← Design Matters with Debbie Millman
Design Matters with Debbie Millman
20th Anniversary celebration with photographers Catherine Opie, Albert Watson, Pete Souza, Lynn Goldsmith, and Mary Ellen Matthews
00:49:46
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- [00:01]
Pete Souza
As a photojournalist, you always hope to have a subject like that.
- [00:06]
Lynn Goldsmith
I took a picture of their feet.
- [00:09]
Albert Watson
I'm always ready for a surprise, something that doesn't work from the TED Audio Collective, this is Design Matters with Debbie Millman. On Design Matters, Debbie talks with some of the most creative people in the world about what they do, how they got to be who they are, and what they're thinking about and working on on this episod in this episode, in celebration of the 20th anniversary of design Matters, we'll hear from some of the photographers Debbie has interviewed over the years.
- [00:40]
Catherine Opie
I wish everybody had that education.
- [00:43]
Mary Ellen Matthews
In some ways I had to leave because I wasn't really doing my job.
- [00:51]
Debbie Millman
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- [01:18]
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- [01:50]
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- [02:30]
Debbie Millman
Susan Sontag once wrote to photograph people is to violate them by seeing them as they never see themselves. She went on to say, just as a camera is a sublimation of the gun, to photograph someone is subliminal murder. Very dramatic. I'm not so sure about that. Over the past 20 years, I've interviewed some of the most celebrated photographers of our time.
- [02:57]
Albert Watson
And.
- [02:58]
Debbie Millman
And they all happen to be very nice, very interesting people, not a murderer among them. On this episode, I want to play some excerpts from several of those interviews. Catherine Opie's portraits of queer communities in Los Angeles and San Francisco brought her fame and recognition in the 1990s. When I interviewed her in 2021, I wanted to get into those early days of her career. You began to contribute photographs to lesbian magazines. You mentioned On Our Backs, whose name was a response to the anti pornography feminist journal Off Our Backs.
- [03:36]
Catherine Opie
Yes.
- [03:36]
Debbie Millman
How did you first discover the magazine?
- [03:38]
Catherine Opie
Well, living in San Francisco, you know, you go. You're basically embedded in. At that point. Valencia street in San Francisco was the kind of lesbian area. The Castro was for the boys, Valencia street was for the women. We had Artemis, Ms. Cafe, we had Osinto Bathhouse, we had Amelia's, which was the seven day a week lesbian bar. So you had all of this happening all at once. And I'll tell you, like, the women who would go to Amelia's were also the women who were being photographed by wonderful photographers like Jill Posner and Susie Bright. And all of the kind of sex positive in terms of starting on our backs was right there at that time. And so I just decided like, well, I want a picture, not our backs. I'm a photographer, I'm a lesbian. Why shouldn't I try to actually do that as well?
- [04:38]
Debbie Millman
Those magazines introduced me to my own sort of private realization that I was gay at the time, although it was another 25 years before I publicly came out. But other magazines that I have in my collection that I thought you'd enjoy, I'm sure you know this one, Babatude. Yeah. And then Caught Looking, which was just an extraordinary publication.
- [05:03]
Albert Watson
Yeah.
- [05:03]
Debbie Millman
At the time you also joined a woman's S and M society called the Outcasts, and it was co founded by the activist and academic Gayle Rubin. But you said that S and M was never sexual for you and have described it as the scariest, most violent secret impulses that could be followed and validated and made almost cozy in an atmosphere where you could always say no. And you go on to say that you needed to push yourself to get over the enormous amount of fear you had. Around your body. Where do you think that fear came from? What was that fear about?
- [05:39]
Catherine Opie
Well, it's personal, and it's not on the record in terms of personal, but there was some childhood trauma on my part, and I think that there was an enormous amount of healing that this community brought to me in relationship to trauma. And you've never read this in an interview, so I'm saying it right now for the first time. And, you know, it's been very hard in a certain way to be quiet about this during the MeToo movement. But there's reasons. And the reasons are. Is when you make self portraits that I made, people easily equate that to, oh, well, that's why she made that. She was traumatized as a child. And I tried to very hard. Again, that kind of compartments that I put things in. In this society, we're very easily to connote things. Things and to take things and blow them out of proportion in a way that's not authentic to one's own experience. So my authenticity to my own experience and in my childhood was definitely worked out on an emotional level, very much so through the leather community. But at the same time, the publicness of that is not necessarily something that I feel I need to have completely spelled out in the world.
- [07:02]
Debbie Millman
I completely understand. For years, I was in the closet and also would not disclose my own early childhood trauma with sexual abuse, primarily because I never wanted anybody to say that anything I did was because of that or that I was damaged in some way because of it, or that I would be judged because of my own inner homophobia in those decades. But I know that the Kink community essentially saved the life of my wife, Roxane Gay. She's very public about the fact that if it weren't for the King community, she wouldn't be alive today.
- [07:38]
Catherine Opie
Yeah, no. And I feel very, very much the same without having to lay out all the details of my past. But, yeah, what an amazing place to be able to work out so much.
- [07:54]
Debbie Millman
Thank you for feeling that you could trust me with this. That sense of community that both you talk about, that Roxanne has experienced, that seems to be the most important aspect of being involved in the BDSM scene. And that it was also political. It was as political as much as it was sexual, as much as it was community. And I read that you often talked philosophy in the Dungeons.
