Transcripts For CSPAN2 Booknotes 20150131

Next encore booknotes. Jill krementz was a guest on booknotes in 1997 to talk about her book the writers desk a collection of authors and photos photos. Cspan jill krementz, photographer, you have a book out called the writers desk. Whats it all about . Guest its a collection of my photographs over it period of 30 years of writers and i photographed over 1500 rider so of course its not all the writers. My favorite pictures of a lot of the writers at their desks but they are all writers that there had desks or near their desks or behind their desks. Somewhere theres a desk in the picture. Literally or figuratively. Cspan why did you pick this for the covert . Guest i suppose because its one of my favorite photographs. I think its pretty recognizable now so people would know it was my book and because i think that it is a picture about a writer. Its a picture about a writers place and i think you feel looking at that picture that of course this is where she would write. Its like her writing. Cspan heres a picture thats not in the book that you gave us to show where she is not at her desk. Why did you i guess why didnt you use this one in the book . Guest first of all i hadnt taken it then and more importantly i brought that picture alone simply because it reflected a visit i had had with her very recently. I went down a year ago. I was having a show of photographs in mississippi and i went to jackson to see her first and broader all the photographs. She was looking at that photograph on the cover of the book and all the others and she said jill thank you for bringing me these. Its just like to visit upstairs. It made me very sad because she could no longer navigate the stairs to go up to that room where she once wrote. But i found it very interesting on another level because i think that all my work that i do as a documentary photographer of writers is in a sense a visit upstairs. Its a way to bring you and your viewers and anybody who sees the pictures up those stairs to see where someone like her works or even if the desk is not literally upstairs even if its downstairs in a cottage in the back it still upstairs, upstairs being a private place. I never thought in a million years that i would be showing a photograph to the person i had taken it of and i would be transporting them back upstairs to a place where they could no longer go. So thats why that picture is so meaningful to me. Cspan who is this fellow . Guest that is Kurt Vonnegut my husband who you just met, the fellow hoosier. Cspan he doesnt have any shoes on here. Guest thats true and hes wearing his pajamas. Thats in our house in sagaponack. Whats interesting about that photograph to me is that reflects the ritual for curt. It happens to be doing the New York Times crossword puzzle in ink. He is really incapable of writing before he has done that puzzle. And i think that a lot of writers have rituals and a lot of the writers talk about these rituals. For most of them, its just this cup of strong black coffee. For Tennessee Williams, it was a glass of wine. For george simenon, he actually went to a doctor for a checkup before he started to write, and he had his Blood Pressure taken and his heart listened to. And then he went into total seclusion, like a monk, for 11 days. He didnt come out. He didnt do anything else but write. So rituals interest me. I think the most important aspect of this book is that its not just photographs. I think that what makes it interesting to people is that each writer, each of the 56 writers, has text accompanying the photograph which talks about, in their words, the creative process; how and why and where and when they write. And some of them talk about the rituals. Some of them say where they got the desk. With kurt, he talks about a prayer for writers. With everybody, its different. And i think that its this juxtaposition and this marriage of words to the text that makes it different than just a picture book. Cspan how long have you been married to Kurt Vonnegut . Guest weve been together since 1970. So thats. Cspan whered you meet him . Guest i met him photographing him. I was working at Time Magazine as a reporter. I noticed that every copy boy had a copy of breakfast of champions sticking out of their jeans pocket, and i was just starting to photograph writers and i was very friendly with dave sherman, who was the picture editora picture editor and the book editor of life magazine. So id go up and see him, and id very often photograph writers that he told me had books coming up. And so i photographed kurt for life, and while i was photographing him for life there was a reporter from the New York Times who wasmagazine who was doing a story. So i ended up selling pictures to the times and it just kept going and. Cspan you said you were a reporter for time . Guest i was. Cspan when did you start your. Guest i was a reporter in the new york bureau. Cspan when did you start your photography . Guest ive always gone back and forth between writing and photography. I started photographing actually in 1961. I got a nikon for my 21st birthday as a birthday present and i was working for show magazine first as a secretary, then as a reporter. And all thethe person who gave it to me had brought it from japan, and all the directions were in japanese. So i went to see henry wolf, the art director, to ask him how i might load this camerahow i might open this camera. So he loaded it up for me and he said, `oh he said, `this is like having a rolls royce and not knowing how to drive. but its the only camera i had. I went off, took pictures and, with no shame whatsoever, came back to henry and asked him if he could unload the camera and how could we get some contact sheets or whatever and he sent them out for contact sheets. And then i had him look at my contact sheets and talk about