STEPHEN CARPENTER: I want to show you
a picture, an image that I created collaboratively
this morning.
So as you see, this was tagged Danbury, Connecticut.
So that's just down the road.
And since I posted it this morning, six hours ago,
18 people have liked it.
They haven't told me what they like about it,
but they've liked it.
And I added some context there.
My name, or my handle is there-- @bscarpenterii--
"Double Water Fountains," Danbury, Connecticut, 2017.
Then there's some hashtags--
#doubletaking, #troublemaking.
And then I've tagged some other folks
who I follow or follow me, who I thought might be interested.
All three of them happen to be connected to MIT.
So this image is, in many ways, just a black and white
Instagram photograph that I also posted to my Tumblr account
and I posted to my Twitter account.
This is a practice people do quite often.
But this is a photograph that originated and continues
to exist within a conversation for me, with an existing
photograph, specifically, other similar photographs,
as well as it sits within a conversation
with other people-- as you can see,
at least 18 people who like it but haven't
commented on why they like it.
This photograph was originally taken as a color photograph,
using this phone.
I set the setting from portrait and landscape to square,
because we can do that now.
We have these options.
And then once the photograph was taken,
I put it through a series of filters in Instagram
to turn it into this black and white photograph.
Now, as you can probably notice, I most likely
didn't shoot this on my own, unless I had a tripod and then
a timer that I set.
So one might assume that someone else actually
took the photograph.
And that's what happened.
This is the most recent photograph in a series--
I believe I'm at or beyond 100 of these in the past three
or four years--
in which, if I'm in a public space
and I see a double water fountain
and there's someone nearby, I'll ask them-- excuse me.
Would you give me a hand?
I'm an artist.
And I take photographs of double water fountains.
Would you mind taking a picture of me?
I'm going to drink out of the fountain.
And I'd like you to take a picture of me.
Make sure both fountains and my body are in the photograph,
please.
That's all the instruction I give them.
There's no composition 101.
There's no depth of field lesson.
And then they take a picture.
And I drink the water during the entire time
they're setting up and moving their body and in and out.
And sometimes it takes a couple of seconds.
Sometimes it takes what feels like four or five days.
You know, you've had this experience, right?
And then what happens when you ask someone
to take a photo of you using your camera or your phone?
They turn around and they show it to you.
We can do that with digital photographs now.
How is that?
And I look at it, and say, oh.
Oh, that's quite nice.
And then if they have time, if they're not rushing off-- oh,
I have to run--
well, would you mind looking at another photograph?
And most of the time they say, yeah.
I'll look at the other photograph.
And it's that other photograph that I show them
that inspired me to start taking these photographs.
So the other photograph I show them is this one.
This is also a black and white photograph.
It was not taken with a digital phone.
It was actually taken with a camera
that uses this interesting technology called film.
A lot of people who use these machines
don't actually know what film is.
And this photograph was taken in 1950 by Elliot Erwitt.
It was taken in South Carolina.
And this photograph shows a gentleman
wearing a hat, drinking out of one of two water fountains.
The water fountains each have labels.
And they, although, are situated as double water fountains,
or side-by-side fountains, they are, essentially,
constructed for different audiences and different users.
And we might know that because of the labels
that are above them.
This photograph, double water fountains--
or, it's actually called "Segregated Water Fountains"--
is one of a few that Erwitt took in the '50s.
He used to take--
he was known as a street photographer
at that time, when he was taking photographs, and capturing just
some basic, typical scenes that would happen in daily life.
So it's this photograph that I had probably seen, or one
of them similar to it, years and years ago.
I don't remember the first time I saw it.
And you know how images come in and out of your life,
or people come in and out, or stories come in and out?
Well, this one did the same thing.
But about 10 years ago, 15 years ago,
maybe, when I started wearing hats like this, in part because
I just thought they looked pretty interesting
and they reminded me of my grandfather, whose
first name is also my father's first name--
it's also my first name, so there's that connection there.
And as I looked at this photograph
shortly after I started wearing these hats,
I started to see these photographs differently,
because as I looked more closely at that photograph,
I started to see myself in that photograph,
and wonder whether years before I was even born--
I was born 15 years after this photograph was taken.
But certainly, signs like this and practices
that these signs encourage were still in place when I was born.
But as I continued to look at this photograph and others
like it, I would see myself in it differently.
And I would wonder, would I--
what would I have felt like?
What would I have done?
What would it have been like for me to be in that situation?
So I started to take--
in public places, it's not uncommon to see double water
fountains.
In public places, it's not uncommon to see other people.
In public places, it's not uncommon
for me to have my phone, which takes pictures.
So that combination of components
inspired me, or has been the motivating piece, and also
the materiality of this series of works.
This is on a beach in California.
I don't recall where this one is.
Instagram remembers.
I don't have to remember.
This is in the State House in South Carolina, three or four
months before the Confederate flag
that was flying about 100 yards away from this spot
where you see me, three or four months before it
was taken down a few years ago.
