Episode 8: Jess T. Dugan and Rafael Solid
In this episode, MoCP Chief Curator and Deputy Director, Karen Irvine, sits down with artists Jess T. Dugan and Rafael Soldi of the Strange Fire Collective to discuss the founding of Strange Fire and its mission to showcase works made by women, people of color, and queer and trans artists. Dugan and Soldi also speak about their own practice as working artists, and their thoughts on the work of Harry Callahan and Diane Arbus in the museum’s collection.
To help stop the spread of Covid-19, this episode was recorded live in front of an audience over Zoom and not in the WCRX studios.
Hermaphrodite and a dog in a carnival trailer, Maryland, 1970, Diane Arbus
Eleanor, Port Huron, 1954, Harry Callahan
Interview Transcript
Karen Irvine:
This is Focal Point, the podcast where we discuss the artists, themes, and processes that define and sometimes disrupt the world of contemporary photography. I'm Karen Irvine, chief curator and deputy director at the Museum of Contemporary Photography at Columbia College, Chicago, with guests Jess T. Dugan and Rafael Soldi.
Jess T. Dugan is a St. Louis who is interested in representations of identity, particularly as they apply to LGBTQ+ communities, and specializing in portraiture. They received their MFA from Columbia College, Chicago in 2014, and has their work in the permanent collections of over 35 museums. Dugan's monographs include To Survive on This Shore: Photographs and Interviews with Transgender and Gender Nonconforming Older Adults, published by Kehrer Verlag in 2018, and Every Breath We Drew, published by Daylight Books in 2015. Currently, they are the 2020-2021 Henry L. and Natalie E. Freund Teaching Fellow at Washington University in St. Louis.
Rafael Soldi is a Peruvian born Seattle based artist and curator. His practice centers on how queerness and masculinity intersect with topics such as immigration, memory, and loss. In addition to his extensive art practice, Soldi was part of the curatorial team at the Photographic Center, Northwest for five years, and has realized many curatorial projects since that time. He is currently co-curator of The High Wall, an outdoor video projection program dedicated to immigrant artists and artists working on themes of diaspora and borderlands. He has published two monographs this year: Imagined Futures with our friends Candor Arts here in Chicago, and Cargamontón, a self-published book.
Dugan and Soldi are both co-founders of the Strange Fire collective, along with Zora J. Murff and Hamidah Glasgow. Strange Fire is a project that highlights work made by women, people of color, and queer and trans artists.
Today we are discussing an artist they each have chosen from the MoCP's permanent collection as well as their own work and practice. To help stop the spread of COVID-19, we are recording this session live over Zoom and not in person at the WCRX FM radio studios. The full unedited interview will be made available on the museum's Vimeo page. Please visit mocp.org/focalpoint for more.
So, welcome to both! Rafael is with us from Seattle this morning and Jess is in St. Louis. Normally when we record these podcasts, the first segment is recorded in our vault where we stand with the artists and we look at the objects that they've chosen to discuss. Today instead, I'm going to share my screen with everybody in our audience and show you the pictures that you both picked out. And I'm going to ask you, starting with Jess, to state your name, tell us the title and the maker of the work that you've chosen, and then could you briefly describe it to us so that the listeners who will be listening just to the podcast audio version have a sense of what we're all looking at right now?
Jess. T. Dugan:
Sure, yeah. And thank you so much, Karen. I'm really happy to be here today, especially with you and Rafael. And as you know, I have a lot of love for and a longer history with the MoCP, so it's especially sweet.
My name is Jess T. Dugan, and I chose the collection work by Diane Arbus titled Hermaphrodite and a Dog in a Carnival Trailer, Maryland, 1970, which is a black and white photograph. It's a portrait. It depicts a person sitting in what we know from the title to be a carnival trailer. Their left hand is resting on the table in front of them and their right hand is resting on their hip, and they're in a kind of two piece sequined performative outfit wearing makeup. Their hair is fixed. They're wearing jewelry and earrings and a necklace. And they're looking right at Arbus, which is important to me and I think to the work.
Karen Irvine:
And then Rafael, can you please do the same?