which ones were good and which werent. And he became a mentor for me and a very, very important mentor. Right from the beginning, he told me hed look at a contact sheet and hed say, `if you take three or four pictures of a person doing something, dont shoot a whole roll, justyou know, take different pictures. and he almost didnt have to tell me that because i was so poor then and a roll of film cost so much that i needed to have at least 20 situations on a roll of film. And i alsoit didnt have a motor drive. It justbut i think photographers staythey stick a roll of film in and theyll take four rolls of the same picture. I think its nuts. Cspan did you ever do covers for Time Magazine . Guest not on assignment when i wenti came down here and covered the march on the pentagon. They had 27 photographers on assignment on day rate with expenses, but i sent my film in that night. I was staying with neil and susan sheehan, and i had got a call that night to say that i had gotten the cover. Cspan what year was that . Guest yeah, when was that . 196364sixtyit wasit. Cspan well, the reason i ask is because i think i was the military officer assigned to you in 66 or 67 and i havent seen you since that day. But im sure that you got the cover. Guest then it was init was 1967. Yes. And i remember that i was down and i thought, `well, if i want to shooti mean, therere all these photographers with important credentials and i thought i should go up to Arlington Cemetery and get everybody coming up. So i got there very early and i went up there and i was waiting and waiting. I was all alone. And i thought, `well, maybe theymaybe im just here and ill be here till 10 00 tonight. Maybe they went a different way. so i went down to see what was happening, and by then, i saw what was happening and i took a few pictures of everybody in the front of the line. I got Norman Mailer and Robert Lowell and all those people and ben spock, and i got one of those pictures inside that issue of time. Then i went back up to Arlington Cemetery. By then, there were all these guardsmen fromand they said i couldnt go passed. And i said, `well, i was just up there. and they said, `well do you have credentials . so i had no credentials, but i had my passport. So i took out my passport and i showed it to them and id traveled so much that they saw all these things pulling out and they said ok. And i went back up and i took that picture with the long lens. And. Cspan of memorial bridge. Guest yeah. And then i took some color because i know that i ended up getting the magazine that thethe cover of the New York Times magazine with my color. And i only shot half a roll of color. And when i went to send them in, i had 13 pictures. And i thought, `well, that is so unlucky. Im not going toso iand i couldnt add one because i didntso i took one out and i sent 12 over. So youll never need to convince me ever in my life not to send 13 pictures. I never sent 13 of anything. So i did very well that day and that was my onetime cover and you were probably the one who let me through. Thank you. Cspan thirty years ago. Anyway. Guest it was 1967, right . Yeah. Cspan it was either 66 or 67. Go back to your book for a moment. You have a picture here of john updike and he wrote the introduction for the book. Guest he did. Cspan how did that work . Guest hes an old friend of mine. Ive photographed him 39 times. Over the years, iveand i just thought that he would be the best person. He loves photographs. I just showed him the dummy and i said, `id like you to do it. And if youd be interested, it would just be such an honor. and he did write it. He sent it to me in a week. Kurt was sitting with me in my office when his introduction came in. I read it and i just started to cry. I was so moved by his introduction. And he actually had noticed some of the things in the photographs that i hadnt. He, himself, has three desksone where he answers his mail; a second where he actually writes his books; a third where he does his work for the new yorker which is very high tech with a computer and a printer; and then he has a Fourth Office where he has a big cozy chair and he just sits in there reading books and reviewing them for the new yorker and the new york review of books. Cspan heres the picture ofi guess this would be the computer picture. Guest yeah. Its been very satisfying to me toover the years, to have gone back revisiting authors and really documenting their lives documenting their children as they grow up. With updike, i just loved going to visit his mother on her birthday. I knew his mother was alive, that she had been a writer for the new yorker, that she had published a novel, and i knew that johns son david was a writer. And i realized that this was the only situation of three generations of living american writers. There were other families, like the benchleys, but one writer was dead. So i asked john if i could take a photograph of all three of them some time and he said `well, you know, ill think about it. and id keep asking him, and then finally he called me one day and he said, `im going to visit my motherits on her birthday`david will be there, and if you want to come, come. and so that was really fine. And he had given her pictures over the years that i had taken of him. So i went in, i think, as a friend of the family. Cspan when did you take this picture of bill buckley . Guest oh, gosh, i guess in the early 70s i wasfirst i photographed him at home, and then he said he was going over to nbc to do an interview and i asked if i could go with him. And he said yes, and i jumped into the front of the car with the chauffeur. When im traveling with a writer or anyone im photographing, i do always sit in the front with the driver, because i dont want to bother somebody when theyre in a car. I know thats a time for them to gather their thoughts if theyre going