This interview with the Chicago-based photographer Melanie Schiff was conducted in Brooklyn, New York, in April, 2007. It was originally published as a supplement to North Drive Press and then re-printed in a monograph of Schiff's work.

Brian J. Sholis: What strikes me about what you said before I turned on the tape recorder is that there a number of mythologies or stories behind the photographs. I've always appreciated them mostly on a formal level, or for the atmosphere that they evoke. Do you intend for your photographs to have a narrative content as well? Is that "story" expressed in each individual image, or across a wall of images, or throughout an entire exhibition?

Melanie Schiff: I'm perhaps more interested in atmosphere or formal characteristic than I am with a connected narrative, per se. But I do like the images to trail a sense of the events that happened to get me to the point where the image disclosed itself. It's more about that idealized moment and what had to occur to get there.

BJS: The idealized moment being akin to Cartier-Bresson's decisive moment?

MS: Yeah.

BJS: But it's not about capturing an action, but rather a mood.

MS: Yes, the process is somewhere between capturing and creating. Earlier, we were talking about Harry Callahan, the portraits of Eleanor, and I feel that those photographs operate similarly.

BJS: They seem happened upon, but in reality it's almost too perfect.

MS: Mm-hm. But I guess I'm interested in that aesthetized moment, like aesthetized experience.

BJS: Sure. Well, there's an everyday quality, especially to some of the earlier still life pictures, that I was first taken with. If one looked at a certain way, one would say, Oh, they're very fussily arranged, compositionally balanced. With the White Album photograph, the arrangement edged off of one side of the table, and in the image of cassettes and bones the composition pushed out of the other end of the frame; together they formed a pair of bookends, almost. But at the same time, these compositions could also just be something one comes across.

MS: Yeah, I feel like the stuff I've been doing recently really still refers to that work, but it's more maybe connecting to photographic history. In the first body of work, which you mention, I was really thinking about painting, and the images directly refer to paintings. The photographs I've been making more recently draw from a photographic past.

BJS: Did you have to develop a certain confidence by developing a body of work and presenting it before you attempted to engage with photographic history? Was it easier or harder for ou to engage with painterly traditions?

MS: Well, to put it plainly, I've always had a problem working in series. I always felt that the need to do so was a problem with photography—especially contemporary photography—and that it was something I wasn't interested i...

BJS: Having an idea be a container or a set that then you fill with eight images...

MS: Yeah, exactly. That's why at the beginning I was making really small sets of images. The first exhibition was only a few photographs. There were three still lifes and two landscapes and a picture that could be described as an abstraction. When, later, I had to fill a much bigger space, I was worry about it seeming "too much." But to get back to the earlier point, it is kind of hard to work with what's handed down from the photographic tradition.

BJS: Who are some of the photographers that you are drawn to?

MS: I was drawn to Harry Callahan, and to some performative photography like Ana Mendieta and Valie Export...

BJS: You could say that their performances were a way of—or one narrow way of interpreting these works—is that they each aestheticized authentic experience. Valie Export was out on the streets in everyday Vienna, and the environment created an aesthetic tension that made for more interesting photographs.

MS: Yeah, but I think what separates my work from theirs is that the photographs, in their case, were largely documentary. I don't think like that; in my case, the "performance" is for the photograph.

BJS: Your body of work thus far is not schizophrenic, but there are two distinct strands to it: photographs with people and photographs without people. You can see how they're related because they are unified by your sensibility, but for me the line between them is fairly clear.

MS: I'm still thinking about whether I separate them. What connects them in my mind is how the subjects—whether human or inanimate—connect to their environment. Sometimes it's objects connecting to objects. But when it comes to connecting to a landscape, or more of a physical space, I tend to use people or myself as a subject. Blending the two is one way of opening up the "narrative" content of the finished works.

BJS: You mentioned a moment ago that your first solo exhibition had only a handful of images, and that two were landscapes. Were those the pictures titled Landscape?

MS: Yeah.

BJS: I refer to them as the "northern Chicago suburb in winter" series. What struck me about those images is that they captured perfectly a very, very specific quality of light. Such that, having grown up in the same area as you, I get homesick when I look at those photographs. They remind me of driving down into the city to go shopping for records or to see some bands play, and on the way through Skokie or whichever small inner suburb all you see is tall, thin, dark trees lining the road—and through which the sun is filtered as it's setting in the west. There are patches of ice on the ground. It's very, very specific. We were talking before this interview commenced about whether you wanted to move to Los Angeles or stay in Chicago. Do you believe the photographs you make have a Chicago—or a Midwest—sensibility?

MS: Yes, I do actually. I really do feel connected to that light, and even though some of the work in my second solo show was shot in other places, they were still attempts to connect to that type of light. The spit piece was shot in Joshua Tree, for example...

BJS: It did seem like the light in the new show was warmer...

MS: Yeah. The first show was cold and gray but bright at the same time. This one was an end-of-summer light; I would shoot at specific times of the day, whether I was in the Midwest or in California or Florida. The sunshine was very easy to mix together, so the images weren't disjointed. To be honest, it was kind of nice to shoot outside of the Midwest. At first I was afraid, as if I couldn't leave because I'm so connected to this region.

BJS: You understand how that light works and you understand the environment.

MS: Yes, but I feel like I will come to understand the work more if I think of it not only in terms of the Midwestern landscape.

BJS: Well, in thinking about geographic diversity, I can't help but think of American road photographers. Your ability to impart aesthetic qualities to the images, capturing moods and moments and giving them compositional dignity, calls to mind many photographers from the 1950s and 1960s, such as Robert Frank and Garry Winogrand.

MS: I love Robert Frank.

BJS: Well, I wonder if your body of work to date is kind of what happens if those guys stay at home, in a way. They were traveling through a landscape, and you can sense the motion, whereas your pictures are almost like extracts or distillations. There's something that seems—in my experience—very American about them, as if they couldn't have been made anywhere else. Taken together, they might be a composite portrait of American life, a catalogue of private moments, private graces, things that can happen here with the conjunction of light and the natural beauty of the environment.

MS: I agree. At the same time I don't think of them as being completely personal. They are instead emblematic of my experience as a woman American artist. Some of the photos in the new series connect very explicitly to other artworks.

BJS: The "spit" photograph was very Bruce Nauman.

MS: Yeah, exactly. But a gender-flipped Bruce Nauman, one that connects to the mysticism of the desert, as evidenced by some of the things I'm doing with life.

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