Rafael Soldi:
Sure. Hi everybody. Thank you Karen and MoCP for inviting us to this conversation. My name is Rafael Soldi, and I chose an image by Harry Callahan titled Eleanor, Port Huron, 1954. As we know, Harry Callahan photographed his wife Eleanor expansively throughout his whole career. This is a black and white image. It's fairly square, I don't think it's quite a square. I think it's kind of a square rectangle. It's a black and white image. It is mostly foliage from top to bottom, and there is a nude Eleanor laying on the grass with her backside to us. And this sort of top third half of the image is very, very dark foliage, and then the foliage gets a little bit lighter toward the bottom.
And I love how the grass is almost lace-like, and then Eleanor and the towel she's laying on seem to have almost been blown by the wind into the image. And there's quite a bit of contrast between the whiteness of the towel and her skin as well, she's fair-skinned, against the darkness of the foliage. I'm sure a lot of that was done also in the dark room, but it's just a very elegant, very simple, very beautiful form, this organic form of the body against the flatness of the foliage behind her and around her.
Karen Irvine:
Thank you. So can you explain to the audience how you made those picks out of 16,000 plus objects? Was it difficult to decide which image resonated with you? And also, how do those images relate to your own personal practice?
Jess. T. Dugan:
Sure. So Arbus was definitely an early influence for me. She was someone I discovered in college. I had discovered some other artists before that, but it wasn't until I got to college that I discovered Arbus. And as a young person, I found her work to be validating, and I always felt a sense of empathy in it, which I now understand so much more about it and that that's not the case for everyone. But as I've matured as an artist, I've thought more about representation and photographing the other and what these kind of interactions must have been like for her. So I thought this piece was interesting because it brings up all of those questions about picturing the other, about representation, about how images function for different people in different ways. My 18-year-old queer self was really excited by this work, and my 34-year-old queer self still really likes the work but I see it as just much more complicated.
So that's why I chose it. There are so many amazing works in the collection and I could've chosen a lot of different ones for different reasons. But I thought this one is just kind of a complicated conversation around representation. And then also language, you know, thinking about the title. Hermaphrodite's not a word we use anymore, and so thinking about how language changes over time, particularly when it's speaking to identity which is also something I think about in my work.
Karen Irvine:
Absolutely. Thank you for that. Yeah, and the scholarship as well, right, around Arbus is very controversial actually in that regard. You know, was she exploiting these marginalized communities or was she actually kind of identifying with them and trying to elevate them and connect them to her pictures of more mainstream society? So that's a great point to make. Thanks, Jess.
And Rafael, what was it about the Callahan piece that spoke to you?
Rafael Soldi:
You know, I went back and forth. I wasn't as familiar with the... I've been to the museum many times but I wasn't as familiar with the collection as Jess was. It's a huge collection, and when I first logged in I was like, okay, where do I begin? And I thought maybe of starting first looking for something that would speak to what's going on today. And then I realized that I wanted to speak to something maybe a little bit more personal. And I knew that Callahan has this huge connection to Chicago, and I assumed the museum would have a pretty extensive collection of his work, and you do.
When I was in high school and I was already very interested in photography but not thinking yet that this is where my life was going to go, I walked into my high school library and I found a Callahan book and held it open and immediately just, my heart started beating so fast. There was such a connection right away for me with those pictures. There was a tidiness to the way he sees that really spoke to my personality and my interest I think. At the time, I was young and so excited about photography but didn't have any references, and it was so cool to find something and think like, I want to do that.
And right at that time, the National Gallery in DC, I was in DC in Maryland at the time, and the National Gallery had a beautiful show, the Callahan Retrospective. And my dad took me to see it, and I just remember thinking and feeling like, that was a life-changing moment for me. Like this is it, you know? I remember also going out and trying to make pictures like him. I hadn't even found my own language yet. I just wanted to go and recreate the pictures that he had taken.
This is not one of... This is a well-known image but it's not his most famous image, but I've always loved it and I've seen it in person several time, different prints of them. And yeah, it just brought me right back to being a really young photographer, much like what Jess was saying, and seeing myself in something.
Karen Irvine:
Aw, thank you. That's nice to hear those stories of inspiration from both of you. That's great. So you both are friends, and as I mention you're collaborators in Strange Fire. But how do you know each other? Where and when did you meet?
