Scot Sothern Interview

(Drive By Shooting)

Recently we posted the work of Scot Sothern, and his latest project ‘Drive by Shooting’.
With an interesting few bodies of work and equally intriguing Bio, we decided to get in touch with Scot and find out a little more about the man behind the lens. From his mislead youth to his latest ventures, read more for our exclusive interview with photographer and writer; Scot Sothern

Firstly, in your bio, you mention a crippling motorcycle mishap…
Can you further explain  this occurrence and how it affected your working and personal life?  One would assume this eventually led to your ‘impetus’ and creation of your Drive by shooting Project?

Actually, I’d say the motorcycle mishap was the impetus for my disability.  In my teens, in the 1960s, I was into motorcycles and I was also sort of out of control, running wild, and prone to do stupid things like jumping a street motorcycle over a car, showing off for a couple of girls.  I made it over the car but landed wrong and took a hard blow to my spine, which is not designed to work like a spring.  An x-ray showed a fracture in my lower back and I wore a brace for a few months even though I took it off (stupidly) when drunk or having sex, which were really the only things to do in the Missouri Ozarks where I grew up.  The real pain, however, was in my cervical spine.  I complained but the doctors said there was nothing wrong with my neck, which turned out to be wrong, and that my real problems were above my neck, in my head, which in retrospect was on the mark.
Anyway, for the next twenty-seven years I complained about pain as well as a plethora of systems, numbness in my arms, electrical shooting pains, insomnia, because I couldn’t get comfortable enough to get to sleep, which explains to some degree why I’ve always functioned best at night, but that’s an aside.  In 1990 all of a sudden I couldn’t walk normally and found myself dragging my right foot behind me.  This time I went to a neurologist who found that my cervical spine was indeed out of whack.  I had also developed bony spurs which had in turn grown into my spinal column fucking me up forever after.  Thus, three surgeries and twenty years later, I walk with the aid of a cane and I hurt.  The price of an ill-spent youth.

In 1992 I got married for the third and final time.  I also went on disability and, for a few years, was a stay-at-home father.  I submitted my Lowlife pictures, along with a mile of Kodachrome street-photography slides, and naked pictures of women I’d known, to every photo gallery and every arty photo magazine and every anything I could find to show my work.  After everyone rejected everything I mailed out, after twenty-five years as a photographer, I put photography in my past and did other things.  I started writing and collecting all new rejection letters.  I wrote a couple of novels and I wrote a memoir, Lowlife, about photographing street prostitutes in the upper 1980s.

In 2010 John Matkowski fell in love with the Lowlife pictures and gave me a show at his Los Angeles gallery DRKRM.  It went well so I decided to start taking pictures again and got a DSLR Nikon and the logical thing for a sixty-one-year-old crippled photographer to do is to make photographs from the passenger seat.  Drive-By Shooting.

(Drive By Shooting)

It seems Drive by Shooting has offered you a fresh new style and perspective for your photography, and an opportunity for you to continue shooting.
What do you look for when taking a photograph?

What I look for, through the lens, is composition and color.  I want a CinemaScopic story.  I want to find intimacy in a split second, and history in both the people and the places.   I don’t always have a chance, in a moving vehicle, to study the shot before I take it, but if I see it on time I see the whole canvas and that’s what I aim at.  My favorites are the ones that look as if they might have been set up.

Is this a body of work that you have any further aspirations for?

Galleries, museums, and books would make me happy.   I’d like the series to grow, at some point beyond Los Angeles.

How will you know when you have completed the collection?

I think I already have enough for a show and I should have enough for a book by the beginning of 2012.  I’ve started a new segment of Drive-By: a young guy, LA photographer, who likes my work, volunteered to drive me around LA from midnight to four or five.  We went out the other night and this very gutsy guy is willing to drive up the porch to the front door and ring the bell of wherever I want to go.  I’m having a blast and I’m happy with the pictures and ready to go back out.  That said, I think I’ll be taking photographs from the car for the rest of my life.  I really love it.