- [08:24]
Catherine Opie
Well, Gail Rubin is great to talk to. I mean, I remember at one point, you know, asking Gail for coffee and just wanting to talk about the kind of amazing experiences of the Transition of so many butch dykes transitioning to male, like in the beginning, you know, And I wanted to have like a real philosophical conversation with her in relationship to AIDS and the kind of work that she did in relationship to the gay male leather sex club south of Market. And so when you. When you have actual role models and brilliant people that were. Surrounded me at that time period and various sex positive people. Yeah, there was like really interesting, deep discourse in relationship to what we were doing and what we were holding and also consensuality. And I mean, I wish everybody had that education in some ways.
- [09:31]
Debbie Millman
Yes, yes. Some of your early work for On Our Backs included photos of your sex toy and leather collection. There's a beautiful image of a woman standing while urinating. And in 1987, you created a self portrait titled Kathy, which is a black and white image of yourself wearing a strap on. Dressed in a negligee astride a bed. Yeah. And at that time you vowed you'd never be a voyeur within your own community. But I'm wondering, did you ever feel shy about sharing this part of yourself in such a public way?
- [10:09]
Catherine Opie
Not anymore.
- [10:10]
Debbie Millman
Did you at that point or.
- [10:12]
Catherine Opie
Yeah, I think that I did. I think that I was still protecting my parents and my family. Yeah. I think that it takes a long time to figure out how you should be as a person and what is okay to be out in the world in relationship to also this kind of weird protective bubble one puts around their biological family. And at a certain point, I just realized that my family is my chosen family. That even though I have a profound sense of love for my parents, that I was also not going to remain in the closet. And that that was not a healthy position for me. And so I just decided to go for it. But I didn't put that image out actually until the 2000s. I mean, that's the thing is, like, I went back into the archive, and I also probably thought that some of the black and white work from Girlfriends that I did was maybe too close to Mapplethorpe. And I needed to create my own identity within the leather community as a woman that was separate from Mapplethorp, because we both also have similar aesthetics. Right. Like, we really like to highly aestheticize our material in a visual, kind of classical way. And so that work in the 2000 was fine to pull out. Where in the 80s, when, you know, Robert didn't pass away from AIDS until 1989, it was too close.
- [11:48]
Debbie Millman
Is that why you stayed away from using a square format?
- [11:51]
Catherine Opie
Well, I used a square Format a lot. And all that private work, I mean, it was all Schott Hasselblad, right? Yeah, no, but. And the archive has that because it's a camera that I really enjoyed using. Including in the new Phaidon book, you'll see an image of me with my grandfather's Rolleiflex as a self portrait on one of the beginning pages, where it was like 1983 or 84, and I'm in New York City and it's self portrait portrait with my grandfather's fedora with a big overcoat holding a twin reflex. So that work existed and it was going on and I was making it. But when I decided to make work of my own community, I felt that I needed to create a different way of thinking about documentary. And so with being and having, which was the first studio photographs of mine with the women with fake mustaches, my friends with fake mustaches, and looking straight into the camera, using that yellow background consistently with the consistent framing created a conceptual positioning to portraiture that I felt was a way to shift from necessarily a comparison to Mapplethorpe.
- [13:09]
Debbie Millman
That work being and having really shot you to fame. What made you decide to shoot them all on a golden yellow background?
- [13:19]
Catherine Opie
Well, it was in my living room, Silver Lake. I lived on Sanborn Ave. And I. You know how I made all my early portraits was in my living room. I didn't have a studio like, yellow is kind of a hard color in relationship to skin tone. But the other thing is, is in terms of diversity of skin tone of my friends in relationship to inclusion. Yellow was the best to kind of make it pop. And I would often have all my friends get their mustaches and we would kind of make the portraits because I was shooting with a 4x5 camera. And we'd make the portraits and then we'd just hang out afterwards. So it was also. I didn't. In a small living room in Silver Lake. I didn't have the ability to change over all different colors of seamless, nor was I thinking about seamless in that way at that point. It wasn't until I started making the portraits the year after, which began first as a collaboration with my good friend from CalArts, Richard Hawkins, who's a fellow artist, where we started making portraits of our mutual friends at that point. And then he realized that it was my body of work and he just said, this is yours, go with it. But he introduced me really thinking about Holbein and what nobility is and what that is within our queer community. We had amazing, extensive conversations about that and Richard is a very brilliant person who I felt just helped lead a pathway for me in terms of continuing to photograph the community after I made Being and Having.
- [15:04]
Debbie Millman
I understand that the title of the show, Being and Having was a play on psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan's idea that men have the phallus while women, as the embodiment of erotic desire and art, are the phallus. And when I was reading this, I'm like, was this dude serious?
