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Roe Ethridge, Refrigerator, (1999)
from Chapter 1: Observing the Ordinary
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Refrigerator records the kitchen of photographer Roe Ethridge's childhood home in Atlanta, Georgia.
Ethridge was born in 1969 in Miami, Florida, and received his B.F.A. degree in photography from the
Atlanta College of Art. His photographs have appeared in numerous galleries, museums, magazines,
advertisements, and album covers. He is currently teaching a course on photography at the School of
Visual Arts in New York City. Ethridge lives in Brooklyn, New York, where this interview took place
in January, 2003.
Ethridge shot the image with a 4 x 5 view camera and two strobe flashes
positioned so that the light bounced off the ceiling.
| S&W3: |
What was the origin of this piece? What prompted you to shoot it?
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| R.E.: |
I was commissioned by the New York Times Magazine to go to Atlanta and document refrigerator doors.
I photographed ten different homes there. I was looking at refrigerator doors as a kind of vernacular,
a decorative area like a frame for ephemera and memories. This is my parents' refrigerator in suburban
Atlanta. But it's almost identical in every house. The same kind of information shows up on each
refrigerator: kids' drawings, letters, refrigerator magnets, little stories, all kinds of kitschy things
that seem to express the unconscious values of the owner. When there was a family involved, the fridges
were much more chaotic. They seemed to tell life stories. On the other hand, one friend had a brushed-aluminum
sub-zero refrigerator and he had one pristine landscape photograph hanging off a suction cup device so that
it wasn't marring the fine finish, as if to say, "We don't junk this modern marvel."
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| S&W3: |
When you look at the photograph now, do any of the objects stand out to you?
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| R.E.: |
For some reason I always notice my mother's sunglasses on the right-hand side of the photograph. I don't think
she wears them anymore; they're out of date. All other suburban mothers seem to have that same weird set of
purple-tinted sunglasses. But the main thing that sticks out in the photograph is my dog Lucky. He passed on
two years ago. That's probably the most emotional detail. The refrigerator as an object is interesting, but the
objects and the details on the edges of the image are almost more interesting to me. I could have gotten closer
to the fridge or zoomed in on the details, but seeing the object in context and using the edges as a device was
a way to form the composition. I didn't crop the photo in printing; this is a full-frame photograph.
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| S&W3: |
Did you use any additional light?
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| R.E.: |
There are two strobe flashes bouncing off the ceiling that create fake ambient light. It projects up onto the
ceiling and bounces back down, creating a downward-projecting light that imitates lights on the ceiling. It looks
like a natural light situation but also fills in shadows so that you can see all the detail. With this kind of 4 x 5
camera, the amount of detail is sometimes what makes the picture interesting. It's a 4 x 5 inch sheet of film and a
very sharp lens that allows every detail to be articulated. You keep going into the image and you can even read the
text. The small piece of paper on the right-hand side of the refrigerator says what a housewife's salary would be
in 1986 if she got paid for all the jobs she did. It's actually covered now with something else, since my mom saw
the picture and was embarrassed.
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| S&W3: |
Where has the piece appeared and how was it received in different contexts?
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| R.E.: |
One of the unusual things about photography is that an image can slip between an editorial, art, and commercial piece.
The piece never ran in the New York Times Magazine, but I wound up showing the piece an art gallery as an artwork, and
later the image was purchased for an advertisement.
An advertising agency saw the photograph in my commercial portfolio and wanted to purchase the image to use for an ad
for a home-organizer product, something like a giant Palm Pilot for the kitchen. I wasn't comfortable using the
photograph for the ad. There is so much personal information: pictures of me and my sister, mom and dad when they
were in college, precisely what they were interested in because it signified some kind of disorder that their product
would help organize. So we allowed them to use the picture, but we took out all the personal information. We wound up
measuring the freezer and refrigerator panels, getting two equivalent sheets of aluminum and dressing them up with
tons of refrigerator magnets. We faked typical family stuff, exaggerating it a bit, shot [it], and then they digitally
dropped the panels into the scene. So they wound up with generic family stuff instead of my family's. Lucky remained in
the shot.
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| S&W3: |
Have you photographed other parts of your childhood home?