(Drive By Shooting)

You have mentioned that you have worked as a darkroom technician, do you still work with film?

I have a file cabinet full of negatives and slides which have either been scanned or retired.  I always enjoyed working in the darkroom, playing music and smoking pot in the darkroom was the best, but smoking dope and listening to music and sitting in a cushy chair in front of jumbo computer screen loaded with Photoshop is better.

How have you found the shifts towards digital to effect your career as technician and photographer?

First off I’m aware that a group of Fine Art Photographers believe digital photography is somehow not really photography.  I guess that’s fine if you are a Fine Art Photographer who wants to make art without leaving the security of what you have already learned, and advancing the art.  A real Artist, without the photography modifier, who uses a camera to make art doesn’t rally give a crap what the process is, it’s all about the finished product.

For me, digital it’s the greatest thing that ever happened to photography.  Even when I worked places where I could pilfer film I still had to pay for the processing or do it myself, and I had to make every shot count.  With digital I can shoot as much as I want.  That doesn’t mean I throw discipline out the window, it means I get more opportunities.  Yeah sure, everyone is a photographer and everyone with a phone has a camera, but they are not in competition with me; they are not in competition with anyone really.  They are just a bunch of people with cameras.  I love digital photography, both the process and final result.  I do still like the way black & white looks and I love big Cibachrome prints but I can’t think of a single reason, for me, to shoot film.

You also state you have no formal education in photography, How did you first gain an interest in photography?
why did you choose not to pursue an education in photography?

School didn’t work out for me, so it’s not so much that I didn’t choose an education in photography, I didn’t pursue any formal education.  I grew up wild in the sixties fighting everything that smacked of convention.  After high school all I wanted to do is get the hell out of Missouri, grow my hair long, get loaded and fuck a lot.  Learning came later.  I’m autodidactic in everything except photography.

My father taught me photography.  He was a successful portrait and wedding photographer who opened his photography studio in Springfield, Missouri, in 1952.  He raised me to someday carry on the family business and even though that didn’t work out I learned a lot.  When I first started working in the darkroom I had to stand on a chair to reach the trays.  My first camera was a 4X5 Speed Graphic.  I also learned how to make a living as a small town photographer and, much as I loved my father and as good as I was with a camera, it didn’t really appeal to me, his studio looked boring and corn-ball and as I was already rebelling against the establishment I rejected my dad’s idea of a great way to make a living.  That I became a photographer is not about falling in love with the magic of the darkroom or an early old used camera I carried with me everywhere, I became a photographer because I didn’t know how to do anything else.  It wasn’t until my twenties that I fell in love with photography for what it could do and how I could use it, and what other photographers and artists had done with it.  Casting myself as an artist also helped to rationalize my quirks; to not do anything I don’t want to do.

(Lowlife)

You also mention the hustle of freelance photography, how did you find this way of working?

Real jobs, punching time clocks, gave me indigestion so I did a lot of freelance, anything a guy with a camera could do to make a buck, I did.  In the seventies I did a lot of studio and portrait work.  I also got enmeshed in some iffy schemes and a con-job I’m still proud of.   In the eighties I did nudes as much as I could.  In 1985 a guy I’d worked with on a gig in Saudi Arabia, called me in LA from NYC and asked if I knew how to operate an optical camera because he needed help at the company where he worked, where they had Forox and Marron Carrel optical cameras.  I had no idea what he was talking about but I said yeah sure, no problem and a week later I was in NYC and I was an optical camera operator.  I continued freelancing optical camera for the rest of the eighties.  That’s what I was doing when I was photographing the prostitutes and when my legs stopped working properly.

 How did this eventually lead to your work with the Bedouin Tribes and later commercial work?