So my daughter, who is now eight, but at the time
that this photograph was taken, she was about three or four--
and because I think I'm a pretty good dad,
I take her with me to various places.
And public places have double water fountains.
And she would watch me ask people
to take my picture in front of double water fountains, which
was all well and good, because that's what papa does.
He's an artist.
And he does things and takes images.
But one day, she asked me, Papa, would you take my picture?
I said, sure.
I would be happy to.
But you have to take my picture.
[LAUGHTER]
And so we gain perspectives on the world
through the eyes of other people,
seeing what we see through what they see.
But more than that being an interesting photograph
of this three-year-old angle, a few feet off the ground,
it was also a moment where I realized that the next question
for her after, would you take my picture,
was, Papa, why are you taking these pictures?
So then I had to have conversations
about the history of this country,
and a particular story, an ongoing story, an uncomfortably
challenging story in the history of this country, a story
that we're still writing today.
I had to talk to my daughter about race.
And so this project, the "Double Water Fountains" project,
you can find on Tumblr.
Just look for @bscarpenterii, and there it is.
I post these images quite often.
So I'm saying all this to say, these photographs come
from my interest in and my relationship
with the double water fountain photograph,
or the segregated photograph, by Elliot Erwitt.
This historical photograph, for me,
sits in a conversation with many other photographs like it,
but also within the practices, the policies,
the cultural understandings that allowed for segregated water
fountains and segregation to exist.
LARRY SUSSKIND: If you walk down the street
of Baltimore or Philadelphia--
and there's plenty of confrontation this last year
in Philadelphia that a lot of people would feel
is racially rooted.
And if you say, oh, we should have more constructive
conversations between people.
They should learn how to deal with conflict
that's in some way connected to or racially defined or rooted.
And well, people don't know how to do that.
They don't know how to do that, to--
cross race.
STEPHEN CARPENTER: Sure.
LARRY SUSSKIND: And so you think it's
the picture that makes the conversation possible?
It's a pretty harmless picture.
It's not an inflammatory picture.
STEPHEN CARPENTER: No.
So the conversation begins well before the photograph is taken.
The conversation begins well before the Erwitt photograph
is presented.
The conversation begins well before the conversation
about race or history or wherever the direction is.
Right?
So your question about, well, how do we
engage in these conversations-- how
do we engage in these conversations?
We start the conversations.
I don't know that--
I take it-- I'm concerned that when I hear statements
or there's an assumption that, oh, well,
it's a difficult conversation, we can't talk about it,
I don't think that's the case at all.
We can.
I think it's the starting.
And this is, I think, central to part of your question
is, how do we start those conversations?
I think we need to start it.
The mediator, which is also what I
heard in what you were saying, might be
the camera and the photograph.
It might not be another individual.
The third thing I would say is, and I
hope this came through with my description and my earlier
responses, I'm not trying to persuade anyone.
I'm not trying to make a case.
Or, in your example, where maybe sensing someone's defensive,
I'm not trying to nail them to the wall or prove them wrong,
but bring up other examples that allow us
to continue the conversation.
It's about opening it up rather than saying--
so for example, if someone said, oh, well, we're
way past that, I'd say, no, you're wrong.
Here's-- I wouldn't-- it's not about, no, you're wrong.
It's, oh, well, what about this?
Or tell me about such and such.
So instead of being persuasive to the point of arguing a point
to convert someone from one perspective to the other,
while that might be, at some level, a goal
for some folks engaged in this work,
I think before one gets there, becoming comfortable,
setting a comfortable space for the conversation
needs to happen.
So it's not about persuasion.
It's about, let's open up that space and talk
about the difficulties within, and the complexities
in that conversation.
LARRY SUSSKIND: So for me, there's something unusual
that I think is attributable to the photograph, to the fact
that the photograph's at the heart
of a conversation about race.
And there's both an old photograph
and a new photograph.
And in some other realms, particularly in the realm
of science, there are difficulties
of people from different disciplines talking
to each other.
And one theory about how to overcome those difficulties
is to use something known as a boundary object.
So it's not me and you and our different disciplines.
It's, oh, here's a map.
And how do you read that map?
Oh, no.
I read that map differently.
What do you think that map said?
Oh, I think-- and I don't have to talk directly
to a person from a different discipline.
We can both be talking about or through the boundary object.
And my question, and the question in my mind
was, does a photograph, in particular,
and a black and white one, in particular,
an old versus a new one, provide a means
to address, in this case, a potentially
difficult conversation?
Now, I think who the people are matters.
And I think your non-defensive style
and your willingness to track the conversation wherever
it goes probably has more to do than anything else
with how the conversations you have turn out.
But I'm trying to see if we might deduce from your project
some kinds of insights about the use of photographs
in particular, but not only, to make
difficult conversations easier.
That's where I'm going with my questions.
