A Bright Conversation with Lois Conner

Lois Conner is a American photographer. She is internationally known for her platinum print landscapes that she creates with the elongated a 7" x 17" format banquet camera. she received her BFA in photography from Pratt Institute and her MFA in photography from Yale University. She moved to New York City in 1971 and worked for the United Nations until 1984. Numerous books have been published of her photographs including China, The Photographs of Lois Conner, Callaway Arts & Entertainment, 2000. "Beijing: Contemporary and Imperial," Princeton Architectural Press, New York, NY, "Ellipticals (ovals and circles from 2020)," Penumbra Foundation, New York City, edited by Leandro Villaro, among others.

Lois's artwork has been exhibited widely both nationally and internationally in galleries, art spaces, and museums, such as : The Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York; The Cleveland Art Museum; The Sackler Gallery and the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C.; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Philadelphia Museum of Art; Vancouver Art Gallery; the British Museum; Australian National Gallery in Canberra and elsewhere.

Conner's work is in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Sackler Gallery in Washington, D.C., the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Australian National Gallery in Canberra, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, and the British Museum and the British Library In London, among others. Conner was awarded the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation grant in 1984, which enabled her to photograph in China.

She was the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, the Anonymous Was a Woman fellowship, Princeton University Research Fellowship, Pollock-Krasner Artist Fellowship, New York; also the recipient of the Rosenkranz Artist Fellowship, New York, Sol and Carol Lewitt Artist-in-Residence, Praiano, Italy and the New York State Council on the Arts Fellowship. I had the honor and pleasure of asking Lois how she explores society and nature through her camera, the benefits of the darkroom process, and much more.

UZOMAH: Your use of a banquet camera has made you renowned. What qualities do you like most about using this method of producing images?

LOIS: I like to think of my cameras as tools. You need to learn how to use them so they become useful intuitively. Each one of my cameras, with its different forms and ease of use, does something very specific. I began by using the 5x7 camera in 1973. By 1975 I could afford a lens for my 8x10. In 1982, after graduate school, I switched from the classical shape of the 8x10-inch view camera to the elongated rectangle of the 7x17-inch banquet camera. Like the cinematic form, the panoramic camera can embrace a different narrative framework. I felt it extended the narrative in ways other formats couldn't. And with the multi-panel 7x17s, the possibilities are endless. During the onset of the pandemic, I began using the 8x10 with circular and oval masks. Suspended in space is how I feel with the circle taking me there with its telescope-like view and the lack of a hard edge. For me, this was a new way of looking. Like learning a new language, you don't give up the other languages; it just makes your visual life richer and more complex. I feel incredibly fortunate to be able to draw on all these formats. Yet, it's with the panorama that I have most elaborately and clearly stated my voice and connection to the landscape.

U: How do you explore society and nature through the lens of your camera?

L: I can't imagine my life without being directly intertwined with the surrounding world. "Landscape as Culture" was the title I used to describe my work in 1993 for an exhibition at the Sackler Gallery in Washington, D.C. I want my work to embrace where we've been culturally and what's been left behind. What initially sends me out into the unknown is often a photograph or a painting that haunts me because of its absolute unfamiliarity; a story that lingers in my memory; a connection to the news; a discovery, or a visceral connection to culture. What I uncover in my pictures is unpredictable, surprising, and often exhilarating. Trying to describe that encounter visually through photography is nearly impossible. It's also invigorating to try and twist what the camera faithfully describes into something of a fiction. With the confluence of light, the camera can conjure up a world, one seemingly half-imagined or one that breathes with the life of thousands of years of history and geological time. Sometimes it simply acknowledges the indescribable beauty of the land.

U: How did working at the U.N. impact your artistic process?

L: Working at the United Nations for more than 13 years (in New York and Geneva), I was directly exposed to a multitude of cultures, traditions, values, and viewpoints. I became an obsessive collector and observer of the landscape and cultures. My photographs are a result of these histories.

U: You met and studied with Tod Papageorge and Richard Benson. How did that help you in your path as an artist as a whole?