- [15:21]
Catherine Opie
So this is serious. And I have to tell you that the title came from the woman with her arms crossed over her chest, peeing in on our backs. So she is an amazing philosopher from Toronto, Canada, by the name of Anna Marie Smith. And she was one of the head kind of political philosophers and teachers at Cornell. But she was my lover at the. And met her in Canada at a bar. And she had been making postcards with a friend that were really awesome erotic postcards from this collective in Canada. And I'm sorry, I don't remember the collective's name anymore, but I was in the bar going, hey, do you know who made these? And then the woman I was talking to said, yeah, myself and my next door neighbor did. And then it started a very long friendship and love affair with Anna Marie Smith, including the portrait that's on the bed, the soft portraits on our bed. When she came to visit me in California while I was in grad school, that was a student's installation in their studio, and they let us have it as a little private palace, so to speak, during her visit.
- [16:41]
Debbie Millman
Wow.
- [16:42]
Catherine Opie
So it all gets wrapped together. That's the beautiful thing about community, right, Is you meet people and you're in this kind of, you know, in the 80s, you're going through so much as a community, especially in relationship to politics and AIDS and visibility. And just all of these interweavings are really also a part of, you know, my ability to think and begin to figure out how to make work.
- [17:11]
Debbie Millman
Catherine Opie in 2021. Albert Watson is a fashion celebrity and art photographer who has been prominent since the 1970s. He took the most iconic photograph of Steve Jobs ever taken, the first monkey in space, death row convicts in Louisiana, and hundreds of artists, celebrities, royalty and cultural leaders. I interviewed him in 2018 as one of the most accomplished photographers alive today. It might surprise some to learn that you were born without vision, which is also why you titled a book of your work Cyclops, and that is also the name of your company.
- [17:52]
Albert Watson
Yes.
- [17:53]
Debbie Millman
An article I read from about 10 years ago said that the Vision in your left eye is actually 2020, but you wear glasses to protect it from hazards because you're down to just one.
- [18:03]
Albert Watson
Why not?
- [18:05]
Debbie Millman
But it looks like you're wearing bifocals now, so I'm wondering.
- [18:07]
Albert Watson
No, I'm wearing bifocals because a lot of times when I'm working and if I'm in a darkroom working with negatives or even sometimes when I'm working on a computer screen and I have to go close, I use a bifocal to just. It's just more comfortable for me and I don't use it that often. And when I'm on a plane, I don't really need them if I have good light on a book, so. But the one eye, a lot of time people ask me about that, I say, oh my God, a photographer with one eye. But if you think about it and you watch a lot of photographers working, if they're working with Canons or Nikons and a lot of different cameras, when they look through the camera, they only use one eye. They're not using two eyes to look through a Nikon or a Canon or a Hasselblad. So nowadays of course, photographers are working off of a screen anyway. You know, they, they might frame through a camera, but you're checking it on a monitor next year, that can be quite big, you know. So times have changed for that, but it never really bothered me. And if I don't think about my vision, then it seems normal to me. If I concentrate on my vision, I'm very aware that I don't have sight on the right side. You know, I can feel that, you know, but somehow it didn't bother me.
- [19:24]
Debbie Millman
You talked about the revelation that you felt when you first took that first picture and that sense of wanting to do it over and over and over again.
- [19:33]
Albert Watson
Sure.
- [19:33]
Debbie Millman
I believe that that came when your wife bought you a Fuji automatic fixed lens camera for your 21st birth. Is that correct?
- [19:41]
Albert Watson
That is correct. And it was, you know, we didn't have two pennies really to rub together and she had saved up for that. I think that we, we had kind of a three egg omelet between four people for a while. And so she bought this little camera. I think that was like, I think $30 or something like that. But I used it and it became really, I learned to use it, maximized what it was capable of. And of course it was great. It was great to have my own camera. Otherwise you were only getting a camera from the school every third weekend. So it was pretty limited.
- [20:20]
Debbie Millman
You know, when it came to picking up the art of photography, you've said that you were old school and felt a responsibility to learn the technical side of the craft, which was painful for you. And your advice to young photographers today is get the technical thing out of the way and become so fluent that there is no stress. And you've likened it to mastering driving. It's overwhelming at first, but with all the gauges and gears. But once you've learned it, it's muscle memory and you can focus on your destination. So I have two questions. Why was it painful at first?
- [20:54]
Albert Watson
Because I'm not really a technical person. I'm not somebody that is really going to go to camera shops and go through all the latest equipment and test out the latest programs at the latest software and digital world and so on. And in fact, I actually got very good to speak about something technical. I actually got very good with Photoshop because when I was doing Photoshop, I found myself operating Photoshop at about five miles an hour. And when I then began employing a really good technician who could go at 80 miles an hour, then I found the most efficient way for me was to truly understand Photoshop and what it was possible of. But to have those people working with me in house. The thing that didn't work for me, that a lot of photographers still do, is they send their work out to a digital house, and the digital house does some work on it, sends it back, he makes a correction, sends it back. It just didn't work for me at all. To me, it was very important to be on the equipment with these very good technicians. So I sit between two technicians going from a left screen to a right screen. It's highly productive. Now, I'm totally aware because I see them, you know, eight, nine, ten hours a day operating Photoshop right in front of me. So I'm seeing what it's possible of. And therefore working with them is a great way of me, sort of through their ability to control the image. Because I'm primarily interested, which I always have been interested in, is printing. Obviously, in the first years of my life, I was interested in darkroom, so what you call silver gelatin printing. And so I was used to traditional darkroom. And it gave me a great advantage with that knowledge moving into digital. So I was able to apply a lot of the philosophy of printmaking right into the digital world and into Photoshop. So the Photoshop became very good. But going back to the camera and your original question regarding technical things, I didn't enjoy it, unfortunately, kind of photography Attracts a lot of. Especially guys who love cameras. They just love the equipment. They love changing lenses and getting all the latest equipment, software. I mean, I have a dentist who has every Leica camera ever made. You know, he's obsessed by it. He loves it. He said he can't wait to finish at 6 o' clock every night and he goes home and he works on his photos for seven hours when he gets home.
