Interview with Tim Carpenter by Jonathan Cherry. Tim and I have had the chance over the past few weeks to be in touch via email. I like his work very much and was eager to ask whether or not he would be up for an interview.

He said yes.

He has written more photography text here.

Tim Carpenter is 41 and lives in brooklyn, new york.

JC: Favourite breakfast food?

TC: when i’m traveling, i always have the biscuits at roadside diners. when i’m at my parents’ place, it’s my dad’s pancakes.

JC: Tell us a little bit about your project ‘a most serene republic’.

TC : the project came out of a three-week road trip around the southwestern and western united states with my father in may of 2008. i had acquired a medium format rangefinder a few months before that, and it really changed the way i made pictures, primarily by slowing me down considerably. so the serenity was not only in the landscape, but sort of also in me. the images from that trip were successful, and i expanded upon the project in another three-week road trip - this time around the northern and northwest US, as well as southern canada. it’s not necessarily finished.

JC: You seem to be a photographer that values the ‘experience of photographing’ quite highly - Do you think it is important to respond to an experience by making photographs or would you rather simply document an experience? Do you see a difference between the two?

TC: i do value the experience of photographing above all. you ask a very interesting question, and i’m not sure that i have a precise answer. for me, making a photograph is an attempt to bring visual coherence to what i see in the real world. when i make the exposure, i’m documenting my discovery of meaningful order and structure in the subject matter. and the fact that perhaps only one in ten exposures ever gets printed or becomes part of a project doesn’t at all diminish that experience.

JC: The first photograph above is an image from the series ‘a most serene republic’ - Can you tell us a little bit about this particular image?

TC: we were just coming off of several miles of dusty dirt road in wyoming and getting back on pavement when we came to this billboard. i am very much drawn to words and symbols in the man-made landscape, and they are incorporated in many of my images. i just immediately loved the idea of enticing travelers with a free continental breakfast to a motel obviously long gone. and the dry, inhospitable environment offers no consolation. one of the wonderful things about using film on a trip is that the exposures live in your head (and are naturally misremembered) for the days and weeks until you get them all developed. this is one that i felt would be strong when i made the exposure, and i was very satisfied when i saw the chrome a month later.

JC: Do you enjoy making portraits?

TC: i enjoy making portraits immensely, although i find it very difficult. i’ve only been photographing strangers for a few months, after getting over my nerves about asking them to be my subject. i envy people who are more natural at it; i recently studied with richard renaldi, and it was amazing to watch someone who is so gifted at finding subjects and getting what he wants from them in front of the camera. so it’s immensely gratifying when i make a good portrait (although still a relatively rare occurrence).

JC: Have you got another project lined up?

TC: making portraits is now my primary concern. i’m not yet sure if that work constitutes a project on its own, or whether the portraits will be woven in with the landscapes. some initial efforts to combine the two have been successful, so we’ll see. i also have an idea to do extended photographing on staten island - both landscape and portraiture - so i’m reading up a bit on the borough, with the thought of starting in the fall.

Thanks Tim.