The MOOD Podcast
In The MOOD Podcast, Matt Jacob, renowned cultural portrait photographer, dives deep into the world of photography and the visual arts, with guests from all around the creative industry, across all parts of the globe, sharing inspiring stories and experiences that will leave you wanting more. With years of experience and a passion for storytelling, Matt has become a master of capturing lesser-told human stories through his photography, and teams up with other special artists from around the world to showcase insights, experiences and opinions within the diverse and sometimes controversial photography world.
You can watch these podcasts on his Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@mattyj_ay.
You can also follow Matt's work on his Instagram @mattyj_ay and his website: https://mattjacobphotography.com.
The MOOD Podcast
Is Identity an Illusion? A Conversation with Photographer Benjamin Rasmussen, EO79
What does it truly mean to belong, and how do our stories shape the connections we make?
Benjamin Rasmussen is an acclaimed photographer whose work explores themes of identity, belonging, and societal narratives. With roots in the Faroe Islands, the Philippines, and the United States, Benjamin’s multicultural upbringing profoundly influences his storytelling. As well as his work being featured in publications such as The New Yorker, Time, and The Atlantic, Benjamin is also the author of the photo book 'The Good Citizen'.
Highlights of our conversation:
- The connection between personal heritage and storytelling.
- Navigating the complexities of identity and belonging in photography.
- The balance between aesthetics and ethics.
- Challenging stereotypes and finding universal connections.
- The nuanced art of photographing power and privilege.
- The significance of compelling narratives in shaping perceptions.
- Insights into Benjamin's book, "The Good Citizen".
- Strategies for community engagement and distribution of photographic work.
Find Benjamin Rasmussen's work on his channels:
Website: www.benjaminrasmussenphoto.com
Instagram: @benjaminras
Referenced book in the conversation:
'The Good Citizen'
https://benjaminrasmussenphoto.com/The-Good-Citizen
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Welcome to the Mood Podcast. I'm covering the art of conversation one frame at a time. I'm your host, matt Jacob. Thank you so much for joining me in today's conversation and on this episode I'm thrilled to be speaking with Benjamin Rasmussen, a photographer whose work bridges the worlds of editorial, commercial and personal storytelling. Born to a Filipino-American mother and Faroese father, ben's multicultural upbringing has deeply shaped his nuanced approach to exploring the themes of identity, belonging and connection. His work has been published in the New Yorker Time, the Atlantic and other leading publications, earning him many accolades along the way. In my conversation with him, we explore the intersection of aesthetics and ethics in his photography, how his personal heritage informs his storytelling and the ways in which photography can really challenge societal narratives. Ben also reflects on the evolving role of photojournalism in a polarized media landscape and shares the challenges and triumphs of working on long-term personal projects. So now I bring you Ben Rasmussen.
Matt Jacob:Ben Rasmussen, welcome to the Moo podcast. Thanks for having me. Yeah, great to have you Another US-based artist. Maybe I should just move to the US, but we managed to make the time zones work. Thanks so much for spending the evening with me.
Ben Rasmussen:I wanted to start things off more in a high-level approach before we kind of jump into your background and then other projects and philosophies, but just give us an overview of of what you do and why you do it yeah, so I mean I, um, I'm a photographer who's been doing this work, um, you know, I just turned 40, so for pretty much for 20 years I kind of stumbled into photography in a journalism class, um, and just kind of fell in love with the way that it allowed me to connect to the different worlds that I came from. And then, you know, I can get into this later, but I, I, um, I'm half American, my mom is from the East coast, my dad is, um, from the Faroe islands, uh, a little protectorate of Denmark, in between Iceland and Scotland. And then, when I was one, my parents moved to the Philippines. So I spent most of my childhood on this tiny little island off of the very southwest tip of the Philippines, kind of like right next to Malaysia, kind of like right next to Malaysia. And so when I found photography, it was this, it sort of became this thing that allowed me to introduce these really different worlds that I came from to each other.
Ben Rasmussen:And then, as I tried to sort of find my way in that kind of where I settled, was for a long time was working in the magazine world, so that's been sort of the bulk of my career, is doing a really wide array of stories um really like not specializing in one topic or one style um, but really uh kind of specializing almost in stuff that's a little bit harder to visualize, um.
Ben Rasmussen:You know. So now I'm not sent to really uh like I don't show up at a protest to take protest photos, um. I don't show up at a news event to make dramatic pictures um, it's more to sort of try and tell a more complex story um, that taps into a lot of, I think, kind of cultural language and visual language um, that that viewers and readers have um, and I think kind of cultural language and visual language um, that that viewers and readers have Um, and so that was kind of my. That's sort of where I sat for for most of the last 20 years, um, and then now just uh kind of reinventing it every year a little bit as you kind of refine it.
Matt Jacob:What? What is it that drives you to to a pick up a camera but, more importantly, tell, tell stories and understand what type of stories mean the most to you. What is why? Why do you do it? What is it that sparks that, that passion, interest, so to me it's inherently about uh understanding the world, um, the.
Ben Rasmussen:The british writer, bruce chatwin, had this line of of uh how he was interested in explaining the world to the world. Um, and to me that's really fascinating, like I think that I I get drawn to things that I am interested in, like I tend to be very my work is very research-based. I tend to be sort of like like almost obsessive um, with really trying to sort of like figure out the like, the underpinning, almost in like a like a sociological way, like why does society function? Um, and you know, for me that's like growing up the way I was always an outsider, and so I think trying to understand how kind of a community or a place or a conflict or an issue functions from the inside, and then being able to photograph that, to be able to sort of make that exploration concrete with images, that's the thing that sort of pushes me forward.
Matt Jacob:Tell us a little bit about your quest for identity and your quest for where you belong in the world and the background to that, because of your parents from different parts of the world and moving from the US to the Philippines and then moving back, and how all that kind of plays into your worldview essentially.
Ben Rasmussen:I lived in the philippines pretty much until I was, uh, finished high school, so I left at 18 and moved back to the to the states for for college, um, and I just remember, you know, like, at that point, um, really really like I, you know you sort of like fantasize about other people's ability to belong, like, um, I remember like thinking that there was nothing cooler than like to have a hometown. It's like you know you could return somewhere, um, and and then, and then I did that thing as well. Right, we sort of think that your own sort of like struggle with that as unique, like you think that you're completely isolated in, like feeling displaced or or feeling confused about those ideas, um, and and so, like, initially, when I picked up a camera, then it was, like, you know, first you get kind of seduced by the stuff that you're supposed to do, like, uh, for me that was like photographing things that were more extreme, like conflict situations or like disaster situations, um, and you know, I did that for a few years, kind of in my early 20s, and I sort of reached this point where I was like, until I start to understand this like identity aspect, like till I start to explore, like I jumped into trying to tell the world about the world, without ever like trying to understand, like my own world and my own interior, and so I decided to do this thing where I would, um, I was like if I want to photograph other people's faces, I need to understand what that experience is like. Um, and so so I spent a few years in my kind of late 20s, photographing this project called Home, where I was going to the Faroe Islands and photographing my family, my father's family community there, photographing the small island where I grew up in the Philippines, and then in college I met and married a woman who's from this small ranching town in Wyoming, and so it's a photographing that town and sort of finding these sort of through lines and this fluidity between it and kind of. What I realized through that experience was like like Abby, my wife, did not love her hometown, like felt very, very displaced in her hometown and, uh, and photographing. And then you know the, the Island where I grew up, it's, it's a very, it's like a indigenous, like people group and very poor, and you know, people were like pushing to sort of like figure out how to go to school or get opportunities or leave.
Ben Rasmussen:Um, and, and I realized that I'd sort of made this sort of romantic, simplistic idea in my head of even like, my own existence and my own background, um, and, and that just made me want to sort of complicate that and like realize that these things were, um, like there's just so many layers, there's so many like, there's so much complexity, um and uh, and then you just kind of have to continue to sort of like move through and dig through and photographs can. Photographs can just be like such a beautiful sheen on top of this sort of ball of complexity, um, and of difficulty and of pain and uh, um, and so I, I, I like that really motivated me to try and like figure that out more and to like, yeah to, to just sort of keep exploring um stories in my own identity, kind of within that. And then I started looking. I kind of went into a phase of looking back out at the world, but very much using this. There's this great Tom Waits line that I love where he says, like I love, I want beautiful melodies telling me horrible things, and so sort of using that mindset, I started making work about, like the experience of Syrian refugees who had fled and were kind of resettling and creating community in Jordan, the aftermath of Typhoon Haiyan this huge typhoon, super typhoon that came through the Philippines, in this one village that was really, really devastated by it, um, and and a number of other kind of like similar, smaller projects.