- [23:40]
Debbie Millman
I kind of love that you have a dentist who's also a photographer.
- [23:42]
Albert Watson
Also a photographer. He's obsessed. And of course, of course, when my mouth is full of cotton wool and he's trying to ask me questions about photography, you know, it's not so easy to communicate with him, but he really is. He loves the equipment and he does enjoy taking pictures. It's not fair of me to say that he's, you know, 100% technical and never takes a picture. But the technical side, he has a love of that. Whereas I find a lot of the technical things a little bit annoying. But some of it, as you said pointed out earlier, you have to learn it. You should have a knowledge of that so that you know what's going on.
- [24:18]
Debbie Millman
Given that you've been working through so many different phases of technical requirements or technical advancements, how long did it take you to feel like you've mastered each phase of the technical skills of your craft?
- [24:34]
Albert Watson
Well, I think it took at least. Remember, I had a lot of training first, but from the. You get training at school, but then you hit reality. You're no longer just trial and error. You have to be doing the real thing. You can't fake it anymore. You can't say, oh, I'll try it again tomorrow. I mean, you had to do it on the day and get it right. But I think in the beginning, and I've given this analogy quite a lot, I think in the beginning, I would do a shot on a Monday that I would say is equivalent to the Sistine Chapel. And then on Tuesday, I would look at the contact sheet and think that it wasn't as good as I remembered it. And then on Wednesday, you throw it out. So the idea was, how do I manage to break this down, to not let that happen? But I think it began to take 10, 12, 14 years before I became really fluent. I felt uncomfortable so that when I saw a vision of something, I had a creative idea that I had the skills to carry out that idea. But I'm always learning, even to this day. I'm always. There's always. I'm always ready for a Surprise. Something that doesn't work.
- [25:42]
Debbie Millman
Albert Watson in 2018. Pete Souza was the chief official White House photographer during the Obama years, but he took his first pictures in the White House many years earlier. I spoke with Pete in 2022. You've said that your personal politics didn't exactly mesh with President Reagan's. Did that worry you when you first joined the White House team?
- [26:09]
Pete Souza
Well, when Carol first called me, I told her I wasn't interested because I thought things were going so well. And I didn't really think that highly of, of Reagan at the time. But, you know, I thought, we all hope that our pictures live in history. And I thought, you know, what better way to provide images for history than be inside at the White House? And what difference does it make whether the President was a Democrat or a Republican? And so I sort of put those thoughts aside and went to work there. And I actually, you know, I admired President Reagan. He was a decent human being. He respected other people from all walks of life. And, you know, to me, the policy part of it was not that significant in terms of what I was doing, which was photographing for the historic archive.
- [27:05]
Debbie Millman
Did you have to develop a certain objectivity or was that something that didn't really come up in the kind of work you were doing?
- [27:12]
Pete Souza
I mean, I think, you know, I approached it as a photojournalist would, which is you're trying to photograph and make authentic pictures that are true to what has taken place. And I don't know how, like, I guess if you, because you didn't like his policies, you maybe get a picture of him picking his nose. I mean, you know, it's sort of like I never understood what that means, objective or non objective. I mean, you're documenting what's happening and policies really don't affect the way you make a picture. I don't think.
- [27:49]
Debbie Millman
After your tenure with Reagan, you became one of the first photographers to cover the war in Afghanistan, which you did for the Chicago. And while there, you traversed the 15,000 foot Hindu Kush mountain pass on horseback in 3ft of snow. You also saw the dark realities of war. Death, destruction, devastation. How did that impact you?
- [28:16]
Pete Souza
Well, I mean, the thing that was interesting about Afghanistan was that it was the first war really, where pictures, because of the advance of digital technology, you could transmit them back to the US Hours later after you made them with your satellite phone. And, and so there was a immediate reaction from the readership of the Chicago Tribune. You know, we had, I went with a correspondent named Paul Salopek. You know, Paul And I had a couple close calls with, you know, rocket propelled grenades and sniper bullets and things like that. And by the way, we were there before there were any US troops on the ground. The US had started their air campaign already and, and we were usually hooked up with the local Northern alliance, the soldiers that were fighting against the Taliban. And you know, a couple times we were right there on the front line with them. And I'm, you know, I never considered myself a war photographer. I sort of ended up right on the front line almost by mistake. And I realized that I was not that good at it because it takes a certain kind of person to be able to keep their together while really bad things are happening around you. And I realized that that probably was not for me.
- [29:45]
Debbie Millman
I can't imagine how anybody could keep their shit together in that kind of condition.
- [29:49]
Pete Souza
Well, there are people that can, yeah.
