John Paul Caponigro
Solano, 1998, Giclée print, 29 x 33 inches.

The interview was conducted by Ilana Stanger of TheArtBiz.com.

You came to photography through drawing. What was the process behind that?

Well, picture making is in my family. My mom is a painter and a graphic designer. My father is a photographer. So it seemed natural to start making pictures. I had access to crayons and paint before film, and I pursued drawing and painting through college [Yale] where I double majored in art and literature. That was a good decision because picture making is about both mastering the craft and having something to say with it. I write. I have conversations with artists [For both "View Camera" and "Camera Arts" magazines Caponigro writes, "Dialogs," conversations with artists--Ed.] Without a broad education, and the writing skills that came along with it, I might never have written my first book.

I didn't pursue an MA degree. I figured that if I wanted to be an artist and not an art teacher, I had to just get out there and do it. I did commercial work and odds and ends, but I kept my focus. During that time the computer came to me. I was chosen to be an artist-in-residence at Kodak's CCI, a state of the art digital training center. That was a great stroke of luck. I'd seen digital technology in the '70s when my mom was overseeing Elliot Porter's "Intimate Landscapes" book. I got a tour of the digital retouching room and was immediately thrilled with what I saw. I thought about what could happen if this equipment was put in the hands of a fine artist rather than a commercial retoucher. But those machines cost millions of dollars. I wondered if it would ever happen.

When I saw what Apple Macintoshes and Photoshop were doing in 1990 I realized it was doing as much and more than those machines and cost just a few thousand dollars. It was a dream come true, and it changed the direction of my career permanently.

In the introduction to your book, "Adobe Photoshop Master Class," you relate how Photoshop has affected not just what you do with your images, but how you think about images in general. Could you expand on this?

Sometimes the process or medium determines a way of thinking about or approaching a subject. It can foster a particular way of understanding things. Photoshop is so many things for so many people. It supports many ways of thinking. One of the things that fascinates me the most about working this way is that you really can approach image making in many ways, simultaneously. When you make an image with a camera conventionally, you usually frame the subject and then capture it very quickly, typically in 120th of a second. You crop out some things, include others, find a critical angle and a decisive moment. Painters may not paint all the things they see. Or they may paint a picture from memory, including things they have seen at other times or in other places, or even things they have imagined. Often they paint what they see with the mind's eye. When I approach image making from the perspective of traditional photography I make very different kinds of images than when I approach it from a painting perspective.

Photoshop provides a meeting place for both disciplines for me. Usually I start with sketches. Some I've made in the field, others I've drawn from a dream, where I wake up and turn on the light and quickly sketch something, still others are created from my transparencies, or on rare occassions arise on the screen after I've scanned the film I shoot in the field. I make sketches of an image at low resolution before making the final high resolution image, much like sketches made before painting the final canvas. And the prints I make are quite a lot like watercolors, they're ink on paper, often the same watercolor paper I used to paint with. I not only compose pictures before I capture them with the camera's eye, but also afterwards. I consider what I do painting with photographs, not painting from photographs or painting on photographs. At times it can be a bit like confronting a blank canvas. Almost everything is up for grabs. You can change proportion. You can change color. Photoshop is an am azing tool for color. The book I'm currently writing is driven by my background in painting. Most photographers put color management before color theory, but I work the other way around.

Do you support yourself on work that you sell?

I don't support myself on the sale of prints exclusively. A small percentage of artists exist solely on the sale of their prints. Ansel Adams did commercial work. I do some commercial work, mostly for corporations that are interested in using one of my existing images, but sometimes on assignment. Often that's for coporations in related industries like Canon, Kodak, Adobe, Epson, and Apple. I also write. I write for three national magazines ("View Camera," "Camera Art," and "Photo Techniques"--Ed.). I recently wrote my first book. Technically oriented books sell more than artist monographs tend to. My dad nearly fell over when I told him what the initial run was, he'd never heard of such a large first printing for an art book. I also teach at workshops around the country and even internationally.

Does teaching impact your work?

It does. I wouldn't have written "Adobe Photoshop Master Class" without my students. Teaching keeps you sharp. Students each have different needs. If I weren't challenged by my students to explore new areas I wouldn't know as much as I do. With both the teaching and the conversations with artists it's fascinating to watch the creative process unfold and to watch how so many people approach the same tools so differently. Vision is what counts most.

What makes you seek out those conversations with artists, and what are you hoping to teach by publishing them?

I'm not sure "teach" is the right word. Maybe in the process of an interesting conversation something worthwhile can be revealed. After college I moved to Maine. A local newspaper there featured a regular interview with an artist in Q & A format. I tried my hand at that. Because I was an artist I understood the artists' processes and concerns. Not all artists can verbalize what they're doing or what their work means, because they're primarily visual people, they're not writers. I found that they appreciated my insight and ability to help them shape an interesting statement about their work.

In a sense it's a way of putting an extra 10 cents into the verbal environment that we create around pictures. There are books, criticism, reviews--we say a lot about pictures, and people take cues about what a picture is or means and how they should approach pictures based on what they've read about them, while most artists would say it should remain a primarily visual experience. We don't hear directly from the artist enough. We live in interesting times. We talk so much. Currently I primarily speak with photographers, and if you look at all the dialogs you see fascinating things being said about what photography is and can be. It's fascinating to see how many similar things they say and yet how different each photographer is, and how different the photographs they make are.

You also have a column, 'The Fine Art of Photoshop,' in "Photo Techniques," and your Adobe Photoshop Master Class appears monthly on apple/creative/digitalimaging.com. How do you do all this?

