Ep 021: Valerie Chiang
A SHOT: So to start, can you describe this photo that we’re going to talk about?
VALERIE CHIANG: This is a photograph of — I would say a friend now but not a friend when it was taken — my friend Abbie in the back of a taxi. I think it was taken February of 2019, somewhere on Park Avenue.
Why were you with her with your camera that day?
I had actually just moved to New York five days prior to this, I think. I just wanted to start shooting right away, basically. I use this casting Web site to find people to photograph. It’s called Casting Networks. It’s great. It’s actually mostly for actors. So I can find a lot of people that I maybe don’t have access to via a traditional modeling agency. So I was just looking for someone to photograph. I put out a casting call, and she responded. And I liked her submission, so I contacted her, and we just met on the street one day and hailed a cab.
Was this the photo you wanted to take, or did this kind of happen within the photos that you were taking?
I just for some reason really wanted to shoot someone in the back of a taxi. I basically had this photo in mind before we met, and I explained to her… She knew what we were doing.
Was this part of many that you were taking that day, or is this your intention for that day, to take this photo?
It kind of was my intention. Whenever I work on a lot of my personal work, I have an idea, and I wanna go out and shoot it. A lot of times, not on this particular day, but a lot of times something else will come out of that idea, and I will go along with it. But it usually just starts as one idea, and I’ll go out and try to do it.
So what’s your setup for when you’re taking a photo like this?
This was a very run-and-gun photo. I usually plan a lot more, but I wanted this to feel spontaneous, which was kind of what we did here. I had one camera with me, and that was it. Maybe I gave her a guideline of what to wear. It was so out of character for me to do a shoot like this. I remember telling her exactly what I wanted to do and explained to her, “Well, we’re gonna hail a cab now and just see how it goes.” For some reason, I had it in my head that we would ask the taxi, and we would get a lot of noes before we found someone who was willing to do this, but I think she was even more eager than I was. She was like, “Alright, let’s go,” and she just put out her hand, and the first taxi that we hailed was it. I remember wanting a particular type of taxi. I think this was like a Prius or something. I wanted something a little more, maybe an older model of car or something a little more classic, but this is the one that it ended up being.
How quickly do you take this photo then?
I mean, the entire shoot, it lasted for maybe 20 minutes. We got in, explained to the driver what we wanted to do, and he just drove. I don’t think it took very long. I think I only shot three, maybe four rolls of film.
It’s interesting that you said this is different than how you usually would be working. How is it different than how you usually would work?
I’m very much a planner, like in terms of location — well, actually, especially location. I do a lot of location scouting for my photos. Before I moved to New York when I was living in Los Angeles, I did a lot of that via Google Maps because LA traffic is terrible. And I didn’t want to drive around looking for places to shoot, so I would do a lot of searching via the satellite feature on Google Maps and scouting out locations and looking at everything digitally. This was very not that. I don’t think I’ve ever just went on the street. Well, I guess it doesn’t really matter where this photo’s taken since it’s inside of the cab, but besides the initial idea, it wasn’t very thought out.
What do you like about her presence in this photo?
I like how calm she looks. This feels — it sounds pretty cliche to say — but it feels cinematic. I remember going into a portfolio review at some point later that year, and the person that I was speaking to said, “I really like this photo. I can imagine a story around this photo.”
To some extent, when I was thinking about this photo, I was thinking about whether you were creating a character here. Is that something you were considering, or were you actually photographing her?
I feel like I never photograph the actual person in my photo. I think I always create a character for them. I don’t go so far as naming them or creating a whole backstory for them. But they’re not who they are, I guess. She is actor in real life, so she is basically a stand-in for a character. I hope that my photos aren’t just what you would see. I hope to kind of elevate them a little bit more, like kind of elevate reality, if you will.
Did anything surprise you about this image?
I didn’t think it was gonna work. The space was so tight. It was really awkward. The whole back was sectioned off by the plastic shield, and there was only a little window where I could stick my lens through. It was kind of awkward shooting that way in a small space, and it was cold, and I had all my stuff around me, and I remember as I was shooting, I was like, “Oh, this is never gonna work.” It was a surprise, and I think that’s another thing I really like about this photo, and just photography in general, is that I am surprised a lot by the ideas that I have that actually work.
How would you describe the mood or emotion in this photo?
