INTERVIEW | Marc Gouguenheim
Boyan - We featured Marc a couple of months ago as an artist of the day. Marc is an exceptional photographer and I thought his words would be interesting to aspiring young photographers the world over. Hope you enjoy this interview, thanks Marc.
Give us a quick, 50 word introduction
A 50 words intro that I can easily write without counting the words would be:
I love to be in love - just like you, I guess…J And to me, photography is nothing else but loving what you look at, and looking (carefully) at what you love.
What’s your favourite subject/niche of photography & why?
People photography – of all kinds. Street photography and studio portraits are my favorites, but I enjoy fashion and advertising people photography just about as much. Why ? In fact, I think it’s just because I’m human, so I have the greatest interest in my own species. Mostly, I take a real pleasure in discovering, during any photo session, all the fine differences and nuances between two facial expressions… And I love to search for the little something that will best express the character of the person in front of my lens…
You’ve moved around a great deal throughout your career - how has that affected your opportunities for work?
Has been a HUGE waste of (career) time ! :-) Of course, each time you move to another area, or an other country, you have to rebuild a clientele from scratch. Whereas even the worst photographer will always manage to get and keep some clients if he stays long enough building a network somewhere. But that’s a choice each of us has to make: Should we live for our clients, or live for ourselves and work for our clients ? J
What has been your biggest a) highlight and b) low point thus far?
My greatest achievements, if I would speak like en entrepreneur, should have the names of the greatest accounts I’ve won… But in fact, no… I’ve been gald to get some prestigious clients like NCR, Scania Trucks, or two ministries, of course… But my greatest personal satisfaction lies elsewhere… I have travelled Asia extensively between 1990 and 1993, and then had a fairly serious accident, which led me to stop travelling for a couple of years. As I started travelling again for short periods of time, between 1997 and 1999, I felt alive again, and was happier than ever to be able again to walk on the beach or in the mountains al day long shooting what ever street scenes I would encounter… And during this short periods of time, I was very happy to see that my travel pictures were a lot better than they used to be before my accident. My greatest satisfaction ever came in 2006, when I entered one of these travel pictures, titled “Little Prince”, in the world’s greatest B&White competition – The B&W Spider Awards, judged by Magnum agency and all the most prestigious names you can think of. A simple picture of a child on the beach, which I had come to love more than all the others over the years. I entered it in the Professional “People” category and it earned me a third place. The third place was a good thing of course, but it was my favorite child picture among thousands, and taken about 8 years before the competition, and that’s what I enjoyed most. This picture was, to me, the symbol of my return to real life in 1997, and the symbol of all the beauty I had ever seen and dearly loved in Asian third world areas.
Now, my greatest low point in my career, was very clearly in the year 2004, when my divorce forced me to close down my studio and my ad agency, and to return to France in very difficult conditions with my two 5 years old boys. Closing the studio was terrible, but all else was even worse, back then…! J
What advice would you give young photographers in terms of maximising income from their work?
I’m the wrong person for this sort of advice, I’m affraid. I’ve always done what I loved, not what paid most… Most people in my surroundings felt – and told me – that they considered I had failed my career, because I hadn’t earned, according to them, the money I deserved to earn.
My answer : “Who cares if I’ve been happy doing what I did ?!”
My faith/belief : “If I do what I love, and if my love for what I do is what drives my life, then soon or later, I’ll be rewarded by Life, or God, or Luck – pick the name you like best…” I can’t demonstrate this, and it may not work this way, but I’ll stick to this belief no matter what, because it made me a happier man.
Has your level of experience in photography shown up any benefits in unexpected fields?
Photography has led me to open my own ad agency in 1999. One of my main clients in photography was very happy with the pictures I took of his products, but happy with my absolute dedication as well. And at some point in time, the manager of this company expressed the idea, that he would wish I could design and print his brochures as well. And so, I opened a small ad agency, working with free lance ad directors when necessary. A great addition to photography, which allowed me within a year to take another two major clients on board to do their brochures, catalog and press ads. 3 years later, in 2002, I had made about as much money from advertising as from photography : so it was definitely a good move ! But what was great as well, is that I learned something a bit different: how to use images to advertise well for various products…
If you weren’t a photographer, what do you think you would be?
A chess player ! :-) I played chess a lot – close to master level – till I was 26, and even a little bit from 26 till 30 or so … Otherwise, I’d perhaps have been a lecturer in Philosophy or arts… that’s what I studied. At any rate, I was born unable to invest lots of time in anything that I wouldn’t love dearly. As a child, I wanted to be a writer, then a painter, then I finally became a photographer, but in all I did, my Love for Arts has always been the key to my choices.
See his fantastic work here: Marc Gouguenheim
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