Ben Rasmussen:And I was showing that to an editor at um national geographic and she posed this question of when does someone go from being a refugee or a migrant or displaced to becoming a citizen? And it took me back to that same place where I was like I never actually, I never really looked at what that process was and what that process was for me, um, as someone coming from the privilege of of dual citizenship, as someone who kind of who entered kind of American society as an adult, um, and that question is kind of stuck with me and I started sort of just researching and being like I think that this is maybe how I like this is that next level of depth, of kind of figuring out my own place and identity is like is asking that question Like what does it mean for, yeah, what does citizenship mean, what does belonging mean and what does that mean for me? And how does my own experience sort of compare and contrast with other people who've gone through the same process.
Matt Jacob:Yeah, I think that's such a wonderful story to investigate and it's always the perennial one, right? There's probably never a final answer and, like you said, it's completely different for every individual. And people always seem to forget that, and an immigrant in the US, for example, thinks when is it that you sit? You wake up one day and go. I feel like a citizen today. I get treated like a citizen. You may get treated like a citizen lawfully, but whether you get treated like a citizen by the rest of the country and in society is a different story together. So what a wonderful thing to investigate. I'd like to ask you what you found. We're going to talk about your book that you released a couple of years ago, soon. What interested me that you talked about is a lovely quote, beautiful melodies telling me horrible things. How do you go about making something beautiful? Do you? Do you really rely on the narrative, or how do you balance the aesthetics with the ethics and and the the neutrality of essentially what you're trying to visualize and portray out there?
Ben Rasmussen:so I mean, for me it's it's. It's changed over the years, but I think what really started to solidify was, again, I came up working in magazines and so, you know, one of the things I quickly started to learn was we had different visual languages for different people. We had different visual languages for different communities, people of different levels of social import. You would photograph a billionaire one way and you would photograph an actor a different way and an athlete another way, someone who is, someone who is, you know, poor, someone who is unhoused, someone from, uh, you know, we would sort of separate the familiar and the exotic and, um, and so you could almost strip away so many levels of representation and you could actually just there's a massive amount of assumption that was built onto just the aesthetic language and the visual context of the image, and so I became really interested in what happens when you flip that. You know what happens when you. I kind of made a rule for myself that if I was photographing a place or a community that was sort of had less power than I did in in society, to to bring as much, uh sort of aesthetic elevation as I could to that, um, and if I was photographing somebody with more power, um, to make sure that it was not being used as a tool of propaganda, and that I was critiquing that power and so that sort of created this sort of question of you know, then, for example, when I was collaborating with another photographer, mike Freeberg no-transcript, this way, that's collaborative. Like you can't shoot four by five, that's not collaborative. You know, like, um, you have to have that conversation, you have to have that interaction, um, there has to be some sort of, uh, exchange of of of, you know, conversation, um, and and then so that kind of that was sort of like this first step.
Ben Rasmussen:And then, you know, starting to try and think more complexly of like, uh, there was a fire that came through, a wildfire, um, sort of like a smaller version of what's, what's ripping through LA right now, that came into northern colorado on new year's a couple years ago and it just like ripped through this like community on the outskirts of denver and it's this like complex community that has a lot of people from a lot of different parts of the world, that all kind of settled there and, um, and this, this fire spread really, really fast because these like strong winds came through and blew everything, um, and so I was. I was photographing it and, within sort of this framework that I'm trying to been trying to establish and trying to think through, like a picture of a burke house is doesn't do anything like, I think, for me, I think for, for for viewers. They've seen this stuff a million times. I think we're seeing that with la fires. Like you see the same, the same tragic thing again and again and again and again and again, and you sort of, uh, you, you get numb to it. Um, and so to me it became like how do you, how do you develop a strategy? Like, how do you develop a visual strategy to tell this story in a way that people can maybe connect with, because it's coming a little bit out of left field, like they're not expecting it, and so they're present with it in a different way, because they don't have that guard built that we normally do.
Ben Rasmussen:And so in that case, as I was sort of walking through, like, as these fires are going, what I found was that it would burn into a, like a fire would burn into a house, it would burn through people's books, it would burn the spines off, and then this wind that was spreading the flames would just blow the pages of these books everywhere, everywhere you walk, there would just be these like sort of Burke pages on the ground, and so I started photographing these. Because of these books that you're seeing, you're seeing, you know, there's an art book in Japanese. There's a Jewish prayer book, there's like a episode guide to I love Lucy. There's, like you know, some someone's yearbook from the 1950s. There's someone's like Jaguar manual, like these things that sort of reveal who these people are in these sort of intimate spaces.
Ben Rasmussen:That, to me, was so much more powerful than just sort of seeing another burnt shell. That sort of invited you in, and so I think that that's how kind of I've. For me there's no, I don't tend to have sort of invited you in, and so. So I think that that's how kind of I've. For me it's there's, there's no, I don't tend to have sort of one answer. I just kind of, when I'm approaching something, trying I try to figure out like what is a yeah, what's a strategy that I can bring that will hopefully, um, kind of cut through some of those barriers that we tend to have as viewers to kind of shield ourselves from seeing so much of the outside world, you know, being like, always loaded onto us through images.
Matt Jacob:Yeah, I mean I don't want to talk about too much, but we obviously, in a world that we're just inundated excuse the pun, but like a fire hose of information, daily that it's, as photographers and, and you know, storytellers it's it's important to find a way that kind of breaks through that foam of just utter nonsense or or just saturation of information. So is that, is that the initial motivator? I mean, I'm just just trying to put myself in your shoes and first of all, where does an idea or where does the concept come from initially? Is it just an innate interest in something that pops up that you see, in this case, okay, once in a few years, or hopefully less than once in a few years, but wildfires that rip through a town or village or an area, that kind of sparks your interest, in that you want to go and tell that story. But why? What is it that comes from within in order to choose these types of narratives?
Ben Rasmussen:In a purely practical way oftentimes they come from commissions like being a jobbing photographer, and I just kind of trust, you know, I think for me I tend to be like being a jobbing photographer, um, and I just kind of trust, you know, I, I think for me, I I tend to be, I consume a lot of imagery, um, I, I like I've collect photo books, um especially, but but also just consume a lot of images, um, so I'm also, I'm very interested in sort of uh, like, what are the aspects of stories that I don't see? You know, like, what do I sort of see? Yeah, what do I see an inundation of, and then what am I sort of seeing as a gap? Like that's one of the things I think is so fascinating is because people are inundated, right, like you make such a good point, people are inundated with images, but they don't always tend to be inundated with stories. And I think we have a hunger for stories, but we don't have a hunger for information, right, just the sort of like endless stream of like facts.
Ben Rasmussen:And so then also, you know, just like this is not a story that I actually did, but I had a friend who was a war photographer and was covering the battle in northern Iraq against ISIS and he was describing to me like kind of what happened when a neighborhood was taken and he said, like you know, the Iraqi army would come and they would fight ISIS, they would push ISIS back and then, but the fighting is localized and so, like the soldiers, you know, isis would move back a block, the soldiers would move forward a block, and then the electric company would come in and would repair the electric lines and then the phone repair guys would come in and they would repair the cell phone tower and then families would move back and fighting is going on, like you know, several streets away.
Ben Rasmussen:And I was like that's amazing because, like all, all of these photographers are on the front lines with those guys shooting guns, but the, the, there's these like phone repair guys who are sort of laying this groundwork for, uh, you know, community, community, to re-establish um. And so to me, I think I just, I just I tend to find um, those little, the little things that it's like.
Matt Jacob:If I find it surprising and if I'm drawn to it, um, then I think probably other people will be as well it's often the unseen stories that are the, and the unseen moments and the moments in between, whether they're on a small scale with your camera or on a larger scale in terms of global narratives, that are often so intriguing and intimate to the audience. Right and that's really where we spark connection is having something that may be relative or may spark emotion because it's sort of an intimacy that really kind of resonates with ourselves. Do you think that's? You know, I'm still want to try and kind of dig a little bit deeper as to why that is the case. Mean, think about your upbringing and is it is?
Ben Rasmussen:oh yeah, absolutely. I mean, I am. I would describe myself as almost being drawn to, uh, the anti-exotic like I I was. I was talking about this with a friend actually recently, um, and because I've been sort of unpacking some of this stuff of like these motivations, but also, like I think, ways that I tend to respond to people or respond in social situations, or the way that I build community, like they're all to me, they're all sort of connected and what I realized was as, as a kid, I would, every few years, my parents would go back, we'd go back to the Faroe Islands, we'd go back to the States. My parents were missionaries, so they would have to go to churches and talk about what they did and my parents weren't the worst of it.
