Christopher Kadish is a free-lance, professional photographer from the Philadelphia area. He has immortalized images from California to Europe, and provides an array of services from fine art to headshots and weddings. I sat down with Christopher to catch up on some of his new ideas and get an insight into some of his work.
Jon Flagler: First, I want to thank you for taking the time to meet with me and provide answers to some of the burning questions I’ve had about your work. Before we get into your previous work, what projects, if any, are you working on now?
Christopher Kadish: Just recently I’ve been working on a project I call minute’. It’s very fine, very close up images of living things—mostly flowers—and I go in with a tight lens and get as close as I can, take a bunch of shots, focusing on minute parts of the flower. Then I go in and edit it. I find a section of it that speaks to me as a possible large painting.
The impetus for this occurred while I was driving by a field, and I saw all these weeds—these flower weeds—and it just occurred to me, ‘”how much art must be in this bland field?” From a distance it looks like just a field with some weeds in it; but if you get up close, as close as you possibly can, there might be something beautiful. That’s what started me. So, I started going to gardens and shooting neighborhood flowers, at arboretums, and things like that.
JF: This seems as if your emphasis with this project is on finding beauty where most others would pass by oblivious.
CK: That’s definitely there, but it’s more about the finding of beauty within beauty, or finding missed opportunities. I would relate it to myself: I have Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. It’s rather helpful sometimes with my art, actually; but it would lead me to stare at things. I’ve always had this habit, this compulsive habit of finding patterns in things, even just a generic table with junk on it; and I’d just find patterns in it. I’d compose shots of these patterns. It’s been a bit of an obsession to find patterns and composition in everyday objects. Now I’m trying to apply that to my art. Looking at something that we would normally see as bland and turning that into beauty is one of my purposes with this new project.
JF: I see. Could one consider this to be your view of life manifesting itself through your art?
CK: I take a lot of headshots, working with actors, models, and musicians, and my job is to make someone look their best, inside and out, to find what’s beautiful about them. But, at the same time, I have to notice their flaws and try and shoot around them. So, I’ve kind of taken that habit into my life: A habit of nitpicking people, and it’s something I don’t like about myself. What this new project does is allow me to do the opposite thing. I’m looking for beauty, but I’m also looking for faults at the same time. Equal and opposite things are happening here. In my life I spend so much time searching for points of perfection, which enables me to, unfortunately, look for points of imperfection. That’s why, in my life, I try to find something beautiful to obsess over instead of something negative.
JF: It’s an intriguing paradox. Imperfections can be considered the things that make something or someone perfect. It’s the character they give something or someone—uniqueness. How did this come to follow your previous work?
CK: That is something I get deeply, but still find difficult to reconcile. To hold both ideas at the same time, to blend them into one whole, to see as “perfectly imperfect.”
As for my previous work, while abroad, I put myself, sometimes, in positions that might get me in trouble, completely unbeknownst to me. One of my images from Amsterdam is from the red-light district. I was told, very adamantly, “Do not take pictures of the women in the glass boxes!” So, I figured everything else was fair game. I came upon a group of men, and I snapped this moment of a man blowing out his marijuana smoke. Well, I was immediate surrounded by this gang who seemed to me to be drug dealers. I just got the vibe. There were many of them, and I was in the middle. A very, let’s say, determined man put his hand out, and I shook it. He immediately pulled it away—he didn’t want to shake my hand. I wanted to appear friendly, and hope to get the same back. He had a Styrofoam cup with rice in it; he’s eating and he has grease all over his face. His hands are greasy and he puts his hand out again, and I shake it, feeling the grease transfer to my hand. He pulls his hand back again and says, in a thick accent, “Camera.” I shook my head, pretending to be confused, and said in some fake accent I made up, “Student’e.” Well, he said again, “Camera!” I shook my head, gave him a shrug, and said, “Student’e! Student’e!” So now the gang moves in closer, and he says a third time, “Camera!” I knew they wanted my camera, or maybe just take out the film, but I wasn’t about to let them. I had a bunch of images on that roll of film that I did not want to loose; so, I just slammed through them and started running my ass off. I ran and ran and ran, and took a left at some small street right out of the red-light district and jumped into a coffee shop and ducked behind the counter. I had a jacket in my bag and a hat. I took my shirt off, put on the jacket and hat, and tried to change my appearance as best I could. Here I am behind this counter, the employees are looking at me like, “Who the fuck is this guy?!” and I’m thinking to myself, “I’m a dead man! I am a dead man!” I stayed there for quite a while, and, thankfully, they didn’t find me. This is one of my favorite images because of that.
