An Interview with Lisa Kereszi

It was thrilling, exciting and spine tingling to be able to talk with the fantastic Lisa Kereszi just before her new show at Yancey Richardson Gallery in New York from March 22nd - May 5th.

Thrilling, Neon Sign, Niagra Falls, CA, 2006
(All images courtesy of the artist and Yancey Richardson Gallery)

JS: You have a new show called Cheap Thrills opening today at Yancey Richardson Gallery. Can you tell me about it?

LK: The show was edited down between me and Yancey from a lot of work. I didn’t set out to make a show called “Cheap Thrills.” It just sort of happened that way from editing the work from the different places I had been photographing. My interest is in fantastical and recreational spaces. But I tend to just photograph a bunch of things and see where it goes. I didn’t pre-plan and set out to have to show that I’m having.

Red and Gold Corridor, Haunted Graveyard, 2004

JS: One of the things I love about your work is that you go into these environments or you find these spaces and things that other people might see as very plain or a little bit seedy, and you manage to bring out something interesting and beautiful. You capture a moment that would probably otherwise go unnoticed. You hone in on elements that are very beautiful and fantastic.

LK: I think I’m trying to look at these banal things and to elevate them. I guess I appreciate these places. I don’t think I’m passing judgement. I think it’s this mixture of love and hate. I walk in and think, “Oh, this is fantastic!” Actually, I think of that word a lot – “Fantastic.” Especially after reading a lot of Diane Arbus quotes. Apparently, she used that word a lot when she approached someone --- “You look fantastic!” or “That is fantastic!” I think some of the spaces that I photograph are meant to be glamorous and fantastical when the lights go out, but I guess it’s not a current notion of glamour. Most of the places I’m photographing do seem stuck in time, but I don’t think it’s as simple as me looking for this retro glamour. I also think that I’m one of these people who looks at the ground a lot. I’m always looking down or looking in corners. I think I’m trying to make sense of the world by looking at these little details or noticing things that other people don’t notice. It’s not something that I’m trying to do. It’s just kind of my nature. To give you an example, is one of the projects I’ve been working on on-and-off is about Florida. I was driving around, and I often found myself pulled to a place --- “I’m just going to make a right turn here and see what happens.” It’s an instinct thing. So I get to this sea-side park and there’s an X on the ground, which is probably just a marking for some construction thing, but I thought of it like X-marks-the-spot for treasure of something – especially being on the Florida “treasure coast.” So I’m taking several frames of this X, and this woman starts yelling at me, “The dolphins are over there.” It’s just an example of how I’m interested in this thing that people would just walk right over, and other people are assuming I want a pretty landscape with dolphins in it.

Eye on Door, Spook-A-Rama, Coney Island, 2004

JS: I read somewhere that you said, “I grew up an outsider, but didn’t want to be that.” You know with your dad running the junkyard and your mom running the antique market. I wonder if your work has taken you closer or further away from that outsider status?

LK: Growing up I was definitely the quiet nerdy kid, and my dad is definitely an outsider -- he’s covered in tattoos, he weighs 400 lbs., he was a big Harley guy back when Harley’s weren’t cool. I think aesthetically now I’m definitely influenced by all that, you know the way the junkyard looked and the idea that “one man’s junk is another man’s treasure.” The same thing with my mom having the antique shop. She’d get us up at six in the morning and drag us to flea markets and garage sales and we’d be searching for that treasure in a pile of crap. I think that when I was a kid, I had this thing about not wanting to be like my family. But it’s interesting to see how I’ve come back full circle to embrace parts of all that. I mean you can’t get away from yourself, even though I think that notion of escape is part of what the work is about. I’m drawn to all these places where you’re supposed to have some type of escape from reality or escape from who you are.

Base of Stripper Pole, Peep Show, CA, 2005

JS: Another thing that I think is interesting in your work is that you are able to shift the “formalness” of a photo. I mean I can see how different photographer would photograph something in a very traditional “head on” sort of way, but then you seem to approach it with a new perspective. So it’s not only that you seem to be looking for beauty in the unconventional, but also that you are looking at an unconventional thing an unconventional way. Do you think this is what Stephen Shore meant when he called your work “visual poetry”?

