Sometimes, you meet a fellow artist, have a chance to speak with them about their work and creative process, learn about their background, and immediately become inspired by what they are doing and how they navigate this sometimes convoluted and challenging art-based career. This happened last summer, and thankfully, I’ve stayed in occasional contact when it suddenly dawned on me that others should know about them, too. This person is Jeffrey Sass, an artist and educator in St. Louis, Missouri. I felt the word should be spread, not just about his artist offerings, but about a new endeavor that goes well beyond what most photographers strive for in their life’s accomplishments. This is an individual with hopes and dreams that transcend his own needs and has the ambition to travel throughout his local community and beyond.

In this inspirational interview, we get a chance to learn about Sass’s latest body of work, Internal Views, which is a progression of past work. We also become informed about his journey, which started as an educator and has now blossomed into creating a new art space that provides the tools to enable others to grow into their own creative practices. Sass’s latest project, the Brick City Photography Center, will feed the soul and expand the mind of his community in ways not seen before. Sass has some lofty hopes and an enormous amount of work ahead of him, but I can tell you from personal interactions with the man that these are the goals of someone who will succeed in enviable ways. It’s not every day that one has a chance to engage with a person like Sass, as I find what he is working on as inspirational to me as well, and both I and our humble magazine have hopes for future collaboration. And this is what I will always mention as crucial in your own work – collaboration. So take from me and Jeffrey Sass – dream big and allow others to get on board, for it will come back to you in innumerable ways. Have a read and look at what Sass is presenting, and see where you fit into the equation. Reach out and carry on when you have the chance, won’t you?

INTERVIEW

Michael Kirchoff: Do you have any recollection of your first introduction to cameras and photographs? Was your interest in them immediate, or did it take multiple reminders of image-making to reel you in?

Jeffrey Sass: As long as I can remember I have been fascinated with cameras. I loved them before I think I truly understood what they did. I loved the Hit spy cameras that I saw in comic books or as prizes in carnivals that I could never manage to win. I begged for a camera. My first camera was a Diana my grandmother bought for me at Ben Franklin. I was hooked from then on. I don't remember a lot of what kinds of images that I liked, I just know that I used that Diana until I broke it and graduated to an Argus 75.

MK: What is it that you get out of creating photographs? Is there an overriding theme in your work that you feel best represents you as an artist?

JS: I suppose what really drives my work as a photographer is the ability to build worlds. I have always told my students that it is the job of the artist to find beauty where no one else thought of looking. I liked my worlds macro. I took close-ups of things that I found while out for a photo walk. I liked common objects like amber warning barriers that had corroded, or a bit of paint flaking off decay, always beauty in decay. I tried to look for the uncommon in my surroundings. My subjects were always devoid of people, so I suppose if there is a overriding theme to my work it's a world of once wonderful objects that have been overlooked and left to decompose.

MK: Once you’ve achieved finding your particular style or voice, do you ever feel the need to break out and follow a different path?

JS: Finding my voice has been an ongoing thing. I went all over the place from shooting exclusively pinhole to these days where most of what I shoot is on 8x10 x-ray film via a hundred year old Kodak 2D. I've painted my photos, torn them up, sliced them into neat pieces looking for a methodology or technique that I could run with. But that searching always came down to the fact that photography is a very accessible, ubiquitous art form. I've had a chip on my shoulder about folks thinking that they can do what I do, so I kept doing more as if to say, "Do that, (insert expletive)!" I think now that you've asked that another overriding notion here is I was never truly satisfied with a perfect print. I always needed to alter it in some way. Then I discovered mistakes. It began with my leaving some student prints in the fix way too long and them putting them in a water bath and forgetting about them again. I came back to find that much of the emulsion had flaked off. So to get back to your original question, I guess I've been trying on a lot of voices until I found my place in imperfection. It's a blast to go out and shoot stuff like I used to but lately it's not what I want to show. The short answer? I try to break out all of the time, I hope the results end up looking like my way of shooting!

MK: Is there another artistic medium that informs your work and process? Music? Film? Literature, perhaps?

