function: Do you feel that you communicate something different in your work?

Larry Fink: From time to time I have the possibility to make a photograph that speaks deeply about a more loving process than a cynical one. I tend to be rangy and broad, from caustic [and] stiletto to generous. My work, hopefully, is about empathy from any number of aspects. I can be a miserable bastard and can empathize with somebody as such. I can be also a generous person and can empathize with that. When I see people on the street in a different genuflection of emotion, I tend to move, smile or frown or go through the paces. The pictures I take now and tomorrow and yesterday are about human events on a small order. I try to make them bigger, to make them into metaphors that might speak across the board.

I press the issues of empathy, of being passionate in a very oddly dispassionate age. My position is to teach and help kids with their imaginations and their courage, and to keep pushing my work. [My work] doesn't change stylistically, and I don't go through torrents of different tendencies. I'm always working on all kinds of things at the same time. I won't just photograph big things for a while. I'm context driven. Life is sensual and physical. My way of thinking is the best way to live, not necessarily without intellect but in a way through your physical body, to somehow evolve through an empathetic condition of sensual empathy.

I see myself as a teacher and a photographer. I work for the mass media within the mass media and [as] a fine artist. I believe in my mass media work, because I've pushed myself to the point where I'm reasonably well known and people hire me to do the thing that I do best. Whether they publish it exactly the way I'd like is another issue.

fn: Where does your fashion work fit into all of that?

LF: First, going into the fashion world I'm making a living. Second, I'm trying to do so in a way where the scenario is really dramatic. There's a lot of high energy, and I'll cut through the woodenness of fashion and make it into a human event. What I do is make a scenario. I cast the people myself and I cast them for the spontaneity. The gal from [a] magazine says, "Listen, all these rugby guys are really ugly. Do you have any feelings about that?" It's a fashion shoot; I say the uglier the better. I'm recasting life so I can shoot it again without any conflict. I make them more human than you see in fashion, to see anxiety. If I'm going to do fashion it's about doing the deepest work I can within that venue.

fn: The stuff you did on the American elections and the right wing fascinate the same way that an auto accident does. On the one hand you say they're nice guys then in the next breath you make some disparaging remark about them. Which side of that is your bottom line?

LF: I like people and even my enemies are not necessarily deplorable to me when I'm around. I ask them questions and I like to watch. All my "enemies" have similar characteristics as I do: we pick our noses; we fuck up on dates; we ruin our children or not. We're all terribly flawed and full of foibles. I assume that right and left-wingers have similar idiosyncratic failings and successes.

However, in particular contexts I would shoot this man dead. On the other hand, when I'm among them I'm impudent or powerless to do such a thing, which would be good for the world if I had a backup program. You don't do violent or anarchistic things without a backup.

You do not take lives without shuffling the deck so that other lives can be amplified or helped. That's where the deep, radical, leftist '60s made mistakes; they had no base in reality, only in theory. I'm a realist. Since I can't do anything beneficial or constructive on a specific insurrection of whatever political level, I join the party and observe. If I can use my camera to observe in a way that is caustic and cutting then I'm doing something in service of my cause. My enemies are human and they are within me, and I am within them.

fn: How did you empathize with the people in the parties in Social Graces?

LF: All those rich folks? They're terrific. The problem is that they think they have it made. It's part of that arrogance. They've got money; they've got position; they've got clout; they've got class. But they're all reasonably miserable because they have so much to uphold. Some of them are wealthy; some are not. There's a disparaging between classes. They're talking over each other's shoulders to see how they should behave. They're conformists. They're peer conceptual. They're not having a good time unless they get drunk, and then I'm having a good time, too.

fn: What are you actually looking for at these parties when you've got the camera in your hand? They see you and you have a camera and you're sizing them up. I get the impression that your camera is your weapon.

LF: It's my weapon for now but I don't necessarily mean it with malice; I'm just critical. I'm looking for high charge energy on any level. I don't really have a scheme like "that son of a bitch looks this way I'm gonna go get him." When visually or emotionally something starts to get exciting in a deep or inherent drama, I start to sniff around. My nose opens like a hog and I go for it.

More often than not the pictures might be sardonic because these people, in all their relational posits towards freedom or expression, are often halted. They are gesturing towards a higher energy of freedom or liberty. Because of their breeding or position, it gets twisted and thwarted and their faces more often that not become grimaced in atrophy.

I'm interested in the contradictory riling of energy. That excites me. I am also a conflicted guy. In certain ways, all pictures that you take of others are self-portraits of yourself. Admittedly, I have no shame.

fn: You have no problem stating your opinion. How do you distance yourself when shooting?

LF: You won't find me stating my opinion when I'm in a group of right wing folks who won't want my opinion. I just do not have any. I am a devious chameleon. If I go to the fashion world I talk about frou-frou. If I go to the right wing I talk about points we might be able to agree on. I do not trigger any kind of animosity by my social opinions when I am working. I listen. I make commentary.

When I come to somebody's school to be myself, my responsibility is to state my opinion as honestly as I can. Besides garnering information and experience for the kids, I can also be used as a transformational symbol of somebody who lives his life right out in front rather than hiding. You won't find me doing that on Wall Street. You won't find me doing that in the Christian Coalition. You wouldn't find me there if I did. I would be kicked out the minute I spoke my truth.

More important is to make the pictures. I've done what I should. My methodology is to be effective under any circumstances. If I'm out there photographing, that's where my real need is.

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