- [29:51]
Debbie Millman
In 2004, you were shooting Washington D.C. for the Chicago Tribune and you were asked to cover the then Senator Barack Obama's first year in the Senate. What did you think about that assignment? Had you ever heard of the senator at that point or did you have a big impression of him?
- [30:10]
Pete Souza
You know, he had made this big speech in 2004 at the Democratic National Convention. And at the time I was with the nominee, John Kerry, traveling with him for the Tribune. And the day that Barack Obama made that speech, Kerry was not yet at the convention. I think we were in Nantucket, as a matter of fact. So I didn't see the speech, but I heard about it after. And then when he was elected to the Senate and Jeff Zeleny reporter said, hey, we should do this look at his first year in the Senate. I, I sort of read up on him a little more. And the New Yorker had published a long profile about him, which I read, but I didn't really, I hadn't seen him like on video and to see what he looked like or how he interacted with people until the day I met him. Him, which was in early January when.
- [31:08]
Debbie Millman
He was sworn in.
- [31:09]
Pete Souza
Yeah, it was just, it was a few hours before he was. When I met him at his hotel, before he had gone up to the Capitol, which was, you know, the first time that I had met him.
- [31:22]
Debbie Millman
What was your first impression of him?
- [31:25]
Pete Souza
You know, the first day of your Senate career is a ceremonial day. You're sworn in, you get your office, you have some receptions, you meet with this person, with that person. Very ceremonial. His family who stayed in Chicago came to D.C. that day. Both Sasha, Malia and Michelle. And a couple things Struck me one, he was very at ease even though I was taking pictures, you know, throughout the day. I've got this, this picture of him in his office with Sasha Malia and he's biting into a big sandwich and he's got this big wad of food in his mouth and Sasha Malia just doing their thing and it's as if I'm not even there. I mean, it's such an intimate picture. And I had only known him for like three hours. And you know, as a, as a photojournalist, you always hope to have a subject like that, you know, one who isn't like, you know, subtly startled by the presence of a camera. And he sort of just went about his business as I went about my business, which was, you know, I thought, unusual in a, a new national politician. Then over the next few weeks to see the way he interacted with people, not only the way he spoke when he was giving a speech and seeing how people reacted to the spoken word, but then seeing how he would interact with people directly and was very respectful to every person he met. You could see the excitement in the faces of some of the young people, especially the young African American kids. All that was very noticeable just in the matter of the first few weeks I spent with him.
- [33:22]
Debbie Millman
Did you have any idea back then of what he was capable of and how far he might ascend in politics?
- [33:29]
Pete Souza
Yeah, I mean, I think he came in with a lot of hype. And then you never know. People ask me who's going to be a Democratic nominee in 2020, and I say, you never know who is going to do well under the glare of the national spotlight. But certainly I could see that he would at least someday run for a bigger position than senator. I didn't know if that would be governor or president. And I sort of tried to keep that in the back of my mind, having been in the White House with Reagan and noting what the presidential bubble is like.
- [34:11]
Debbie Millman
What do you mean by presidential?
- [34:12]
Pete Souza
Well, I mean, there's so there's this apparatus around you, Secret Service. Everything is kind of stage managed in terms of, for security reasons. You can't just like leave the White House and go for a walk and go to Starbucks or, you know, Dunkin Donuts or whatever. You can't do that when you're president. You can do that when you're senator, especially your freshman senator. So I was trying to make, make pictures in my mind that I thought if he ever became president, these would be cooler pictures. In 20 years, they would be more, they would be timeless. But as you look back on them, you'd see, I mean, some of my favorite pictures of John Kennedy are ones when he was running for president and nobody really knew that much about him and there's like nobody else around. He's the only one out on the airport tarmac, things like that.
- [35:04]
Lynn Goldsmith
Yeah.
- [35:04]
Debbie Millman
You see the person.
- [35:05]
Pete Souza
Yeah. So I was trying to, like, I keep that in the back of my mind. I've got this series of pictures of President Obama in Russia. We went to Russia with him and Senator Lugar from Indiana on a congressional delegation. And I've got these pictures of him in Red Square, President Obama, where he's walking through the red Square and nobody is looking at him, nobody knows who he is. And I knew that those pictures, when you look at those now, they're really kind of cool to look at because here's this guy that became this president, national figure. Everybody knows who he is now. And at the time, he's running around Moscow and not a soul recognizes him.
- [35:51]
Debbie Millman
Pete Souza in 2022.
- [35:57]
Mary Ellen Matthews
Hi, this is Sherrell Dorsey from the TED Tech podcast. And today I want to talk to you about Boost Mobile. So you're thinking about upgrading to the amazing new iPhone 17 Pro, the most powerful iPhone yet with 8 times optical zoom.
- [36:14]
Debbie Millman
But are you also thinking about the.
- [36:16]
Mary Ellen Matthews
Traffic on your way to the store or transferring all your data? Well, good news.
- [36:21]
Debbie Millman
When you order a new phone online.
- [36:23]
Mary Ellen Matthews
With Boost Mobile, they'll send an expert to your home or work to deliver your brand new iPhone 17 Pro and.
- [36:30]
Debbie Millman
Get you all set up on Boost Mobile within minutes.
