How will you make additional prints?

That’s done. The problem is, the paper is gone. Kodak made it, and later other companies, but now it’s just not available. This means that I probably won’t be doing contact prints of any of my previous 8×10 work. I suppose if someone came along and was really good at making platinum prints and wanted to help me print them, that might be an option. But my negatives are made for printing-out paper and tend to be dense and contrasty, which doesn’t work well with standard black and white paper. I will probably scan some of that work and have it in digital prints. It was an extraordinary paper, but the pleasure and ease of putting a negative in a print frame and taking it outside in the garden to make a print is over.

Now I need to have drum scans made, the files resized and adjusted and have professional prints made. The only remaining hands-on activity now is in making the picture and developing the film. From then on it is machines and computers.

In many of your images, you obviously used a slow shutter speed; on occasion, people would move through the scene and become blurred, even ghostlike. Was this intentional?

That often happens, somewhat by chance. But, seeing how it worked — not that I like the term “ghosts” — a slow shutter speed does warp time. You could read it as human experience is impermanent and the natural world is more permanent, which I am fine with. There are a lot of ways it could be interpreted. I don’t want someone saying these are ghosts of the ancestors. Occasionally I would make a picture where I wanted it to happen, but more often than not it was an element of the situation. What I had hoped would stay still and not move, would suddenly take off. I have come to accept this. On my first trip to India I tried to make pictures that excluded people. That became difficult as there would be so many people and curious kids. People didn’t understand. Stuff just happens. I don’t believe you can be a control freak, especially in India. It was a good experience for me to accept what happens and sometimes you are given a gift, but you have to be there, you have to put yourself out there. You cannot demand that it will happen.

Would you consider yourself a technical expert?

I do have some technical skills but I am not a great technician.

What are you doing now? Do you still teach full time?

Yes. I teach graduate and undergraduate classes. I don’t teach technical courses. This summer I went to Peru for five weeks as a workshop leader, the first three weeks with a group of students from San Francisco Art Institute, and the last two co-teaching an open workshop with my friend, Lonnie Graham. We went to some astounding places, the ocean, mountains, and Machu Picchu. I had not been there since 1984. We had a very good outfitter, who got us around, and helped us with the language, and logistics.

I strive to teach a love for photography and the importance of being engaged in the world. I think photography creates the opportunity for a relationship between the individual artist and where his or her curiosity leads… It just has to be done seriously.

I strive to teach a love for photography and the importance of being engaged in the world. I think photography creates the opportunity for a relationship between the individual artist and where his or her curiosity leads… It just has to be done seriously.

How do you conduct travel workshops?

I offer a safe, well-planned introduction to a place and also make sure students have the freedom to explore. I will have follow-up with them when we get back in the classroom. If they were shooting digitally, I could see their work on a computer screen. A number of them, however, were shooting film. I wouldn’t see the results until later and then I would work with the students to help them find their strongest voice, or an idea, and maybe it is not just one idea. And then we help them edit in sequence and help them bring out the richness of their work.

How do you help a student find his or her voice?

Partly it is getting to know them, what other kind of art they resonate with, and looking at a lot of their work. Then it is helping them organize their work so that it is a little bit more fluent. It takes a long time to develop a voice. There is no easy answer to this question.

What do you stress in your teaching?

Some people just love being out in nature and have an interest in the landscape, for instance, and that seems very true to their psyche and their concern for the planet, whether they go to the documentary form, or ecological or poetic fashion. For me, as a teacher, it doesn’t matter — just so long as they are involved deeply. This applies to people who want to take pictures of their own family or self-portraits. It doesn’t matter. It just has to be done seriously.