I feel like it’s pretty close to how I imagined it. It feels contemplative. I mean, she looks contemplative. If I didn’t know her, I think I would just wonder who she is. What is her story? I feel like it draws you in, like her expression. It’s, I wouldn’t say expressionless, but it’s sort of like a blank slate.
How would you describe the quality of light in this image?
Pretty soft, but also I liked the shadows in it. I don’t remember what kind of day it was. I think it was partly sunny or something, but this is completely natural [light]. I do really like the way that the light falls on her, but also you can see the buildings in the background. You can see detail there. It’s not all washed out. I think it gives the photo more context. You can kind of tell what her surroundings look like. I do really like the soft-yet-direct quality of the light.
Compared to a lot of your other photos where the light feels kind of bent or warped or tightly sculpted, this photo feels very real. What do you like about that here?
Yeah, it does feel kind of documentary-like, which is probably not as common in my work. That is another reason why I like it, I think. That’s what makes it stand out.
Likewise, there’s also a level of ordinariness to this photo. Even the car just seems like an ordinary car, and there’s not even really much of a hint that it’s a taxi. What impact does ordinariness have on an image like this?
I don’t think people pay attention to their surroundings as much as they should. I’ve always liked the ordinary. That could be influenced by photographers like [William] Eggleston who can elevate trash on the street or something that people would never pay attention to. I want people to notice the ordinary things in life around them because sometimes honestly it’s the most interesting to me.
You’ve mentioned elevating what the scene is in front of you. How do you see this image as elevating what was going on in front of you?
I love the fact that photography can make what you see completely different. When I was looking at this scene, it didn’t look like this to me because, first of all, we see in color. This is a black-and-white image, and also this was taken with a very wide lens, and I know it maybe doesn’t seem like that at first, but the environment inside the taxi, it just wasn’t that great, honestly. I’m always kind of surprised at how different the photo looks versus what I remember how the taxi actually looked. That’s what I love about photography. A photo of something that exists can look so much better and so different than what you’re actually seeing.
I think it’s interesting that you mentioned the wide lens because when you look at it, you start to see it. The little handle that you hold and the top is kind of bending out toward the corner. And to some extent, it makes the back seem really spacious, so that gives here a sense of importance sitting in the back of this large car.
It does, and because the lens is so wide, it distorts her really. She doesn’t look like this, and neither does her coat. Like, her coat feels really wide. That’s because of the lens. When I was looking at her from where I was sitting in the front, my field of vision was much narrower. Like, I turned around, and all I could really see was her face and the very top of her torso. I don’t remember seeing any of the background. I feel like I couldn’t even see the part of the seat next to her. It’s much more pulled back than what I was actually looking at.
How did you realize that you could do that with a photo, essentially take a scene that’s in front of you that looks like nothing special and create something that feels heightened?
I don’t think I realize that at all until I actually see the photo, which is another reason why I really love shooting film. I can’t see the result right away, so it’s always kind of a surprise. It could be a good surprise or a bad surprise, but it’s a surprise nonetheless. I think that’s what I learned from shooting film. I don’t really know what I create until I see it later, whether that’s in a day or a month. I think a lot of my photos come through via editing either in the darkroom or digitally in Photoshop. I feel like post-[processing] kind of gets a bad rap. Like, you can’t fix things in post, but I actually do fix a lot of things in post. I think if I showed what a lot of my photographs looked like before I edited them versus after, they end up looking pretty different.
What would be an example of that in this?
The shadows. I definitely exaggerated them, and I know it doesn’t seem that way because the quality of the light isn’t direct and it’s not very harsh, so there’s not too much of a difference between the highlights and the shadows, but I definitely darkened parts of her, her coat, the side of her face and also brought out detail in the windows because that wasn’t there.
I kind of got started with photography on Flickr. It was a big community on Flickr that I was a part of. I remember the term “SOOC” was such a big deal. It stands for “straight out of camera,” and there was this mentality like, “Oh, I got this SOOC. I didn’t edit any part of this.” I feel like it was a competition to see who could get the most pure or original image, basically like a RAW file. I feel like it still kind of influences me, even though now my practice is so different. Editing is not bad at all. Sometimes a photo comes out with the way that you crop it. This one I didn’t actually crop too much. It was a square photo, but I think I just made it into sort of a landscape format, but this isn’t an exact aspect ratio. I just cropped it as I saw fit.