L: My teachers and mentors have been integral in helping me find my way. Philippe Halsman encouraged me to become a photographer after I took his “Psychological Portraiture” class at the New School. At the time, I was on another path: working at the UN and studying Fashion Design at night at FIT. At Pratt, Alan Newman taught me how to use the view camera; using it gave me a reason to pause, work slowly, and describe things with an almost surreal precision. I received a grant with Alan from the University, for research into platinum printing. Philip Perkis, also at Pratt, was a visionary critic and teacher. His work was an inspiration as it was about the subtle beauty of nature in the world, something I was trying to figure out for myself.

Tod Papageorge was an uncompromising yet poetic critic, whose respect and expectations for the medium were the foundation for the Department at Yale. Under his tutelage, my years as a student and teacher there were critical to my voice as an artist.

Richard Benson was a big part of my artistic life. I wanted to meet him after seeing the beautiful platinum prints, he made for a 1977 exhibition of Tina Modotti’s work at the Museum of Modern Art. Later he became my professor, friend, colleague, and, as Dean of the Yale School of Art, my boss. In each of these roles, he was encouraging, but not overbearing. He left a lot of space open for criticism and humor, looking at photographs and embracing the world as a miraculous place.

U: What is the most challenging thing you have faced as a female artist traveling abroad for projects? Do you have any advice for others who might have to do the same or go solo today?

L: As a woman traveling alone, I have faced innumerable challenges. I try to learn to speak a little of the language and have a good sense of the customs, traditions, and history of the place I am traveling, which puts me on a more even footing. My advice is to read as much as possible before you go, and when you travel, be prepared for your equipment to break down or malfunction. I travel with wood glue, clamps, pieces of wood, and now, after my ground glass broke in Mongolia, fine sandpaper. Carrying extra ground glass is good, but with my experience, that's what I end up breaking.

U: Are there still benefits of the darkroom process, or has it completely been pushed out and considered outdated?

L: The materials are still easily acquired for silver printing. With the platinum printing process, the chemistry is more available than when I began platinum printing in 1974 (though recently, with the war in Ukraine, the price of the palladium and platinum compounds have skyrocketed). Buying a 7x17 film has sometimes been a challenge. I switched to Ilford about eight years ago when Kodak began scaling back on the film they make (they still make the 7x17 film, although, it’s twice as expensive). I order film once a year as before. Color film has become dear, as have black and white. I’ve always used film, but digital is now in the mix, with the iPhone, the Nikon, and, more recently, the Hasselblad. For me, digital does not replace film, silver printing, or the numerous early processes; they just add other possibilities, yet digital cannot be fixed in the field.

U: If you could describe your career in photography with one word, what would it be? And why?

L: I don’t consider photography as my career; it’s my life.

U: How does your process of selecting images differ from when selecting for a book or when selecting for an exhibit?

L: Editing is crucial. It’s important to have other voices besides your own, especially when creating a book. It’s frequently a compromise from what I had originally intended. And I’m happy to report, always better. Exhibitions are a collaboration between you and a curator or director of a gallery. With an exhibition, the space has a large role in determining the edit and the size of the prints. With a book, the cost can determine that the edit be curtailed, and for me, with my elongated format (and the multi-panels), it seems that the compromises are greater than with the 8x10 or 5x7. They both elicit different kinds of expectations.

U: What lens size do you typically use when shooting? Why do you prefer it?

L: I tend to use ‘normal’ focal length lenses, ones that mimic the 50mm on the 35mm camera. So, 150mm for 4x5; 210mm for 5x7, 300mm for 8x10 and 360mm for 7x17. I own many lenses and frequently employ wider and longer focal length lenses. It depends on where I am and what I am trying to describe. Also, what I can logistically carry.

U: Through your many travels and career in art, what has it taught you about society and the role we play in it?

L: What I am trying to reveal through photography deliberately yet subtly is a sense of history. I'm a born traveler, adventurer, obsessive collector, and observer of the landscape. I want my photographs to describe the relationship between the tangible and the imagined, between fact and fiction.

What initially sends me out into the world is often a story, photograph, or painting: some aspect of the world that haunts me because of its absolute unfamiliarity, beauty, or incomprehensible existence. Trying to render a visual encounter through photography is nearly impossible. My challenge is bending and twisting what the camera faithfully describes into something of fiction, to give form and meaning to what exists in front of me. With the confluence of light, circumstance, chance, and a dozen other factors – I attempt to conjure up a world, one seemingly half-imagined and breathing with a life of histories.

For more information about Lois’s artwork, please visit her site.

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