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| R.E.: |
I've shot just about everywhere in my parents' house. I just shot down in the basement. My mother uses the basement as
a holding area for everything. So we've got an antique store — more like a thrift store — of things that we've bought at
garage sales or things that are broken that we can't get rid of. There is half-finished, peeling wallpaper and a pool
table that you can't see because it's covered with stacks of things. My parents have only seen one picture of a close
up of a bow. My mother's horrified that I'm showing the world our little secret mess.
The ability of photographs to function in different contexts becomes almost like a little bit of the burden of photography.
It's great that it can do that, but sometimes it's hard to make judgments about images because they're so contextual. It's
a nebulous area.
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| S&W3: |
How do you look to make art out of the ordinary?
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| R.E.: |
In some ways it has to do with medium. I'm not the first person to take pictures of the mundane. Immediate
details are important in image-making in general, as is the record of accumulated possessions. Artists like
Duchamp or [Giorgio] Morandi took ordinary things and made them into massive objects. [See an example of
Morandi's still life at MOMA.]
The nature of the large format photography lends itself to still objects. The scrutiny that is able to happen
with that size lens and that much information is irresistible in terms of making and reading the image. It has
a seductive power to transform something like a Kleenex box — an object that you'd walk pass a hundred times
and wouldn't notice. Somehow with light bouncing off the object [and] recorded onto film, it turns into this
other kind of thing. Recording the ordinary is also a documentary record of what things look like. That's important.
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| S&W3: |
In 2000, art critic Bennett Simpson wrote that you are one of the first photographers to make the
distinction between art and commercial work redundant. How does your creative process change based
on the context in which the photograph has been commissioned
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| R.E.: |
I definitely have intentions; there's usually a reason that I'm photographing. To be honest, in the
past few years, there have been very few images that have been able to do it. [Make the distinction
between art and commercial work redundant.] There have been editorial assignments that have turned
into artworks, that I thought were successful enough to cross over. Even with the agility of images,
it doesn't mean they actually wind up in multiple contexts.
At the time that was written there wasn't too much of it going on. Photographers like Wolfgang Tillmans
and Philip Lorca DiCorcia were doing both commercial and artistic photography without using a pseudonym.
I suppose I was self-consciously intending to frustrate people a little bit, to apply pressure to the
sore area in terms of the preconceptions about the differences between art and commercial photography.
At this point it's not really that important to me. You just persist and continue making interesting
work. You try to get commercial assignments but your artwork is what you have to pay attention to the
most. It's the work I feel most responsible for.
Other assignments are collaborative. There isn't a single advertising image that I've worked on that
hasn't been absolutely collaborative. With the client, art director, or whomever may be musing for you.
Just because your name is on it doesn't mean it's yours. It's the same case with editorial work. If there's
style, it's more directorial — everyone performs for the piece. There's more individual accountability with
art projects. You hope that someone eventually buys them, but no one is paying you to take the pictures.
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| S&W3: |
You have photographed musicians such as Fischerspooner and Andrew W. K. for their album covers. . . .
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| R.E.: |
I have had a long-term collaboration with Fischerspooner. They have used the work in every possible way;
they've done considerable postwork on the images and then have had them enlarged to 40" x 50" prints [for]
which they had an exhibition. They use the images for CD covers and posters. That's a perfect example of
work that doesn't fit neatly into any category because the use is not predetermined. K.C. Spooner will
just say, we need to get some new pictures. We'll loosely go over an idea, get a studio space. He'll get
the clothes and I'll get the equipment and an assistant. Then we'll improvise and play off ideas that
we've both had. So all the realizations of those images are collaborative. It liberates some of the
pressure and I can just technically play and see, for example, what happens to the image when there's
only that one really strong film-noir lighting, or what happens when you flatten it out and have light
all over the place. It can be fun; it can also be frustrating. Collaboration means compromise and you
have to let some things go.
I also did the album cover for [U.S. rock singer] Andrew W. K.'s album I Get Wet (2002).
[The photograph shows Andrew W.K.'s face smeared with blood. View the
album cover on VH1.]
The photograph was shot with the intention of it being an album cover and then the project was put on hold
when he was signed by a different label. I really liked [that image] as an art image. It was a really pop
image, something that would arrest the attention. In a way, it was contrary to my other pictures which were
much more mundane. That picture set up an interruption of a singular reading of my work as a group of images.
So it worked in a gallery sense and then Andrew got signed to a new label, made an album, and then the image
was all over the place.
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