Photograph: 2 Sports Palace Metarie, William Greiner
MADE Paper: When did you begin taking photographs, and what inspired you?
William Greiner: At the age of twelve, I bought my first camera by mail order. It was a cheap 35mm model with no light meter. I would spend hours in front of my house photographing automobiles as they passed. The process was an experiment in exposing film in different ways and achieving different results. This experience hooked me on the magic of the medium.
I decided to attend college, this was 1979, so I went to a small liberal arts college north of Boston. While there, I befriended two kids from Memphis, TN. One of these kids one day shows up in my dorm room with a copy of William Eggleston’s Guide book. It turns out her dad was one of Bill’s benefactors, helping to fund his career. I looked at this book and although I could not completely grasp its complexity or originality, I realized photography had the potential to be very personal and it did not have to function as journalism or “news”.
On Spring break, we traveled to Memphis and I had a chance to spend time with Eggleston. This encounter was like a fork in the road and I pretty much abandoned photography as journalism. I know this is a long answer but it’s my answer! Photography for me now is an obsession, it is how I look at and react to the world.
MP: Do you have a favorite camera?
WG: No but I have mostly shot medium format film for big projects and 35mm for travel and small projects.
MP: You have shown alongside the other artists in Commonplace – what are a few of these exhibitions?
WG: The Morris Museum of Art held the exhibition ‘Local Color: Photography in the South’, between December 2011 and January 2012, which included work by Birney Imes, William Eggleston, William Christenberry and myself (and Dave Anderson). I also participated in the group exhibition, ‘Economy of Scale’, along side Christenberry at Hemphill Fine Arts in Washington, D.C., in 2009. William Eggleston and the Color Tradition, an exhibition exploring the art of American color photography over the last 30 years, was on view at the J. Paul Getty Museum in 1999/2000 included my work as well.
MP: What’s next?
WG: I am painting and collaging mostly now, appropriating road maps , painting over them. It is a completely new and different way of working and seeing, a more additive rather than subtractive process.
I have been visiting a few outdoor sculpture gardens, The New Orleans Museum of Art has a nice one, as does The Nasher in Dallas. I see all kinds of sculptural looking things and objects
In these places, but are not in fact sculpture. I am starting to photograph these objects in a way in which they could be interpreted as sculpture. I call it, “The Sculpture in My Garden”. I am questioning the notion of what is art? What has an esthetic beauty and what might be appropriate in a way which reveals hidden meaning or beauty.
William Greiner will attend the Opening Night Reception of Commonplace on Wednesday October 8th. Commonplace runs through October 31, 2014 at Triumph & Disaster Gallery. For information, visit www.triumphdisastergallery.com or the gallery located at 505 Cloverdale Road, Unit 102 at The A&P in Old Cloverdale.