Ep 002: Katie McCurdy
A SHOT: Can you describe this photo that we’re gonna talk about?
KATIE MCCURDY: I actually took this photo when I was in college. I was a junior in college, so I think it was 2008, which is cool because I feel like all the work I post and see, it’s always recent stuff. It’s nice to go back and have an image that I took over 10 years ago. So this is a photo of my father in a nursing home, sort of, like an assisted-living facility. My grandmother, when I was that age, she couldn’t live on her own anymore, so we had to move her into an assisted-living facility. It was weird because I grew up going to her house all the time and seeing all of her stuff and being so familiar with all of her things and then to have it put into this space that was just so compressed — all of her favorite things in this very tiny room, when I’m used to her house. So seeing her in that space, and then it’s all of her photos of us when we were younger, her TV that she brought from her house, all these little things… It’s just a strange thing to see.
We would go see my grandmother whenever I was home from college. I think it was probably on the weekend. I don’t know. In that moment, I just saw my dad going through her stuff. She was somewhere else, obviously not in the room. It was almost just like a moment where I… I wasn’t like, “Oh, I need to remember this moment,” like I’m cherishing it. It was just sort of like, “Oh, the light is really beautiful.” I don’t know why my dad is in a suit, but he is. It just looks really nice. So I just snapped the photo and kind of forgot about it.
Later in the year, when I was still in college, I was printing images in the color darkroom, and I decided to print that one. I don’t know. I’ve always really loved it. It’s funny; I actually don’t even know where the negative is. I have one print of that image that I have in my house. That’s kind of it. I just recently scanned it and gave it some extra love because I’m using it for a series that I’m working on. But now that I look back on it, it’s kind of crazy because I got to actually really experience that image now, later in life.
My dad had recently moved into an assisted-living facility as well. He recently passed away. I think that’s why I was revisiting that image because I was going through my rolodex of images of him. It’s so crazy 12 years later to look back at that image and remember that moment and then to actively be in my dad’s shoes now, where I have lived that moment. It’s kind of surreal. It’s cool. It’s emotional. It’s good.
How did the impact of it change on you? Twelve years is a long time to revisit something but then also seeing it in a different context now, how does that feel?
I think it’s why I love photography so much. You just shoot in the moment because you’re just like, “Oh, this looks cool,” or “I want to remember.” But it’s almost like I didn’t experience that photo until recently when I had lived through the same thing that my dad was going through with his mom. Again, that’s why I love photography so much because it’s just sort of keeping these things and being able to revisit them later… It’s almost like you don’t understand the image until you can kind of step away and get perspective of it. It’s an image that I really cherish, and you shoot so much, or you shoot someone cool, or you do something for a cool magazine or whatever. But to me, where all that really stems from is just being able to shoot personal work and make things that you can cherish and mean a lot to you. It’s your life; it’s your story. To me, it’s more important than doing a cool [advertising] campaign or a shoot for a magazine.
I think it’s interesting that you actually feel more present in the scene of this photo now because I remember with my own grandparents, when they were in a similar situation, just having this very strong barrier to either understanding or feeling present when I would visit them. Is that something that you recognized at the time?
I wouldn’t say it was hard for me. I think I just didn’t really understand. I was in college. I was busy with other things. I don’t know. My grandmother was very energetic and loud. I would go visit her with my sister. She was really sharp; she was really with it. But she just couldn’t handle a big house anymore and wanted to sell it. That’s sort of where she ended up. I just remember visiting her, and the nurses would pull me and my sister aside and be like, “Your grandmother is so great. She talks to everyone, but you know, she’s drinking too much.” We were like, “What are you talking about? That’s crazy.” She had a mini-fridge, and we opened it up, and it was like, Carlo Rossi jug of wine and a six-pack of Yuengling lager, and we’re like, “Okay.” But also she’s, like, 90. Let her live. Who cares? So she was a firecracker. She was so fun.
So seeing her on our own, just me and my sister, actually, it was a really good time. But my dad, it was a little different because he had Parkinson’s. He really needed 24/7 care. His room, it didn’t have all the little trinkets and things that my grandmother’s room had. It was just very… Sterile’s the wrong word, but it didn’t feel super homey. I spent a day when I was visiting him adding things to the room to try to make it feel more comfortable for him, just bring things that would try to jog his memory so he could connect to the space. It was sort of a different emotional thing.
Also, it’s my grandmother, not my dad, so it was more emotional experiencing it. I remember visiting him and always just thinking about that image I took of him in the same scenario with my grandmother. I kind of was like, “Maybe I should recreate this,” or create my own version of it this time. But I just couldn’t. There was a barrier, like you said. I just couldn’t, and I didn’t want to. I just wanted to experience the moment and not walk away with an image. I don’t know. I just couldn’t. Having that image — I have it hanging up in my house — it just reminds me of time and space and how things change over time and how it comes full circle.