Ben Rasmussen:But you sort of get paraded around, you're sort of this exhibit, so you leave your life, that's super normal to you, and, given we're in a place with no electricity, we're sleeping under mosquito nets. You're sort of this like exhibit, so you leave your life, that's super normal to you, and given like we're in a place with no electricity, we're sleeping under mosquito nets, like it's very exotic in that sense, like from like a western perspective, but so you're basically taken from this place. That's very normal. And then within a couple of days you're dropped in this. So you dropped in the faroe islands and in the in the faroe islands people are like like what is your life? Like? Like this is this is crazy, like you're sort of this like exotic, like exhibition of strangeness. And then you go to the the states and they think that the philippines part is exotic and the faroese part is exotic. And so I think for me it became this thing of like, that thing of feeling like an exotic object was so alienating, it created so much distance between me and people.
Ben Rasmussen:I think what I've always been drawn to one of my favorite films is this Chris Marker film called Sans Soleil, and there's this line in it where the narrator says I've been around the world several times and now it's only banality that interests me, like the thing that actually in that space or that scene that could be exotic, that could be alienating, that could be sort of distancing, to find that thing that me as a photographer and like you as a viewer, can connect to and can sort of like remind ourselves of our life, and that we have that thing to sort of latch onto. That for me is almost it's that that almost like that thing that started as a kid of just like wanting my world to connect, um, and wanting wanting them to feel sort of closer together, as opposed to wanting it to feel sort of, uh, distant and and and exotic and strange and wonderful. I think I just had not such a distaste for that because I was always put into that position kind of during those developmental years.
Matt Jacob:Did you feel unseen or misunderstood then as a child? I mean, I understand that kind of central lack of belonging, especially in a physical sense, because you're moving all over the place or you're growing up in a different cultural environment than maybe your heritage suggests, or, in fact, the place you were born in but did did you feel almost unseen is that? Is that maybe a good word for it or a reflection of of why you look for the more unseen and less exotic in in your photography?
Ben Rasmussen:yeah, and I, and I think I also think that I and I still, I still find this um, uh, for years, for most of my, most of my uh, basically from the time I went to college until close to the end of my 30s, I never talked about this stuff. Um, like I, literally I had my 20 year of class reunion last summer, um, and I, I showed up not remembering I didn't, I didn't know who most people were like, I didn't remember like people would tell me stories about me that I had no right, like I, never I had literally hadn't revisited those experiences in 20 years. Um, I had just sort of that was like a I didn't want to be sort of, I didn't want to be one of those people where the most interesting part of my life was my past, um, and so, yeah, so I, I think that I, I, um, what I felt was that when you're, when you're, seen as exotic, you're not actually seen as fully human. Um, right, like, like, if you enter a space, uh, my, my, my wife's an attorney from small town Wyoming Like, when she enters this space, she has a lot to make up for, she has to sort of prove herself socially, and I don't, and it's really strange.
Ben Rasmussen:It's really strange to see that interaction again and again, where it's like I can rail off a couple of childhood anecdotes, work stories, whatever, and people are like you're in, right, and for her she has to do that actual human connection work, stories, whatever, and people are like you're in right and I'm like, and for her she has to do that actual human connection work. And so I think that there tends to be actually less of a barrier for her in getting to know people, where for me, people will assume a level of knowledge and a level of connection because they can remember you right, like you stand out in their head, you're different than other people they've met, or whatever, but it's not actually, it doesn't make you feel known.
Matt Jacob:No, they don't know anything about you. Yeah, Really, truly deeply.
Ben Rasmussen:And so I think that's where that desire comes from.
Matt Jacob:It brings us nicely onto the book, the Good Citizen photo book, which I kind of want to unpack as much as we can. It's been, I guess, a couple of years since it was published, but it took you numerous years to, I guess, put it together, but also using other images and essays. Just just give us a an overview of really what the book is about. Um, and I know it's broken down into five different chapters have you just kind of give us an overview of of what the book is about those chapters? But also really I guess we've answered it already but really why that book came to you and came about and why, why the concept really was was brought to, brought to your mind, to to make this book yeah.
Ben Rasmussen:So, like I like I mentioned earlier this, it kind of started from this, this place of like, examining what that line is between entering a place and becoming a citizen of that place. Um, and I was looking at that from an American perspective and researching it and you know, I kind of like I had to find something to grab onto, basically. And so what I started doing was I started looking at Supreme Court cases that have decided citizenship, that have decided who was and was not american and um, one of the most infamous ones is is this uh case called dred scott v sanford, which dred scott was like an enslaved black man who sued for his freedom, and then the case came up to the supreme court and basically the supreme court decided that um, as a black man, he could never become a citizen, so therefore he had no standing to sue um. But there was this line in there, um, where the justice who wrote the decision, taney, wrote that um, basically, like the founders, never wanted, like people of african descent, to be citizens and if they did and allowed slavery, then, like they should be uh, like rebuked for all of history because of their hypocrisy. So this thing that in reading in hindsight, like 150 years later, is actually an incredibly profound critique of the american founding fathers. Um, within within this historically horribly racist decision.
Ben Rasmussen:And as I was reading this, so Dred Scott was from St Louis Missouri and then is buried in St Louis Missouri and as I'm reading this, a young black man in Ferguson named Mike Brown was shot and killed by police. And so people start pouring out in Ferguson onto West Florissant Avenue, and five miles south on West Florissant is Calvary Cemetery where Dred Scott is buried, and so I went down to photograph it, because I sort of knew that there was something there and knew that I didn't want to take protest photos. I knew I knew that I wanted to try and find a language, a visual language, to approach it. So I went down with like a large format camera and some lights and recorded interviews with people, this idea of the sort of the shortness of American history and how, how those those kinds of echoes of history are so they're so strong because of of the the kind of compressed nature of the time, but also how history tends to sort of rewrite itself and we forget these lessons of the past.
Ben Rasmussen:And for me, as someone who was working so much in the media.
Ben Rasmussen:We were always looking at the contemporary only within the context of the contemporary, and so I became interested in is there a way to look at this idea of who was kept out of full citizenship and look at the ripple effects that that had on communities and being able to trace that into the present and then trace that presence back and then trace that back forward and sort of create this looping narrative that it wasn't a sort of simple we started here and now we're here, but it was this consistent movement, um and yeah, and so that that was, um, you know, led to about probably seven or eight years of of making work and, and, you know, like researching, trying to find something to photograph um around, like finding one specific thing that I was interested, trying to find a way to photographically uh approach that, trying to get access to that thing, and then that would become, you know, two pictures, uh, and then and then figuring out where that led and where that led and where that led um, and after working on this for a lot of years, I approached, uh, stew smith, who, who runs the publishing house and goss, but it's also just like he was a, an editor and book designer and someone who I really respected.
Ben Rasmussen:Um, I mean, I literally would go through my library of photo books, choose out books that I liked, um, and especially books that were able to sort of do a create a complex narrative and deal with image and text. And, um and uh, when you I'd flip to the back and sort of see who had edited it and who had designed it, and stew's name kept coming up. And so I I end up meeting stew um, like I go to new york he's there doing a book with elliot erwitt. I go to elliot erwitt's studio to meet um, to meet him, and I sit down and like hand him this dummy that I've put together. I've worked on for months. Yeah, I've been shooting this stuff for years, worked on this elliot, this or no?
Ben Rasmussen:no, sorry, stew stew yeah, okay, um, and stew flips through it and he's basically like you've made so many bad decisions. It's like this doesn't work at all. Um, but he's like but I but I think, I think, like, I think the there's, there's bones here, like there's something that we can do with this. Um, and then it was another couple of years of of photographing some more things, um, creating some different, um, creating a structure for it that was more fluid, changing the way that we were using text.
Ben Rasmussen:As I'd been producing this work, one of the things I was really interested in was, in the US, the naturalization laws said that you had to be white to be naturalized as a US citizen. That's how they were written in the beginning, and they were changed slightly, but up until the 1950s, you still had to be white to be naturalized as a US citizen. So the US had the only racial exclusionary naturalization laws other than the Germans, and it's this really forgotten part of again, again, the way that history rewrites itself, because what happened is, between the 1890s and the 1950s, you had these people who applied for naturalization. They were denied because they weren't white, and so they had to sue, but the only recourse they had was to sue to say that they were white, so the courts were deciding what whiteness was. So you have this thing they're called the prerequisite cases. It's crazy and it's it's the courts deciding like is a Jap is a person, is a Japanese person white? And therefore can they become American? Is a Filipino person white? And they become American.
