© Joyce Tenneson

Robert Farber: I'm here in Florida with Joyce Tenneson, and Joyce is being part of this photo fusion at the Palm Beach Photographic Workshop. So I've had the opportunity to interview Joyce and really find about her career and herself. Joyce, where are you taking your career now, what are you working on?

Joyce Tenneson: I'm working on my sixth book, and for the first time in years I've gone back to black and white and so my new book will be a black and white book. I'm very very excited about it because, in a way, it sort of feels to me the new work which I call Spiritual Warriors is almost coming full circle from where I started out 25 years ago. It's very autobiographical.

Robert Farber: Talking about coming full circle, where did you start 25 years ago? Were you an art director before, a painter, what background did you come from?

Joyce Tenneson: I started as an art school professor in Washington, D.C. and I taught in art school for fifteen years before I moved to New York City. So my roots are very much in fine arts and before that in literature--an avid reader. For me, photography has been a passionate journey, and a way of recording my life metaphorically. All my imagery stems from the unconscious and it's my attempt to make visible the inner workings of my heart and my soul. So my work is very personal.

Robert Farber: The ethereal quality you have and that's become such a signature style with you, do you find that you want to move away further from that just for new directions? Is that what your new black and white work is about?

Joyce Tenneson: Yes. All my work evolves in a very subtle, I think, form. Just the way our lives evolve from year to year. They may not look terribly different to an outside viewer, but to us the changes over the years are significant. If you look back on your life and think of who you were 20 years ago, you can hardly imagine I'm sure it's the same universe. When I started out I had had a very circumscribed life in a way, and now I feel like I have had a chance to taste and experience so much that has given me a different kind of wisdom and a different kind of compassion. My work has obviously changed from all of that.

Robert Farber: A lot of your work is being driven by your inspiration, by your experiences that your finding, as opposed to maybe even just seeing other work at museums or galleries and so forth, you find mostly through your own experiences.

Joyce Tenneson: Yes, I'm very much someone who looks inward and finds their inspiration from their own personal journey. I think that's probably what gives me that strong signature style that critics talk about. I think if there's one thing people say over and over again when they see one of my images, they can tell right away it's a Joyce Tenneson or somebody's trying to copy it. So I take that as a compliment. And another thing that is said over and over again to me is that I look like my work, and I also take that as a compliment. I think it's meant that metaphorically I look like my work, that there's some kind of emotional equivalent that someone picks up on. For example, I recently had a Japanese curator come in to my studio to look at work, and when I opened the door the first thing he said was, "Oh, you look exactly like your work." You know, I was very moved by that because I think it means there is something authentic about what's coming through.

Robert Farber: Looking at your beautiful images and the ethereal quality and what you get out of your models, can you tell us something about how you work with your models...

Joyce Tenneson: I love shooting. When I'm actually photographing and actually seeing new things in front of my lens, it's an incredible high for me. A lot of our lives are spent managing what we do, but for me the pure joy in my work is actually photographing. Almost all of my photographs have people in them, it's my relationship with the people that I photograph. I think when people look at my work, they think it's very quiet and meditative, so they think it must be a very quiet atmosphere in the studio when I'm shooting or on location, wherever I am. Actually, it's quite the opposite. I prepare a long time before I shoot. I try to get myself into a quieted state, and I try to really open myself up to some kind of new interreaction. So when I'm actually photographing, I'm very lively and talking and joking with the people I'm photographing. I'm a very hands on type of person, I like to just grab somebody, and I never give instructions like move over here or do this, do that. I'm constantly taking their arm and moving it to a certain place. There's an awful lot of body language between us. And I think that's what gives the work kind of an intimate feeling because I do feel intimate with the subjects I photograph, and I do, at some point, feel there's some kind of wonderful bond that's established.

Robert Farber: And working like that, do you find to work with a model the way you do, you're better off working with a large format camera (because I know you do a lot with a Polaroid) or do you like a smaller format in order to make this communication work for you?

Joyce Tenneson: No matter what camera I work with, from the Canon 35mm all the way on up, my pictures always look the same. I think that's what is surprising to other people. And I think it's because my pictures come from me and they're not about technology, they're about my way of seeing and interreacting with my subjects...

Robert Farber: I mean, not technically, but as far as being able to interact, because working with a large view camera like the Polaroid, do you find you have a difficult time interreacting like you do with the 35, so I'm asking you more on a sensitive interaction level as opposed to a techinical level...

Joyce Tenneson: I just love working with my subjects. So no matter where I am in the world, it's as if I'm in my own private universe. I can create my own private universe anywhere. It just unfolds naturally no matter what film or camera I'm using because I do create my own little universe.

Robert Farber: How much of your work is personal work as opposed to commercial work? And if you're not working commercially, how much of your energy do you put in to your time not working commercially to really creating something for yourself.