That's what I ask myself. It's a very full schedule. The one good thing is it is forcing me to explore new areas that I wouldn't explore on my own, some of which are quite revealing to me. But it is too busy sometimes. One plus of being so busy is it's good visibility. All of the things I do each have something different and they're all worthwhile doing. Diversity can be distracting, but I've found a way to put each component to work positively for my career as a whole. They each feed the larger whole.

Do you work alone?

I used to work alone. This last year I've had someone (Zeb Ellis) help me in the studio, creating files and making prints and helping with tasks in the studio. In the field I'm mostly alone. Sometimes my wife comes along and sometimes my assistant, but I'm primarily out in nature to explore. If it's not always a solitary experience, it is always a very personal experience. I like to explore. I like to lose myself in nature. Andre Gide said, "To make new discoveries you have to first lose sight of the shore."

My wife runs my career--she makes sure I don't forget a deadline, she calls the editors, she stays in touch with galleries, she sends out proposals to corporate collections and museums. She handles managing the business so I can focus on production. If I had to do that, I could not do all that I do. Having someone in the studio is also helpful. I couldn't have written the book in so short a time without help. When I work I first make low resolution files so I can experiment with ideas and work quickly. For the final high resolution versions my assistant will help me get everything into place. It definitely saves a lot of time.

In your series, "The Sensual Land," you call for a return to non-Western ways of looking at the earth--recognizing land and man as interdependent and sympathetic. How were you drawn to this issue?

Both my parents are interested in spiritual, or esoteric, issues. I grew up in the Southwest. Native American culture has a very strong presence there. I've always been interested in spiritual art, quite often that's art done for religious purposes. Egyptian sculpture, Hindu miniatures, Islamic and Zen calligraphy, the cathedrals in Europe.

In 1984 I saw a show on primitivism in New York where they put famous Modernist paintings and sculpture --Picasso, Ernst --side by side with the primitive artifacts that had influenced them. Many were artifacts drawn directly from the artist's own collections of "primitive" artifacts. I left with a powerful feeling that the artists who had gained no recognition and didn't consider themselves artists had created more lively objects than those who had and did.

I use the camera and a computer-- really sophisitcated Western tools. The challenge is to keep my work lively and not just sophisticated.

I'm also interested in the natural sciences. When I was a kid my mom threatened that if I got one more fish tank she'd fill up my room with water and lock the door. I've always been interested in ecology and environmental issues. It's ironic, because I work on a computer and I'm interested in primitive art. I use machines that involve industrial waste, and I'm interested in ecology. But digital photography may actually be greening of photography. It eliminates a lot of chemical waste.

In the introduction to "Adobe Photoshop Master Class," you write that, for image making in general: "First be mindful of what can be done, ask next what you want to do, seek out ways it has been done by others, and then do it your own way." Was it difficult for you to forge your own artistic path in the wake of your parents' careers?

My parents laid a tremendous foundation for me, so in that sense, no. They were always supportive. Neither one of them made me feel that their acceptance or respect for me would be based on my becoming an artist. People tend to overlook my mother's influence on me, perhaps because I'm not a graphic designer. My father's name is Paul Caponigro and mine is John Paul Caponigro. Often there's a confusion of identity. For years people used to say to me "How can you be so young? Didn't you do this piece?" Now its nice, because they're also coming up to my father and saying, "I really love the conversations you're doing, and I can't believe you're working digitally now."

Influence is inevitable -- for all of us. There is a difference between imitation and emulation. The trick is to turn that influence into something very personal. You draw from a number of sources and then search for your own voice.

What advice would you give to artists who are just beginning to produce serious work?

I'd recommend they learn as much as they can about the art business and business in general. They should also be clear about their objectives and what they're willing to do and not willing to do. Once they've sorted that out, just stick with it. Woody Allen said, "90% of success is just showing up." So many talented people aren't recognized. Some don't stick with it long enough. You need to have talent, hard work, and luck. It should be pick two out of three, and for the lucky few it is, but most of us need all three. That said, if you stick with it and keep working hard, I think you can engineer some of your own luck.

There are so many paths to choose from, so many ways of doing things, so many exceptions to the rules. It's hard to know where you fit in. People will give you contradictory advice. You have to take it all with a grain of salt and walk your own path. Do your own work, the work you love, and don't react to the market, because as soon as you react to the market and change yourself, the market will change.

Everyone has many resources that can feed into each other. Look for synergy that can arise out of your personal resources. Diversity can be a good thing because if one area has a rough time temporarily, other areas can take up the slack. Things come and go in cycles. Just look at how the art market has changed since the early 1990s. Look at how the photography market has changed in the last 50 years.

What would you warn people about? What mistakes have you made that we might learn from?

I'd encourage them to trust their instincts. If you're going to do really first-rate work it starts with finding your personal voice, and no one can find that for you or tell you how to do that. No one can duplicate your perspective or your passion. Make that your foundation and let everything else follow.

Then stay alert. You'll learn what works for you and what doesn't. You can learn from other's mistakes and successes too. You'll learn to smell a rat. You'll come to know the feel of a snake. But you'll also learn that while there are a lot of unscrupulous people out there, there are also wonderful people, and when you meet them you value them all the more. Don't engage in a famine mentality. There's enough out there for everyone. You can make it happen.

This article was originally created for TheArtBiz.com. It appears on NYFA Interactive courtesy of the Abigail Rebecca Cohen Library.