Jess. T. Dugan:
We were figuring out the details. But we got to know each other in 2013 at the Society for Photographic Education Conference, which was in Chicago that year just down the street from MoCP. And we were on a panel together. I think that's when we really became friends. I think we had crossed paths a little bit before that, but that's when we really got to know each other. We've been good friends since then and we've also worked together in a bunch of different ways that we can delve into.
Karen Irvine:
Great. Yeah, we can get into that. So I was wondering, Rafael, what is it like to be a model for photographer Jess T. Dugan?
Rafael Soldi:
That is a great question. Every time we've done a portrait, it has been at the end of having spent several days together doing things, hanging out. And it's such a different energy. I think something that Jess is really good at in their work is bringing this moment of intimacy and this moment of quietness that creates a real connection with the subject. And I think that for me, those moments have always been really special. And as a photographer as well, as an artist as well, I think being on the other side of the lens is a little strange, but it's also this really cool opportunity to see somebody else work. So there's something nice about laying back and just being like, I'm not working right now. Somebody else is working and I can just focus on having this nice experience with someone I care about.
Karen Irvine:
And Jess, do you feel a difference when you're photographing people that you care about and know intimately versus people that you've met, for example, on the road doing other projects?
Jess. T. Dugan:
Yeah. That's a good question. I think definitely. Everyone I photographed for Every Breath We Drew is someone that I have met somehow and have a connection to. So they're not strangers to me, which was the case often with To Survive on This Shore. So there's always some connection. But I think with people I know well, it's inherently different. And also even with someone I know well, I think the first time I photograph them is different from the second or the third. So I was noticing when I was looking at the pictures of Rafael, it seems that we've made one a year recently, probably because that's when we end up at conferences or see each other. But there's something about the passage of time that really affects the process as well as my relationship with the person.
Karen Irvine:
Great, great. I want to talk a little bit about your very different approaches to your work. So Jess, with Every Breath We Drew, even though it was kind of personally motivated and you included some self portraits, it quickly expanded as I mentioned into a wide group of people. And then in the project To Survive on This Shore that you collaborated with Dr. Vanessa Fabbre on which is photographs of trans people over 50 that includes interviews by Vanessa, you really traveled throughout the country finding people from various states, and it became a very politically and socially engaged project that has kind of a very strong foundation in documentary work and sociology.
And in contrast, Rafael, your work seems to be much more kind of inward-looking. I'm thinking about your recent project Imagined Futures, which was a very personal exploration where you entered photo booths and took self portraits or allowed the machine to take the self portraits of you with your eyes closed as kind of a meditation on immigration and your experience as an immigrant. And I'm curious to hear more about that kind of private ritual itself. But I read an interview with you where you said, "I've never known how to make work that is not deeply connected to my own story. I've never been able to work in an objective documentary way."
So thinking about your two, kind of your works to date, although your works seem different kind of at face value, I'm curious about where you see affinities and connections in your practices. And maybe you can reflect on your very different approaches to communicating issues that are sometimes very similar to one another and they're often also innately private and visceral.
Rafael Soldi:
Yeah. I think what you said is right. I've always made work that's very connected to my own story and at the same time being very concerned about how it then connects to the rest of the world. I think a lot about Szarkowski's famous quote of photographers being mirrors or windows. And while I think that's a very broad categorization of a swath of artists, I do think there's a grain of truth in that. And for me, I've always identified as a mirror, always kind of reflecting back what's in my own experience. It does not come naturally to me to go out and just kind of make a project about something outside of myself, and for better or for worse, you know. It is something that I think of on practical terms as well. In my practice I think about that, about the challenges of that.
I do spend a lot of time thinking about how to make work about the self that is not narcissistic, and that's why I spend a lot of time trying to connect my work to larger issues or to other people. Because I do think that the more personal something is, the more universal it becomes. So if you can tell a personal story, people can connect to it. But if you leave it at that then it just becomes like, "Hey everybody, look at my life." But if you can then bring in other voices and have conversations around those topics then I think it can be a really powerful way to connect with the rest of the world.
Jess. T. Dugan:
That's great, Rafael. I love that. I think for me, Karen, my work has always centered around identity. From the very beginning that's what I was interested in. I've always been interested in making portraits and really understanding myself and my place in the world through that work. And I think part of that for me was my own identity and queerness.