LK: I don’t feel like I’m choosing to look at things in an unconventional way. I think that it’s a natural thing for me. Sometimes I take one picture. Sometimes I take several from different angles because I can’t decide. It’s very reactive. I don’t like to think about it too much. Actually, I feel like I don’t think at all when I’m making a picture. Like the picture of the popcorn on the theater floor (below). I would see movies at that movie theater and asked to come in to take pictures, and I took a whole bunch that day. That’s the only one that really got it. And I didn’t know what that something was. Then I was back at school printing it in the darkroom, and people were walking up saying, “Ooo, it’s like a night sky -- starry night.” And I was like, “Oh yeah, I guess it is.” I think I must have known that subconsciously, but I didn’t set out thinking, “OK, I’m going to do this.” With someone like Jeff Wall, everything is so conscious and so set-up and planned. I appreciate him, but I work in the complete opposite way.

Theater floor, New Haven, CT, 2000

JS: In a more intuitive way

LK: Yeah, definitely. When Stephen Shore called my work “visual poetry” I thought that was a huge compliment. Part of it is that is for a long time, up until my second or third year in college, I was going to be a poet. But the poetry teacher said that I did not have the love of language needed to be a poet. I was crushed. But I think he was right in that respect, but wrong in that I have this visual language. I spent all my teenage years thinking that I was going to be a writer, and now I’m making this other type of poetry. It totally makes sense.

JS: Like the universe falling into place a little bit.

LK: Yeah, totally.

DJ Booth, South Beach, 2002

JS: Over the past couple of years, you’ve been given some big honors -- winning the 2005 Baum Award, then having your photo on the cover of ARTnews magazine under the title “Photography: What’s Hot Now”. What have those things meant for your work?

LK: I have really mixed feelings about all that. On the one hand, they’re both really big honors, but neither of those things were really things that I aspired to. It was like going to Yale too. I never thought I would go to Yale, and I did, and now I teach there. You know, I was shocked by both the award and the cover, but I just never pointed to those things as goals. I didn't have my eye on the prize, but I have always known I had something to say. I wanted to be important, and I wanted to be part of a dialogue, whether it was in poetry/writing or now in photography/art.

When the ARTnews cover happened, I had a meeting with Stephen Shore to show him some work and he asked me how I felt about the cover. I said that it was great, but that I knew how these things work from working with magazines. I guessed, The art director just thought, “Oh, orange would be great and that would look really great with the red type face on top.” And that’s why they picked it. And he just looked at me like I was crazy and said something like, “If that’s what you need to think to deal with it, then that’s okay.” I don’t want to say that I don’t appreciate all the success, but I guess I’m a little wary of it. It makes me a little nervous. It's a weird ambivalence – having goals and being ambitious on a large, long-term scale, not on the scale of this here today-gone tomorrow “art star” thing. Like the What's Hot cover - I am bracing myself for when I am decidedly not “hot”, you know? But even if or when I am not "hot", I hope to be making good work, challenging myself, pointing to things, influencing photography.

Cruise Ship departing at Night, Miami, FL, 2002

JS: What work are you seeing now that is blowing you away?

LK: William Eggleston and Walker Evans and Robert Frank. I look at it and I still get chills. I just discovered Roger Ballen, who is completely weird and wonderful. I kept hearing his name crop up, and I was looking for medium-format photographers (square camera) to show my students, and checked him out. The pictures baffle me, and are so exciting, like from some other world. He really got a good rise out of my students too. It's funny, I feel like I am a little conservative with my pictures. It may seem unconventional to others, but not to me. It's just how I am. But I look at Ballen's pics, and also at Phillip Pisciotta's pics, and I get totally freaked out. I couldn't make those pictures. I am not saying they are better or worse than mine, just the products of such a different brain. I may have been anti-rebellious, because of my upbringing. I may have an instinct and react subconsciously when making work, but I am not really off-kilter or crazy, I am not making pictures that look “drunk.” They are thoughtful, but not in a conscious way, maybe. Also I just saw Mark Steinmetz's new book, which made me question how important it is what I do. His pictures are real and sincere. I want to be sure that I am too. Also, John Pilson's new book, Interregna is beautiful and telling and meaningful. I just re-watched some David Lynch, who I love. Also, I am dying for the Sopranos to get back on -- I love that NJ landscape, often similar to the suburban Philadelphia where I grew up. Everything I take in influences every picture I make.

Golden Stage, Poconos, PA, 2004