David Griffith, photographer
Interview by Doug Aikenhead • Photos by David Griffith

Continued...

DA: What has shaped your vision over the years?

DMG: Experience, curiosity, the conceit that I can still do better.

DA: I think your color work is significantly different from your black and white work. Do you see the color and b/w work as being different? If so, what differences do you feel are there? Why are they different?

DMG: I think it has more to do with the fact that most of the color stuff is done using a tripod and longer exposures. The sensuousness of the color is sometimes critical to the image, not always. The waterspout and the tire tracks in the parking lot would work just as well in B&W. The B&W is all handheld. Maybe more spontaneous, less so now.

DA: Some of my favorite photographs come from your work in the 1970s and 1980s when you were very much a street photographer. Your more recent work has moved away from the street and the street photography approach. Do you think street photography is still viable? Do you think it has a future?

DMG: Of course. I still do it, but the streets have become much more aware, and much less tolerant of the encroachment of someone with a camera. We live in interesting times.

DA: Looking at the photographs from about 1986 through 2002 in particular, and following from the two previous questions, I see a distinct difference between this "later" work and the "earlier" work - a moving away from street photography, certainly, and also a growing involvement with elements of landscape, quieter situations, less of the surreal theater of the spontaneous, an increasing sense of working in situations and settings that you're possibly a little familiar with, or that allow more time to work with so that familiarity is a possibility. Can you comment on this? Do you see a change in your work anything like what I've suggested?

DMG: Much of that work is still surreal in my opinion. I think you may be implying less gutsy. I have a family and perhaps less time and less of a desire to put myself in possibly difficult situations. I am still trying above all to make good photographs whenever I have a camera in hand.

DA: Has your employment as a biomedical photographer influenced or affected your personal work?

DMG: Everything influences everything. Some of my biomedical work was influenced by my artistic conceits. I was more influenced by teaching younger people Biomedical Photography and picking up on their energy. It was revitalizing.

DA: Do you have any thoughts about showing and/or viewing photographs on line, as opposed to the traditional approaches to viewing photographs, i.e., on gallery walls, or in books or magazines, or as artifacts that you can hold in your hands?

DMG: Yeah, I'm highly amused with the situation. Maybe this is the future biting me in the ass. I feel that it's a great opportunity to possibly reach a much wider viewership. The downside would be loss of quality, possibly fine, critically important detail, a filtration of the sensual experience of looking closely at original prints, but only one further level beyond looking at book reproductions, and probably superior to TV images of photographs. You have control over the amount of time you're viewing the image.

DA: What are your goals as a photographer/artist today? How do they compare with your goals when you started out?

DMG: Honestly, much the same. Make interesting (to me), images, honor the medium by doing that. I look at photographers who continue to do great work as they grow older, and I want to do the same thing. This isn't some passing fancy. I'm in it for the long haul. I want to live and die like André Kertész, with a camera
in my hands.

David Griffith graduated from Center for Creative Studies in 1972 where he studied with Walter Farynk, George Phillips, Bill Rauhauser and Robert Vigiletti. He also studied with Garry Winogrand at the University of Texas from 1976-78.

"Thanks to them all, and thanks to Micheal Sarnaki and Detroit Focus for letting me show this work, and to Doug Aikenhead for his insightful and insistent questioning." David Griffith

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