Renée Jacobs
Renée, a former US civil rights lawyer, is a successful fine art photographer in France. We talked about her photography, a good photo, empowerment and her special way of treating her models.
Thomas Berlin: Renée, when we talked recently in Paris after your exhibition, I was very impressed by the expression of your photos, on the one hand classical and on the other progressive. Can you relate to this interpretation? And how would you describe your work?
Renée Jacobs: This is a great question because it gets to the heart of what I’m trying to achieve and the intellectual tension of erotic photography to me — Can you present pure, authentic sexual desire within the framework of a classically beautiful photograph? That I suppose is at the heart of what I want to achieve. A beautiful photograph makes the heart ache and the mind explode. A good photographer does that by design, by taking the viewer’s eye through a photograph with the use of composition and light. Same with the impact of desire on the heart and the mind. I reject the idea that you can’t combine the two. In the Introduction to my PARIS book, John Wood wrote about the difference between pornography and great erotic photography in that the latter invites repeated viewing to discover more. That’s the point about not abandoning classical principles of making a good photo simply because your subject matter is desire.
Thomas Berlin: Can you describe to a recipient who doesn’t know or see your images what feeling your images are meant to convey?
Renée Jacobs: My images aren’t meant to convey anything. I’m not making them for the viewers. I’m making them for the women in the photographs and for myself. Nothing else matters.
Thomas Berlin: You also make the pictures for the women in front of your camera, you say. Can you outline it a bit?
Renée Jacobs: Most of my photographs come from asking the women in my photographs what their fantasies are, what they want to explore. That’s my starting point.
Thomas Berlin: Is beauty what you are looking for?
Renée Jacobs: Beauty is nice but authenticity is more important. If the woman in the photograph feels she and her desires are well represented, I’m happy. And of course all of the elements that make a compelling photograph — light, composition.
Thomas Berlin: Why do you photograph people, mostly women, and not other motifs? Why nude?
Renée Jacobs: Empowering nudes of women are a radical idea in today’s world. They’re important to me in understanding myself and so many things I didn’t have access to when I was younger and to the women I photograph who want to express a certain part of themselves that society tells them they can’t.
Thomas Berlin: When are you happy with a picture? Are there some components or criteria you use often?
Renée Jacobs: My reaction to a photograph is always the same — whether it’s mine or someone else’s. It’s very binary — it’s either “Wow!” or “Why??” There’s always almost something I would slightly change in a photograph .
Thomas Berlin: Do you think that there is a specific female gaze in your images?
Renée Jacobs: I think it’s important to completely reject the phrases “male gaze” and “female gaze.” I don’t find them useful anymore. I would replace them with the phrases “empowering gaze” and “disempowering gaze”.
Thomas Berlin: Empowerment in the sense of empowering the person in the photo or changing society in general? And do you think that art photography can have a political impact and is not just decorative?
Renée Jacobs: Mostly empowering the woman in the photograph, then myself, then changing society. Society doesn’t want to be changed, particulary regarding the emancipation of women and women’s desires. It’s much simpler to elevate photos of women who are paid to fake desire (particularly for one another) in service of selling products. I absolutely think photography can and should have a political impact. But back to my earlier answer — there’s no reason to abandon the principles of good photography to do it. In fact, I really dislike photography that only strives to have a political impact. You can’t simply throw someone in front of a wall or a field and expect the fact that they’re different in some way to carry the photograph while abandoning light and composition. It’s boring.
“My behavior is dictated by my models and what they want to portray.”
Thomas Berlin: How do you choose your people in front of your camera? Do you shoot with agency models or also with friends and amateur models?
Renée Jacobs: I’ve never shot with an agency model, except for perhaps one time and that was with Helmut Newton’s muse Sylvia Gobbel in Paris. Although that was through a friend and it didn’t involve an agency. I prefer to call the women in my photographs co-conspirators rather than models.
Thomas Berlin: Earlier I was flipping through your great Polaroid book again. It impressed me that your co-conspirators in front of your camera look relaxed, confident and also having fun without hiding sexual pleasure. How do you treat your models? Do you have a specific behaviour?
Renée Jacobs: I want to hear what my models have to say, what they want to show. My behavior is dictated by them and what they want to portray.
Thomas Berlin: Do you think that female photographers are different to male photographers in general?
Renée Jacobs: I think both female and male photographers are capable of taking fantastic, empowering photographs of women. Conversely, both female and male photographers are capable of taking horrible, disempowering photographs of women.
Thomas Berlin: How do you prepare for a shoot? Do you create mood boards or specific ideas before shootings?
Renée Jacobs: I never prepare, other than perhaps checking my gear and that my batteries are charged or I have the components to take a Polaroid. I’m a big believer in following the light and the mood, so preparation is useless.
Thomas Berlin: How do you choose your locations?
Renée Jacobs: Locations choose me. It’s all about the light.
Thomas Berlin: How do you deal with light? It seems that you are using ambient light but are you using also artificial light in some situations?
Renée Jacobs: I almost always shoot with natural light. Artificial light doesn’t turn me on.
Thomas Berlin: Renée, you are shooting also on Polaroid film, the old Type 55, isn´t it? What is the special charm of Polaroid pictures? Can’t it also be generated digitally or is the different process of taking pictures the reason?
Renée Jacobs: I’ve described the Type 55 process this way — it provides a perfectly imperfect result that allows for a dreamy image that mirrors the way our fantasies exist — ephemeral, at the edge of our understanding, blurry, out of reach, not precise or perfect.