But I find now that while those interests are the same and are consistent, I tend to swing back and forth pretty heavily between a highly personal and subjective approach to those ideas and a more outward, more documentary approach. So for me, Every Breath We Drew and To Survive on This Shore feel like really different projects. Even though formally they're environmental portraits made in a similar style, they come from very different places for me. And I think in some ways I share that with Rafael in pulling work that... or that our work comes from ourselves and our own experiences in the world, but also wanting to connect it to broader issues like he mentions.
Karen Irvine:
Mm-hmm (affirmative), mm-hmm (affirmative). And of course the video work you've done is also kind of highly personal. So really in some sense in your overall practice, you have kind of taken both approaches, more kind of autobiographical and then also kind of more documentary as you said. Yeah, thank you.
Jess. T. Dugan:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Karen Irvine:
Rafael, I know you've experimented in a lot of different mediums. What do you think are the limitations of photography in trying to address issues of identity? Where has that frustrated you or opened up opportunity?
Rafael Soldi:
I personally find that for me as an artist who works in an expanded way a little bit in photography, I'm still very image-focused, for me the limitations are not with photography but with how we've been taught to understand photography and use photography. I get very frustrated that you go to art schools and photography will always be separated from all the other fine arts medium. You know, sculptors, painters, illustrators, they all tend to do critiques together, work together, take classes together. And we're always like in the basement by ourselves. We have our own magazines, our own museums, our own conferences, our own festivals. Everything we do is siloed. And I think we've been robbed of an opportunity to be a part of a larger conversation.
I think that's why you see now more and more artists expanding what it means to do photography. There's a really interesting connection between photography and sculpture. Many photographers started as painters, just making photographs as reference and then turned into photographers. I think that we should have a more expanded way of teaching and understanding photography so that we can really sort of exploit the image in a way that's more interesting and exciting and has more possibilities.
Jess. T. Dugan:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). For me, the limitations become when I'm trying to tell a specific story or when I'm trying to speak about a specific issue or a specific person's life. So in my project To Survive on This Shore, I felt that the text was really necessary. Because that project wasn't about me and my internal state. That project was about a very broad and diverse group of people, and I wanted specifics about their lives and their narratives in that project. I felt like text brought that in in a way that you just can't include that kind of information in a photograph. So that certainly felt like one limitation.
And then I'm thinking also, Karen, you mentioned the video piece. I made a video piece about my estranged relationship with my father, and really wanted to tell a story. In that particular piece, I actually feel like the text is sometimes at odds with the images. The images themselves don't tell the story that I needed to tell.
Yeah, so for me that's where the limitation comes in, when I have something very specific I want to communicate. But I also love the openness of photographs on their own for different reasons.
Karen Irvine:
Mm-hmm (affirmative), mm-hmm (affirmative). Thank you. Rafael, I want to go back to the point that you made about us being, like people approaching photographs in a very particular way with a set of expectations. Because I think that must really impact your Imaged Futures work, which for those who haven't seen it is a set of 50 self portraits that I mentioned earlier taken in photo booths where your eyes are closed. In some ways, it seems that that project is maybe photographically less about being a self portrait of you, but the generic nature of the image and maybe even the process I think invites kind of an openness and a chance maybe for identification from the viewer that maybe is calling for a letting go of what we want from pictures, which is often narrative.
Rafael Soldi:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah, I mean I think around the time that that project came together, I had lost my interest in operating a camera. And I have never lost my interest in photographs and in pictures. I love working with images. I've never loved using a camera. And when that project came about or the concept sort of crept in and I was trying to figure out how I could execute it, I was at a loss as to what to take a picture of or how to make that picture.
The year prior, it had been 2016, the election, I was in Berlin at a residency. And it was just a really strange night and we were all really confused as to what happened, and were really mad. I remember being super emotional and walking back to my studio and just needing some peace and quiet. Like I just wanted to step away from the street for a moment and take a moment to breathe. So I stepped into a photo booth, which was kind of there in the corner. I remember thinking, "The world is going to change from now forward. It's going to be very different for the people I care about, for women, for people of color, for queer people. And I feel like I want to make a picture of this moment." Right now I'm explaining it so rationally. I think in the moment it was kind of visceral and a little more emotional.