Another time, when I was in Prague, I passed a woman in an alley. She was staggering around, and I noticed that she just looked beat—totally beat. She was tall, long legs, short pants, and she was staggering around looking for, I guess, cigarette butts or something. She was a really attractive woman, just beat. Black and blue marks all over her legs. I moved behind a wall, and prefocused my lens, trying to anticipate where she’d be, feeling I might only have a moment to catch this woman. So I quick came back, lifted up my camera, snapped one image, and that very moment a door opened in the alley way. Two huge men came through the door, leather vests, tall as buildings; well, in Prague everyone is tall. I mean, you have to pee up at the urinals, it’s ridiculous. They came right up to me, and I’m thinking, “Son of a bitch, I’m a dead man again!” They both came upon me, staring over me; meanwhile the woman is still staggering around, bending down looking for something. They’re standing over me, and I’m shaking, I mean violently shaking. I don’t think I’m going to get out of this one. They paused, and the one guy says, “Cigarette?” Still shaking and my head itching from the sweat, I gave them both a cigarette, turned, and walked away. I felt very lucky to walk away from this one.
I went back to Europe three years later to try and take more images but just lost myself. I wasn’t able to pick up my camera. It was as if my art, and my creativity, and my desire to get into situations like that, to capture beauty in a nest of drug dealers… It was as if I lost my will to shoot, and I stared leaving my camera behind, locking it up at the hostile. I just started walking around, smoking way too much marijuana, and dying inside.
I was on a beach in Southern Italy and I met my friend Robbie. She came to visit me for a few days, and we camped together. While on the beach she goes and buys an ice cream sandwich. I’ve never seen this before, but in Italy they have these ice cream sandwiches with images printed on them. Well, I had told her that I’m dead inside—that I have no desire to make art at all. I was afraid to get in peoples’ faces. I felt ashamed, I felt like a failure. People go through little deaths in their lives and I was going through one, I just didn’t know what it was. Any way, she unwraps this ice cream sandwich and there’s an image on it. It’s a rhinoceros charging a photographer who’s shaking like a leaf. Robbie laughs. The image title is in Italian, and Robbie tells me that it’s called, “The Frightened Photographer.” And, in her thick Italian accent, she’s pointing at me laughing, saying, “This is you! This is you!” It was so strange; it was like I found some divine message in an ice cream sandwich. Like God was watching. Then I immediately started taking images again, and I didn’t stop after that. I found Divine inspiration in an ice cream sandwich. It’s pretty funny.
JF: What would say are your fears or struggles now as a photographer?
CK: Cartier Bresson speaks of “The decisive moment,” where you almost know what’s going to happen before it’s going to happen. I’ve had that feeling in my life where it was almost as if I was getting a message; like something is going to happen in a moment just ahead. Well, I’ve ignored that message at times, that feeing, and it’s like you’re denying yourself of something. I think if you deny yourself of those moments enough they stop coming. God gives us these talents, and I think it’s our responsibility to use these talents. I’ve gotten sick—literally, I felt sick—I’ve beat myself up, and felt shame at times when I’ve denied what was given to me as talent. I feel like if we don’t get it out, if we don’t use these talents, then we might actually take time off our lives. There is a spiritual release that we feel when using our talents and if we deny ourselves of that and it begets sadness, even depression.
JF: That testimony is a true depiction of the integrity behind your work. Now that you’ve gone through these little deaths and come reborn in certain ways, where do you see yourself now? Rather, what projects has this understanding inspired you to pursue?
CK: One of the ideas I have in expanding my business is photographing normal people: housewives, bartenders, secretaries… Whomever. It’s aimed at anybody who wants to feel special for the day, or anybody who wants to feel like a model for the day. The goal to focus on the beauty and the essence of the normal person—someone who isn’t in the arts, or someone who wants to just stand in front of a wind machine and just let it fly. It’s not to imply that there is no beauty in the everyday person, but focusing on that beauty, that unappreciated aspect of the everyday person that we, our society, so often looks through. People desire deeply to feel beautiful, and I want to help them.
Photography by Christopher Kadish
Christopher Kadish Photography
