Andrew Zuckerman was born in Washington, DC in 1977. After an internship at The International Center of Photography in New York, he attended the School of Visual Arts, from where he graduated in 1999, to study photography and film. His work has been commissioned extensively for many leading international brands and has received many awards, including D&AD, One Show, Promax|BDA and multiple annuals. He's published three photography books: CREATURE, a portrait series of animals; WISDOM, a book, film, and traveling exhibition of the world’s most eminent elders and their perspectives on life; and BIRD, a visual study of birds.
03.09.10
A Tool with Which to Pursue Ideas
If you have a degree in what field is it? I have a BFA in photography from School of Visual Arts in New York City.
What was your strangest assignment? I made a series of pictures of the collection at the Mutter Museum in Philadelphia. I worked in the backrooms for three days taking pictures of shrunken heads, fetuses in jars and other medical oddities.
Which photographer would you like to meet? I always wanted to meet Irving Penn—unfortunately that will never happen.
What famous person (living or dead) would you most like to photograph? JFK.
Aside from your camera and lighting, what item could you not work without? My iPhone.
Is there anything you would not digitally retouch? I don’t like to think of the work we do in the computer as retouching, which has come to imply inauthenticity or reconstruction. I think of that part of the process in the same way I think of traditional master printing in a darkroom—minus the smell.
From where do your best ideas originate? To be honest I have no idea when my ideas are good or not. Often I figure out if they work or not during the execution. Where they come from is a huge mystery and if I knew I would live there.
How do you overcome a creative block? I move onto something else. I’ve learned to use my attention deficit to my creative advantage. Multitasking actually provides me with extreme focus, most of the time. I think... What?
Do you have creative pursuits other than photography? Lots. Photography itself is not a creative pursuit but a tool with which to pursue ideas. Most of my work manifests into multiple mediums. Outside of storytelling or visual cataloging I love to play music, rearrange furniture and art, spend time with my family, search endlessly on the Internet for nothing in particular, the usual.
What music are you listening to right now? Lots of different stuff, especially now that I’m working on a project about musicians. I’m really enjoying a new band called Balene from Brooklyn, JayZ’s latest album is a joy and I love the Rachels.
What’s your approach to balancing work and life? I have no idea how to balance the two. Before we had kids I saw no delineation. Now I try hard to find balance in every moment, especially when I’m with my children; I do my best to not drift into my own self-involved thoughts.
What’s your favorite quote? “Inspiration is for amateurs; the rest of us just show up and get to work. If you wait around for the clouds to part and a bolt of lightning to strike you in the brain, you are not going to make an awful lot of work. All the best ideas come out of the process; they come out of the work itself.” —Chuck Close (from WISDOM)
Do you have any advice for people just entering the profession? Make work obsessively and don’t listen too closely to other people’s plans for you. Only you know what’s right for you.
What’s one thing you wish you knew when you started your career? I wouldn’t change a thing. I think that my naiveté was the driving force behind the extraordinary risks I took; if I had known better I may have made different choices.