LAist Interview: Max S. Gerber

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Max S. Gerber has captured janitors, scientists, porn stars, Willie Nelson, Carrie Fisher, Tim Hawkinson, Jim Jarmusch and many more. He's a photographer who does editorial portraiture, and his website features engaging editorializing of its own. His photos have appeared in Time, Newsweek, the UK's Sunday Telegraph Review, the LA Weekly, LA Magazine, LA Citybeat and more. Later this year, his photo series My Heart vs. the Real World will be published as a book.

Age and occupation:
32 - Professional Photographer.

How long have you lived in LA, and where?
Most of my life — I was born in LA — though I was 3 months premature and supposed to be born later in New York. My parents were bicoastal, so I grew up in LA and New York City. Mostly in New York for elementary school, than LA for mid/high school and college. I moved back to New York for a year and a half after college and instantly hated being there. Couldn't wait to get back.

I grew up near Westwood, then lived for several years in Culver City, then for five years in Echo Park and now I've been in Pasadena for about the last two years. So far, of all the places I've lived, this is the best one. I absolutely love Pasadena.

You do a lot of portraits. How much time do you spend with your subjects?
It can be as little as fifteen minutes, or as long as a couple hours. Ideally i have around 45 minutes to 1.5 hours with someone. Most magazines like variety in their selections, so I usually have to do two or three different setups. That becomes difficult in some situations with impatient subjects.

I got one and a half minutes with Dennis Kucinich when he was running for president. It was in the middle of a peace rally and it was so loud that even from six feet away he couldn't hear a word I was saying. I doubt he even has any recollection of doing the picture.

The publicist can often be my great enemy. The goal of publicists seems to have changed significantly in the last several years, probably as the celebrity culture has changed. Publicists used to want to help you get a great result, as they knew that that would reflect well on their clients. Nowadays it just seems like the publicist's only goal is to remove any shred of inconvenience from the client. That usually involves picking highly restrictive locations, and cutting the session off after 5 to 10 minutes.

Still, there are a handful of good publicists out there who really work hard with the photographer to make things happen. For those very few I am quite grateful, and glad to know them.

The rest of you all are going straight to hell, though. Don't get me started on this, I can rant for hours.

What's the difference between and editorial photographer and other kinds of photographers?
Well, editorial photography just refers to the end use of the pictures — that is, for editorial purposes, to accompany articles in magazines and newspapers. Most specifically, I work mostly in editorial portraiture. As most magazine articles are interviews with or profiles of people, that works out well. I also do commercial portraiture for corporations, record companies and universities.

But this kind of photography would be distinct from, say, fine art photography which has the gallery and/or private collector as the end client.

I'm usually trying to balance the notion of first successfully illustrating the story/article that my photo will accompany, and secondly to make a picture that I like enough to look at again and carry around with me forever. One thing I never thought of much when I started all this is that I'd actually have to PUT all these negatives and prints and digital files somewhere. I used to think my CD collection was a pain to move, but that's nothing. So now I figure that if I have to hold on to this stuff forever I might as well like some of it.

What's your favorite thing about editorial photography?
I've always said that I love my job, but I hate my business. The business of photography is terrible. Perhaps this is a side effect of most photographers getting trained as artists (if they get trained at all) and not businesspeople. I have friends who work "normal" office jobs in environments where there are standard acceptable practices of business, and they're all appalled at how the photo industry works. It'd be funny if I wasn't in the middle of it.

But the most interesting thing about my job is that I get to do things that regular people will never get to do. I get to meet a dizzyingly vast assortment of people. My average job lasts one day, so there's always something different. From convicts to rock stars and movie stars, to CEOs, to alien abductees. . . I've seen all of them. I even got to fake a kidnapping once.

Is there anything essential to a good editorial shoot?
A cooperative subject sure helps a lot. That's not as easy as it might seem. Most people hate having their picture taken. Really, if you DO like having your picture taken, I usually consider that a character flaw. For most of my subjects I'm the media equivalent of going to the dentist. They don't really want to do it, but they know they have to, and they're willing to put up with only as much as they deem absolutely necessary.

Sadly, a great many of my shoots were done inside of fifteen minutes. Occasionally that works, but it's not the best way to guarantee results.

If I have a decent location, a cooperative subject and enough time, I can get something good out of nearly anybody.