What did the crop change in your mind?
There was a little bit too much space above her head that was part of the square format. I removed that. And I feel like that kind of balanced out the wide-angle look of it.
I wanted to touch on the thing that you’d said earlier about not necessarily shooting this person who’s in front of you but shooting an idea or a character that you want them to be portraying. How important is it to this image that it is this woman, your friend?
It wasn’t that important that it was her. When I put out this casting call… I get a lot of submissions from people every time I do this. It’s just me looking through hundreds of headshots, basically. She just stood out to me. I remember talking to her about potential wardrobe because, again, these are all her clothes, and she kind of just had what I was looking for, which was something classic. She ended up being really perfect for the shot, but even as I was casting her for this, I don’t think I knew that.
How did you get into working that way, where you just have a very narrow, specific idea that you want to execute and kind of casting someone specifically for that?
Maybe it has something to do with my film background. I studied film. This was also how I found out about this casting Web site for actors. I think it just has something to do with me wanting to make something look perfect, or my sort of perfectionist nature. If I have something in my head of someone in particular, I really wanna find someone that matches that because I just want to increase the chance that the photo is going to be how I imagine it because I know that a lot of times it just doesn’t turn out that way. There are so many things I can’t control in a photo that if there is something that I can control, then I’m gonna do it.
I guess a lot of the photographers that I know, on a day in which they would have a model, it would be like, “Yes, I have some ideas in my head, but we’re gonna shoot a bunch of stuff.” But [your process] is much more structured and constrained than that, which I think is kind of cool.
Yeah, I always go into a shoot having at least one very specific idea. Whether that idea is the one that works or not, that’s a different story. But through my experience, I’ve just noticed that whenever I go into a shoot having a specific idea and shooting that first and then kind of playing around afterward to experiment and see what else can come out of the shoot, that works the best. I don’t know if it just calms my anxiety about getting that one photo that I really want, but I’ve come to accept that not all of my ideas are going to work. A lot of them don’t. Sometimes I even draw them out before I shoot them. And I try my best to get those ideas shot. If it works, it works. If it doesn’t, then that’s when I feel like I can improvise. But a lot of times, if I’m shooting and I’m feeling like, “I kind of got this,” then I’m happy with it, and the shoot ends. And that’s why this shoot was definitely no more than 30 minutes.
Where does an idea come from and make you think that this is something I wanna create?
Really it can come from anything. A lot of times I’ll be looking through a photo book, and perhaps one photo will jump out to me. I don’t re-create that photo, but maybe that photo will lean me to think of something else. Or reading a book and something jumps out at me visually. I’ll write it down or draw something out.
Do you remember what this one came from?
I don’t think it was this exactly. Maybe it was in the recesses of my mind, but there’s a photo of Harry Dean Stanton in the back of a car, not in the movie Paris, Texas, but actually a photograph that Wim Wenders, the director, took of him going to the premiere of Paris, Texas that I thought was really beautiful. I’ve always really loved that photo.
So I always think about images of cars as having a place where you were and a place where you’re going to, as well. Does a photo like this have a before and after to it?
I think it does. Even while we were shooting this, we were driving along either Park or Madison. We took this photo as the car was moving. The driver asked if we wanted to stop, but I didn’t. Even though it’s a very still image, there is movement to it.
Do you think that’s important to a photo like this?
Yeah, I think so. It gives it a little more life. You can’t really tell that the car is moving, right? But you kind of want to feel that it is.
I just re-read the Q&A with Stephen Shore in his Uncommon Places book where he talks about the distinction between a photo freezing time and a photo stopping or stilling time. And to me, this photo feels like time has stopped, like she could just be here for forever. And there isn’t really the indication that the car is moving even though you said that it was. But at the same time, it is a car. Like you said, you kind of want it to be moving. What effect does time have on this photo?
Especially for this photo, I want it to look like a slice, a slice of time. I wanted it to kind of feel like it was taken out of a moving image, a movie or something. If it’s a still, there’s movement before and after. This is just a snippet of it. It’s a pause.
So if I do a Google search for you or scroll deep in your Instagram, I find a lot of color photography. But at least in the work that you’re showing now, you’re working primarily in black and white. What’s changed there?