In 1982 I answered a classified ad in the LA times for a photographer in Saudi Arabia.  I had to forge a college education and do an interview in Chicago and then I got the job.  The job was making visuals for industrial training programs.  The Saudis, at that time, were still made of generations who didn’t grow up with the technology that Americans came of age tinkering with, so basically we were there to teach them how to do the things that we were doing so that they could do it themselves and get us the hell out of their country.  We lived in American camps and were not encouraged to go out and about.  But here I was in this place like no place I’d ever seen before, I wanted to see it all, and that combined with the rules about not photographing the people, was enough to get me out to frequent the Bedouin camps a hundred clicks into the desert, in one of the company Toyotas.  Anyhow it was a nice body of work and when I got home I submitted them to just about everybody and collected a few more rejection slips.

(Lowlife)

Your writing describes much of the process of your photography for your series lowlife.
How did you balance the books whilst producing this project?

When I began photographing the hookers I was thirty-six and still unsettled.  My second marriage was over but I  had a four-year-old son and I was trying to not be a deadbeat dad.  Along with child support and life as usual I couldn’t hold on to a dollar, then when I started the Lowlife series I was giving a lot of the little I had to the whores.  So I took a full-time optical camera job in Long Beach and moved in with a friend in Santa Monica and managed to spend every weekend with my son.  Adding gasoline, food, drugs and film to my tab, I was still broke most of the time.  In my early twenties I took a job traveling around the country taking portrait photographs in churches, with a sales crew a couple of weeks behind me.  The point I’m getting to here is that the guy who hired me for that job told me, “anyone who leaves this job in less than a year is a fucking quitter and anyone who stays more than two years is a fucking idiot.”  So I quit the optical camera gig at the two year mark and went back to freelancing.  So I guess the real answer to how did I balance the books is not very well.

Many of the situations you found yourself in regarding lowlife seemed shady and amongst the fringes of city life.
How did you feel immersing yourself into these situations? do you have any outstanding ‘Horror’ stories?

I like shady and on the fringes, I’ve had a thing for prostitutes since I was a teen crossing the tracks, so to speak, and getting laid for a couple of bucks.  I guess I could analyze the things I’ve done.  In junior high school my psychiatrist told my father, who told me years later, that I was nuts because I had double vision and couldn’t play sports.  But it was more than that, I was always the kid who brought home strays and I always had a fascination with those who had less than I because they seemed to know something the rest of us didn’t know, they seemed more honest about their moral limits.  I’m not a bad guy, but I have always been a scofflaw, even as a kid.  It just made more sense to me and for some reason I’ve never been intimidated by authority.  I guess really, when I think about the Lowlife pictures I just liked the rush.  Some people go to Magic Mountain, I picked up whores.  I do have horror stories, but the most scared I ever remember being is when I was still an adolescent and a drunk hillbilly pulled a gun on me.  But then I’m making this into an autobiography and not saying much about photography.  So I guess I should add that when the hillbilly threatened to shoot me I had a twin-lens Rolleiflex, but I didn’t take his picture.

Do you find your subject matter has any deeper reflection on your own personality other than voyeur?  

Voyeur implies watching as opposed to participating so I guess I could say the Drive-By Shooting photos are a kind of voyeurism, but for Lowlife, I was a fully fledged participant.  I think every picture I’ve ever made is a reflection of my own personality and in that, for me anyway, the Lowlife pictures were a kind of fuck you, whereas the Drive-Bys show that I’m, finally, after all these years, not so angry.  That’s not to say I don’t still think like an angry leftist and I hope that it shows in my new work, but I’d kind of like to have pictures that someone could hang on the wall and not have to take down when their parents visit.

Do you consider yourself a lowlife?

No I don’t.  I used to be an asshole but not any more.  I live a quiet, respectable life.  I’ve got an illegal cable hook-up to the television, otherwise I’m on the path to fucking redemption.

your work obviously involves interaction and some form of relationship with ‘Lowlifes’ and people less fortunate than yourself; you have referred to yourself as the ‘Patron saint of whores’;
Is there anyone of your subjects that you have had a strong emotional connection with?
Do you ever feel empathetic towards your subject and/or revisit them?