Ben Rasmussen:And I became really I was obsessed with these and I was like, how do you photograph this? Like this is such boring, legalese, right, like it's a good short description, but like the actual, like it's hard to sort of grab onto. And and then this is when you know we're going back some years, but this is like but but Trump was running, like Trump was just about to be elected for the first time and and you know he had, he owned the like Miss Universe pageant, and so it was like sort of connected to this like idea of pageantry and that was this very American expression. And so I started researching and and like realized that there were these immigrant beauty pageants that happened in these communities, and a lot of them are the same communities who you know, 50, 60, 70 years before had sued to be considered white so that they could become American, and now they were celebrating their joint American identity and identity of origin. And it was this way to sort of bring in contemporary politics through the like pageant Trump reference, but then also sort of show this movement of history that like we move to a place where those identities could be celebrated, and then using that as a way to sort of bring in the kind of fact pattern and history and the like elements from the legal decisions, um, you know that have that have been going on up until the 1950s, and so that would be kind of like one of the ways that I would try and approach some of this Um, and with that one in particular, you know, I was doing all of these little pieces, usually with editorial partners, um, so like the the beauty Queens were done with uh, with vogue magazine and um, and then it ran in a number of other places and uh, and so I got an email from this, this academic named frank wu, who is like hey, like I saw your, I saw your pictures, and that you're doing this work on the prerequisite cases.
Ben Rasmussen:I'm a legal scholar and a legal professor. That's super cool. I also write about photography and art. Here's some of my essays. We should chat sometime.
Ben Rasmussen:Originally I was like cool, I'll have Frank do a forward to the book, then fast forward. I'm meeting with Stu and Stu is like forwards are stupid. He was like forwards, forwards, apologize for what a book doesn't do, um, and so he's. He's like, instead of having frank come in and write something that tries to fill in what the images fail at doing, um, let's have a conversation between him and the images, uh. And so frank ends up writing this series of five essays. I kind of I sent him the edit, frank writes these five essays in response, and then stew and I go back and re-edit the book in response to uh, frank's essays, and so that created this, this five chapter structure, um, that uh sort of moves through in this way where it starts, kind of where the project started, with a chapter called violence. Um, that begins in in ferguson and then moves through from from ferguson to like the last. Um, a reenactment that social justice advocates put on of like one of the last big lynchings in the South, because the, the, the perpetrators of this lynching, have lived in this community and were just never prosecuted. Um to uh to Trump's Muslim ban and a community of Somalis in Kansas who are targeted by like a militia of Trump supporters who got radicalized by his like anti-Muslim rhetoric and tried to blow up their community, uh, um, school shootings and that kind of spread of of violence kind of like throughout um community, and yeah, so it just it's sort of it.
Ben Rasmussen:It and the thing, the thing that we realize is that we could create movement based on the visual connection between images. So, for example, like when it moves into Trump's Muslim ban, I photographed Trump for a Time magazine cover, and so we were in the White House residence and the image that we used, the image that came out of it was this is a longer story, but I got into an argument with him and he was annoyed at me and so he walked away from me into his like private living room and I'm following and I'm following him photographing Uh, and as he's like opening the door, you see this sort of like light comes in and there's his face is reflected back in the door. There, this sort of like light comes in and there's this, his face is reflected back in the door. There's this really creepy shadow, um, and then, as we're working through the edit, one of the images that I made in uh, in kansas with this somali community was just this very simple kind of like patch of sunlight hitting um this like kind of blank wall and these uh carpets in the mosque that they had built in one of these apartments, uh, in their community, and that mosque had been the central point that these militants were targeting. Like that was that they were going to do a oklahoma city style truck bomb. It got broken up when they were by an FBI informant, like as they were buying the explosives.
Ben Rasmussen:So that gave us this way to sort of visually, you just move from sort of Trump this way that light hits the frame, to this completely different scene, with light hitting the frame in a mirror direction, and then it moves to this different narrative and then it moves to this different narrative, um, and so we kind of we realized that we could create these connections and these movements between things using, um, the visual language and then bringing in the sort of uh text elements to kind of to, to bring it, to bring it to life and, I think, to sort of um. You know, obviously it's very heavy content and so we also just didn't want to make light of it, you know. So, uh, um, so the way the text functions is very specific to um kind of give it a level of kind of rigor. Um, where then the imagery, that is, the, the sort of seduction item to kind of bring people in and keep them moving through?
Matt Jacob:yeah, that trump photo, uh, that the petulance I I can feel coming through through the images is fantastic and so well paired and pairing photos like that is, you know, thinking about it as crudely as possible can be so powerful in an aesthetic way. But add text and then add, you know, the deeper the narrative and the reverence behind how those images might just go together on an emotional and metaphorical standpoint. All of that come together and it provides something that's worth discussing and worth thinking about. And, on that note, how difficult is it for you not to I mean, I didn't know the story about you photographing Trump that way and him getting how difficult is it for you to not impart your own opinions or own kind of viewpoints and the way you think about these narratives, these topics? They're highly complex and highly nuanced, of course, but do you mind that? Or do you try and stay as neutral as possible when you're piecing these things together?
Ben Rasmussen:I mean, I definitely don't try and stay neutral, but I think I try and avoid low glows or to be sophomoric. So, to use Trump for an example, you know I I photographed, I was sent to photograph him very early in his presidency. Um, you know, there's a lot of concern over, like, not normalizing him. Like you know, these were the conversations that are sort of going on socially and uh, um, and I hate, like, like to me, when you're sent to photograph people in a position of power, they have so much that is being set up to try and just create, to control the image, to create a piece of sort of puff propaganda, um, so, so I'm very like those are shoots that I enter with a lot of research and a lot of um, uh, thought and a lot of conversations with friends. Um, and then the Trump one in particular.
Ben Rasmussen:Um, there's uh, a a great piece of of new journalism from back in the high sixties, from Esquire. Um, it was a gay Talese profile of, uh, frank sinatra called frank sinatra has a cold, and the thing was that talese went out to interview sinatra to write this profile and sinatra wouldn't talk to him. So that's like, get the hell out, I don't want to talk to you. So talese hangs out for gates with, with sinatra's crew, with all of his sort of like, with his family, with everyone except for Frank, and then wrote this profile that's so revealing because what you get is that this person is essentially impenetrable, right, that they have this thing built around them. And so I entered like something like the Trump truth, like I entered that very specifically with like that in mind and thinking about, and then doing research and realizing, uh, like Trump did not like to be photographed from behind. So it was like, okay, cool, like this man is not going to reveal anything, right.
Ben Rasmussen:But then also, uh, we, we need to photograph from from, from behind, as much, as, as much as possible, um and there, but there was some stuff from that shoot that like, uh, you know, it was a very weird um, like at one point we were taken into the oval and him and mike pence are trying to figure out their tivo so he could like play us some news clip that he'd record. It was very, very strange. So I have these pictures of like trump and mike pence trying to figure out how to use a tivo brilliant, oh god. And but within the context of like of this like broader project, something like that is just a little bit too like, it's too easy.
Ben Rasmussen:And so I think I, I like, like to me that, like the image that we use in the book and the one that has kind of come out of that shoot, the most, um, it works, cause it doesn't, it doesn't read necessarily immediately as him, um, it's not. It's not that thing where it's a picture of a famous person, but it's kind of a boring picture versus things first, and and so I think that that's uh, yeah, trying trying to sort of like I feel like I want that authorship and I don't want to sort of be utilized by communications or PR people to say what they want me to say, um, but then trying to figure out how to say that in a way, um, where even if a person is not going to reveal anything and it's not going to sort of bring anything of themselves to the shoot that you watch, for those moments where something can be shown, where maybe it cracks slightly.
Matt Jacob:Yeah, I think that visibility of what you're trying to say and the subtlety with which you put it across is A incredible but also very difficult to do. And personally I love subtlety and nuance in images without, like you said, photographing the obvious or being too loud or too much of an easy target or low blow. And the visibility thing is something and I read a quote from you. I can't remember where it was, but just doing some research about you over the last few weeks, I read a quote that I wrote down here and it was relevant to the book.