JS: In college I thought of still photography as a way to focus my attention through a lens so I could become a commercial film director. After film school at Boston University I went to New York to see if I could make a career of it there. That's a whole different story, but I loved filmmaking. Someday I'd like to play with experimental filmmaking again. Analog of course.

MK: The work we are showing here is a progression of your last body of work, Katastrophe. Can you tell us a bit about the work and what the intention was behind its creation? I do know that I align with the idea of embracing flaws, so I’m especially interested in your take on this.

JS: My latest body of work is called Internal Views. It is a follow up to the Katastrophe body of work where I played with creatively destroying images and using cyanotype to cover the distressed areas and making assemblages. But that seemed decorative, rather than narrative. I worked two years on the next body of work called Internal Views. It's comprised of 17 framed works and a 12 foot long visual poem called Fragments. The work was born out of an existential crisis of creativity. I knew that I was photographing still lives of objects that I liked, I just wanted to know why. That meant a lot of insomnia, but the objects became symbols for different parts of my creative process. This was my break out as far as direction and voice. I finally had a narrative in my work and ways to tell the story using accidents, frustration at the accidents not working and the elation of discovering what did work. I leave the interpretation of what the symbols mean to the viewer. The intention behind both shows was that I felt that digital photography was sharp and perfect and I knew I didn't want to be either of those things. I believe that we as artists who use photography should differentiate ourselves from perfection by embracing the beauty of the imperfect image. I want to create compelling work that only chemistry, experimentation, and time can create. I take very few notes about my process because I want to keep what I'm doing as fresh as I can and almost unduplicatable. I tried once just to see if I could make pieces that looked alike, but that was a failure. Thankfully.

MK: Do the methods to make this work ever change, or do you keep an open mind about the tools or processes used?

JS: I'm open to anything except using a computer or a printer to make my work. I love learning new processes! I love talking to other artists to see what they think and if they ask, passing on how I did something. I'm not about gatekeeping secret processes! I think Mordencage will be the next thing I tackle. But no digital.

MK: What is it about analog processes that you feel so close to? Are they the necessary component to make any sort of soulful or intentional photograph?

JS: Analog processes are hands on. Some smell quite bad, others may hurt you. I love it all. It's visceral, in my opinion a truly sensual set of almost alchemical things to play with. I like to play with and handle all my toys, not keep them inside of a computer. I really think that I can get to the heart of an emotion by distressing the image, or overprinting on it. Analog processes can be touchy and frustrating, but that's what makes them worthwhile. I once read that Jackson Pollack works can be identified by the fingerprints or cigarette ash that is left in the paint. That makes for a soulful work of art, the kind I hope to attain someday.

MK: I know that you are also an arts educator. When I first met you you were also working at the Jacoby Arts Center in Alton, Illinois. Is that still the case and what do you feel was the most important part of working with students in an organization like that?

JS: I believe that the universe meant for me to be a teacher. It was and is the most difficult and rewarding thing that I have ever done. (Aside from being a parent.) With the exception of my first classroom, they all had a barely dark enough darkroom. There's nothing like the face of a kid who sees his image appearing from a blank piece of paper for the first time. It never gets old! The Jacoby Center, sadly is no more. The community darkroom and film photography project ran for almost a year and it was a blast. At the beginning I stressed that anyone could learn how to shoot, develop and print. We ran about 100 students through our workshops and darkroom classes, from tweens to seniors. The thing that I stressed to my students was that they were all capable of creating beautiful work, but the fun was once they had gotten the hang of making good prints was subverting them with a bit of chemical image alteration. It was a way of showing them that even their mistakes, the overexposed prints could be bleached and redeveloped to become something totally different. It was fun giving them permission bend the rules.

MK: You have an immense project in the works that will enhance and strengthen your local arts community, called the Brick City Photography Center in St. Louis, Missouri. When we originally spoke, this was something discussed but you had not quite moved it beyond its initial concept. I do know that know, however, you have already made great strides in getting this incredible idea off the ground. What can we expect from this new venture?

