In the summer of 1979 I was sent by Life Magazine to photograph an artist named Dale Eldred and his work. I knew nothing about him or his work and the assignment was for two days of shooting. When I got to the Nelson-Atkins Museum in Kansas City, Missouri, I was overwhelmed, to say the least.
Artists see what others see, what they do with it, however, is different.
Dale saw a tape that reflected color, used for car bumper stickers and motorcycle helmets. He took the concept and extended it by covering hundreds of posts with this tape (made by 3M) and then planting them on a divider strip next to the museum.
He used the same concept in the museum and on the museum.
What you had to understand is that the specific colors reflected and refracted off the tape changed as your viewpoint changed. If you saw it from street level, for instance, the same posts would look totally different if you photographed them from a different height
I, for one, could stare at it for hours.
Dale himself was a big happy, go-lucky, sweet man with a gentle disposition. We got along just fine when he realized I was in love with his work.
I photographed with a combination of joy and terror. Joy because it was so much fun to shoot and terror because it was film (digital hadn’t happened yet) and I had literally no idea what the exposure should be since the stuff didn’t just reflect light, it amplified it.
Well, bracketing was the obvious answer and I shot over 2,500 images in two days (I paid for this later with mind-numbing editing). I thought I’d done a good job but two days after I turned it in I got a call from Life Magazine. Some guy says I’d better come up there, I’m in deep shit with the editor.
Carefully adjusting the chip on my shoulder, I marched in there. Fuck them. I knew I’d done a good job. They referred me to the editor’s office. I went in and the first thing he say was,
“Did you know this was set up as a single spread?”
“No.”
“Well, it was and it’s now going for 6-8 pages. You’ve fucked up our whole schedule!”
It was the first and last time anyone chewed me out like that.
