Stanley Greene

Stanley Greene

The Lens Blog ran an interview with Stanley Greene: Stanley Greene’s Redemption and Revenge. Do you remember when you realized that the camera suited you better than anything else?

Greene: I wanted to be a musician. I wanted to be Jimi Hendrix, but when I heard Jimi Hendrix, I realized I could never touch him. I wanted to be a painter, but Matisse and all those guys were ahead of me. And I wanted to be a writer, but you know, Richard Wright and all those guys.

And I looked around and all there was was Gordon Parks and Roy DeCarava. I could compete, and I knew I could bring something. It’s like Miles Davis. He was a drummer. But when he picked up a trumpet, he realized that he had found his instrument. When I picked up a camera, it was like one of those movies.

Then a bit on heart over technique, especially when it comes to disaster tourism:

NYT: I have been hearing this from a lot of older photographers: that the young photographers today are technically amazing, they have learned what an amazing photograph looks like, but they sometimes lack a variety of influences or a certain humanity.

Greene: They don’t have humanity. They are definitely much better technically. They know that backwards and forwards. And they should. It’s their generation. But at the same time, because of all that technology, they are losing the humanity.

When we get to the point where we start digging up graves to make photographs, I think we are in trouble. When we get to the point where a woman is standing there with a bucket, trying to hold her guts in, and we are trying to get the right frame, and chimping at the same time we are doing it, we are in trouble. “Wait a minute, I need to take this picture, but I need to do an interview with you, but also, I need to shoot some video. Do you think you could keep that bucket there and maybe a little bit more, so we could see the blood running out?” And she is just shell-shocked.

…First thing, I think that photographers need to get away from the computer and get out and walk around the communities that they photograph. I think that a lot of photographers are taking nothing away.

And there is a thing called disaster tourism. That is disgusting. I am sorry. But that is disgusting: to bring people, like they are going to the zoo, and show them how to take pictures.

And finally, some words to live by:

Greene: Because I think — at the end of the day — we have to be diplomats. I don’t like the word “photojournalism.” It’s been bastardized. I am comfortable with the idea of being a photographer, just being a photographer. I don’t want to be an artist; I want to be a photographer. That’s what I do. And a photographer is someone who looks at the world and tries to make some sense of it for themselves, and for everyone else. And that’s what I want to do.