What was your setup for taking this photo? Is it something where you’re always looking to take pictures?
I was in college. When you’re in that space, you’re always trying to shoot. The camera I took that with was a 35mm Canon EOS that my dad had actually given me. He was sort of an amateur photographer when he was younger, and when I was born, a birth gift that I got from my dad, I guess, was that camera. That camera was just so sentimental to me. I still have it. So I was just carrying that around. I literally just had it and took the photo. Like even now when I’m doing personal work and I’ll see something, I’m like, “Oh, I gotta get that photo; I gotta get that shot” and scramble for my camera or try to get it. But that was just I had it, and it was easy. I just took it. Then later looking at it…. I don’t now. It jumped out to me.
How quickly would you have shot this? Would you have set it up and framed it up, or would you just have snapped it?
I think I had the metering on auto. I didn’t have a light meter. I had the internal meter and just went with it. It wasn’t like a “Oh, this is amazing.” I was just like, “The light is really pretty. I like the way it’s hitting the bedsheets. I’m just gonna snap it and move on.” I have more pictures from that day, where we’re having lunch together, and I took some pictures there. It wasn’t like, “Oh, this is so emotion,” or I need to remember this. It was really just superficial, I guess, because I liked the light.
I still have that camera, and I love it so much. I haven’t used it in a while, but when I was in college and using that camera, my dad, he wanted to give me the best. I remember he took the camera and was like, “I sold it to this camera shop to get you a better, newer version of that camera,” and I totally had a meltdown and freaked out and was just like, “Oh, my god. This is so sentimental to me.” I understand that you wanted to give me a better camera, but I get so emotional with photography and things like that. I had a meltdown and made him go to the shop with me and buy it back. But I really glad I did that because I just love it so much.
What did you see in this scene that made you want to take this photo?
I guess it was also a little bit of an emotional moment where it’s me realizing that this house that I had been going to all the time… My grandmother would watch us all the time. And just seeing [the house] condensed, like this whole house of little things that I see every day... You see it every day, and you’re not thinking about it, but when those items and those memories and those pictures and those things are then moved into a different location, it isolates them in this way where you’re not distracted by the fact that you’re in a house. You’re seeing them in a new environment, isolated. I don’t know. It just changes the way you see them. You actually see them. They’re not just these decorative things that are around in a space. You’re focusing on them. You’re seeing them. And I think that seeing all of these things in this space just made me want to take a picture.
And it’s also just... You know, we live in our apartments. Imagine if you had to move into one room, one single room. What would you take? What are the things you would take to live in that one room? It would be hard for me, but you also have to really think about what’s the most important to you, and I just love that it wasn’t her clothes… It was just pictures, pictures of us, framed, lined up in a row on the window sill. It just spoke to me as far as those are things that I care about, that I get emotionally attached to, memories or photos or items. For it to be that’s the thing that she chose to live out the rest of her life looking at, I think that’s really special.
Do you have a favorite item in this room?
The thing I really do like… I like the TV. It’s kind of cut off in this photo, but it really kind of gives you a time stamp of what time it is and her TV that she chose to take, which is, like, 100 years old. I love her weird little porcelain tchotchkes. It’s just such a weird thing that that is what she wanted to have. I guess they felt precious to her. The thing I really love the most is my dad in this photo, if I have to be frank about it. He’s in his suit, probably just finished a work day. He’s going through her mail to make sure she didn’t miss anything. He’s just taking care of her. I think that’s really lovely that he’s there to see her. She’s not even there. He’s just making sure that all her stuff is taken care of.
Yeah, and I think visually for me, the first element of this image that I see is the line of his pants going down to his shoes.
Yeah, and the loafers. I have similar loafers that I wear now. It’s definitely him in that photo. Just now to be him, I was doing that same thing a couple months ago. Me and my dad were so alike in a lot of ways. It’s interesting, first of all, just to take a photo 10 years ago that I still like because obviously, you know, when you’re younger and you’re working and you’re shooting, you just make all this work. And it’s great and you need to, but it’s rare that I go back and I’m like, “Ah, I really love this photo from 10 years ago.” It’s really nice just to have images for myself that are so personal. It feels special. And if other people like it and it’s a strong image, great. But ultimately, when I’m not shooting stuff for other people…
You know, quarantine actually really brought me back to that space, where I wasn’t working for anyone else. Because of that, I finally had a minute to just look around and feel and have some emotion. I was visiting my mom a lot, especially because my dad had passed and my sister was home. We just were there all the time. It gave me this space to actually shoot again, and I shot so much personal work over quarantine, so many images that I now have looked at and just feel so close to and love. It was nice to remind myself that yes, I do shoot commercially, but I shoot commercially because I started shooting personal work. That’s where I started. That’s what it was. And to revisit this photo for you, it feels nice. I feel like, even though I do so many things for other people that I haven’t totally strayed from what I actually care about and what makes me excited about photography.