to an interview or whatever theyre doing. And i just like to stay out of their hair. I like to have enough distance so that they dont feel claustrophobic. So i turned around and there he was working with rowley, his companion over the backseat of the car. And i was to find out that he had had this car especially built for him. When the people who were building the car called and asked him how much leg room he wanted, he says, in the book that he actually extended his legs, asked for a few more inches, and he ended up with an office in the backseat of his own car. Cspan is thereor are there a number of things you can say about writers after having photographed so many . How many1,500 writers . Guest probably 1,600 since i made that last statement because im always working but, you know, i dont know if iin the last few weeks, ive gone back to photograph chaim potok, cynthia ozick, joyce carol oates, erica jong. So i dont know whether i can recount them since ive photographed themorupdike would only count for, you know one time. All i know is that im going to have to get a new house with all my file cabinets of photographs. What have i noticed about writers . I would say that none of them have enough bookshelves. Ive never been in a Writers Office where there werent just piles and piles of books everywhere. Certainly Robert Penn Warren is a prime example of that. Cspan heres a photowell have it on in a momentthati dont think this one is in the book. Guest yes. Thats an example, too, of a picture that wasnt in the book because ithe picture i have in the book is very cluttered and messy and hes wearing his flipflop sandals. But this is very messy, but you have to see the whole picture to realize just how messy it is because you have to have the stuff all on the floor as well as all the stuff above his head. And in a small book thats a square format, its going to just focus on warren and his messy desk. And i had lots of messy table tops. And i had the picture of robert coles showing that he didnt have enough bookcases. So i went with the coles, with the bookcases, and used warren in the outside house because i like the idea of almost being barefooted and having thewell, thats the. Cspan coles picture ofhow many. Guest thats coles picture. I just thought they should be together in the book because they were such. Cspan who is robert kohls . Guest robert coles is one of my heroes. Hes an eminent child psychologist, psychiatrist, who knows how to listen to children. And, again, he is someone who has mentored me all my life. The first book i did, the first childrens book, was called sweet pea. It was a photo essay about a nineyearold girl growing up in mt. Meigs, alabama. And robert coles was very helpful to me and very supportive and has always been on all my how it feels books on everything ive done. I applied for a guggenheim. I didnt get it, but he wrote one of my letters for me. He is someone i admire and respect enormously. Cspan and you mentioned walker percy and heres the photograph. Guest walker percy wrote in bed. I flew down to new orleans to photograph him. I liked the photograph because i think he wrote also with a catholic sensibility. So the cross is important to me in that photograph. I returned, oh, 20 years later to rephotograph him and when i was covering the Republican Convention which was held there not long agoand i went back to covington and had lunch with him and photographed him with Johnny Walker, his grandson. In the earlier picture, Johnny Walker was standing beside him in a window with magnolias outside and walker was standing inside. And Johnny Walker, in his oshkosh overalls, standing, came up to walkers waist. When i returnedi guess it was about 18 years lateri asked ahead of time if Johnny Walker might be there. He said, `oh, yes. Johnny Walker is now a College Student wearing jeans and he is sitting in the window and from his head to his butt is exactly the same height as he once was standing as a twoyearold. And if you look at the two picturesi dont have them with meside by side, it looks as if i took them moments apart because walker didnt change at all; its just the son. And, again, thats a perfect example of what a pleasure it is to be able to have that kind of access to a family and to take those kinds of pictures. It doesnt have anything to do with having them published. It just has more to do, for me with taking them and documenting these peoples lives. And my greatest compliment is always when somebody tells me that their mother loved the picture they sent them, or their son, or if i see it framed in their living room when i goan earlier picture that i sent oryou know, that itsor with e. B. White, who was one of my other heroes. I was so excited before i went to photograph him. I was like a small child waiting for christmas. `only five more days till i do e. B. White; only four more days; only three more days. but then on the third day, before i was going to photograph e. B. White, the phone rang. I was in the kitchen. It was around 3 00 in the afternoon, and this voice said `oh, hi, ms. Krementz. This is andy white, and i didnt even know who it was because i didnt call him andyi didnt knowandyi said, `oh, mr. White he said, `you know, ive been thinking about this photography session, and he said, `you know, i justi amthink i am too old to be photographed. i said, `oh, mr. White, i said `you know, just last week, i photographed p. J. Woodhouse, who is 96 and93 and i did rex stout the day before yesterday and hes 86. i said, `youre only in your 70s. Youre a spring chicken. and he saidhe paused and he said `well, come along then. so i said, `oh, thank you. Thank you. i said, `ill justi promise you, ill take a taxi from the airport. Ill have the taxi wait in the driveway. Ill be just in and out before you know it. so i went and did him. It was a winter day when i went