002 - Michael Eastman
Episode description
Michael Eastman is an artist working with a camera.
4:00 - Dude
5:00 - Big Lebowski/Jeff Bridges/Weed
8:50 - St. Louis slow to change visually
11:10 - Rate of Urban Renewal in STL
14:45 - Beginnings as a photographer
15:05 - “A lot of times when I went out and photographed my mantra was, ‘If I were aware of what people 150 years from right now were interested in, then I would photograph those things. They’d be significant records; historical records. And a photographer, unlike many artists, is really part historian. What they’re doing is recording a reality in time, that changes. So that was meaningful for me to see these changes and to record them. To do a portrait of a place.” - Eastman
17:30 - Why did Eastman get into photography in the first place?
19:10 - College years/Entering the workforce
23:10 - The attraction of photography
24:00 - The Daybooks of Edward Weston
24:30 - First Photographs as a “Photographer”
26:45 - Emotion in photography
27:03 - “What you feel about a photograph is transmitted, translated, communicated into print.” - Eastman
28:45 - Photograph things that you have feelings about
29:25 - Ansel Adams & Others
31:40 - First photo jobs
38:39 - “When I started, there was all these voices in my head. There were critics, gallery owners, museum curators, my parents, their friends – there was a Shakespearean chorus of naysayers telling me I couldn’t, shouldn’t, wouldn’t do it. Those voices propelled me.” - Eastman
40:25 - Relating Michael’s Story to the concept of Anti-
42:00 - Eastman’s First Show at Washington University
44:40 - Maintaining an attitude of incompleteness
49:00 - Sitting on your work for awhile
50:00 - Knowing William Gass
54:30 - Shooting Forest Park & showing them to Gass in his last years
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58:15 - Reinvesting back into yourself
1:00:00 - Commercial vs. Fine Art Work
1:00:15 - Shooting Nudes as Landscape
1:06:00 - Finding success in fine art later in life
1:09:00 - Success is the most difficult thing for an artist to overcome
1:11:05 - Vivian Maier
1:12:50 - Lee Friedlander
1:13:50 - Gaining a national reputation with commercial work
1:20:00 - Low overhead = more freedom
1:21:00 - Learning about studio lighting
1:22:00 - Shooting on location
1:26:00 - 9/11 & No Work
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1:29:00 - Overview of Eastman’s fine art work
1:33:00 - The importance of printmaking
1:40:00 - What Eastman’s working on now
1:46:00 - When photography became recognized in the art world
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1:49:00 - Agoraphobia
1:52:00 - Childhood fears
1:54:28 - A Ghost Story
1:57:30 - Composition/Framing
2:04:30 - Originality
2:06:00 - Cuba
2:07:00 - Buena Vista Social Club
2:08:00 - Traveling to Cuba
2:11:00 - Isabella's Two Chairs
2:14:00 - Havana
2:17:00 - Book sales lead to gallery openings
2:19:00 - Traveling photo show
2:21:20 - The Price of Everything
2:23:30 - NOLA and Current Photo work
2:25:00 - Forest Park Retrospective
2:30:00 - Leaving instagram
2:32:30 - Waking up with something to do
2:33:30 - Feeling mortal