Do you think anything about this image either implies or conveys ideas of what’s happening outside of the frame?
I don’t know. This image happened in one second. What am I, like, 20, 19? I’m probably just annoyed that we’re still there and wanna leave, and I’m just standing in the doorway, like, “Okay, I guess I’ll take some pictures” because I’m in college. This is actually a moment where… Because, you know, we shoot so many set up, produced, thought-out, all these things that we have to worry about before we get to set, or just even when you’re documenting something. Maybe it happened, and you’re like, “Oh, do that again.” This is actually a true moment that was actively happening to me that I just decided to shoot. Even when I shoot things that are real life, it’s like, “Oh, hold on. Let me run in, and I wanna move this one thing that’s distracting me,” or I wanna move this cord or whatever, the thing that might ruin it for me later. But this is an actual moment of me not being a control freak or worrying about anything. It was just a literal time-stamp shot.
To many people, if they were standing in this room, especially if they were with a parent, they would just kind of see something ordinary in front of them. Do you think there’s power in something ordinary?
Oh, absolutely. Especially since I’ve been home so much with my mom and my sister. I just had a day where I was just like, “I wanna shoot stuff” and my mom has all these silk flowers in vases, and I just look at them all the time. I never thought about it, and then when my dad passed, we got all of these flowers sent to the house. I was just like, “I’m gonna photograph every sympathy flower arrangement that I can.” Just because I wanted to shoot something. And also it felt interesting to see the type of people… what their bouquet was and why. So I shot that, and then I was looking around the house and, for the first time, actually saw these silk flowers in all these different vases, so I took them outside and photographed them as well. It’s so boring but also such a tell of who my mom is and why she has things.
It’s nice if you can see the beauty in something so simple, whether it’s “I like the color of this” or “I like the light.” Something that I look at all the time, maybe I need to look at it in a different way. I just take things for granted when I’m at home so much that when I actually moved out and graduated college and came back, it was like I missed these mundane simple things that I was so used to that I couldn’t really see until I left and came back. Maybe that’s a sentimental thing. I don’t know if it’s interesting to other people, but I think there’s a lot of value in photographing something that maybe just feels so simple to you. There’s a beauty in simplicity. I think it’s really important to take a second and appreciate the simple surroundings that you have, why they exist. You get so used to what it is, but I think it’s important to take a second and appreciate those small things.
In this image, there’s so much filling the room, and I think it would probably still be an interesting image if it was just a still of the room without a person in it. But what effect do you think it gives an image like this when there is the presence of a person?
Obviously without him, it’s all of these things, but to me, he’s also a thing in the room. It’s not necessarily about him. When I look at the photo, I don’t think, “Oh, this is about my dad .” It’s this fixture. He’s another picture frame. He’s just part of the room, in a sense. Having a person in an image, that gives it more of a narrative, a different perspective, for sure, but I don’t know. I think without him it would be a fine photo, but it’s just incomparable to having a person in the room, where he’s actively going through what I now understand as an emotional shift. At the time I wasn’t really thinking about it, but now that I’ve basically been in his actual shoes doing that, I think it creates a more interesting narrative.
What do you think it means to this photo that he’s not posed?
That life is happening. It’s not about a posed photograph or the perfect frame or what you want the photo to be. It’s literally just actually living your life and having a moment and having… I don’t know. People always shoot exciting things or, you know, high points in your life. It’s what you see on Instagram. It’s always a positive thing, but to just actually have this raw emotional moment of what’s actually happening photographed in a mundane, simple way, it’s nice. It feels real, and I think it’s so easy to… Especially what we do, you shoot something, and it looks real, but there are so many other things that are going on. This is actually a real moment that I was experiencing even if I wasn’t realizing the emotional thing that was happening.
How important is the window to this image?
It’s so important. I like that it’s a little backlit. You see what’s going on, but it’s sort of under this veil of the light coming through, where it’s a little less literal maybe. You’re seeing all the things, and things pop out to your eye, like, “Oh, I see that. I understand that. I get that.” But it’s not like being lit from the front with a flash, where you see every little thing. It feels more emotional, or cinematic, I suppose.
How does it make you feel that you can’t see what’s outside the window?
