The stuff I shoot is so wide range. I don't concentrate on nudes or portraits. It's just
whatever happens to me in my life. It's just a daily record, basically, of what's been
going on in my life. And it's been a crazy life. I was going through all my proof sheets
yesterday because I'm at the tail end of finalizing the images for the book. And I realized
I've been in some really white-out places from jungles of South Africa to Bali, to the
White House, to the Kremlin. I mean, my life has been nuts. I've been candy enough to
have my camera with me as much as possible because I always get upset when Elvis comes
around the corner on a giraffe and I'm not there to photograph it. It's like, that would
really upset me. And it's happened many times, you know, when I haven't had the discipline
to carry my camera with me all the time. But I'm getting better. It's not a question of
looking for anything specific. It's a question of forcing your will to accept the fact that
something is going to happen. Like, okay, I'm going out with my camera. Something's going
to happen. I don't know what it is. But I often tell myself, you know, okay, will it
appear before me, whatever it is? And invariably it does. And that's been my mind space from
the moment I pick up my camera. I know something's going to appear before this camera that I hope
I have the courage and the patience to take. But when an image makes it to me, when the
subject matter is interesting enough, the composition is good enough, the printing is good enough,
and the overall feeling of the piece is good enough for me to want to share it with anybody.
That's when I, that's when I like an image. But it happens constantly with me. So which
are my favorite images? I don't have favorite images, I don't believe. But I know the ones
that work, and I know the ones that work really well. And those are the only ones I'm interested
in sharing, because there's enough, you know, there's enough bad stuff out there, and I just
in my way, I'm trying not to add to that. The world that I see is taken up by the beauty
of simplistic things, you know, a beauty of composition, a beauty of juxtaposition of
something being in a place it's not supposed to be. Just crazy things that I see that when
I show people the pictures of what I saw, they went, oh, I remember that, but I didn't
think it was that interesting. But that's the way I see. I try not to say, hey, look
this way, I'll put your hand here, if it's a human being, I'll go over and move a thing,
if I don't think it's in the right proportion or the right placement within the frame. But
I, you know, a lot of people say, well, you know, manipulation, manipulation, especially
with today's Photoshop world. But I think that the moment you're pointing your camera
at something and you take a step sideways, because there's a lamp on sticking out the
back of his head, you're manipulating the image from that moment on. So I'm not so scared
of the word manipulation. I'm only really interested in when you view one of my images,
are you getting what it is that I'm trying to say to you, you know? And invariably I'm
trying to say to myself, first of all, because it's kind of the way I write music, too. I
only write for myself, and if I can please myself, then I stand a good chance of pleasing
you with a song. But it starts with me. I have to think that an image is worth picking
up my camera, and worth concentrating on, and worth taking. It's only the same energy
that people go, well, how can a musician, you know, take photographs or sculpt or collect?
But it's just the same desire to shoot my mouth off, really. I mean, it's just the same
desire to want to express myself. And I just am able, luckily, to be able to turn it to
various directions. And with the same intensity and with the same passion, achieve what I
want to achieve in whatever, wherever my creative muscle is pointing, either to my camera or
to my Amazon chisels or my music or my collecting, you know. And that's not even talking about
trying to be the best husband and father I can be. I'm just, you know, trying to have
a good time. I was asked to do a show in Tokyo of 50 prints in an edition of 25, but they
wanted them 30 by 40. But at that time, I saw an Irish graphics proofing machine for
the proofing industry. When I saw the machine print photographic quality, I mean, the image
itself was, wasn't very good, but it was very photographic. Even that, you know, if I hadn't
seen it, it would have fooled me. So I bought one of those machines. It was $126,000. My
partner Mac, Mac Hobart and a bunch of people, we forced the machine to do what it was that
we instinctively knew it could do and that it would be a very interesting way of printing
digital imaging. So it started as a very selfish thing for me to do this show in Tokyo. And
then it just became Nash editions. Of course, skeptics were on many fronts. They were artists
that didn't think that the computer and the word art belonged in the same sentence. Gallery
owners were low to show digital work because it wasn't true art. It would have been done
by a computer. They didn't realize, of course, that, you know, there was more hands-on work
done in preparing the image for the final printing. We have been dealing with the permanency
of the inks for a long time. And right now, we're at least 200 years per print. And that's
pretty, that's pretty good, you know, and I would like it to be completely permanent,
but nothing's completely permanent. You put light on anything and eventually it will fade.
So we have to deal with that reality. We're obviously giving them prints now that will
last way longer than they will, you know. So in a certain way, that's long enough, isn't
it? But we won't stop here. I want a thousand-year prints, you know. There are certain images
that are worth keeping around that long, you know. And I hope we can print them. This digital
revolution is coming extremely fast and I've watched it in the last 10 years go from the
skeptics that you were talking about before to people that swear this is the future of
printing period. One of the things that my images mean to me is that I know I can do
it. When I see what I consider to be a successful image, I know that I have what it takes to
be, you know, audacious enough to pick up a camera and start filming other beings and
other objects. And also it means to me that I have something to share, that I have, you
know, photographs that would make you laugh, photographs that would make you cringe, you
know. But at least I have something to share. And what I'm trying to do is I think most
artists have a responsibility to do and I don't want to get too heavy about it. But
I think you, as an artist, you want to bring things into the world and bring them before
people who may not have had the awareness to see them and may not be aware of the information
and what, you know, the photograph or the piece of music is representing to make them
feel something about life because, you know, life really wants to treat us all as sheep
and have everybody lie down and just don't question anything and just go on with your
Isle of Lucy and your beer and you'll be fine, you know. But I was never one of those people.
I was always one that wanted to wake myself up and try and wake other people up to what's
going on around them.