- [36:34]
Mary Ellen Matthews
No hassle. Visit boostmobile.com to get started. Delivery available for select devices purchased@boostmobile.com terms apply.
- [36:46]
Wise Ad Voice
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- [37:22]
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- [39:12]
Debbie Millman
Mary Ellen Matthews is best known for hundreds of celebrity portraits she has taken for Saturday Night Live, where she is chief photographer. How does one become chief photographer for snl? That's what I wanted to find out when I interviewed her in 2018. So you also had a job in music publicity at a record label, I believe it was called tvt.
- [39:36]
Mary Ellen Matthews
Tvt, yep.
- [39:37]
Debbie Millman
And so was that the job that you had after mtv?
- [39:40]
Mary Ellen Matthews
After mtv, I also at the same time interned for kroq, which was a rock and roll radio station that had Howard Stern 923 back in those days. And I was an intern there, so I did two at once. I was like, I was in the city, I might as well go there to there and get all this experience. And well, this is a story.
- [40:01]
Debbie Millman
Excellent.
- [40:01]
Mary Ellen Matthews
So when those two things were done, I had a resume. Now you know, which wasn't too bad having those two things on it. And so I just wanted to work at a record label at that time. And I had my, I had printed them out and I had them in a folder And I put on this suit like, you went to, like, Strawberry or something and got dress barn. The dress barn. And I got the blazer and the long skirt, and I had the thing. And I was walking around to every record label in midtown, and I saw this big movie set. I've never seen one before in my life. And I kind of walked up to the guy. There was a guy who had these kind of headsets on and like a microphone thing. And he was kind of in charge behind these ropes. And I said, how do you get to like, what are you doing? I kind of asked him about what he did, and I said, how do you do that? He's like, not, you know, you gotta know someone. Like, keep moving. Did not want to have any conversation with me. And then I hear, excuse. Excuse me, miss, Miss. And it was Bill Murray in the middle of the. The cordoned off area. And he said, can you help me or can you take a picture of me and my friends? He had a can, like a little camera. And I said, well, sure. Took a picture. And I said, can I have your autograph? And I had my resume. And he was like, are you looking for a job? I said, yeah. He goes, do you want to work for me? I was like, sure. And he kind of put that into motion, took me aside, put me in somebody's hands to say, start her tomorrow as. So that was a big whirlwind. And then I was walking to a payphone to call my mom to tell her, as you do back then, you'd call on the payphone and I'm telling her. And then Robert Plant and his band, I think were the Honey Drippers at that time, were walking by, like, looking super rock and roll. And this was on 42nd street by the brand Grand Central.
- [41:48]
Debbie Millman
Oh, Grand Central.
- [41:49]
Mary Ellen Matthews
Grand Central, yeah. So they were walking to a souvenir shop, and I saw them walk in. I was like, gotta go.
- [41:56]
Debbie Millman
Click.
- [41:56]
Mary Ellen Matthews
And I walked in and I asked him for his autograph, and he said, you looking for a job? And I said, yep. And then he's like, well, go to Atlantic Records, talk to so and so. Tell him I sent you. So that didn't pan out, but working on a movie that was called Quick Change did. And that's how I became friends with Bill Murray. And it had nothing to do with snl.
- [42:17]
Catherine Opie
Right.
- [42:17]
Debbie Millman
I mean, that's the part that I think is so serendipitous that you ended up. I mean, he had to have come back as a guest host.
- [42:24]
Mary Ellen Matthews
He did.
- [42:25]
Debbie Millman
In the time after. While you Were working at Saturday Night Live.
- [42:28]
Mary Ellen Matthews
He did.
- [42:28]
Debbie Millman
And what did he.
- [42:31]
Mary Ellen Matthews
Yeah, right.
- [42:31]
Debbie Millman
What did he think of this sort of way in which your lives sort of intersected?
- [42:36]
Mary Ellen Matthews
I think I might have told him, like, you know, left him a message or something like, you know, I had a way to contact his people or something and just have said, you know, just so you know. So it was pretty funny when he saw me there, but I think he knew a little bit. But, yeah.
- [42:52]
Debbie Millman
After the movie with Bill Murray, I read that you then moved on to the camera department on other productions. What other movies did you work on? Back in those days, I worked on a TV show.
- [43:02]
Mary Ellen Matthews
I think it was called Emergency 911. And it was on NBC. And I was in the camera department. They used to call me the Camera Tomato, which, you know, I thought was hilarious, but then probably wouldn't go very far these days. And I was a film loader and I worked on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. And then I think that was it. There might have been another one. And then I fell into TVT somehow. I don't remember from there to there, but I think I just went back to going to the record company.
- [43:39]
Debbie Millman
What did you imagine? I mean, this was such sort of heady Times, those late 80s into the early 90s in New York City. And the whole notion of the way music was evolving, it was so exciting. What did you envision your life was going to be like as an artist?
- [43:56]
Mary Ellen Matthews
I knew that I wanted to be a photographer. And I thought being at a record label could get me closer to the bands. Of course, everybody wanted to shoot the bands and be next. Be, you know, at the show and do that hang and just get that creative push from all these amazing musical artists. So I thought that was a good entree. And that's what happened is I got into TBT and I was working. They had a thing called the Sullivan Years, and they bought the rights to the Ed Sullivan Show. So me and another guy had to go through all of the audio and put them in categories, which was sort of fascinating, but very like stationary. And then I would go out at night and shoot all the bands because you'd get all these invitations to do so. And being an independent label, there were so many bands you would get to see. So that's what I did. And then I had to leave because I wasn't really doing my job so.