And I stepped in and I closed my eyes and I tried to imagine a world that might be different for the people I care about. And I made those four portraits, and I just carried that with me for a while. And around that time, I think that event really got me thinking about what my life would've been like if I had stayed behind, and really all these what I call imagined futures started to flood in. These ideas of what life could've been like. And I found that strip one day, and I realized that that could be this great strategy to approach the work, where I could make the work as I travel. Wherever I am, I can find a photo booth. I can make the pictures. And that there were a lot of parallels there, that the photo booth would allow me to focus on creating the work and make the pictures without me having to operate anything, and it would also set a lot of the parameters for the formal qualities of the work. So it would also check a lot of boxes and solve a lot of problems.
I think we don't often talk about the practical elements of how we make work, but you have to make those decisions. So I did set some parameters myself. I decided that they would only be analog photo booths. They would be black and white, so they would be gelatin silver prints. And then the booth kind of took care of the rest in terms of what the picture might look like. And that was also really exciting to not know and let go of that control. Was really freeing to say, "You take the picture and I'll be surprised as to what comes out on the other side."
Karen Irvine:
So do you make them at any sort of interval or it's just kind of when you feel like it? And is there significance to the number 50? I'm also just curious about actually what you're thinking about when you take the pictures. I'm intrigued by the aspect of ritual, and I forget how you put it but kind of saying farewell to an idea.
Rafael Soldi:
Yeah. So I didn't make them at random. What would happen was that over the course of two years, I would have what I call these visits from these imagined futures. And they sound very esoteric, but I'm talking about just random moments of wondering or thinking what my life would've been like. Or even I've been going back home more often recently and visiting my family and meeting people who remind me of myself, meeting people who are artists, who are queer people my age down there who have a life there. And I'm starting to see myself reflected in them and thinking, could that have been me? Could that have been my life? Maybe it would've been okay. So whenever one of these thoughts creeps in or one of these imagined lives that I imagine for myself that never happened, that's when I could go seek a photo booth and step into it and imagine that future. And then I would say "Thank you" to it and I would give it permission to go find someone else to live it.
So that was happening in the booth while making the picture so I can really focus on that process. And 50 was just a number I chose because it had to end. It was one of those things that could go on forever. I pulled a lot of them out, I looked at them, I sequenced them, and 50 felt, it had a nice ring to it. You know, these 50 imagined futures. They spanned two years, and they held up the kind of space that I wanted physically as an installation.
Karen Irvine:
Thank you for sharing.
Rafael Soldi:
Thank you.
Karen Irvine:
One thing that both of your works have in common is that you both speak about your work as relating to the concept of masculinity. Jess, in Every Breath We Drew, you state that you're working from your actively constructed sense of masculinity. And Rafael, in your artist statement that I read as part of your introduction, you state that your practice centers on how queerness and masculinity intersect with larger topics of our time such as immigration, memory, and loss. Can you both speak about masculinity and how it functions as a social construct in addition to how it informs your practice?
Jess. T. Dugan:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah, that's a big question and a great question. You know, a lot of the people that I'm drawn to photograph exist in this space of gentle masculinity. They exist in a kind of androgynous space. And similar to what Rafael said about making the work on a more visceral level and understanding it later, I was certainly drawn to certain people just innately. But as the project has gone on and I've come to understand what it is, a lot of the people that I'm drawn to embody a kind of quality that I see in myself or want to see in myself.
And a lot of my personal interest in masculinity comes from having to define my own masculinity in the world. As someone who was born female, I identify as non-binary. So I'm not transitioning to male, but I'm very masculine presenting. And so from a very early age I had to negotiate the ways that masculinity fit me and the ways that I reject in society. And the space that I have settled into personally is one that is more fluid, but the ways in which I'm masculine are a different kind of masculine. It's a more gentle version of masculinity, a more vulnerable version of masculinity, as opposed to the version that we're often taught in society. So a lot of what I'm looking at in Every Breath We Drew is how to be masculine in this world in a different way, in a more expansive way.
Rafael Soldi:
It's interesting. I love these questions because I was just thinking last night too that there are so many parallels between Jess's work and my work that I hadn't noticed before because formally they're so different. But maybe that's why we get along.
For me, masculinity is a fairly new topic in my work that I've been exploring the last couple of years. I'm interested in specifically how Latin American culture creates a concept of masculinity, how it influences the way we think about gender. So I've been trying to parse out or take apart the events in my life that led me to believe that I had to be a certain kind of man and what that means for other boys and other kids that are growing up there now. And what are some of these rituals or some of these everyday life things?