A lot of things. I learned how to develop black-and-white film semi-recently. I think it was late 2019, early 2020. I just found that process really fun. I love printing black and white in the dark room, even more so than color. It was very gradual. It also wasn’t really a conscious decision. I just kind of started playing around with my photos and was curious to see how they would look in black and white, and I just found that when I took the color away from a lot of my images, they stood out more. I don’t think that’s the case for all photos. But I found that there’s more emotion that can come through almost when you take the color away. The world isn’t in black and white, right? So automatically the photo is different. It’s definitely not what you’re seeing. And I like that. I also find it’s almost like a challenge to create a presence with a photo. When there’s color, I feel like it’s easy to see the vibrancy or the energy of a photo versus when you take all the color away, it’s skeletal. It kind of makes the image naked. It’s funny because I shoot in color a lot, most of the time. A lot of my photos are in color. I just remove it later when I’m editing. It just brings out some emotions that aren’t there when I see it in color.
How would you describe your black-and-white tones?
Well, the contrast between the blacks and the white are really important. That is kind of what defines my black-and-white work. It brings out the light more.
The presence of the light.
Yeah, the presence of the light. If i’m shooting in a studio, I really love it when I get that cold, direct quality of light that really just looks the best in black and white versus color. It’s just a different feeling when you look at a photo. Especially with warped light, it’s more striking when it’s in black and white.
What does the out-of-focus element in the foreground of this image add to the photo?
Actually, I was thinking about that earlier. I think it actually makes the photo feel like it’s moving, even though it’s like the window pane of the taxi and that doesn’t have anything to do with the movement, but it creates depth, for sure, and it kind of balances out the image, which I really like. The window behind her, it’s a highlight, and the glass in the foreground achieves that same quality. It’s not light. It’s just the blurriness of the glass. But it kind of looks like another light source.
What do you think we can learn about you from this photo?
I hope that a lot of the photographs that I take will kind of evoke the same feeling as this. Again, I’m overusing this word, but her presence is very calming. The photograph itself, it’s real but kind of also not real at the same time. I want people to think of my work that way and hopefully myself that way, as sort of this in-between reality and unreality, shall we say.
What about this photo feels familiar?
Kind of everything, right? She’s a person sitting in a car, and we all see that. People ride in cars. People ride in taxis. Every element in this photograph is familiar, but it’s also not familiar because no one’s ever going to see this again. I guess you could say that about any photograph, but what happened in this photo will not happen again. So it might be familiar to me, but it’s not going to be familiar to anyone else even though everything in this photograph is recognizable.
Do you like that element of your work, that an image you take is potentially the only time that would exist?
I do like that. I feel like that’s kind of why I take photos — so I can achieve that. I don’t want anyone to look at my photos and not feel anything. It is important to me that my work kind of at once feels familiar but also unfamiliar. It creates an interest that way.
What do you think Valerie 10 years ago would say about this photo?
I think she would be surprised at how ordinary it is. When I started photographing or just when I was younger, I kind of always lived in this fantasy world. I was a big fantasy geek. Not even 10 years ago but when I first started photography, I didn’t think that I would even want to take a photo that looked this real. I was very into big props and costumes and a very created image. This image is created too, but it does feel real at the same time.
What do you think’s changed?
I think whatever exists in this world is already very interesting. I don’t feel like I have the need to create from nothing, right? Like, start from scratch. I feel like that’s what illustration is for. I think photography should be grounded in reality, should be more realistic. I think it definitely has something to do with, my tastes changed. Even with the movies that I watched and the books that I read, they became more non-fiction, documentary. But I don’t want it to be just a document, right? I do kind of want a mix of that, but nothing wrong with reality. It’s interesting enough.
So to close the conversation, what’s something unrelated to photography that’s been feeding you creatively lately?
Illustration, to be honest. It’s something that I never thought I would ever do, but it’s like a whole new world has opened up. I’m looking at a lot more illustration work, collage work now. I’ve always been interested in collage, just looking at it. I have a couple friends who are illustrators, but this gives me an excuse to delve deeper into that world. It’s so new. It’s been like six months. It could be photography, right? It could be that influence. This, I guess, style that I’ve developed had already been developed visually through photography. I can’t actually draw with pen and paper. I work with photos in my illustration. So I think it was kind of a natural transition.
Interviewed on April 20, 2021.
(This transcript has been edited for brevity.)