Matt Jacob:Americanism has grown from something very exclusionary, but those aspects of whiteness and power remain largely invisible. So on one hand, I can feel you trying to create stories that question rather than necessarily tell, and to add a little bit of curiosity in those images for the audience to raise questions for themselves. But how important is going back to maybe the first chapter of your book and the issues with race and the relatively short time between these stories and, like you said, the really kind of close and recent history of the US compared to many other countries? How important is it to show progress in those areas as well as highlight the areas that you feel still need progress to be achieved.
Ben Rasmussen:Yeah, no, I mean, I think that's a very, a really important question and I think that to me we didn't need to do that in every section, so it wasn't show a problem and show the solution and sort of show this line of progress problem and show the solution and sort of show this line of progress, um, each each section sort of does that differently. Um and um, so some, uh, I mean the, the, the section on violence, basically like it's, it's, it's the darkest in some ways, and basically I mean to me the overall narrative of that chapter. What it moves from is it moves from this sort of targeted, racialized violence and then the way that that, in my opinion, has just poisoned aspects of society that we continue to suffer from. In a much broader way, portraits of military vets who served in each of the kind of wars, from World War II forward, to talk about sort of different narratives of the way that those wars impacted the communities who were from the places where the fighting was happening. So from Japanese internment in the US where Japanese Americans were put in concentration camps, to a young man who fled with his family from Vietnam. But then that section actually ends with young, what are called junior ROTC, junior reserve officer training corps, who are training to be soldiers, um to sort of like project like you know, like what? What will be the next thing that will sort of like go forward and how will we as a society sort of address that? Um?
Ben Rasmussen:And then, as it moves, it sort of moves to a uh slightly like if we sort of start with like the highest level of pessimism and then we end essentially on the most hopeful note run uh surveillance towers that are being implemented, where the, the ai, actually decides um what it's seeing and gives a percentage basis of whether or not that is a human and whether or not that needs to be intercepted, and then alerts border patrol um. And so that chapter sort of moves through these aspects of the complexity of border policy, um and ends with these students uh in elementary school, who all come from, who's like parents for all migrants, who all come from different places, um talking about uh like aspects of what language do they dream in? Um, like what language do they speak at home, how their, how their cultures sort of overlap um, and so it sort of ends in this place of like. These are the, these are the like.
Ben Rasmussen:Change happens through people developing sort of relationships with people whose backgrounds are different than them in in school and society and work, um, and kind of moving forward through that, but kind of without ever saying those things. The structure is sort of left. Um, there's never my voice sort of talking you through that at all. Um, it's uh, it's meant sort of more as like an open-ended, um like movement for people to have uh kind of on their own.
Matt Jacob:So what specific role do the, the, the essays play? Uh, I haven't read them. Uh, I'm looking forward to, but are they more like op-eds? Are they? Are they they? There's some opinions in there. They're more kind of journalistic in their, in their factual storytelling.
Ben Rasmussen:Um, so it's, it's. It's interesting because Frank frank's one of the leading scholars in the us on um, on especially asian american identity, um and uh he's. He's written very, very broadly and published very broadly in in academic circles and so when I initially contacted him it was like are we gonna end up with? These things are super heavy, super academic. I mean, he's now a university president at queen's college in in new york, so you're just like man, this is gonna be so dense um, but what they are actually is they're.
Ben Rasmussen:They're just, they're almost like a um, they're like an adam curtis documentary or something. They just kind of move from like pop culture to law, to the history of photography, to um, they're very, they're very sort of open um and loose, and and the way that we structured them is that there's a one, there's there's like kind of a point of overlap between the visual narrative and the essay, but the essay is not talking about the edit. The essay is sort of like kind of musing and exploring these different sort of facets and these different aspects, and then the visual edit picks up from one element of that essay and then moves in its own direction.
Matt Jacob:Fascinating. Can't wait to read it. Having now a bit of retrospect with with the book and it's been a couple years since its release and probably I don't know five, six, seven, eight years since you even started putting it together um, what? How do you feel the impact that it has had, and do you feel like these types of journalistic endeavors and artistic endeavors, with these real narrative-based books? How do you feel that they have a place for impacting change or impacting awareness? Still to this day, you?
Ben Rasmussen:know it's interesting because I think when you work on something for a long term, this culture changes around you.
Ben Rasmussen:And so fast at the moment just daily Right and and so there's there's aspects of what we were what like I was interested in exploring that were not sort of. I mean, there was definitely people who were, who were doing work on these issues and talking about these issues, but they didn't have the place in kind of contemporary culture that they do now. Um, a lot of that changed in in thes, you know, especially like post george floyd and and, um, you know, now, with this like most recent election, like it, those things, but really like culture really kind of started to change. Um, and then the other thing that was interesting is, as I was making this work, I was doing most of this with magazines, so it was being released this like small sections of what were being released in traditional media, um, and and then I've also done like exhibitions of it, and so it's.
Ben Rasmussen:It's been interesting to see okay, here's the response like a small portion of this gets in, uh, you know, in in in time in the new york times and whatever here's. Here's the response that sort of this gets as a book. Here's the response this gets as an exhibition, um, and it's yeah, it's complaining I, you know, to be totally honest, I think that, um, I've been in enough book fairs where Goss has a booth and seeing people flip through, um, that like people, people like pretty shit, like like you know, and and I think that, um, I think that, uh, I, I do think that it's it's you know, um, uh, I had a friend tell me that the book was a little bit unlovable and I was like that's fair, and I think that that was something that I definitely learned is, you know, I think that this was a very specific project that I had in me and that I really wanted and needed to approach in a really specific way. Um, I would never make a book like this again.
Matt Jacob:I want to, I want to, yeah, I want to want to kind of widen that to to all of your work, not not just necessarily about the book, right, take time magazine and all the commissioned and editorial work that you still do. You know it's, do people, people still care, you know, does the photograph still have a, you know, a very powerful place in being able to drive awareness and potentially change? As legacy media kind of falls into the ether and digital media rises, where does photography and and your, your type of, I guess, photojournalism, editorial work fit into that?
Ben Rasmussen:it is yeah, it is like it's really hard to figure out. I mean, in part, I think that, um, I, I think that there's large aspects of photojournalism that were sort of like getting people to take their vitamins, um, you know, like it wasn't going to be pleasant, it wasn't going to be nice, um, but it was important and, uh, I think it's culture has sort of shifted people like that.
Matt Jacob:I don't want that, um, which I totally get uh, because they have other options, right, they, they have. They have so many other options to get their their fix of beautiful images or funny puppy stories or whatever it might be right, they don't. They don't have to.
Ben Rasmussen:You know, stick to four channels on the television and a couple of newspapers for their information, and I think I think to me, I think shouting is just ineffective, like I think trying to make you know, basically trying to grab people, like this is important, like is a just narcissistic as a, as a creator, um, because there's a lot of stuff that's important. So like to claim that your voice and what you have to say at that moment is important, is a little bit ridiculous. Um, but then also, I do think it comes back to like, the, that aspect of like, um the.
Ben Rasmussen:The british photographer, tim hetherington, had this, this philosophy of what he called trojan horses. Um, and it's like, how can you tell a story in a way that will draw people in and then you can tell them this complex, maybe difficult thing that they wouldn't choose to engage with from the outset, which is a really good story. And I think that's where I find myself. I find myself being like okay, how do I really expand my craft as much as I can, really expand my craft as much as I can? How do I make images that will, that will bring in viewers? How do I think about how do I expand the way that I use text to draw people in?
Matt Jacob:um how do you do that? Have you come up with a strategy? Is it aesthetics? Is it, yeah, is it? Is it the power of shocking?
Ben Rasmussen:I think to me shocking is is is it's too easy because people can just move past it. I would define it as the difference between beautiful and pretty. I had this Adam Brubaker and Oliver Shannon, these British, south African artists, did these posters years ago and I had one on my wall for my studio for like the last decade and it's just a screen print on top of a newspaper and it just says no more pretty pictures. Um, okay, and to me that became like a mantra, right, like if it's, if it's just it's just pretty, if it's just like it's just lovely. Um, that there's not enough complexity and sort of depth with that um, and and to me, sort of I I contrast that with beautiful as beautiful being. Um, that there's more there, there's a, not even necessarily like narrative or meaning wise, but just that there's a level of complexity to it, there's, there's dimensionality to it. Um, yeah, not just superficial. Yeah, um and uh, I think of the same thing. Um, to me that there's a similar dichotomy with with, uh, with clever and smart, where, like, people will do these stories that are sort of like clever, it's like, okay, I get what you're doing, um, but once it's like an m night shamalan movie or something more, like once you know the hook, like you never engage with it again, um, and so I think that that to me it's, it's like it's how do you, how do you make work that's really smart and really beautiful and, um, and can draw people into, like, and just maybe it's it's just engaging in the same way that like a good film is engaging or like a beautiful book is engaging, um, I think.