to do him the first time. I photographed him out in the snow with the geese around his house. And we had a very nice time. I spent a few hoursmaybe an hour, i dont know. I justi do know i kept the blue hill taxi waiting for me. And when i returned to new york, i sent him an album of photographs and a thank you note. The whole time i was there, he kept saying, `oh, you know, `its too bad its not spring because i usually write in the boathouse. In fact, thats where i wrote charlottes web. and so i goti became obsessed about going back and photographing him in the boathouse which, indeed, i returned to do. On that same visit, when i went back in the spring, i took a picture of him on a swing. It was a simple wooden swing which his grandchildren had used with just one rope, not two. And hes swinging and his family ended up using that picture on the front page of his Memorial Service when he died. And, again, i was so sad when he died, and yet it was just, to me, the biggest honor in the world to have had a picture that his family loved enough to use in that way. And thats just better than any book, any picture in a magazine. Its justthats what matters. Cspan have you ever had an author say no . Guest oh, yeah. But sometimes an author will say no because theyre busy and they mean its because theyre busy then, but theyd love to do it sometimes when theyre not busy. Sometimes an author will say no because they dont want to be photographed. Cspan can you remember one that. They are private people. They dont play cat and mouse. They are not coy about it so i respect that privacy. Cspan have you had one where they have never had their photograph taken and they said sure, and over they had never done this . Guest i know for example that i was very anxious to photograph william when he was editor of the new yorker because i thought he was the most important editor andy had nurtured so many of the best writers and i let it be known that i wanted to take his picture. Certainly updike dale and i guess mr. White male. A lot of people knew but and i would often say that if he ever would let me photograph him that i would literally stand there and take a picture and at the film came out of my camera i would hand them to him and he could put them in a vault so until after he died or do whatever you wanted. I thought he would be photographed and one day im in california and the phone rang and this man says hello this is mr. Shaw and i hope im not bothering you. He said will you know i want to know if i could impose upon you for a favor. I said absolutely. He said will Time Magazine has recently interviewed me for the anniversary of the magazine and they wanted to photograph me but i told them i r. D. Had a photograph but i really loved of myself and i was wondering if he were too busy if you could come and take that picture. I said i will be there tomorrow afternoon. That was an example of something that worked out with patience and then when the picture appeared in Time Magazine i let him take the picture that he wanted and rather than take a picture of him at his desk i photographed him at home and i photographed him in the park wearing a fedora. That was the picture you wanted and then bob said i was really just in that picture because he said i think sean has always thought of himself as the reporter, the man out on the street on the beat. Cspan whats the story behind this picture of saul bellow . Guest saul bellow i photographed in the 70s in chicago and i wanted to be photographed him. He was approaching his 80th birthday so i went to vermont to take that picture. I began the session at the drafting table and he was actually sitting down at that table. While i was taking his picture i was telling him about the picture of reader that i had taken for the book and she wrote standing up. As i was talking this desk started to rise so he too was standing cspan heres a picture of rita dove. Guest yes. Rita dove, unlike most of the writers in the book who prefer to write in the morning or in the afternoon, she prefers to write at dusk. And she begins by lighting those candles, so that as the dusk turns into darkness, the candles are lit and she can keep going. That desk was built for her by her father. Its, as i said, in a cabin in the woods. Silence is very important to her. She says she wants a silence that is so palpable that you can hear your heart beating in your chest. A lot of the writers i other writers, my husband among them isaac singer, they talk about the interruptions, that this is part of writing. I know that kurt actually likes to be in his room alone, but he likes all of us in other roomslily in the next room, me downstairs running around. In fact, very often, over the years, i know that if im out andor ifbefore lily was born, or if shes out, when i come home, when hes been alone all day, hell be sitting in the kitchen, dining room, reading or watching television. And as i return, he, very often, will go up and write because its, i think, easier for him with someone in the house. I think newspaper people are like that. They like the sounds of the city room and everything going on around them. I think there are people who can write in an airport. I know you think of me totally as a photographer, but the writing i do, i, too, prefer to be in an environment where theres life around me and not in a totally empty house because then i think it gets lonely. Cspan heres that picture of your husband in what looks to be like postcards. What is this . Guest well, ive always had pictures published as postcards, usually single postcards that have been published over the years by fotofolio, and in the last few years ive been publishing postcard books with pomegranate, a publisher out in california. I began with women writers, and then i did black writers with Edwidge Danticat on the cover. And then i did the men