So I talk about, you mentioned Cargamontón which is a newish body of work that looks at playground brawling and... you could say bullying but really it's just this sort of rough play that happens amongst boys. And for me, it was one of the first things that told me like, "You're not a normal boy. Why don't you like that? Why don't you want to play rough? Why don't you want to be suffocated under a pile of bodies?" And then slowly through that process coming into my early teens and understanding my own queerness, I started to realize that these moments of violence were my only outlet to touch another man in a way that was acceptable. So these brawls, things like sports and anything that made it okay for us to touch one another in any kind of way that was remotely, maybe not gentle but intimate, became my access to intimacy with other men. And not necessarily in a sexual way, just intimacy, closeness.
So I began to sort of equate intimacy with violence. I think for me that ended up not creating much of an issue long-term, but I could definitely see how that relationship between intimacy and violence could lead to a very dangerous situation in the future.
Karen Irvine:
Thank you. Can you both tell me about the Strange Fire collective? That's got to be an interesting story.
Jess. T. Dugan:
Sure. We founded the Strange Fire collective as you mentioned along with Zora J. Murff and Hamidah Glasgow in the fall of 2015. And we founded to promote work by women, people of color, and queer and trans artist, and we focus specifically on work that is socially and politically engaged.
You know, I think for me personally around the time of founding Strange Fire, I had recently finished my MFA as you know, Karen, in Chicago, and I relocated from my partner's job. And I was finding myself in a new city. I was missing a sense of community. And I really wanted to start something and be part of something that would build community both for myself and for other people. And I had also been in and around the art world long enough to be very aware of the inequities in terms of whose work was being shown and presented and who was getting space.
And so these were my personal inklings for Strange Fire. It took a little while to figure out what the group would be, but once we settled on the four of us and we settled on a topic, we decided that we wanted to make something that was both accessible to other people and sustainable to us individually.
Karen Irvine:
Right. And then the name of the collective did come from The Indigo Girls song. We've established that.
Jess. T. Dugan:
It did.
Rafael Soldi:
It did.
Jess. T. Dugan:
They have an album called Strange Fire and a song called Strange Fire. And when we were trying to name the collective, that was one of several contenders that we all really liked. But it's funny because I don't... I think I'm speaking correctly. I don't think any of us are that religious, and we realized after we named it that it obviously has a much longer religious connotation. So that's always, you have to be careful what you Google.
Rafael Soldi:
But I love the idea of someone googling it in a religious context and landing on a...
Jess. T. Dugan:
Right, right.
Rafael Soldi:
... on our collective.
Karen Irvine:
Exactly. That's called poetic justice, right?
Rafael Soldi:
Yeah.
Karen Irvine:
But to get back to the mission of Strange Fire, and when we think about institutions who are under very long overdue scrutiny in terms of racial justice and fighting against white supremacy and the patriarchy and all of this, how do you feel about where institutions are and other arts organizations potentially? And do you see any glimmers of hope on the horizon here? Or do you have any ideas of how that, like where really urgent and long-term change are needed?
Rafael Soldi:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). That's a big question. But I think I do see a glimmer of hope. I think we always have to see hope if we want to move forward in some ways. And we, for better or for worse, we need institutions in some way or another. And I think that it's really great, it's really heartening to see people kind of step out and not be afraid anymore to challenge institutions to do better. So that's really exciting.
One of the reasons Strange Fire has worked so successfully I think is because we've been able to be really nimble, and because we sit right in between the institution and the commercial gallery space, and we can respond to our times pretty quickly. And I think that more collectives and groups coming through the arena and creating projects I think can make a really big difference. And then these projects and these groups can also be brought into institutions to work with them. So I think only in the last couple of years, we've started to receive more invitations to work with and interact with institutions. And I really like that because we're able to come in and present some challenges, bring our own perspective to the institution as well.
Jess. T. Dugan:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah, and also adding on that Rafael, I think one thing we always try to share when we speak about Strange Fire specifically with a student audience or a younger artist audience is that you can really make whatever space you need for yourself. Like we started with a simple idea and it's grown into something meaningful. And it doesn't take, as Rafael mentioned, it doesn't take much money. It's not something that's becoming a business in any way. But it's possible to grow a community that you need.