Ben Rasmussen:I think that photojournalism and documentary work can fall into this place, that bad nonfiction falls into, where it's like you read a nonfiction book because you're interested in the topic, um, but it's not a good book. It's like you read a nonfiction book because you're interested in the topic, um, but it's not a good book. It's like it's a, a book that should have been an article, um, and and so I think it's it's sort of is it's like on us to kind of figure out, well, like, how do we like, how do we stop referencing the same life magazine stories from the 1950s? Like, how do we stop, how do we stop, uh, doing the same kinds of pictures again and again, again, like how do we, how do we, like, have an understanding of the society that we exist within, understand how people engage with images, and use that knowledge to try and uh, yeah, tell the world about the world.
Ben Rasmussen:Um, and I think that it's. It's easy and I find this with myself it's easy to get stuck in this sort of like pretentious, purist place where you're like, essentially just making work for other photographers, um and uh, and I think trying to like for me that's the constant, like sort of push is like how do you make work that connects with an audience and meets them where they are, while still trying to bring levels of complexity and depth and sort of layers to it?
Matt Jacob:Isn't finding the audience more important than trying to think of a narrative that might connect with an audience? Because you know and this is full circle. Now back to you and your upbringing and creating for yourself, knowing that there are other people that will resonate with that reflection or that mirrored narrative or whatever is meaningful to you, knowing that there are many, many people out there that would be of meaning and of curiosity to them. So I don't know, you know, in this day and age, how do we go about what we just talked about? Finding something that is not pretentious. I agree with you on that respect, and I agree with you on the other end of the spectrum. And that's not just superficial and getting likes and validation from your social media, for example, just because it's pretty, but there's something to be said for both. You could sit in them and just go well, so fucking what, who cares? But there's something to be said for both. You could sit in them and just go well, so fucking what, who cares?
Matt Jacob:What are we trying to do here? Are we trying to change narratives and change opinions, or are we trying to make something that gives someone pleasure just by looking at it? But I think the answer to that is I'm going to ask if you agree with me and I'm going to elaborate a little bit more me, but I'm going to kind of elaborate a little bit more on this question. But isn't it just important to create for yourself, knowing that you're going to do the best job that way and you're not going to, like you said, create photos for other photographers? This is such an easy trap to fall into. If you create for yourself and create something that's important to you, then having the belief and faith that, well, there's millions of other people out there that surely are going to at least empathize with this may not be in my exact position or agree with me totally, but may empathize and at least garner some connection that way.
Ben Rasmussen:Yeah, no. So first I 100% on all of those, but to take them kind of piece by piece. A friend bought me this book by Alain de Botton called Artist Therapy. It proposes this model of art serving different uses and different purposes, and one of them he calls out this idea of art being essentially a balm for people and their like lives and lived experiences. Um, one of the you know a very simple example that he makes is someone who who lives in a chaotic city and has a chaotic life and is is sort of surrounded by by noise and and traffic and and all of these things, having like coming home to a sort of like modernist home with super straight lines and like danish design and you know, like this thing that just completely contrasts like what, what their daily life is. Um, and that was like.
Ben Rasmussen:So his ideas have been really powerful for me, because for me it gets really in. I'm I tend to I can get stuck in that idea that like this should have a social purpose, right, like I feel like I could sort of get stuck in this like the sort of narrow little loop, um, and and just realizing that like, oh man, like that idea of there's a huge value in bringing beauty to people's lives and, in a very weird way, a straight utility to that, that art can have a utilitarian use for being a of, yeah, being a balm of the for existence, for sure, um, and and, uh, and then also, I think, in the same way, like, I think, if you, if you chase audience, you end up in this position where, um, you know your, your mcdonald's, your, your Marvel, like, like the, the things that everyone loves, like you've, you've kind of stripped away a lot of the um, personality from and uh, but I think I think for me, when it comes to that idea of like, of your own voice as a photographer, I think that, um, those are the elements that I, I like, yeah, to me, none of the. They're not like, they're not globally applicable to everyone. They're the things of like. What makes me interested, um, and I think what makes me interested is things that sort of engender a more complex conversation, um, but then also, what I mean a little bit about like, sort of, what a viewer connects with is more from like the, the roland bart perspective of the punk, than this idea of like, a thing in a picture that pricks you because it reminds you of your, of your life. Um, he has this example of a, this picture of a woman wearing a locket, and the locket looks exactly like one that his grandmother had, and that makes the picture real for him. It sort of shifts its dimensionality, and so I think that, to me, is more the thing of like okay, how do we like? What are the elements? Again, it's like pushing back against the exotic, like, how are there elements that I can bring into this that a viewer is going to connect to their own life and and and sort of so to me that's become just a way, that kind of a part of my like, uh, like authorial voice, is trying to figure out how to, um, to visually explore in ways that kind of include that more like multi-layered, like multi-dimensional thing. Um, and I think it also comes, honestly, it comes a little bit from a distrust of photographs, so, like the idea of just trying to make like a great photo um becomes so, uh, I don't know.
Ben Rasmussen:You like, you learn how to. You learn how to do that. You learn. You learn how to use a camera. You learn this sort of like technical stuff. You learn how to do that. You learn how to use a camera, you learn this sort of like technical stuff, you learn how light reacts, and so to me it's also just sort of adding those layers of kind of challenge and complexity for myself, for my own practice, like that's what gets me excited. It's like, is you know, engaging with text or with found objects, or thinking of new stuff, news, like those are just the things that, for me, like sort of keep me in this. I think if, if, if my practice was just about trying to make good images, I don't think I, I think I would have um kind of flamed out, um.
Matt Jacob:So I feel like for me it's, it's part of just like it's that that feeling of constantly learning and constantly growing and failing and and being able to do that in in these ways that aren't just um, that are the end of the day, like I'm a photographer, but wanting to have a practice that kind of brings in these other elements and it's okay to just go through that process right, always, you know to be moving forward all the time and meaning to it, or can it be a bit more of a you know vocation in in what you're just wanting to do and and you know just being aware of that and understanding that process and that it is a process right, you know even enough 20 years of doing it, still asking the right questions, and still you're trying to do your best in that respect. And one thing that I think is important, that that every photographer listening to this and watching this should seek to try and do in the way that you do, is challenge those stereotypes. You know we see stereotypes plastered across our devices and and and papers, magazines and conversations all the time, and what I really love about your work with so Inspiration is challenging those stereotypes in a very subtle, nuanced way and piecing these unseen almost narratives and in-between moments together, whether they might be things like found objects which just can be so powerful if done in the right way, and the ability to challenge those stereotypes and ask those questions, I think is hugely important. And my question from that, I guess, onwards to that, onwards from that, I should say is how you reach people, that, how you challenge, how you.
Matt Jacob:How can I ask this, how you reach the people that you want those stereotypes to be challenged for? So, for example, people that don't buy photo books and people that don't buy Time magazine or read that? You know the, the, the rural Midwest, or countries that don't have access to your work necessarily. How do you is that important to you, to kind of try and go into these spaces and also provide the questions and hopefully that they can at least be interested in?
Ben Rasmussen:these topics. I love this topic the Good Citizen wasn't as much dealing with that but my previous, this project I briefly mentioned that we did in Jordan, called by the Olive Trees. When we made this work it was at a time when, you know, the crisis, the sort of civil war in Syria, had really really ramped up. You had the migrant crisis, sort of starting with people going into Europe, and in the US you had this thing where governors from all of these different states were basically saying we won't allow Syrian refugees into our state, Like we're going to block them. And so what we did with that work was was again working in sort of a multifaceted way. We um, we did it initially as a commission for this magazine called the new republic. Um, we got some contacts at kodak to give us the film. Um, we uh did like this is back in the day of instagram takeovers I think we did an instagram takeover for, like, the New Yorker and some other people, so kind of these little things like that.
Ben Rasmussen:But then the thing that came out of it was we wanted to make a newspaper, so like, instead of making like a $50, $60 photo book, like how do we make a newspaper that we can distribute really really widely for free. So we crowdfunded it. We got this wonderful designer who came on board. Do we get that into these conservative areas where, um, they're basically trying to keep, like refugees from this place out of? And so we did exhibitions in churches. We did exhibitions in conservative universities Um, we, uh, we, we caused a church split in Texas at one point. We collaborated with a student group in Arkansas where the governor was coming to speak, and so we took over the student newspaper racks all over campus during his visit to sort of distribute these among the students and all of the people who are coming to see and speak. Um, and then also did exhibitions there, um and uh, and so kind of tried to find these like guerrilla ways.