Then again, what I consider to be a successful portrait may end up being something the subject hates. It's important to understand that we all have different goals in any given situation. Often the most interesting aspects of a person are not the most flattering. It's helpful that I'm generally working for a third party, and not doing fashion/beauty work. One thing I try to avoid like the plague is any situation where I'm being paid by the person in front of the camera. In those situations, no matter how insistent the subject is that they want something "edgy," it's always, always, always about vanity. Which is instantly boring.

Tell us about your project My Heart vs. The Real World.
Well, like I said before, my average job lasts about a day. it's very rare that I get to revisit subjects or spend any significant time with them. I knew I wanted to do that, but wasn't sure how, exactly.

I was born with a congenital heart defect, and I've had a pacemaker since I was eight years old. All my life I'd never met anyone else my own age or younger with a similar problem. It can be kind of isolating. As a kid I got pamphlets from the doctor's office that always looked the same: a grey haired, elderly couple, either bicycling or jogging on a pristine mountain road. Nothing I saw ever looked very familiar to me, and I certainly never saw anyone in a doctor's waiting room who looked like me. One brochure I they gave me from the pacemaker manufacturer had a line that said "Patients with these devices can expect to live up to fifteen years!" I was eight. Now granted, that was when the technology was just being perfected, but still. . . .Not encouraging.

I think we all want to be around other people who are like us — people who we hope will "get" us. So I thought this would be a good project to do. I wanted to find kids who were like me when I was a kid. I wanted to make something so that other heartkids could see something familiar. There are a bunch of books out that deal with pediatric cancer, but heart disease is the Fat Old White Man's disease, and nobody pays much attention to those of us who aren't old and fat. Even the books on pediatric cancer patients always seem to talk down to them. I don't want to talk down to kids, and I don't want to give them a false view of what to expect. I take pictures of kids just like they were adults. They're often serious pictures. I hate smiling just because you're in a picture. It's automatically insincere and uninteresting.

Ultimately, I found ten families, some in California and some in Arizona. I interviewed them, and photographed them for a period of about four years. I watched kids grow up. I got to be involved in their lives. I went to band practices, swim classes, bar mitzvahs, birthday parties and doctor's appointments. I went through four surgeries with them, and two funerals.

Foolishly, I thought I'd find all the kids and shoot it and finish it all up within six months. Didn't quite work out that way. It took me almost a year and a half to find the subjects. Then another three years or so to finish shooting it. It was very difficult keeping tabs on all those families, AND trying to keep my own work going at the same time, so I could continue paying for rent and film and such.

The book was excerpted in the LA Weekly a few years back, and in Doubletake Magazine. The LA Weekly spread (which was the cover and eight pages inside, I think) won the C. Everett Koop Media Award, was submitted for a Pulitzer prize, and was the runner up for Best Photo Essay from the LA Press Club for that year.

As it stands now, the book will be published, hopefully sometime later this year, by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press. That's a publishing division of Cold Spring Harbor Labs, a genetics research facility run by James Watson, who won a Nobel prize (along with Francis Crick) for discovering the structure of DNA.

What inspired you to become a photographer?
Honestly? I can't draw.

I was a music and philosophy major in college. I was in a band with a guy who never had time to practice because he was doing his senior thesis in photography. In the middle of my freshman year I needed another class to fill out my schedule, and found an old camera. I figured hell, if he can do it, I can do it.

It just sort of stuck from there. Music became less and less satisfying to me, as it became increasingly difficult to get three or four people in the same room at the same time over and over again. Photography was something I could do relatively by myself.

During the summer between my junior and senior year in college I went to New York to intern for Mary Ellen Mark. That really sealed the deal, and changed the way I thought of the whole process of taking pictures, and of what pictures can do.

I started working for magazines several months before graduating college. I had a rolleiflex twin lens camera and a tripod. No lights. No training. My school didn't have much of a program, so I didn't even know how to turn on a strobe light. I would go on assignments and pray for big windows.

What do you think about digital vs. film?
I'll say this: I'm a purist who loves digital.

I'll take a picture with a cereal box, if you gave it to me.

I've been shooting digitally for the past couple years and I absolutely love it. For magazine work, especially. It makes perfect sense for editorial shooting. Publishing deadlines being what they are, digital is a great blessing. I work for several publications in Europe. I used to shoot film for them. My life is much easier since shooting those jobs digitally. Anyone who says the quality isn't there should look at some of my prints. I like computers, too, so that helps. Just so long as it's an apple.