The Story Behind
Renée Jacobs: I was saying goodbye to friends at a fabulous party at an apartment at the Palais Royal … I was literally saying goodbye to the entire project and all my friends at 3 am on that street. Those two women walked down the street. All my friends looked at me just assuming they were my friends coming to do photographs. Nope. Just random women walking down the street. So of course I spoke to them and asked them if I could photograph them. … Et voilà. … this is the perfect example of why I don't plan anything.
Thomas Berlin: How do the models or co-conspirators react when you shoot with cameras from the last century?
Renée Jacobs: Many haven’t seen it before and so many “models” these days have been programmed to over pose and twist themselves in pretzels, it sometimes takes some getting used to. But I like the fact that it makes us slow down.
Thomas Berlin: Because your Polaroid type is meanwhile discontinued I hope you have a huge feedstock in storage, have you? But just in case: Would you switch to the normal and a bit smaller Polaroid format?
Renée Jacobs: Sadly, I don’t have any Type 55 in reserve. I shot my last sheet of it a few years ago here in France. I really don’t like the new Polaroid format, at least for my work. I love some of the results I see my friends getting with it but it’s too fickle for me. No real control for focus, exposure, etc. But I have used it and I think we’ll do a book of the new work. Some of the images are on offer now as a special edition with POLAROIDS.
Thomas Berlin: But you also take photos that are not on Polaroid film. Are these digital or analog photos?
Renée Jacobs: I usually shoot digital these days. Shooting digital has allowed me a nice latitude with the work that I do, particularly because I adore low light.
Thomas Berlin: Which camera do you use outside the world of instant film? Is there a favorite you could do all your work with?
Renée Jacobs: I loathe the digital camera that I use, which is probably 10 years old now. I would be happy to change to a lighter, faster system.
Thomas Berlin: What is your workflow up to the final print?
Renée Jacobs: I’m not much of a technician. I don’t really have a workflow. I use a little photoshop but pretty much the way I used to make my darkroom prints — dodging, burning, not much more than that.
Thomas Berlin: As far as I have seen, you show only or almost only pictures in black and white. Why?
Renée Jacobs: I think it’s timeless, classic, so much more in the greys and the shadows, just like in our deepest desires.
Thomas Berlin: Which photographers have inspired you?
Renée Jacobs: The early French photographers are my influences — Cartier-Bresson, Lartigue, Kertez, Brassaï. I’m a new devotee of Marianne Breslauer. And of course, Mapplethorpe’s approach is inspiring — he was a participant and an example of the culture he was photographing, not just a voyeur or someone that appropriated the lives and culture of the people he photographed.
Thomas Berlin: How important is social media and your website for your success and inspiration? What is your way to sell your artwork?
“Empowering the woman in the photograph, then myself, then changing society.”
Renée Jacobs: I use Instagram and have made some wonderful connections on there. I often take social media breaks. My photos are sold the old-fashioned way — collectors, auctions, galleries, etc.
Thomas Berlin: Does the growing prudery in social media and some parts of the world also affects you? Is nudity still well accepted in France?
Renée Jacobs: France is fine. Strangely, the most significant recent censorship of my work was in Spain last year in my concurrent exhibit with Helmut Newton, where the gallery censored out almost all of my same-sex images at the last minute, without my knowledge or approval and in violation of my contract. Social media prudery is tame compared to that. The censorship of that work resulted in my current exhibit at the Erotic Museum in Barcelona—“Renée Jacobs: Partisan of the Lesbian Movement”, which is up until April. The title comes from what the gallery told me in response to my protesting the misogynistic and homophobic censorship of my work. The gallerist told me that I should rethink whether I was “behaving as a photographer or as a partisan of the lesbian movement.” The exhibit is just a wonderful and delicious response to those who tell women that we shouldn’t have a voice in how we’re depicted.
Thomas Berlin: I like your pragamatism and humor in choosing the title of the exhibition. Because you mentioned the Lesbian Movement I would like to question once again whether your images are really not meant to convey anything, as you said at the beginning. I can imagine that the freedom of different sexual and non-sexual relationships in society will be advanced if people inspired by exhibitions talk more about it.
Renée Jacobs: I’m not making the images to convey something. That doesn’t enter the equation when I’m photographing. But I can’t and I won’t retreat from the battle in advancing equality by ignoring the sheer hypocrisy and double standard when it comes to gatekeepers in the art world refusing to let women in general and lesbians in particular have a say in defining who we are.
Thomas Berlin: Renée, after the interesting information about your work, I would now like to come to yourself. How did you get into photography? And what was your original profession?
Renée Jacobs: I started in photography when I was very young, in high school. By college, I was freelancing for newspapers and magazines across the US. My first book of photography came out in 1986, “Slow Burn: A Photodocument of Centralia, Pennsylvania”. From there I went to law school and practiced civil rights and constitutional litigation for 15 years.
Thomas Berlin: As far as I know, you moved to France from the US a few years ago. What was the reason? And how do you perceive the French or European photography scene compared to the US?
Renée Jacobs: Yes, my wife and I moved to France from LA at the end of 2016. I love the French and European photo scene. Every town bigger than my Citroen Berlingo has a photo festival. It’s marvelous. And of course, generally speaking, the restrictions around nudity are much less.
Thomas Berlin: What is your best reason being a nude photographer?
Renée Jacobs: Because I can give myself and other women a voice in how we’re depicted. It’s time to remove the fossils of the art world that only see women in a particular way.
Thomas Berlin: What are your hobbies or interests besides photography?
Renée Jacobs: Our area of France is absolutely stunning, although the winters are a little tougher than LA so we’re adjusting to that. But I love to hike and bike ride here. And of course traveling all around Europe has become an absolute passion.
Thomas Berlin: Thank you very much for our conversation.
Renée has published the illustrated books "Polaroids" and "Paris". She can be reached via her website as well as on Instagram. Feedback on the interview is welcome here
