The Sunday interview: 5 question for Mark White

Today I will present Mark White, the author of Eye on I: Projections of a Street Photographer. Mark is a photographer and a writer creative.

1. Why photography?

I spent most of my adult life with the written word – I was a reporter for a minute, a freelance writer and editor for years, a poet (with an MFA and poetry journals to prove it!), a bookseller, a publisher, and an owner of a content marketing company. Once I started publishing and entered the business side of writing, my brain zeroed in on the logistics. As a result, the right side of my brain atrophied. Eighteen f’n years of atrophy.
At some point in those eighteen years, I raised a family. One day, around 2016, my toddler kid asked me from the back seat of our car to “Please keep your words inside your head.” We’d been driving several miles and I realized I’d been carrying on a conversation with myself, talking aloud to myself, totally oblivious to my surroundings and my son. The next day I bought an Olympus Pen-F. I figured that if I committed to learning photography, it would force me to remain present and notice the world around me. And it worked. Fabulously, in fact.

2. What is your favourite gear? (camera, lens)

I started with the Olympus system but transitioned to Fuji. I love the ergonomics of the
Olympus for the street, but the manual controls of the Fuji XT3 (and the color rendering) have captured my heart. For analog, I’ve got a beautiful a Slovenian-made pinhole and an Olympus OM4, which I like a lot.

3. What are your favourite subjects to photograph?

I’m something of a depressive. In all honesty, I’ve recently started on a daily dose of anti-depressants. TMI, and for that I apologize. But since my photography practice took a serious turn while I was documenting Seattle’s homeless crisis during Covid, and then through the months of political unrest, I noticed that I had little ability to remain focused long term on my projects, and that my subjects were all extremely dark, literally and figuratively.
The medication has so far helped me immensely in maintaining longer term concentration on my projects. I’m actually finishing projects now, and I no longer feel overwhelmed by my endless “idea” list. It’s also opened me up to “lighter” subjects. I even took a series of sunrise photos recently! This is way too many words to say that I don’t have a “favorite” subject, per se, but my go-to tone in my photography has tended to be “dark.” Social documentary dark; visually dark; street edgy; dark coloration. I don’t know that this will change dramatically, but I’m hoping that over time, with my newfound ability to stay focused, I can gain a clearer, more consistent “voice” in my photography.

4. Can you name a few of your favourite photographers?

Mary Ellen Mark has influenced me the most. Hands down. With this finer print: The movie “Streetwise,” which her husband Martin Bell made, and which was based on Mark’s Life magazine essay on street kids in Seattle, changed my life. It showed me a few things. First, it was possible to make the camera invisible to the subject. There is little separation between the film maker and the kids, just as there is little separation between Mark and her subjects. You don’t see that in Arbus, and definitely not in Parr. With many photographers who photograph on the “fringes,” a certain “circus” or “storefront” element comes through: Look at these freaks! Let’s feel sorry for them! Virtue signal! Mark never judged. That’s important to me. It’s not easy to do. Which leads me to the second lesson “Streetwise” gave me: it’s possible to bring a sense of
vitality and humanness to wretched situations. It’s possible to humanize anyone with a camera. It takes an investment of time and empathy, but it can be done.

5. What can Substack community expect from you/your publication in the future?

I think of Substack in two ways: First, it’s a community of photographers who let me play with them. That feeling of belonging is huge to me. Secondly, my subscribers and followers are my greatest test market. NOT in the sense of teaching me how to make money, but in the sense that I trust that they are honest in their comments and “likes.” I am all over the map with my newsletters – partly as a result of my inability to focus, but also because I want to explore. I’m not ready to settle into a “type.” Substackians seem to be honest with me. I like that. So I’ll continue to explore, dissect the feedback, and explore some more. And in the coming weeks and months, I’ll be posting a lot more analog – darkroom prints as well as cyanotypes.