writers, which you just showed, with kurt on the cover, of course. And most recently, poets came out this month andoh. Cspan whos this . Guest seamus heany. Cspan whyd you pick him for the cover . Guest well, i think thati personally think of poetry as having a strong irish tradition with yeats. I thought that seamus, because he had recently won a nobel prize, would be recognizable. It justi like the photograph. It was just a personal decision. I probably could have used any number of pictures. Cspan how many photographs. Guest there are 30. Cspan . Are in each. Guest thirty. Cspan thirty in each of these . Guest yes, and ive just gone to press with a new one called writers and their familiars, which is writers with their creatures, whether theyre dogmostly dogs and cats, but Jacquelyn Mitchard with her ferret named powacket which was a familiar in bell, book and candle, maxine kumin with her horse. Cspan you mentioned earlier lily . Guest lily, our daughter yeah. Cspan how old is your daughter . Guest shes 14. Cspan whats she like . Guest shes terrific, and shes a very good photographer. Cspan she does it professionally already . Guest no, she doesnt do it professionally, but she actually recently photographed me because i wantedwell, in the postcard book with familiars, i have a photograph of kurt lying on the sofa with pumpkin, our late lhasa apso, sleeping on his tummy, and kurt, too, is taking a nap. They both liked sleeping. And when lily came home from boardshes at boarding school now, she was looking at all the pictures. And she saw the picture of kurt, and then she kept looking at flower, our new dog, and going `mom and so we thought that it might be appropriate to somehow get flower into this postcard book. So lily took a picture of me at my desk with my familiar, which will be a small picture, and shell get a photo credit. Cspan what kind of camera do you use . Guest i use very simple equipment. I use a leicaa leica m6, and to i use a nikon with an 80mm lens. The leica has a 35mm. We always have these two cameras. Cspan what do those cameras cost now . Guest i dont know, because i got them so long ago. If i probably had to replace them, id have a heart attack. I shoot mostly blackandwhite. I like blackandwhite. I think that for the kind of intimate photographs i take, that there is an intimacy to it. I also think that it translates the moment into something ive seen and not everybodys seen. If you and i were to stand and look at almost anything, we would see it in color; we would see it the way it is. So what you see isnt any different than what i see, whereas when i translate it into blackandwhite, i think i am seeing something that you havent seen. And i dont work with lights; i the dont work with an assistant. I have a small bag over my shoulder which gives me a lot of mobility. I have a very small camera that i use that i always have in my pocket, which is just an olympus stylus, that i keep color negative film in. And i use this virtually every day of my life. And. Cspan let me show the audience. Im going to grab this from you so they can see what it looks like. Guest and. Cspan this is just a littlelike a pointandshoot . Guest it is. Itsbut its a very simple one. When i send pictures to people from this camera or when they see me working with it, they often say, `oh, whati want to get one of those. and i say, `fine. Its an olympus stylus, and it has a fixedfocus lens. It does not have a telephoto, so when you go in, dont get the telephoto. it wont cost any more. Its just a gadget, but it will slow you down. And youre not going off using a camera like this to photograph giraffes in africa. So if you want to get closer to your subject, thats why you have these things called legs. Move in. It actually will make it more of a giveandtake, an intimate relationship, anyway. You shouldnt be so far away from somebody and be grabbing their picture to begin with. You know, if youre going to take their picture, take a good picture. Cspan do you talk to your subjects while youre doing it . Guest oh, yes, i do. Oh, i was just going to say about the color picture, i think it takes as good pictures as my leica or my nikon. Its not the camera that takes the pictures. So a picture i took in color recently with this is now on the back of saul bellows new novella. So a lot of the pictures im taking with this small camera are published. Theyreand theyre certainly publishable. As far as talking to my subjects, yes, i talk to them only because its often interesting to them to hear about some of the other writers that ive photographed. And if theyre talking, then they have to concentrate too much on what theyre saying instead of what theyre doing. So by the time i get them, say to a situation where theyre at their desk, i might Start Talking in the beginning, but then im backing up and theres not a conversation going at all. For example, with this picture of george plimpton, in the beginning, of course, we were chatting away, and those kids were running back and forth and getting him paper clips and playing with rubber bands. And then it was time for their bottle, and theyre running around with their bottles. And then they just kind of settled in. And i am on a sofa on the other side of the room with my back against the wall, wishing that i could have two more inches because im so scared that these twins are going to crawl out of the picture. But. Cspan whose twins are they . Guest theyre georges twins. They were about a year old in that picture. I photographed them the other night. Theyre notthey dont look like that anymore. They were sitting and reading their bedtime books. Cspan what year is this . Guest that was in 1995or 1996, just before the book went to press. It was one of the more recent pictures i took for the book. But i met. Cspan and where is this . Guest thats in new york city, in his apartment