Ahead of a mentorship scheme with Polaroid and Magnum, the US photographer shares stories and advice from his singular career
The American artist and photographer Jim Goldberg traces his relationship with Polaroid photography back to the mid-80s, when he received a commission for an installation at a nursing home in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The photo company welcomed him to its hometown – where it was founded in 1937 – by supporting him with cameras and film, and over the six months he spent getting to know the nursing home residents, before even taking his first photograph, instant photography became a pivotal tool to form meaningful relationships and gain their trust.
“It was obvious that most people had few visitors,” he tells Dazed, looking back on his time with the community that populates his 1985 series Nursing Home. “Perhaps their family did, and maybe some friends… but the people who visited the most were doctors from Harvard or Tufts University, doing studies on older people.” Taking their photo with a Polaroid camera and immediately giving them the physical print, as a record of their meeting and a moment in their lives, opened up a whole new world, he adds, bridging the gap between the photographer and his subjects. “It was magic.”
Anyone familiar with Goldberg’s work will know that he’s incorporated Polaroid photos into his practice ever since. In long-term projects, where he’s embedded deep in the communities he depicts – like the provocative Raised By Wolves (1995) that follows the lives of kids living on the streets of California – people record their immediate reaction to his portraits by writing straight onto the photograph, often including intimate insights into their state of mind. (“This picture stinks,” reads one note in Nursing Home. “I come out lousy. I’m more attractive.”)
In other projects like Open See – which documented the struggles of refugees, immigrants, and trafficked people arriving in Europe in the mid-2000s – Goldberg gifted Polaroid photos to the people they depicted. “Some people, they don’t have any other pictures of their life,” he explains. “So when I could give pictures to [those] people… I think it meant a lot to them.”
Having worked with their cameras and film for almost 40 years, Goldberg is now part of a landmark partnership between Polaroid and Magnum Photos, which aims to celebrate the storytelling power of instant black-and-white photography. This will include a mentorship scheme for a new generation of photographic storytellers, with entry based on an international open call, offering the chance to mine Goldberg’s expertise alongside that of fellow Magnum photographers Enri Canaj and Newsha Tavakolian.
Ahead of the mentorship scheme, does Goldberg have any more general tips for younger, emerging photographers? “The only answers are the obvious ones,” he says. “You have to just work. Go out. Don’t be afraid when the door closes on you, that you can’t knock on another door. Make lists. Set some goals. Keep working. Read. Get off your phone.”
As part of the Magnum and Polaroid partnership, Goldberg also experimented with Polaroid’s new camera on his most recent project: a portrait of two small towns in the Arkansas Delta, which he describes as a “microcosm” of what’s going on in the rest of the US right now. The resulting images depict a range of residents in shades of grey, from a teenager in a prom dress, to an “exhausted” single parent, to a man in his 70s who is coming to terms with his mortality. Their thoughts – including hopes, dreams, and deepest insecurities – are scrawled on the photos in coloured ink.
Take a look at Goldberg’s Polaroid photos in the gallery above, and read more about his unique methodology and tips for emerging photographers below.
You often spend a long time embedded in the communities you photograph, from Nursing Home to this latest project in Arkansas. How did you develop that approach?
Jim Goldberg: Well, I take time. I think I’m slow in some ways. What I like to do is make work out in the world, and then come back to my studio and look at it, sit with it, sleep on it, and see what comes from it. Whatever [it] is I’m trying to do, it’s always there. It just takes time for it to come out, for it to be realised. Because I go out into the world and bring it back into this world of the studio, I can take it to other places, or think of it in new ways, or reimagine [its] presentation.
Why is it important for you to forge a personal connection with these overlooked communities before taking photographs, instead of just documenting their lives from a distance?
Jim Goldberg: Well, distance doesn’t interest me. Relationships interest me. Contact, meeting someone, conversation interests me. And to have that conversation with a town, or people, takes time. You don’t just have [a conversation] and then leave, at least that’s not the way I work.
“It’s a lot of knocking on doors, and there’s a lot of rejection sometimes, in making work like this. That’s just part of the process” – Jim Goldberg
How did your relationship with the two communities in Arkansas begin?