I think for me with institutions, I'm really interested in institutions. I love museums and I view them as the ideal home for my work. I want to be in dialogue with institutions. And obviously there are a lot of important conversations going on right now. But that's one thing I try to bring into the collective is talking to a lot of curators and people who work in institutions. And I'm often reminded that a lot of people even within institutions are pushing for the change that we so desperately need, and they're not always getting the support that they need or they're not getting the funding that they need. So I guess I just think it's important when we talk about institutions to remember that they're these often massive organizations and a lot of change needs to happen and a lot of growth can happen, but I think there are also some people pushing for that from within in really important ways.
Karen Irvine:
Well we're kind of getting close to the end of the hour so I think I'll just ask one more question and then we'll open it up for our audience. And that was I wanted to ask you about the impact of COVID-19, because it really has turned everybody's life upside-down. I'm sure that that's affected your practice and your personal life in some ways, and I was wondering if you had any thoughts or reflections about your experience this year.
Rafael Soldi:
Yeah. Well, I'll speak briefly both to Strange Fire and my own practice. But I think for Strange Fire, it's been interesting because a lot of the processes and a lot of the way we were operating before very much mirrors the way the rest of the world is operating today. You know, the four of us speak every month, and we've always been able to do that from far away for the last five years, and we've always been able to do all of our programs virtually. So it's really interesting to see the rest of the world catch up to a different way of doing things.
For my own practice, I won't say much because I think it's the same than most people. But you know, it's been really tough. One of the challenges that I've experienced has been that I've been feeling a lot of pressure from the outside to perform as an artist in order to entertain people during this time. So I think there were times where I was seeing a lot of language around like, "We need to see artists putting content out." And I was just like, no, we're just people. We feel it the same way as everybody else. And if we just want to go away for a year and disappear, we can do that.
Jess. T. Dugan:
Yeah. I think for me, my reaction has shifted as we've gotten further into the pandemic. In March when it hit, there was an element of the slowdown that I came to appreciate even though there were a lot of challenges. I had been on the road a lot for several years before that, and I suddenly was at home. I feel like my professional life completely stopped. I do a lot of work with universities and museums, and everything I do was shut down, which has its challenges but I also suddenly had free month, free calendar, which has just never happened to me.
So I made a lot of work in those early months at home. I was making self portraits. I was making still life images. I also, like Rafael said, was feeling some pressure to make work. But I found those restrictions of me not being able to go out and make portraits of other people, while frustrating, had an unanticipated benefit which was that I returned to making really internal work and personal work.
I will say as the fall hit, I've been struggling with feeling that my professional life and my world is moving along, but it's just in this online, distant way. And I really get a lot of feedback and energy from being in space with other people. I'm really missing that now at this point in the pandemic. I am making portraits of other people now but in a kind of distant, more limited capacity. And like Rafael said, I'm really missing other people. I miss lectures in person and I miss seeing friends. I actually really miss making portraits without this kind of fear of getting too close to somebody. It's sort of contrary to what I do most of the time.
Karen Irvine:
Great. Well thanks for sharing that. I understand the rethinking of priorities for sure. I think we all do, right? It's been a very traumatic year, so thanks for sharing those thoughts.
So nice to see you both. I miss seeing people in person too, but I'm glad we got to connect today.
Rafael Soldi:
Thank you, Karen.
Jess. T. Dugan:
Thanks so much, Karen.
Rafael Soldi:
And thank you Marissa.
Karen Irvine:
Thanks. Thanks everybody.
Thanks for listening to Focal Point. Focal Point is presented by the Museum of Contemporary Photography at Columbia College, Chicago under the direction of Kristin Taylor, curator of academic programs and collections, in partnership with WCRX with help from [Matt Cunningham 00:41:02], [Wesley Reno 00:41:03] and Zach Cunning. Music by [Zavey 00:41:06]. Research assistance provided by MoCP curatorial fellow Asha Iman Veal. To see the images we discussed today, please visit mocp.org/focalpoint. You can also follow the Museum of Contemporary Photography on Facebook and Instagram @mocpchi, that's M-O-C-P-C-H-I and on twitter @MoCP_Chicago. If you enjoyed our show, be sure to rate, review, and subscribe to Focal Point anywhere you get your podcasts.