on 72nd street, overlooking the river. I first met george when i was working as a staff i first met george when i was working as a Staff Photographerwell, just before i got hired as a Staff Photographer for the new york heraldtribune, so i met him in 1964. I was called on a saturday morning by jim bellows, who was the managing editor of the paper, and he asked me if i could get on a train in a half an hour and go photograph amanda burdens weddingwell, she was amanda paleyamanda mortimer, actually, and she was marrying carter burden. And i ran out of my fourthfloor walkup apartment very quickly and photographed the wedding. And then george gave me a ride back to new york, and ive been photographing him ever since, as a trapeze artist, asin every incarnation. Cspan whats the arrangement you have with your subject . If they love your photo and they want it, do they buy it from you . Guest they can. I go in saying that i will give them picture approval. I want them to like my pictures. I feel that its a collaboration between them and me, which is why i dont work on assignment for magazines. Once in a while, i do. And then i will usually print up anywhere between maybe 10, 20, 25 photographsprints and i will send them a selection of prints, usually as a present. Ill send them some of the color pictures, often in small framesas a gift, as a thankyou present for letting me do this. And i will sometimes send them contact sheets if i think they would be interested. But usually, if they just call and say, `oh, thank you so much for the pictures and could i get some more . ill say `sure, and then ill send them an order form, and they can order additional pictures at what is basically my lab cost, and with the stipulation that these photographs are only for family, friends, a desktop drawerthat they cannot be usedthey cannot be published without my permission. However, if they want to send the picture to a magazine or to their alumni magazine or to their publisher or whatever, theyre free to do it, because the photograph is actually stamped on the back with everything but my blood type, so the person who gets the picture knows that they have to call me, because they know they cant that im a professional and that they would have to negotiate for the fee of the photograph. Now certainly, if somebody calls and wants to use it for a truly nonyou know, something that has no moneya nonprofitthats really nonprofitexcept im beginning to think that im fast becoming the only true Nonprofit Organization in this country. Every day, i get a call and they say, `well, were a Nonprofit Organization. i say, `oh, god, you know, thatyou mean, youre doing this jobthis is a volunteer job . and they say, `oh, no, no, you know, im being paid, but its just nonprofit. and im thinking, `well, im not getting paid, but youbut, you know, i try to just work it out. On the other hand, if iyou know, i photograph somebody and their publisher callsbantamand saysor saul bellow, a classic example. I did him on my own, sent him a lot of pictures, and then when viking penguin was going to publish his book they asked saul what he wanted to use on his jacket. He said, `id like to use jills picture. i send them the picture; they pay me. And if im lucky, in five years, ive actually broken even on the cost of my airplane ride. Cspan whos this man . Guest p. G. Wodehouse. Cspan when was this taken . Guest that was taken in 1973. He lived in remsenburg, long island. I photographed him in conjunction with an earlier book i did with israel shenker from the New York Times called words and their masters, and he had written an essay about p. G. Wodehouse. And so i wrote to mr. Wodehouse and asked him if i could photograph him, and i guess either he called me or hisi know i was on the phone with him and i wanted to go and photograph him at 3 00, and he said why didnt i come around 4. And i said, well, i could come at 4. I said, `but i know you watch edge of night every day at 3 30, and i would like to come at 3 00, and i give you my word of honor i will not say a peep if youll let me take a picture of you watching your show. so he said, `oh, ok. so i went and took a picture of him watching edge of night. And i took many pictures. I thought it was easier for you to show the picture with edge of night on the screen. But as that tape progressed, you could just see him just sitting on the edge of his chair as heas theyou know, the story was evolving. And then theres one where theres a couple kissing, and hes just really into this program. I had a nice time. Hes in my writers and their familiars postcard book with his dachshund jed. And he and his wife were very generous with the bideawee shelter in long island and gave them a lot of money. And its actuallytheres a part thats named after him. Cspan where did you take this picture of stephen king . Guest stephen kingi photographed him in maine. Thats marlow under there. I photographed stephen king when he was just starting out. He had a beard. Heit was in the very early 70s. He and his wife, tabitha, who is a wonderful writer and a wonderful woman, both came to new york, asked if i would take their picture. I did. I wanted to have them in the book. When kurt and i went up to maine last summer to visit our daughter at camp, i wrote and asked him if we could get together while i was up there. You know, maybe all four of us could have dinner. And he said, you know, that they would like that. And i said that i was working on this book, but that wasnt part of the deal. If he would like to be in it, i would be honored to include him, but if he didnt, he didnt have to feel uncomfortable. But i certainly didnt want to get there and then ask him and turn a social occasion into a business. Butbecause iso i wanted to put my cards on the table. And so we got there and nothing was mentioned. We had a terrific dinner. And just