Jim Goldberg: I received a commission from the High Museum in Atlanta as part of their Picturing the South collection. One thing led to the other, and I ended up going to Arkansas, and that was all through a bunch of serendipity, people that I knew who connected me to somebody else, who connected me to somebody else, and for some wonderfully strange reason, the communities accepted me pretty quickly. But it has taken time. It’s not like it’s effortless or instantaneous.
What does being accepted by a community look like for you? Or when do you reach a point where you might think, ‘OK, I kind of understand what’s going on here’?
Jim Goldberg: Well, I’ve made contact with a variety of people and organisations, including local government, police, a boxing club, high schools, hunting clubs, fishermen, an auction house, and church groups.
Some have opened the doors. Some have not opened the doors. It’s a lot of knocking on doors, and there’s a lot of rejection sometimes, in making work like this. That’s just part of the process. It doesn’t feel good, but you know… and that’s why it takes time. And when you’re accepted by somebody, or a community, you know it because it feels good.
There are themes that reoccur throughout your work – overlooked communities, close personal relationships. How did you find your subject matter? Is it a conscious choice?
Jim Goldberg: When I was younger, I was probably pretty close to running away, so it made sense to me to want [to] work with kids in trouble. This is what became Raised By Wolves. My intuition guided me throughout. Then, over time, I hone the ideas down into a form that becomes communicable to other people. That’s part of the craft of storytelling, and that’s actually one of the reasons why Polaroid [imagery] is so good, because it’s instantaneous. One can reflect on it quite quickly and show it to a person. You can see your results. You can hold it in your hand. And I think that that elicits a response, and often that response can be the beginning of a story, or the beginning of an idea.
How concerned should emerging photographers be with style and aesthetic, over elements like storytelling, or just going out and capturing something?
Jim Goldberg: It’s not black and white. But one thing an artist can do is point to things in the world for us to look at, and to do that, I think one has to be clear [about] what you’re looking at and what it is that you’re trying to show.
The thing that most people usually say, and I think it’s true, is [that] one needs to find their voice. Sometimes we find it by chance. I think I found it by chance – I didn’t expect to do the kind of work that I do, it just happened. But I’m [also] quite disciplined, so I kept pushing and honing my practice, developing it, not working fixed hours, just following what I thought needed to be done.
I think it’s the same for any younger artist, too, that they have to do the same thing. It takes time, you know? It’s not like you can sing the Blues immediately. You have to earn it.
How would you define ‘voice’ as a photographer?
Jim Goldberg: At some point, I was able to use my photography, or filmmaking, or video, or or collage, whatever it is, in a way that other people saw what I was seeing or feeling. That’s my voice.
That’s all I know. I only know me. I can imagine what you might see or feel, but I can’t really know it. I also try to push myself all the time, to not be completely comfortable in doing it the same way over and over and over again.
“One thing an artist can do is point to things in the world for us to look at, and to do that, I think one has to be clear about what you’re looking at and what it is that you’re trying to show” – Jim Goldberg
We all share and consume images so much nowadays. How do you think an aspiring photographer, someone who wants to make it their life’s work, can set themselves apart?
Jim Goldberg: That’s a really tricky question. When I started out, there were a lot less photographers, so it was a little easier to stand out in the crowd if you did something a little different. But now it’s much harder. I think that really makes it harder for someone who’s starting off. I don’t want to be discouraging and say to anybody who’s starting out, or who wants to become a photographer and is a bit frustrated, that it isn’t frustrating. It is frustrating. It is hard.
I guess the only thing is… I think that I’m a little dumb, and I tend to ignore what’s [going on] in the outside world and just make my work.
Of course, I want to be seen at times. Of course, I want to make a living from what I do. Of course, I want to have a place to work and be able to afford it. So I do think about those things, but most of the time, I’m just thinking about making work. That’s what’s most important to me, and the other things aren’t. And when I’ve had to make a living in other ways, I do. That’s not advice, that’s just a reality.
The Polaroid x Magnum open call closes on August 12. Find out more about submissions here.
