great. Thank you.  I really appreciate you listening to this episode with Bill. I hope you enjoyed it. For more information about Bill, including his social media handles, check out the episode notes. I'd really appreciate it if you could also rate and review the podcast in the podcast apps.

In the next episode, I have a really interesting conversation with Alison Eye, who is an English artist whose art form is stitching. I look forward to you joining me for the next episode.