Ben Rasmussen:And then the way, the only way you could get these newspapers was either one of the places we were distributing them or if you wanted one, um, we would send you 10. And so this idea of like, um, we're going to make you sort of, uh, responsible for the distribution of nine of these, like, you can keep one, but you have to distribute the other nine through, like your family and your community, um, and so we ended up getting this very like very, very broad reach. Because we were working, um, we were basically using the people who would be interested in the work not as the end viewer of the project but actually as our distribution partner. So either to distribute the newspapers in their community, to create a space for us to come in and do a pop-up exhibition, or a more formal exhibition, um spaces for us to do talks, uh and, and to me that was a really that was like sort of really eyeopening Um, cause I think that that's you know, especially with how sort of segmented the world has become. Like, you know, you do that story for the New York times. You're just going to reach the same people like who already kind of agree with you, the new york times. You're just gonna reach the same people like who already kind of agree with you, um, and so I think figuring out you know how to, how to bring work into interesting spaces, um, and and kind of challenge that uh is is really um, I think it's to me and then that's that's like inherently that's not photographic, but to me that's so key and core to the practice of being a photographer.
Ben Rasmussen:Um, I think that's one of the things that that social media has an unfortunate effect that it's had is that it's made people very oftentimes lazy about distribution, you know, because it's like oh well, I have an audience, so I'll do stuff and I'll show it to my audience. Um, and it's the same thing that happens with assignment photographers. You're like I'd get an assignment so I'll do stuff and I'll show it to my audience. Um, and it's the same thing that happens with assignment photographers. You're like I get an assignment so I'll do it, and then that person runs it and then it's done.
Ben Rasmussen:Um, as opposed to thinking through, like, how do we get this work into the world? How do we, um, how do we exhibit our work? How do we print our work? How do we, um, you know, give it life, have relationships with collaborators, um, uh, think through how it exists, like in a physical space, in a three-dimensional space. Um, uh, yeah, I think those, those are some of the aspects of, of, I think, like of being a photographer, that are so exciting and so cool, and I think that there can be power structures that tell you that you have to have permission to do that, you have to be oh well, you can submit to this group show. Oh, you can just do it. You can just do whatever you want.
Ben Rasmussen:A number of years ago, I started a photography sort of community space in denver, um, which sort of took that to heart, where it was like, okay, how can we, how can we essentially control the means of production for producing exhibitions, how can we have a library of frames, large format printers, all of these things, and then produce exhibitions that we think are interesting, um, and that are very cheap, because we, we can, we own all of these things already, um to start doing interesting exhibitions, like in our own community, um, as opposed to waiting for some gallery to invite us um, or like asking permission to just kind of do our own thing and just just kind of do our own thing and just just kind of make it happen.
Ben Rasmussen:And I think that there's, there's an energy to that. That I think is is really important and and I think that, especially when it's done collaboratively and within community, we are kind of helping one another and you're like elevating each other's voices as opposed to being protected, right, that's what you're doing. You're like you're like elevating each other's voices, um, as opposed to being protected, right, that's what you're doing. You're like you're, you're, you're bringing in these conversations and you're elevating these voices and you're sort of creating these cross points between different people who wouldn't necessarily meet or know each other. Um, and I think that there's so many avenues for us to sort of do that, as as as photographers, um, but it just kind of oftentimes takes rethinking, um, the more traditional models.
Matt Jacob:Yeah, I love the way you described almost the laziness of I I'm the first one to admit that as well Like it's almost small mindedness when you think, well, I have an audience and I just kind of put out to the audience and see what sticks right.
Matt Jacob:No, let's think a lot more strategically and a lot more ambitiously about how we can push this out into the world and make it good for everyone you know, good for yourself in terms of potential revenue or potential increase in audience and potential community, et cetera, et cetera, but also for those seeing it and getting into those spaces that you know outside of your audience, but outside of the potential audience, and so on and so forth, and that snowballs.
Matt Jacob:So, um, yeah, I think community more than ever, uh, the the these days in Asia just is so, so important and whether, like you said, so many avenues to do that, whether it is a podcast, whether it's an exhibition or whether it is a, you know, a photo club or a gallery or just a community of people who get together and talk about stuff, right, it's extremely important, I think, and I think photography generally, certainly my experience has lacked that for a while and that's one reason I wanted to start the podcast right Is just to connect with other photographers, where I felt connection was lacking, and certainly cross-pollination.
Matt Jacob:A lot of photographers out there like to gatekeep and don't really like to kind of, you know, share information or express opinions and talk about these things I think we should talk about, especially in today's polarized and digitized world where it's so difficult to put such amazing work into the public sphere. Tell me more about the challenges of photojournal. Mean the financial challenges obviously come to mind immediately, but tell me about the work that you do and how difficult you find it and how rewarding you find it. In the same, breath.
Ben Rasmussen:I was very lucky in the sense that, um, but I spent almost my whole career, uh, living in in the American West, like in in Colorado, um, which is not, it's not, it's not like a huge, it's not a huge hub, um, uh, you know it's, it's definitely not like New York or LA or San Francisco, um, but I was in a really fortunate position that I sort of came into this as budgets were lowering and so it made sense for people to um, save some money, right, and like that you could get my foot I could get my foot in the door because they could save 500 or a thousand bucks by hiring me, um, for some small story that, like, if I, you know, screwed up, they wouldn't get in that much trouble. Um, so I ended up, through that, um, just starting to work really, really broadly like um, for I mean pretty much everyone um, and editors do this thing where they kind of like take you and and they're like, okay, cool you're. They find a very weird place for you. So, yeah, like I shot politics for time. Never having shot politics, probably never shoot politics again, have no interest in it. Um, but, uh, I had an editor there who was like I think it would be interesting to see what you do with politics. Um, first time I ever went to a professional american football game was for esv in the magazine, and I didn't even know the rules, um, so it was that.
Ben Rasmussen:It was sort of that era a little bit, um. And you know, things have have changed kind of year on year and and really hit a I think, a a bad point during covid that they've never quite recovered from. So it's rough. Everyone I know, everyone I know in the editorial world and the ad world are, I mean, pretty much all just came out of our worst year we've ever had. So you know, I've one of my best friends spent three years doing a huge Nat Geo story. The same month it came out he started going, he started classes to become a nurse, um, because he's like I, he's like um, because he's he's, he's smart and he's like I, I, I can, I can create a schedule for myself where I have more freedom to pursue the projects that I want to pursue and be able to do that kind of on my own terms. And so I have a number of friends who are kind of going that way of finding sort of different paths, or you know some of us are. You're like, do you wait it out, do you do whatever? And then I think you know there's and I think a lot of your guests sort of hit this space where people were like maybe we're never doing the kind of mainstream normal, like, oh, I'm going to walk around New York with my portfolio and like I'm going to go to LA and meet with that the sort of very traditional, old fashioned type of being a photographer, but have created their own path and found their own way of monetizing what they do.
Ben Rasmussen:Um, and I think that, uh, sort of the, the, the photojournalism, like I don't know, like the straight photojournalism world, the world that's just kind of like you know, uh, 70 to 200 on a canon and I'm gonna like shoot this dramatic picture. That's a dark place for sure, because, like there's not too many other ways that you can make a living off of that type of work. Um, I'm in a slightly better place where, like I've I've had a commercial agent for a really long time I do ad work. I've had a commercial agent for a really long time. I do ad work. That works also. I think that world's also constricting quite a bit right now. But what I've been trying to do is basically be like okay, what are these ways that I've learned to tell stories and how can I apply that to different places? I'm starting to now work with more like NGOs, um, but trying to sort of come in from a little bit more of a high level and being like what are the values that you're trying to bring across? How can we figure out complex ways to explore this story?
Ben Rasmussen:Um, so, like I was in, I was in Cameroon late last year, uh, working with like a soccer development non-profit, um, and so kind of coming in using like the visual language almost of like european football clubs and the, the way that a, a kit functions is like a fashion item and community support and bring that to this, like bring that approach to this um group who works with uh using soccer to sort of uh like do development among like teenage girls in in cameroon, um, and so you know, basically like, instead of going and and taking sort of like photojournalist the ngo pictures, going and taking sort of like photojournalist-y NGO pictures, going and shooting it almost like you would shoot like a Nike campaign.
Ben Rasmussen:And so I think for me it's, it's, that's, you know it's, it's kind of like it's so easy to kind of just sit there and be like wah, wah, like stuff used to be good and now it's not good.