Do you have a favorite/least favorite place to shoot in LA?
If I had my way, I'd always go to the subject's home. Even better than their office, usually. A person's environment can often say a lot about them. It's usually a place they feel comfortable in, and as an added bonus, can usually show up on time too.

The worst place to shoot in LA: The Chateau Marmont. God, I hate that place. Publicists always pick it for interviews since it's snooty and private. But it's so private that they demand several thousand dollars as a location fee to shoot there. The typical location budget of magazines I work for: Zero.

I've taken a lot of pictures in the street behind the Chateau Marmont. What a pain.

Do you have a favorite LA photographer, or favorite photo/s of Los Angeles?
That's tough. Photographers move around a lot. They tend to go where the subjects are. Also, when you say "LA Photographer" you immediately think of celebrity, which doesn't hold too much interest for me.

I think the world of Mary Ellen Mark, but she lives in New York. Chris Buck is someone I admire greatly, but he's also predominantly in New York. Greg Heisler is another (also New York).

I'm not answering this question very well, am I?

My mother takes a ton of snapshots, and some of them are pretty good (mostly of the family pets). She lives in west LA. So there you go. She owns a Max Yavno photo from the 1960s (i think) of a gas station in LA that i've always thought was pretty good.

Describe your best LA dining experience.
That's tough, too. Too many to name. I love the farmer's market at 3rd and fairfax, but since moving to Pasadena, haven't been there very much. Barbecue King on Sunset/Figueroa is excellent. I got their tri-tip sandwich, brought it home, took one bite and unplugged my phone so i wouldn't be disturbed. Canter's matzo ball soup (with carrots). Tiger tails from Donut Man in San Dimas. Burritos from El Pavo in Upland. $1 fish tacos at Rubios. Asakuma sushi on Wilshire and Barrington. Chipotle's braised beef. Chili My Soul in the valley deserves the patronage of everyone in the world. Anything that combines the words "Brazilian" and "Barbecue" is fine by me. Any place that cooks things slowly for hours and hours.

At the post-nuptial party of a good friend of mine they had hired a churascuria to send a guy over to barbecue some meat brazilian style. That was one of the best things ever.

LA has the best:
Cheap mexican food. The best places are the ones without names - just called "Burritos Y Tacos."

I was in Michigan once. You can't get a burrito there to save your life. Burritos in New York cost nine dollars, which is just plain criminal.

You haven't really lived in LA until:
You understand why any number beginning with (818) is funny.

What is your LA pet peeve?
Not terribly original. . . traffic. It's not uncommon for me to drive four or five hundred miles a week. Often I think about how much more productive I could be if I wasn't just sitting in my car for hours on end.

Also, it'd be nice if it rained more. I hate the sun. Give me overcast, any and every day and I'd be happy.

What is the "center" of LA to you?
I have to say, I'm partial to my own office. Anywhere I have all my stuff is kind of my center, and where I want to be. I'm happier sitting in my home office than probably anywhere else. My girlfriend used to complain that I go to work before I even get dressed in the morning. It's that arduous twenty foot commute. I envy graphic designers and illustrators who have home offices AND don't actually have to leave them very often. I drive way too much.

It's 9:30pm on a Thursday. Where are you, and where are you going?
I'm afraid I'm very boring. I don't like going to clubs, and I don't drink. After photographing musicians for so long, going to concerts or shows often feels more like work than entertainment. I'm not terribly fond of being around large groups of people. I like going out to eat, but most likely on a typical Thursday night I'm at home, in my office. Which, really, is ideal for me.

Where do you want to be when the big one hits?
It can be said that my great flaw is that I'd rather be at home than anywhere else. I hate traveling so much that I probably wouldn't even want to do it to avoid an earthquake. Every time a glass falls off a shelf in Encino somewhere and it makes the news, my sister (who lives in New York) calls me in a panic telling me I should move immediately. A few years ago an earthquake actually hit New York. I was quite pleased.

However, I tend not to be terribly concerned with things that are a) unknown, b) inevitable and c) unlikely to occur during my lifetime.

But, since we're on the subject, I'd rather like the Big One to hit someplace else that could use the excitement more than us. Maybe Kansas? Or Guam. They could use a little action every once in a while over there. I missed an extra credit question on a high school biology exam once, where the answer was "Guam." It'd serve them right.