- [44:52]
Debbie Millman
Well, you were more interested in doing what you loved. Were you ever worried or afraid that you couldn't make a living as a photographer? I mean, those aren't sort of slam dunk careers.
- [45:04]
Mary Ellen Matthews
Sure. And, you know, it was like doing fashion and doing those big shoots seems so, so far away at the top of the mountain, for sure. And, you know, you just wonder, like, how am I gonna get there? How am I gonna figure this out? And doing what I was doing at the. At the label and working in music got me very far into that world. But, yeah, there was. I had a job, thank God, at the time. But, yeah, so I left. And the reason I left was because, I mean, I became a publicist, and we had Nine Inch Nails, and that was all very exciting. And so that was a whole other. But the reason I left was because I think I was asked to leave number one. And I went again. I went to. Walked across the street. There was a payphone, and I went to check my answering machine.
- [45:48]
Lynn Goldsmith
Right.
- [45:48]
Mary Ellen Matthews
That's what we had. Right. Do you remember doing that?
- [45:50]
Debbie Millman
Like, absolutely. My dad was appalled that I had an answering machine. I got an answering machine in my first apartment in 1983. And he couldn't believe that he had raised a child that was so narcissistic that she needed to know who called her when she wasn't home. He was like, can't they just. Right, right, right, right.
- [46:10]
Mary Ellen Matthews
Dad, just get with the times. The right he has. He's not wrong, though, in a way.
- [46:14]
Debbie Millman
Right.
- [46:15]
Mary Ellen Matthews
But right. Yeah. So then that happened. Then you'd be like, okay, I gotta check my answering machine. Gotta check my answering machine. So I check my answering machine, and a friend of this other publicist, Jennifer Gross, who's amazing, left me a message saying, I know you're into photography. I'm leaving this job with Edie Baskin at Saturday Night Live. Do you want to interview with her? That was the same day I walked across the street. I was like, bye. And then I changed. I did. So that was serendipitous also. So I interviewed for the job, and I ended up working for Edie Baskin.
- [46:49]
Debbie Millman
What was that like?
- [46:50]
Mary Ellen Matthews
Amazing. She was so wonderful to me as a mentor as to get to know what the show was and what this job was to be the photographer there. Obviously, like, you know, she set the tone with all her photographs and images.
- [47:08]
Debbie Millman
You joined Saturday Night Live as Edie Baskin's assistant in 1993. Now, Edie was the photographer who created the bumper images that are seen before and after the show's commercial breaks that feature the episode's host and also introduced the musical guests.
- [47:26]
Mary Ellen Matthews
Yes.
- [47:26]
Debbie Millman
Now, why is it called a bumper?
- [47:28]
Mary Ellen Matthews
Because it bumps into commercial or it bumps into the Show, There's a reason for it and each local market. Cause it's live. Television has to have a place where it all meets to go back to the show.
- [47:40]
Debbie Millman
Interesting.
- [47:41]
Mary Ellen Matthews
And some linger longer, like in Kansas City. It may hang there for a minute, but, you know, sometimes in New York it goes bloop and it's out. So it just depends how it goes.
- [47:49]
Debbie Millman
Now, Edie initiated using her photography as a graphic element in the show. She used unusual techniques to bring the photos to life. That included hand coloring the photographs. Talk about what it was like to work with Edie at that time, at this moment, when Saturday Night Live was also really in its heyday.
- [48:09]
Mary Ellen Matthews
Mm, yeah, in the 90s, you know.
- [48:12]
Debbie Millman
Sort of Saturday Night Live 2.0 after the original truth.
- [48:15]
Mary Ellen Matthews
And then the time it went through in the 80s when Lauren left for a little bit, and then it came back and things started to change as far as the techniques that were becoming available. So she was very experimental with that, a Polaroid transfer and all kinds of things. So to be in the studio at that time when the cast was such a. I mean, they were all a heyday, but it was the Adam Sandler and Phil Hartman. And just to know that time was amazing when I first started and see her work with the host and the cast and Lauren and, you know, there's no better way to get to know the show and what it means to everyone.
- [48:53]
Debbie Millman
Mary Ellen Matthews in 2023. The last excerpt I want to play for you is one from my interview with Lynn Goldsmith, who took many, many iconic photos of the music scene in the 1980s. The excerpt was brief because the audio quality isn't great, but I really wanted you to hear this amazing story. I spoke with Lynn via Zoom in 2023. On February 9, 1964, the Beatles made their first live US television appearance. And more than 70 million people watched these four young men from Liverpool make history on the Ed Sullivan Show. Lynn, you are the only person I've ever encountered who saw the Beatles perform live on that show that night. Can you talk a little bit about what that experience was like?