sitting outside, his son was there. And i only brought my leica; i didnt bring my whole camera. You know, i didnt even bring the nikon. And after dinner was over and it was actually getting quite dark, he said, `well, how long would it take forhe said, `could you take that picture you talked i said, `i could do it in five he said, `come along, then. so we went upstairs and i only shot half a roll of film. And i sent him a lot of the pictures. He actually sent me flowers, he liked them so much. And he ended up using that picture on the back of his new book. I used it for my book, and i think everyone was happy. Last summer, when i had an exhibition of my photographs on long island, they had a show called `creatures at the Elaine Benson gallery. And that was where i got the idea of the familiars. And i had 12 of my photographs of writers with their familiars, including this one. And when i showed up at the opening, elaine came running up. She said, `jill, weve already sold a picture. she was flabbergasted. And so i went in to meet the woman who had bought my picture, and she had a vest on that had all these corgis on it. And she said `oh, im so excited about the picture. she had never heard of me. She had never heard of stephen king. She collected corgis. She had a car parked outside. It had `corgi on the license plate. So stephen and i were very incidental to this big sale. Cspan animals are in a lot of these pictures, including this of Willie Morris. Who is Willie Morris and whos the animal . Guest well, that was just an alley cat that he found, a stray cat. Willie morris is a wonderful southern writer. It was with willie that i stayed when i went down to visit eudora the last time. I had wanted to stay in a guest house or, you know, a hotel, but they were having some kind of antique show down there. And i think the three hotel rooms in jackson, mississippi, had been sold out. So i called willie and he said,` of course you can stay here. so i stayed there, and when i wentand i went up and i sawhe slept a little later than i did, and i saw this beautiful writing room of his. And the cats name is spit mcgeeand took that photograph of him before he drove me over to eudoras andbecause i was having lunch with her. And i think its similar in feeling to the photograph of eudora. I think that you can telli dont know why that that is a southern house. Its all those windows, the light, the peacefulness of it. And i like the photograph a lot. Cspan you know, weve showed the actual book photograph there, and you see the spine in the photograph. Does thata photographers nightmare, when a book has to be published like this where they split a photograph . Guest with a gutter, yeah. But i think that it was the only way i could show my horizontal pictures, was to go across the gutter. I think that what is wonderful about this book, besides the quotes, is the size and the format, because my photographs are intimate, and i think that the physical size of the book is intimate as well. I dont want it to be a coffee table book, because coffee table books just stay on thetheyre like fancy big coasters after a while. And then they get moved to a bookcase thats high enough to accommodate them. I wanti think this book is nice if you can put it by your typewriter, by your bedside table. I think its cozy. And i also think that my best photographs are horizontals because i think we see horizontally. I dont think everything is, you know, tall and narrow, except for my next project, which, of course, will be bookmarksvery tall and narrow. Cspan who is this . Guest georges simenon. I photographed him. Cspan and this. Guest . The day after i took that photograph of piaget because i was in switzerland. Piaget had the worlds messiest desk; simenon had one of the neatest. I felt, when i took that picture, that if he had gone out of the room and i had moved one pipe three inches, that when he returned he would have just without even talking, moved that pipe back to where it had been. And. Cspan and who is this. Guest . The messy desk. Cspan who is he . Guest georges simenonhe is a very famous writer of mysteries. He did all the maigret stories. He was a very, very prolific writer. He wrote a novel in 11 days. I said earlier that he would go to the doctor, hed have himself checked out to be sure he was in good shape, and then he would not see or speak to anyone for that 11day period. But i was going to say, in the messy desk vs. The neat desk ive always found that its the person with the really neat desk, like simenon, when you go in, they say, `oh, god, you know, `you cant photograph me. Let me clean this up first. its the executive who has one piece of paper who says, `oh god, this is a mess, where the people with real mess and clutterthey wouldnt dare clean it up, because if they did, they would never find anything again as long as they lived. Cspan jean piaget. Guest jean piaget. Cspan where did you take this . Guest in geneva, switzerland. What was wonderful about his desk was that you couldnt see his desk. There was one small area that was just big enough to accommodate, he told me, a book so that he could place it down and actually turn the pages. Until updike wrote the introduction to the book, iall i saw were all those papers and clutter. And what updike says is he seems to have what looks like two radios in the back, one on top of the other. Dont know what those two radios were doing. Sometimes i donti think i see everything in the photograph when im taking it, but its always fun to go back and rediscover something that was there that i didnt necessarily see or notice the first time around. It wasnt until after this book was published and i had an exhibition of my photographs at the staleywise gallery in new york thatwhen i had my Tennessee Williams picture blown up very, very large, like, you know, 24by30, that i noticed that