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Michael Eastman
Uncle Henry's
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 ver the past thirty years Michael Eastman has produced a body of photography on many wide-ranging subjects. His work is in many collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the International Center of Photography in New York City, the Art Institute of Chicago and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Eastman has been the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts grant and has appeared in numerous publications including, Time Magazine, The New York Times, Life Magazine, American Photographer, and Communication Arts.Michael Eastman: I was born in St. Louis, Missouri in 1947.
Art Interview: What was it like growing up there?
Michael Eastman: I grew up near the county seat. It was part of a big city but had a countryside feel to it. We were a very average family for that area. My father owned a small company as a distributor. My father was an avid hobby photographer, who loved to take family photographs. He found great joy in that and I think this influenced me as a child.
Art Interview: Did he directly encourage you to pick up the camera?
Michael Eastman: No. I started photography much later. But children notice when their parents are enthusiastic about things.
Art Interview: Did you get to spend time in the darkroom as a child?
Michael Eastman: No, my father didn't have a darkroom. He was an amateur photographer who took his films to the drugstore to be developed. He had a lot of photo albums and 8mm reels that he took great pride in.
Art Interview: Did he live to see you become a successful photographer?
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Michael Eastman
Caution Infinity
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Michael Eastman: Barely, he died very young in 1976 and I had only been working for four years. He did get the impression that I'd be able to make a living from photography and I think that pleased him greatly. He always supported me in my decisions. Although he never said it, I always had the impression that he wished his children would be successful at whatever they enjoyed.
Art Interview: Did you study photography?
Michael Eastman: No, I studied business. I was going to take over my fathers company, but I didn't like it. When I had just come out of college in 1972, I began taking pictures. It was during the time of the protests against the Vietnam War. The war had a great influence on me. It made me view everything differently. It was a strange time; the nation was scrambled and unsettled. Once you left school you couldn't even find work because you had to worry about being drafted, and you didn't really know what was going to happen. It was impossible for me to go back to study photography at that point.
Art Interview: How did you begin working professionally as a photographer?
Michael Eastman: Well, I was completely driven to learn so I taught myself. The beauty of photography is the immediacy of it. Anyone can take a photograph, possibly even a great one. This was very attractive to me when I was 25. I had found something that I truly loved, so I read everything I could get my hands on and tried everything out. I re-invented the wheel to some extent but I learned how to take pictures.
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Michael Eastman
Memphis Hallway
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There wasn't a great demand for photography in 1972. It wasn't seen as a particularly glamorous occupation. At the time, I was working in a record company and they asked me one day if I knew anyone who could take pictures because they needed a photographer for a jazz band. I said that I could do it and I photographed the band with good results. Soon after that shoot, I had a business card printed and that was it. It was a revelation for me that I could go out, take photographs, develop them and get paid. I wasn't being paid much but someone was actually paying me to do something that I loved. I couldn't believe it! It was the equivalent to a small kid dreaming that someday he would make a living playing baseball.
Up until that point I had been trying jobs out, hating them and leaving after a few months. Nothing suited me. I was working in sales a lot and there was a lot of dishonesty, which made me very uncomfortable. Once I realised that it might be possible to make money another way I made up my mind to try and make a career of it. It took me a long time to draw in any business and I was usually paid poorly. For a while I had to work in the darkroom for another photographer.
Art Interview: How long did it take before you could support yourself solely through photography?
Michael Eastman: It took about four years. In the beginning I had to move back in with my parents. I set up a darkroom and a small studio in their basement. The situation slowly improved and by 1976 I had bought myself a house for $40,000 and worried if I could make the $172 mortgage payment.
Art Interview: How did your parents view this transition phase?
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Michael Eastman
Brick Reflections
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Michael Eastman: They were a bit concerned about the whole thing, but they were very supportive. It wasn't a normal thing to do. I didn't want to move back in with them but my income was too uncertain to rent a place. I was earning five dollars for every photograph I made that was published in the local papers. On average I was getting about thirty pictures published a month, but not always. After two or three years I was on my own feet.
My parents were fairly sceptical in those times. One day after watching a presidential conference on the news, my father saw a huge group of professionals photographing the president and turned to me and said, ‘There are a bunch of people who look just like you. They are getting paid to photograph the president so I guess it must be possible to make a living out of it.' By the time I moved out he had accepted my decision.
Art Interview: But how did you actually get started? I can't imagine that there was a huge demand for photography in St. Louis at that time.
Michael Eastman: True. But St. Louis was a very inexpensive place to live and so it wasn't a bad place to start from. I've always avoided having a big overhead. Many photographers buy or rent things that they don't need just make themselves feel important. I prefer not to have to worry about money. I don't have a lot of equipment. I have always felt that the photographer's skill is far more important than the equipment he uses.
As a freelance photographer I would get a project to produce a catalogue, for example, which would pay me enough to live on and cover my entire overhead. By the end of the 1970's I could earn up to 500 dollars a day. As I improved as a photographer my pay steadily rose, so I got paid more as time went on. Eventually I could work two months out of the year on commercial jobs and have ten months to make my own work. St. Louis was big enough to provide me with constant material to photograph. That has changed somewhat now that I have been here for so long.
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Michael Eastman
Guadalupe
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Art Interview: How long did it take to develop your own style?
Michael Eastman: It took me about ten years to develop the style of my fine art. By 1982 I had a good feeling for what I was doing. I think that your foundation and the decisions you make in the beginning are very important. If you're strongly influenced by another photographer from the outset when experimentation is most exciting it will get in the way of your creativity. It takes a lot of twists and turns to find your own style. Mostly I learned by studying my photographs, both the ones that were successful, but more importantly the ones that were not as successful. The ones that did not work usually taught me the most.
Art Interview: How did you go about marketing your fine art photography?
Michael Eastman: At the end of the 1980's I started sending out portfolios to galleries. The rejection rate was very high. Once I sent out 50 parcels and 49 came back rejected. The only acceptance was from a gallery in New York. St. Louis is in the middle of America and very isolated from any major metropolitan areas. That was a major drawback. But my belated success actually allowed me to continue to grow and develop. I always felt that the only thing I have control over is the work, so if my work was being rejected all the time then it probably just needed to be better. That motivated me to work harder to become accepted.
Art Interview: Was it a turning point for you when you were finally accepted by the Witkin Gallery in New York?
This oral history transcript is the result of a digitally recorded interview with Michael Eastman on July 2, 2008. The interview took place over the telephone between Berlin, Germany and St. Louis, Missouri, USA and was conducted by Brendan Davis for Art Interview Online Magazine.
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