Honestly, fine, because I just want to see what’s inside. I’m sure it’s a parking lot or something boring. It’s actually quite nice that you’re not distracted by what’s outside. You are immediately forced to look around and see what’s inside, and that’s the image. If I’m being picky, normally, it’s like, “Oh, it’s blown out. I want to get the exposure better.” But I think it’s nice that you know that it’s the outside, and the light is illuminating the room to a certain extent. But it would be distracting if you could see what it was.
Would you describe this photo as simple or complex?
Both. It’s a simple image that is complex once you look into the things that are happening. For me, it’s such a simple emotion and feeling, but it has become more complex over time as I have gone through the emotions of my dad and what I had to do during his time in a nursing home, so I think it’s a simple image that becomes complex once you understand why the image exists.
What about this photo feels like a Katie McCurdy photograph?
Oh, I don’t know. When I shoot emotional stuff or personal stuff, I feel like it always references how I shoot a celebrity or someone else where it’s… I don’t want to insert myself or ruin their vibe. I want to receive them, make them feel comfortable, have a moment, but I think it’s about getting the nuance of their personality or what they’re doing. I know who I am, and I know what my deal is. But when I show up to a photo shoot, if it’s fashion... I can do the thing. But when I get to shoot a celebrity or just someone who has an actual story or a nuance, I am way more interested in capturing that story and that nuance than I am inserting myself into it. Having a camera, being a photographer gives you so much access and so much trust that you wouldn’t even normally have in other fields. It feels like such a luxury and a pleasure for me to be able to have that space and that platform to be able to receive or pick up or photograph the nuance of that person or their emotion. It’s way more interesting to me, and I think to others, than my own. If I’m doing personal work, then fine. But with other people, I bring all the things. I can make you feel comfortable and maybe get a certain thing out of you, but ultimately you’re the interesting part of this, so how can we get there with it?
We’ve been talking about something that’s 12 years old. How do you think your eye has changed since you took this photo?
I don’t know if it’s necessarily changed. I think it’s maybe more refined, maybe more grown up. Maybe more in the moment I can anticipate that something might happen or be able to choose better settings or turn on a light in a hallway if I’m trying to get more light in there. But I don’t know if it’s necessarily changed. I think it just has shifted in a way where I’m able to make a quote-unquote better image. In a commercial space or when I’m hired for things, I have shifted in a way where I’m able to execute what the client wants or what needs to happen. But at the core of it, and why I love photography, I don’t think it’s changed. I think it’s the same. And that’s what I’m really grateful for, where I started out, why I love photography and why I love to capture images that essentially I can keep and look at later or think about or have… It all comes from the same place. I don’t think it’s changed. It’s just shifted a bit depending on the type of photo or job.
What place is that that it comes from?
For me, it’s nostalgia. It’s emotion. It’s just purely enjoying the moment and wanting to photograph it and have it. That’s what got me so excited about photography, just being able to have it and look back. How many times have you shot an image that you didn’t think about and then you look back later and you’re like, “Wow, why didn’t I edit it this way?” or “Why didn’t I post it that way?” or “Why didn’t I even care about this image?” You have the luxury of revisiting that purely superficial quality of image.
But also just, I find myself going into autopilot a lot, just like processing emotions or things later in life. In my family I’m the one that’s always harnessing, like, “Okay, are we okay? How can I figure things out? Are we all fine?” So I feel like sometimes I don’t have the luxury of experiencing emotion or things in real time. I process them later, so with photography, I just shoot, when I shoot personal work, and I know it’s a nice image because of the light or because of the technical things that we know. But later, when I get to sit down and have my own space in mind and clarity in emotion in thought, I then can actually experience what had happened or how I feel. And to have that space is so nice. And also to be able to keep it and revisit it, and maybe since then I’ve shifted or the way that I look at it is different.
How has this photo helped you?
I don’t know if it’s helped me necessarily, but I think it’s made me appreciate more. I wouldn’t say I’m someone who takes things for granted because I feel like I’m pretty present about stuff like that, but inherently, you just do. You just live your life, and you do, and you don’t realize it. Not that it’s helped me, but I think that it has made me realize that, dude, time moves so fast and things happen so quickly. You don’t think it does. Literally the other day I was like, “Oh, I’ve been in New York for 10 years.” That feels crazy to me. I feel like I’ve had so many lives. That just makes me stop for a second and realize that, for me, I’m so in a rush to get where I want to go or do what I want to do, to move quickly through life. But this image just makes me realize that, yeah, you’re literally gonna blink your eyes and you’re gonna be there. So enjoy the journey. Enjoy the process. Try to take a second to appreciate and realize… I don’t know. Just take a second. It’s made me realize that things move quickly, and the luxury is really enjoying how you get there.
Interviewed on October 27, 2020.
(This transcript has been edited for brevity.)