STEPHEN CARPENTER: So your example of boundary object
is interesting, because it makes me
think of a couple of different things.
One, when talking about works of art
in schools, or even in galleries,
for a number of reasons that we don't necessarily
need to get into at this point, many folks
are interested in the formal qualities of those works.
And those formal qualities are fine-- formal meaning shape
and color and texture.
But as we start to look and think
about those works of art contextually,
place them into an historical context,
a social, political context, those works
are about those other realms as much as they
are about the physicality, moving it away
from the material, the physical material into other kinds of--
what might move into new materialisms in some way.
So I think there's a bit of that going on,
where your example of the map, it's not about the physical map
itself.
It's about the representation and the signifying aspects.
Now, these photographs, the black and white component,
the formal aspect, moves it away from--
and this was intentional for me, because the original dozen
or so that I took were in color.
And there was some distance for me
between those color images and the Erwitt photograph.
And it wasn't until I tinkered with the first one in Instagram
and made it black and white-- and I resisted it,
because I didn't want it to be too literal.
You know?
There was a shift that happened.
The time element flattened.
And so putting oneself in-- there's something about a black
and white photograph that it moves it away from
a contemporary sense of--
because the color gets removed.
Now, the other piece there is--
so you know, you want to have an interview with someone.
So you say, OK, bring an object that means something to you.
Or we'll talk about this map.
This photograph, we produced together.
As a matter of fact, the person I'm talking to,
they're the ones who produced it, primarily.
They composed and took the shot.
So they have a degree of ownership and connection
with it.
LARRY SUSSKIND: That's very interesting.
That's a very interesting way of reframing
why it might be easier for them to use
the photo as a basis for the conversation,
because they have part of the ownership of having taken it.
STEPHEN CARPENTER: Not only are they
part of the ownership of having taken it,
but if you look closely at the photograph,
you don't see them in the photograph.
I'm in the photograph.
So anything they say about it is separated from them.
But it gets difficult, too, because the person
in the photograph is the person standing next to them.
So while the photograph allows for some separation
and objectification of that individual, the very subject
at hand is right there.
So there's a complexity there.
But their contribution to the creation
of that work and that ownership, I think,
is key to this conversation.
LARRY SUSSKIND: I've been trying,
since the first time I saw this, to imagine if there
is a method in here to make it easier for conversations that
have race at their root.
But I particularly mean conversations about situations
where race is at their root, and they
are about people being unable to deal
with differences in any other way except through violence.
And so I want to make them harder,
more difficult conversations.
But I'm trying to imagine-- and hopefully, we can actually,
at some point, do this--
whether the same smoothing or easing effect of the exercise
makes it possible to have a conversation,
which, otherwise, you couldn't have.
STEPHEN CARPENTER: Yeah.
I think so.
A statement that I'll use tomorrow
in the lecture and workshop, but I'll use it right now.
I was in-- it was about three years ago.
I was teaching an undergraduate class
of students who were preparing to be art teachers.
And we were talking about, I said, what is this art?
What does art do?
Why are we studying art?
Why do you want to be a teacher of art?
What is art's role in our lives?
You know, these really small, insignificant questions.
No, it's a big, important question.
And one of the students said, you know,
art allows us to-- among the things
that it does-- but it allows us to tell stories that we might
not be able to tell otherwise, and we probably
can't tell otherwise.
And I thought, oh, yeah.
That makes sense.
LARRY SUSSKIND: It's consistent with the theme
that I'm pursuing.
I mean, people are terrible, if just
caught off-guard and with no special training, trying
to deal with issues that have race or ethnicity,
and many cases, gender, at the heart of the difference
or the conflict.
And I'm just trying to think of this notion of flattening
and overcoming history by having the two black and whites
next to each other in the same location.
And now, not everybody is as charming as you are.
And so they would not get the same response.
But maybe the existence, and the fact
that they took the new picture, which
I hadn't thought of until you said it this afternoon,
is, you know, they own some of this.
So now maybe it's easier for them
to stay with the conversation.
Maybe adding an artist makes--
and doing these things-- makes it easier.
Also, you start out by saying, I'm an artist
and I'm taking these pictures.
STEPHEN CARPENTER: That's right.
LARRY SUSSKIND: You don't say, I'm
someone waiting on the street corner to ambush you,
because I don't know if I can trust you,
and you probably don't think you can trust me.
None of that.
It's just, I'm an artist.
Will you take a picture of me doing this?
And that's very disarming, in every sense of that phrase.
And then maybe that's the key to moving
toward a conversation where nobody's anxieties
and prejudices go sky high right at the beginning.
Now, I don't know how long it would last,
once you tell them what that side is,
if they didn't already know it, in the model that I'm--
STEPHEN CARPENTER: Sure.
And they might know it, especially
if they live in that neighborhood or nearby, which
would then be quite a rich conversation,
in unexpected ways, I guess, for the artist
who is initiating their work.