Master Profiles: Richard Kalvar

* “Master Profiles” is a series profiling all the great photographers of uncontrolled life. Unlike the rest of the blog, I’m doing these in a straight profile format to make it easy for quick access to facts, quotes and knowledge on all the masters. I’ll also group them together here every time I add a new one.

Profile:

Richard Kalvar (1944-Present)

American photographer known for capturing absurd, sometimes humorous, scenes from the banality of day-to-day life.

Background:

Born: November 14, 1944 in Brooklyn, New York, USA

Born in Brooklyn, New York as an only child from a lower middle class family, Richard Kalvar didn’t find his interest in photography until adulthood. After studying English and American literature at Cornell University, he decided to drop out and follow his creative streak through an assistant photography job for fashion photographer Jérôme Ducrot. After a year working for Ducrot, he decided to take an extended trip around Europe for some adventure. Ducrot gave him a camera as a going away present and after the trip, before even developing his film, Kalvar knew photography was what he wanted to do.

Starting out, his focus was more on personal photography and expression instead of making a living as a photojournalist. He worked assignments for various magazines to make enough money to get by, while taking his own photos for himself. After two years in New York, he moved to Paris to join the Vu Photo agency, and in 1972 helped found the Viva agency. In 1975, he joined the prestigious Magnum Photos agency, later even serving as the president.

Kalvar’s work is able to capture a strange and humorous aesthetic from banal, real life scenes, which he refers to as a “tension between two realities.” He calls the people he captures candidly, “unconscious actors in little dramas they don’t know they’re in.” Most of his work takes place in the US, Europe and Japan. Over his career, Kalvar has been highly selective with showing his work, which culminated in his book Earthlings, but more recently he’s become active on Instagram, where you can see more of his past work. Today, he lives in Paris and continues photographing life’s quirks, while teaching workshops in Europe and the US.

Style:

Humor, absurdity captured from the banality of daily life.
Characters. “People used as unconscious actors in little dramas they don’t know they’re in.”
Tension between two realities. “Playing with the false impression of reality, with the ambiguity of appearances.”
Clean compositions without mess.

Gear:

For a trip to Europe in 1966, French fashion photographer Jérôme Ducrot gave Kalvar his first camera, a 35mm Pentax. After that, he took most of his personal photos with Leica rangefinders over the years. Since he switched to digital more recently, he shoots mainly with full frame Canon DSLR’s, in addition to a Sony full frame. As far as lenses go, he’s always preferred the 50mm focal length.

Quotes:

“A photograph is what it appears to be. Already far from ‘reality’ because of its silence, lack of movement, two-dimensionality and isolation from everything outside the rectangle, it can create another reality, an emotion that did not exist in the ‘true’ situation. It’s the tension between these two realities that lends it strength.”

“I capture reality, never pose it. But once captured, is it still reality? I’ve always tried to play with the false impression of reality, with the ambiguity of appearances. Things are what they seem to be, or maybe something else. I use people as unconscious actors in little dramas they don’t know they’re in. These pictures are about Earthlings, but I’ll let you in on a secret: I’m an Earthling myself.”

“When I first began in photography, I was liberated by seeing The Americans. Not that I wanted to take the same pictures as Frank, but I was excited by his way of “reacting to” rather than “showing.” “Showing” struck me as a little boring.”

“There’s a certain irrational element that afterwards I can describe and try to analyze. I look at the sheets and suddenly I see, amid all the crap, something that sticks out and works – and works in a way that has a kind of hysterical tension in it. It’s funny, but also disturbing at the same time. It’s no longer the thing that was being photographed, it’s a scene, it’s almost a play.”

“The photograph is completely abstracted from life, yet it looks like life. That is what has always excited me about photography.”

“I walk around a lot. That’s necessary. I try to go to places where interesting things might happen. And I’m always looking. At relations between people. I’m attracted to people doing things with each other. Mainly talking, as a matter of fact.”

“It’s a basic rule of humor that a joke is always at somebody’s expense. Really good jokes, however, tend to be at everyone’s expense.”

“I’m kind of shy and sneaky and aggressive at the same time. Sometimes I have the nerve, sometimes I don’t.”

“I’m trying to create little dramas that lead people to think, to feel, to dream, to fantasize, to smile… It’s more than just catching beautiful moments; I want to fascinate, to hypnotize, to move my viewers.”