Joyce Tenneson: My entire career has been focused about 90 percent on doing my own personal projects. As I mentioned, this is my sixth book of personal work, and for me that is what really gives me the most pleasure in life. Like mt other photographers, I've supplemented my income through doing assignment work, and I've learned a lot from that and had wonderful experiences especially working with the magazines, and doing wonderful portraits of people that I wouldn't have had a chance to meet otherwise. But the core of my work is personal, and to me that is what makes my life worth while.

Robert Farber: Joyce, your work has a very sensual quality about it, but it also has a spiritual--I don't--where is it coming from?

Joyce Tenneson: You'll have to come to one of my larger lectures which Canon so nicely sponsors that some of these art schools--I'm teasing you. But I think because my work is so autobiographical, my early roots and how I grew up and the kind of family I grew up in. I've always been interested in the spiritual realm, the realms beyond our senses, and from a very early age I was open to the unconscious and to the mysterious. So critics have said that my work has a strange blend of sensuality and spirituality, and I think that's true and I think it comes from who I am as a person. For me, sometimes sensual experiences can bring you close to the divine. To me, they're all interrelated if they're done with a pure heart and purity of spirit.

Robert Farber: What do you find so interesting--and I enjoy asking these questions because I do nudes--about the human body?

Joyce Tenneson: I understand why artists over the centuries have been so fascinated by the human form, and it's because it's endlessly changing. I'm fascinated by skin and how it's transformed and how it metamorphoses from early age to childhood to old age, the way wrinkles are beautiful, the way light can flow over skin and transform it from almost looking like stone to looking almost like fabric blowing in the breeze. It has such range, and it's continually changing. I also think when I'm photographing there's--even when I'm doing portraits--if somebody is pared down to a more essential self physically as well as emotionally, there is a chance for something unexpected and something deep to be transmitted, and that's what I'm always hoping for. I'm always hoping that I will see or glimpse or connect with something that's not just the facade of the person. I'm looking to connect to something that is essential to all of us, and I think that is a quality of mystery.

Robert Farber: That's well said. I wish people that need to be educated about nudes, and that we both have difficulty with them, people that photograph or doing anything with the human body, the way the look at it because of censorship--they should listen to what you just said and understand that the thoughts are a lot deeper than what they see on the surface with educated problems that we run into--should I say in that middle America mentality...

Joyce Tenneson: I think that unfortunately in our country we don't have a culture, like for example in Europe where there is reverence for the body, where there's nude angels in churches and on bridges and what have you. There's a reverence for the body. I think in our country, the minute you see body, somebody who is untrained often can just say, "Oh, well that's pornographic." They can't see the subtlety between somebody who is taking pictures for in a way that makes you feel ashamed to be a human, then that would be pornography. Artists who are exploring and probing to find what is beautiful and essential and complicated about our nature. So it is something that we do need to educate more in this country.

Robert Farber: With your strong, recognizable style--I don't know if you evolved from that--but you've gone through a period where you could give some really good advice to people just starting out, whether they should assist, whether they should go to art school or whatever. Tell me, what kind of best advice would you give to somebody who wants to get started either in fine art photography or commerical work?

Joyce Tenneson: Well I think a good education is obviously the foundation. Then I think that actually interning for a photographer whose work you admire is an invaluable experience because once you have a foundation in photography, I think what's important is seeing how the world revolves in a working studio. I know I get a lot of interns that come through my studio and they're just awed by how different school is from the reality of being a working photographer. So I would internship is absolutely crucial.

Robert Farber: Do you feel somebody who doesn't have the opportunity to be in New York, that they could make it somewhere else in a smaller town or city or how do you think they should go about it?

Joyce Tenneson: Absolutely. I think New York is very tough city, and the quality of life, unless you go to the top, is very tough. I watch my young assistants, and I really admire them because it's so expensive to live there and there's so much competition. It's really a difficult environment, and I would encourage people to start where they are, and to try and build up their portfolios. And most important to do work that they love because I think in the end that's what is going to give you your style. If you do something that's truly yours.

Robert Farber: Someone that wants to really get a sense of your work aside from looking here or your web address (which I'd like you to give us) what book would you suggest they look at or where would you like them to study you?

Joyce Tenneson: I do have a website, it's tenneson@tenneson.com and welcome you to come and look at my work. I also teach workshops occasionally and do lectures and I will post them on my website, and I look forward to all of you listeners come and look at the work more closely on my website. Please come if you see that I'm coming to your city, I would love to have you come and spend more time with me.

Robert Farber: I want to thank you, that was really wonderful, and I wish you well. I'll keep admiring you work, and I admire you also.

Joyce Tenneson: Thanks, Robert, it was fun to have a chance to talk with you.

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