JS: Brick City. The passion project. It's hard to be an evangelist for film photography if you don't have anywhere to demonstrate how cool it is. I see the Brick City Photography Center as almost a shrine, a holy place. It will contain a gallery to display the work of the membership, a studio space with lights and other equipment, an alternate process lab and classroom, and of course a nice big darkroom! I see it as a place that will welcome anyone who wants to try this medium, regardless of experience of economic situation. It will be a place to gather, display, and discuss this artform. I see it as not only preserving the darkroom, but as a place where it is advanced. To quote Captain Kirk, "In every revolution there is one man with a vision." I hope that Brick City Photography Center can be a place where a movement starts, where artists are free to experiment, combine and create their own visions using what the darkroom can deliver. I hope to be that visionary, not because I want stuff named after me but because I think that changing how we define a photograph is a necessary thing to keep the analog processes and the darkroom alive. There will be no photo snobs if I can help it.

MK: What is the ultimate goal you have for the Brick City Photography Center? Also, how do you see artists locally and nationally engaging with this new center of creativity?

JS: The ultimate goal of Brick City if everything on my Mary Poppins list comes to pass? First of all it serves this community, as much of it as we can. It should be a place for people to discover parts of themselves because art can be a transformative force in a life. I want it to be a place where artists want to come to visit and teach what they know. I want Brick City to be the kind of place where artists teach artists so that we can produce the new innovators and inspire others to do the same. I want it to create a sense of urgency, because if we just aspire to make pretty prints, then what have we done to preserve the artform? We must create a movement of artists that re-invent analog photography in order to preserve it. Katastrophe is a philosophy. Besides creating beautifully imperfect work, Katastrophe encourages artists to create their own version of photography by saying its okay to add stuff or take things away from the work to make it something more. It means to ruin or undo. At Brick City I hope to create a place that calls to the folks who want to come and do just that with a bunch of others that want to do the same thing. Is there a formula or methodology to begin? One can start by tearing a beautiful print in half and then imaging what will (if anything) they can create to replace the missing piece. Or drop a fresh print into some bleach and see what a combination of bleaching and redeveloping does. Then maybe tearing that print in half too. Katastrophe (in ancient Greek) means to ruin or undo. Brick City will be the place for that.

MK: In the midst of starting a new photography center, I understand you also have a new body of work you are currently working on. Care to enlighten us further about this?

JS: With getting the hell out of Alton and redistributing my creative life over two storage units and my studio, new work has been slow in coming. I can say that I've always been fascinated with doors and windows, what they do and what they can be interpreted to mean. This way I can get back to my decay roots and see where that goes. I'm not going to retire my fish, just give him another pond to play in. One thing I learned working in that spacious darkroom we had in Alton is that I don't always need to use a big format to make the images I need, I suppose that was a self-imposed limitation that I'm going to put in the past.

MK: As a final inquiry, is there anything else you’d like to touch upon in regards to the work you are doing as either an artist or Director of your newly designed organization, Brick City Photography Center?

JS: As far as new Brick City stuff is concerned, I've been fortunate enough to meet a non-profit art specialist who is way smarter than me in how you create a dedicated support base and fund a new NPO. She is really our first dedicated volunteer that is going to help us put together a business plan and other things that make people with money feel more comfortable donating to our cause! Hopefully in the near future, Brick City Photography Center will be sponsoring a series of artist talks and museum events to create awareness for artistic approaches to analog photography and get us some true believers as well! She truly has an impressive pedigree of accomplishments and I feel humbled that she wants to see this project become a reality.

GALLERY

ABOUT THE ARTIST

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Michael Kirchoff is a photographic artist, independent curator and juror, and advocate for the photographic arts. He has been a juror for Photolucida’s Critical Mass, and has reviewed portfolios for several fine art photographic organizations and non-profits in the U.S. and abroad. Michael has been a contributing writer for Lenscratch, Light Leaked, and Don’t Take Pictures magazine. In addition, he spent ten years (2006-2016) on the Board of the American Photographic Artists in Los Angeles (APA/LA), producing artist lectures, as well as business and inspirational events for the community. Currently, he is Editor-in-Chief at Analog Forever Magazine, Founding Editor for the photographer interview site, Catalyst: Interviews, Contributing Editor at One Twelve Publishing, and the Co-Host of The Diffusion Tapes podcast.

Connect with Michael Kirchoff on his Website and Instagram!