Look at the pictures, look into their eyes, which are always looking out at you, and if you can do that and not feel empathetic you’re not a person I want to know.  I spent the night once, with a whore in Mexico, and that’s the longest I ever spent with any subject.  I met the prostitutes and then I spent anywhere from ten minutes to a couple of hours, and then I never saw them again.  I think I knew them well enough.  I wanted to save each and every one of them, but I didn’t save a one.  I gave them money and a bit of a fun time with a guy who was not going to kick them in the stomach and take away their money.  I’d be a happy man if one of my pictures makes someone do something good for all, or anyone of, the prostitutes the world over.  They are victims and it’s fucked up.

I noticed one of your subjects subsequently died, how did this come to your attention, and how does this make you feel?

Actually, that was metaphor.  The written vignette that goes with a picture titled, Jane Doe.  “This woman is already dead so I photograph her ghost.”  I know nothing of her actual fate but odds are she is no longer with us and how I feel is how I already felt.  It’s fucked up.

Other than you show at the Drkrm gallery, have you had any other shows?

I was in a few X-rated group shows over the years.  Otherwise, that’s about it. I would be very happy to court publishers and galleries.  If I had an open for business sign I’d hold it up right about now.

Have you anything in the pipeline, or further aspirations?

I have a few photography projects in the works which you can find linked to both my Lowlife and my Drive-by Shooting web pages.  Two projects, the Adventures of Little Miss and Photo Specters are both completely different from anything I’ve done in the past.  I’m also working on a nice abstract series of pavement pictures which I hope to eventually get out into the world.

(The Adventures of Little Miss)

In your writing you mention Robert Frank as one of your primary photographic influences….
Who else would you consider pivotal in the inspiration of your work?
Your appears more reminiscent of photographers such Larry Clark or Diane Arbus?…

I said Robert Frank?  Well, it kind of changes from day to day.  Because I grew up in photography my father’s heroes became mine as well, Edward Steichen was amazing and I love Arnold Newman.
I remember in the mid seventies I happened across the photobook, Sidetripping, photos by Charles Gatewood and text by William Burroughs.  I owe a lot to Gatewood, not just in the photography but also the way he and Burroughs put the book together which is the way I’ve always conceived Lowlife.  Gatewood is still around and still doing books.

If you were to be offered any commercial role as photographer or writer, what would be your ideal commission?

Well, I wouldn’t want to work for anybody else.  Ideally, I’d like to get a million dollar book deal for my Lowlife memoir, and then a couple million more for the film rights, and then another million to write the screenplay.   And of course if a million is asking too much I’m sure I could work out a compromise.

Who do you currently find inspirational in the world or art and literature?

My favorite, and therefore most inspirational, writers this week are Russell Banks, Ngũgĩwa’  Thiong’o, and Amitav Ghosh.  I collect signed first editions of contemporary novelist and I can go to any one shelf in any of the seven bookcases in my condo and find a few authors I can credit in my formation as a writer.

The most inspirational anything I’ve seen in years is the photographs of Vivian Maier, a New York City nanny who made thousands of photographs from the fifties to the turn of the century, in the US and around the world.  Her work was discovered in 2007 and she died in 2009 leaving a substantial cache of negatives, black & white, and color, along with crates of undeveloped film.  I won’t go into the whole story here, but anyone who hasn’t seen her pictures should make the effort.  Her street photos are absolutely the best.  You can find her at http://www.vivianmaier.com

If you could drink with any one dead or alive who would you choose?

I think Charles Bukowski would have been fun to hang out with.  I’m a big Lou Reed fan.  Sean Penn is a bit intense but I like his politics.  Irvine Welsh.  This is another one of those questions where the answers are constantly changing.

Have your literary works been published anywhere? if so, where are they available?
Do you have anything else in the works?

Keep your eyes peeled for more Scot Sothern in the future, and make sure to check out Lowlife, Drive By Shooting and Scots other projects