To acknowledge that beauty, I make my work in that manner. Not because I want the photographs to look
old, it’s because I want that wonderment of newness in a photographic reality, which I prefer over the dull,
modern look of what you have to work with in paper. I have reverence for the prints. I first make a master
print, and when I make an edition, the edition must match the master print.
AB: What are the challenges in creating photographs that juxtapose art from different ages in history?
JPW: My photographs reflect something that comes from painting. When I was kid, instead of playing
stickball, my brother and I went to museums. We thought we were in houses of beauty and wonder. We
learned from the descriptions of paintings, the stories of the past. What I wanted to do with photography
is to create narratives that first came about with Western painting. I don’t believe that photography should
be only in the moment. Obviously, it’s made in the current moment, but it can be about the past and about
the future, just like filmmaking, because it’s the story of life and how life changes. In my work, I like to
make photographs with a narrative that comes from the past but is relevant for today.
AB: Your photographs speak to political and social aspects of history and contemporary life. Are you
politically active?
JPW: I am. I always have been. I stay informed. I get the New York Times everyday for the last 25 years. I look
at BBC on television. NPR on radio. I’m a registered Democrat. I’ve never been so saddened by what’s going
on in Washington as now, with the gridlock in Congress, the mediocrity and the stupidity. I have made, in that
reference, a photograph called the “Raft of George W. Bush.” It was meant to show the damage that a mediocre
Republican president and his Congress and advisors can make on all our lives. We’re still paying the price
of that. That particular print is based on Gericault’s “Raft of the Medusa,” where in 1818 the ship called The
Medusa went aground, and the captain and his officers took the lifeboats and left the passengers to fend for
themselves. What the passengers did was rip the ship apart and created this raft. There was about 200 people
on the raft, and there was cannibalism, and horrible things. There was only a few survivors. That was the basis
of my making the “Raft of George W. Bush.” The way I depicted it was to show the mediocrity and stupidity of
these people not being able to see the results of their actions. Another photograph I made of political failure is
the “Capitulation of France.” That was the failure of France not to see the dangers of national socialism.
AB: Why did you decide to live in Albuquerque?
JPW: I came here because I was accepted to the graduate and postgraduate program of photography here.
I knew the work of Van Deren Coke, one of the founders of this program and I wanted to get out of New
York. I was living in an apartment that was 11 feet wide by 22 feet long for about eight years. I always joke
that it was so small that I only had to shave on one side. I moved here on the G.I. Bill, I had three years of
it, and that sustained me, but in that time I gained a wife and son. When I began my postgraduate work, I
was making photographs in the daytime and working as a busboy in an Italian restaurant. I was 44-yearsold. I worked there for five years. By the 1980’s, I was picked up by a gallery in New York and one in Paris.
AB: What did you take away from your years in art school?
JPW: I went to Cooper Union first, and I knew from the get-go, because I was usually older than the teachers,
that art can’t be taught. Either you have the flame of passion or the spark of interest, or you don’t. A fraction
of one percent of all graduate students in studio art actually live a life of working that way full time. It’s a
hard trip. But I’ve always been impassioned. I’ve always done what I’ve wanted to do. The definition of all
artists, actually the definition of all human beings, is to inform yourself of why we’re here, what our purpose
in life is, and how to make life better. We have to ask the profound questions. Am I an atheist? Am I a religious believer? Or is life just a crazy conglomeration of planetary movements that made us and made time
and space, and we live a life of futility? I’ve tried living that way, and it didn’t work. I don’t like futility or
anything nihilistic. I like things that are human and positive. Otherwise, it’s all self-involvement, and it’s all
escapist, and it’s all meaningless. I’m not just a spiritual person. I’m a religious person. That’s another reason
why I photograph death. I think death is the doorway to eternal life, and we have to die to get there. I believe
we are given life to make life better, to find our spirits, and to nurture each other. Then that’s over with, as it
will be with me pretty soon. I have maybe 10 or 20 years left. And I’m going to die in the darkroom, printing.
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