Ben Rasmussen:But like everyone's been saying that always, like I came up with like ad photographers complaining that like they weren't getting thirty thousand dollar day rates like they used to all the time, and like, um, you know, I remember, uh, uh, an editor at nat geo being like, yeah, we knew it was getting bad when we had to stop flying photographers like business class. And you know, like I just like my whole career, I've sort of heard the stories of this all being on a downward trajectory and I think you just have to. Um, it's again like, are you asking permission? Like are you, are you sort of saying I need this world and this industry to function in a specific way, or are you like I need to figure out how to? Like I have a voice, I'm interested in saying these things, I'm interested in exploring these things. How can I make it work? And I think it's easy to kind of get stuck in the like defeatist thing as opposed to being like, no, let's figure it out. Like, let's like it is a huge situation.
Matt Jacob:Yeah, exactly, you're either going to do something about it or you're just going to moan about it and you know people are going to see that and they're not going to want to work with you or you're just not going to be able to be flexible enough to find the solutions to these issues. Let me ask you, ben, why do you think before? You think before? We're wrapping up soon, don't worry why do you think this is the current state of editorial ad work, photojournalism? Is it saturation? Is it the ubiquitous nature of photography these days? Is it lack of competition? Is it just a general supply and demand issue and drop in rates that photographers don't want to accept anymore? What is the underlying cause? Do you think that has landed this sector of the industry here At?
Ben Rasmussen:its core. I think it's really hard for people to figure out what audiences connect with sort of like financial explanations of, like craigslist destroyed newspapers because newspapers relied on like classified ads and um, and magazines relied on a certain like income level of subscriber in order to like sell that page. You know, there's, there's, there's those sort of explanations, but I think that I think in a deeper way, um, because there are some that sort of like make it work and and and have continued to make it work, and I think I think the ones that sort of like make it work, um, are just doing like really interesting, good stuff that people connect with and I think that, like I mean, this is probably like sort of rose colored colored glasses, but like I think that there was a lot of bullshit and I think that like, like I was up first this huge job for a tech company and you know one of these like, like between me and someone else, if I would have gotten it, I wouldn't have had to work for the next three years. Like one of these like, like between me and someone else, if I would have gotten it, I wouldn't have to work for the next three years. Like one of those right and uh, and I didn't get it, and this, this other person shot it, and they also was, like you know, a filmed thing as well, and I've never seen that anywhere like so that that thing that you're, and that was that's what so much of advertising was like. They were pumping so much money into something that just sort of like floated away into the ether. But, like you know, you have a brand, like I know there's a water brand called Liquid Death and they get it right. Like Liquid Death does these like sort of little stunts that everyone thinks are hilarious.
Ben Rasmussen:Everyone connects this, they go viral and I think that they sort of have their finger on the pulse and I think that in a lot of ways, especially editorial, their finger just really fell off the pulse and that started to constrict their budgets and so the less budget just meant that the work was was worse. Um, people's attention spans were shrinking, and so they just made the stories smaller to fit those shrinking attention spans. They leaned into the content that people were connecting to like, uh, sort of fluff and celebrity content, um, and and I think it just sort of created this, this sort of self-fulfilling cycle of worse content that people didn't want to engage with and so there's less money, and so the content became worse and, um, and I, and I think that there's, you know, there's there's ways back, and so the content became worse. And I think that there's ways back and there's different ones that are kind of figuring out models, but I think that one of the I do think, at the end of the day, just interesting, compelling storytelling, it does have value.
Ben Rasmussen:I think it has like staying power. I think that's why we see there's there's still a lot of, you know, there's podcasts have tons of traction right, like um, I mean, yes, you have like superhero movies that make billions of dollars, but they're still like a24 is one of the most successful like production companies right now making really unique, weird stuff. Um, like, I think it can be so easy to sort of simplify audiences, to kind of be this like milk toast thing, um, but uh, yeah, I think, I think that there's. I think that there's still like an appetite for uh, like good stories told well, really driven.
Matt Jacob:If we think about social media generally and what you've just talked about, it sounds like the underlying cause is really social media or the digitization of our information ecosystem and how short-form content has really driven people's attention spans. What people want to see, the luxury of choice and just the abundance, the privilege of abundance that we have in our lives. And so, like you said, all of that at the high end of editorials just kind of snowballs into each other. Budgets decrease, they're not able to get the work, et cetera. There's just less interest. People can turn elsewhere.
Matt Jacob:But I do feel, I can feel it in my bones and I see it just being in the digital space quite a lot these days. I see it changing. I see, like you said, stories will always be there, whether they're AI created stories or they're human created stories. People. It's just innate in our, in our human makeup that we, we want stories, we engage with stories and we, I always will do um, but I I do see that the the yearn for a better, better stories or at least a better delivery system of those stories, whether it is on social media or not, people are happy to. I mean, the podcast boom has been fascinating to see. I mean I kind of got into late, been going for about two years now so I'm still very green in the space.
Matt Jacob:But I still don't quite understand it when we look on one side of the spectrum, where people doom scroll every day. Right, they want, like you said, see a pretty image scroll on, see a pretty image scroll on. Nothing really kind of captures their attention, engaging their attention for longer than a couple of seconds, unless it's a naked chick or a car crash or a cute puppy basically. So when the podcast kind of industry really took off, I was amazed there's still a short form element to that because people can stop and stop, start and listen whenever they want. But it's the utility of the podcast that people can really get their stories from while running or while driving to work, and so it's kind of like this marry of convenience but also storytelling.
Matt Jacob:I'm not saying all podcasts are storytelling, but do you know what I mean? It's finding that balance in today's world is really difficult. But I do feel and it's the podcast industry that does give me hope because people still want that long form content, they still want to engage with stories, engage with people that they're interested in and topics that they're interested in. There's still that interest and because there's still that interest, there's still that yearn for stories. So I I feel it's changing back and I see the social media platforms also allowing or promoting that. You know a different, different way of doing as well well, I think it's also again it's, it's.
Ben Rasmussen:It's um sort of who are you as an author, right? I think that sometimes it can be a thing of um, uh, you know, tiktok's like seems likely to just get banned in the states in in a week or two, right? So like if, if all, if you? I think that's this is to me. This is where like sort of influencer culture breaks down, like if we, if we contrast influencer versus, uh say, author culture, um, if tiktok goes away in the us, like people who've built up a massive platform are essentially going to lose that overnight, right? Um same thing with people in vine back in the day and and um, like to sort of matter and laughing all the way to the bank exactly.
Ben Rasmussen:Yeah, yeah, um. Uh, very early on, kind of going back a number of years, instagram used to do these like, recommended, like follows, and so one time, instagram recommended three of my friends and a 16 year old Danish skateboarder named Benjamins Rasmussen. They tagged the wrong person and so this dude ends up with like I don't know like 150,000 followers or something like that. Right, like um, but it was amazing, right, because you're like, hold on, like this is literally a following that was built not off of anything that you're doing. It was built off of this very simple sort of like recommendation engine, um, and that made me really kind of suspicious of, I think, of the of existing on a platform and that being like, if your career is a platform, as opposed to your sort of like voice and trajectory as as a, as a photographer, as a artist, as an author, um, I think you also really sort of shortchange yourself and, in the same way that some of us who became too reliant on assignment work really did, um, because those things are going like, the only constancy is going to be the changing of um, whatever way your work is getting out into the world, and so I think it's also so important to just sort of like think in multifaceted, like longer term ways of you know, if you have an awesome audience on social, great, but make that one part of your audience, right, like, if you're able to monetize that awesome, use that monetization to be able to make complex work that can then exist in a different sphere as well.
Ben Rasmussen:Um, if you're, if you're a photographer who's getting a lot of you know, magazine work, if you just do that as an assignment, that dies, you know, like the joke is always that like it just ends up lining a birdcage a week later. Like to me it was. It was like, how do you utilize those things to then do longer form, more complex, project-based work? Um, using whatever resources you have, like none of the resources are better than any other resources. But also, I think the lesson of the time right now for people like me who come from more traditional media is to just always know that whatever, like that foundation should never be the essence of the work that you're doing. It should just be like one tool that you're using as an artist, as an author, to sort of get your work into the world.
Matt Jacob:What a fantastic way to end the conversation Very, very informational and inspirational. Thank you so much for spreading your kind words of education and photographic knowledge, and certainly when it comes to storytelling, there's a lot that we can learn from you in that respect, in visual storytelling. Thank you so much for joining me and I hope I can meet you one day, but until then, yeah, please take care. Thanks so much.
