RAOUL GATEPIN, 32, BROOKLYN

What is your typical process for shooting photographs? Do you go out and walk somewhere randomly or do you have a very carefully planned idea in mind beforehand?

This is a tricky one, because I don’t feel like I have a set process to shoot pictures.

I enjoy not always shooting the same kind of stuff so that I don’t feel like I am taking the same picture over and over. So naturally, my process for shooting is not something set in stone.

I used to take the bus to some place every weekend in the sole intent of taking pictures. I would then walk around randomly and shoot a fair amount of frames.

Right now, I take fewer pictures less often and I tend to do it wherever I happen to be, not visiting specific places in order to shoot.

However, I probably do it in a more conscious way than I used to and edit a lot more before pressing the shutter.

As far as planning the pictures beforehand I can’t answer you anything else than “it depends”.

There are times when I’m shooting more or less randomly, and then a particular image or group of images triggers something… an idea, a feeling.

Then I focus on that and seek particular images, while shooting or in my older negatives. That is usually how I build my series.

Still, overall, I’m not much of a planner (my mom can confirm that!) and I mostly let things unfold as I go.

You seem to be traveling quite a lot. As a tourist in most of your projects, La Diagonale du Vide, Distrito and Subway Breeze, what do you look for when visiting a place? What holds your attention? When do you decide to take a photograph?

This is interesting because apart from Distrito which I definitely shot as a tourist, spending a week in Mexico City (a city I really, really liked by the way, it made me think of a mix of Paris and Mumbai), I wouldn’t have considered myself as such when I shot the other projects.

Whereas it be France, Los Angeles or New York, these are all places in which I had lived in for at least a few years and I believe I had experienced in a slightly different way than a tourist would have.

However it is very true that changing places and moving around seem to facilitate my picture taking. I think I get visually tired by a place relatively quickly.

What I like most in photographs is surprise.  So I guess I look for stuff that surprises me in some way and/or that would make an intriguing frame. I take a picture when I think that what I see in the viewfinder achieves that to some level.

Of course, more often than not, the results are painfully banal.

You haven’t studied photography the typical way. What was the best advice you got and who gave it to you?

I don’t know if someone in particular gave me that advice -it’s more like every good photographer I know did- but looking at photo books and entire bodies of work is something that made me think about pictures and take them in a different way.

This is a personal opinion but I also think that not taking photography too seriously is probably a good thing as well.

What is your job today? How often do you shoot?

I currently work for an interactive advertising agency, doing search engine marketing. No photography involved.

I do not shoot that regularly, for me it comes and goes. I shoot by bursts. I’ll be at it for a few weeks or months and then not shoot at all for a while. Like right now, I think the last picture I took was 2 months ago.

I like taking breaks from it, because I get photography fatigue after a while; too many images in my head and I just can’t see straight anymore.

Isn’t it Koudelka who is said to shoot 3 rolls a day in order to stay sharp? That probably explains the big difference in quality between his pictures and mine, but I don’t think I could do it that way.

Well it’s also how he makes a living, so I guess he’d better stay on top of it!

Can you explain your series Pyramid?

This is a series that came together after a lot of shooting in NY without exactly knowing what I was aiming for.

Then I shot what is now the first image of the series. It’s a picture of the New York Stock Exchange taken a few days after the Madoff scandal was uncovered. For me, this is one of these “particular images” I talk about in your first question, and it somehow brought together a bunch of pictures I had previously taken.

I found it interesting to be in NY before and during all that financial mess and I guess the series is some kind of reaction to it, looking around during those weird times.

But there is no very elaborate idea or theory behind the project, no strong desire to document anything objectively. It’s more of a matter of trying to capture my findings and feelings about the situation, and with no false modesty, I think they are pretty basic.

All of your photographs are of excellent quality. They have the same visual power and strength whether they’re seen individually or in series. What process do you go through when it comes to sequencing and editing your work?

Well thanks for the kind words and I’ll take them, although I’m sure some will disagree.

Anyway, I usually try to edit my images down to the ones I find strong on their own and then I sequence them, shoot more, re-sequence…etc…

I’ve never been much into “fillers”. I feel like there are enough images around, so no need to add to them with some so-so pictures.

Of course there will always be images stronger than others in a series. So when I sequence them, I try to keep that in mind and find some kind of pacing while making more or less subtle connections between pictures.

I want to say though that the whole “edit only strong images” is something that I am challenging a bit right now.

Books like Bertrand Fleuret’s Landmasses and Railways or Michael Schmidt’s U-NI-TY are some of my current favorites (they are both books containing hundreds of black & white pictures). It’s a personal opinion, but I don’t think all the pictures in these books are of exceptional quality.

However, each book as a whole is very powerful; the overall concept, the sheer number of images, the quality of the sequencing and structure of the work almost cancel the need to keep only strong singles.

Editing and sequencing are things that I am still very much in the process of learning… well if I think about it, you can add “photographing” to the list as well!

www.raoulgatepin.com