- [49:49]
Lynn Goldsmith
Yes. My stepfather, my mother remarried when I was about 14. So this is after 10 years of my mom being a single working mother and living in a household of three women in Detroit, when suddenly I'm told we're moving to Miami beach and now I have this father. I wasn't really receptive to that. I didn't want to move. I was looking forward to starting at Mumford High School. So I really didn't care for George who was my new stepfather, and to move to this place, which was so different from where I had grown up. The world that I grew up in was racially diversified. Miami beach was not. And it all looks so different. And now we were wealthy. My stepfather owned hotels in Miami beach. And because he wanted me to love him and to realize that he wanted to be a dad, he decided to get the opportunity for me to be in the lobby when the Beatles arrived at the Deauville Hotel. Before the show. I also had tickets for the show with him. I didn't want to go. My mother said that. I said, george has no idea who I am. You know, I'm a rhythm and blues girl. I'm Detroit, I'm Motor City. I have no interest in these wimps, the Beatles. My mother said, well, you know, Lynn, if I have to choose between George and you, I'm choosing George. So you better get your act together and go wow. With George. And so we went. And I was, you know, I had my camera because I had already had a tour of hotels and was just floored by what they looked like. I mean, when you come from Detroit, you go into the Fontainebleau or the Deauville or any of the Eden Rock, you know, it was like some magical world of color and light, and I'd never seen anything like that. So I went with my stepdad and my camera, and I was very happy photographing the carpets of the Deauville Hotel that had these amazing designs. When the Beatles came through the door, I wasn't as tall as the men that were there. It was all men, photographers. And my stepfather kind of pushed me forward, and I took a picture of their feet on the carpet. But I didn't want to really look at them. I somehow felt it would be a betrayal to the Rolling Stones, you know, you chose, right?
- [52:56]
Debbie Millman
Back then, you had to choose.
- [52:57]
Lynn Goldsmith
Yeah, you chose. You were either a Stones fan or a Beatles fan. You know, what I remember was John Lennon grabbing my arm, my forearm, and saying, don't you want all faces? And I just thought I had the cooties. Like, he touched me and I just said no. And I pulled my arm away. And it was seen by someone from the local newspaper who asked if they could process my film. And they ran a little story, you know, that was really my first published photograph.
- [53:39]
Debbie Millman
Lynn Goldsmith in 2023. You can hear the full interviews and hundreds of other interviews with a wide range of designers, artists, musicians, writers, performers and scientists on our website. Website designmattersmedia.com or wherever you get your podcasts. We'll be back next week with another special episode culled from the many years I've been doing Design Matters. I hope you're enjoying these special episodes because I'm really enjoying making them. Yes, this is the 20th year we've been podcasting Design Matters, and I'd like to thank you for listening. And remember, we can talk about making a difference. We can make a difference, or we can do both. I'm Debbie Melvin and I look forward to talking with you again soon.
- [54:28]
Albert Watson
Design Matters is produced by the TED Audio Collective by Curtis Fox Productions. The interviews are usually recorded at the Masters in Branding program at the School of Visual Arts in New York City, the first and longest running branding program in the world. The editor in Chief of Design Matters Media is Emily Weiland.
- [54:53]
Verizon Ad Voice
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- [55:23]
Mary Ellen Matthews
Big news Boost Mobile is now sending experts nationwide to deliver and set up customers new phones at home or work.
- [55:29]
Pete Souza
Wait, we're going on tour?
- [55:30]
Mary Ellen Matthews
Not a tour. We're delivering and setting up customers phones so it's easier to upgrade. Let's get in the tour bus and hit the road. No, not a tour bus.
- [55:37]
Albert Watson
Us.
- [55:37]
Mary Ellen Matthews
It's a regular car we use to deliver and set up customers phones at home or work.
- [55:40]
Wise Ad Voice
Are you a groupie on this tour?
- [55:42]
Mary Ellen Matthews
We deliver and set up phones.
- [55:43]
Pete Souza
It's not a tour. Oh, you're definitely a groupie.
- [55:46]
Mary Ellen Matthews
Introducing store to door switch and get a new device with expert setup and.
- [55:50]
Pete Souza
Delivery wherever you're at. Delivery available for select devices purchased@boost mobile.com.
- [55:55]
Wise Ad Voice
Hey, it's Adam Grant from Ted's podcast Work Life and this episode is brought to you by ServiceNow. AI is only as powerful as the platform it's built into. That's why it's no surprise that more than 85% of the Fortune 500 companies use the ServiceNow AI platform, while other platforms duct tape tools together. ServiceNow seamlessly unifies people, data, workflows and AI connecting every corner of your business. And with AI agents working together autonomously, anyone in any department can focus on the work that matters Most. Learn how ServiceNow puts AI to work.
- [56:29]
Debbie Millman
For people@servicenow.com hey, it's Maya and Sim from the Girls that Invest podcast. If you are an IT or security pro, you know managing devices, identities and applications can feel overwhelming and honestly risky. That's where Trelica by1Password comes in. It helps conquer SaaS Brawl and shadow it by discovering every app your team uses, managed or not. With pre built app profiles, you can assess risk, risk, manage access and even optimize your software spend. Plus, it simplifies onboarding, offboarding and compliance, all while cutting costs by eliminating unused licenses. Take the first step to better security for your team. Learn more at1Password.com special offer.
- [57:19]
Verizon Ad Voice
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