he has two typewriters on his desk. I had thought he had one typewriter and that that thing in the back was simply the typewriter cover that clamped on over it. But it is clearly the bottom of a second typewriter on its side. So you know, who knows . Cspan where did you grow up . Guest i grew up in morristown, new jersey. I moved to new york when i was 19 and started working at harpers bazaar. And. Cspan did you have college . Guest i wenti took courses for a year at drew university, which is in madison, new jersey. Its one of the best seminariesmethodist seminaries in the united states. And then i came to new york and ive always taken courses in new york, whether its at the Art Students League ori audited some courses with Margaret Mead at columbia. I goeven now i think im taking courses, in a way because i go to two or three readings a night. There is so much going on in new york. You know, i think you just startyou keep learning to read as you get older, and you become a better and a better student. Sono, but i didntdid i go to a formal college and walk out holding myno. Cspan what was your family like, that you grew up in . Are there otherdo you have sisters and brothers . Guest i do. Im the eldest of four children. I grew up in a very traditional, middleclass family. Most of the mothers didnt work. My mother didnt work when i was young. I grew up pretelevision, so i never saw writers on television. When i was in school, reading Thornton Wilders bridge of san luis rey, it never occurred to me in 10 million years that i could actually write him a letter or that this man was alive somewhereand i didnt see him on your show, either. So i think thats exciting for students today. In fact, even when i went to see Thornton Wilder in 1973, i remember vividly the night before i was at a dinner party and i said i had to leave, i had to get up early and i was going to photograph Thornton Wilder the next day. And this was, you know, all these very sophisticated literary people. And every single one of them said, `oh, is he still alive . and i said, `well, yes. i know people will think ill go to almost any extreme to take a photograph, but thats a line i havent crossed. Cspan how many people in your book . And you say there are 56 different people photographed. Guest yes. Cspan john updike has three pictures. How many of them are still alive . Guest twenty of them have died malamud, simenon, john cheever, Katherine Anne porter nerudaso many of them. Cspan you have a photograph here byi mean, of James Michener in theand by the way, who wrote all the littleyou know, they show the name of the individual and then underneath it theres copy. Did each of these people write them . Guest textit varied. With James Michener, i think it was aprobably a pull quote from a paris review interview. Georges was extraordinarily generous letting me use quotes from the paris review. And certainly, when a lot of the people were dead, i had to go to other sources. But also over the years, as i have photographed people, i have constantly clipped articles andthat are interesting about them, whether or not my picture illustrated it, and put them in the subject folder so that i was able to go back to a lot of other magazine articles. And then in the case of people like amy tan and roy blount jr. , veronica chambers, they wrote their own text pieces. With ann petry, whos 87 and living in old saybrook connecticut, i interviewed her and then i wrote up, you knowextracted from my interview with her what i thought would be a nice quote and sent it to her and asked. Cspan this photograph i was showing. Guest . Her to agree. Cspan . I want to make sure they know its amy tan. Guest thats amy tan. Cspan . Becausein 1996. So this is one of the most recent . Guest yes, that wasfirst i went back to my files and i pulled a lot of the pictures that i loved or knew i had pictures of desks. Then i went back to some of the files where i wasnt sure whether i had desksfor instance, neruda. Well, i thought i had done him at his desk, but i knew id done him holding the shell, which is a famous picture. And then there were some new people i wanted to add. I particularly wanted to photograph ann petry, because i had been hearing so much about her. Every time i went to hear skip gates talk, he would talk about this book called the street. It was written in the 40s by ann petry. So i went to the bookstore and i found the book, and i found out who her agent was and i called her agent. And her agent called her, and before i knew it i was driving to old saybrook and taking that picture of her. And weve stayed in touch a lot, and thats been a huge pleasure. In that picture of her, i wish that there werehad been a way in the book to even tell more about what was going on. But up on that shelf you see a mannequins head with a hat on it. And that is because she grew up the daughter of pharmacists, and she went to Pharmacy School and was working in the pharmacy, and then started writing and submitted a book of hers to a Houghton Mifflin contest and won the contest. And when the street was published in 1946, it was the first book by a black writer to sell over a million copies. And it is such a wonderful book. I amthat, to me, is what is so wonderful about my profession, because i love to read, and to have had the experience of not only hearing about that book and thenand to have read it, and then to have gone and to have been able to talk with anne petry about it, i mean, my god it just isi have to pinch myself to believe, you know. Im sure its the same way with you, isnt it, i mean, meeting some of the people that you love to read in your studio . Cspan guess what . Were out of time. Guest were out of time. Cspan heres the book called the writers desk by jill krementz, introduction by john updike. And we thank you very much. Guest oh, it was so much fun. Thank you. As