Q & A with Tom Griggs

Photo by Carlos Ramirez

Tom Griggs is a photographer, writer, and educator based between Mexico City and Medellin. This is part one of a planned two part conversation, focusing on his recent book "A Creature Obeys A Creature That Wants". Part two will be published soon.

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BA: Are you adjusted to normal routine after your recent travels?

TG: Yes...having things in the same time zone makes things pretty easy, and with a life split between countries I'm pretty used to the abrupt shifts. Things like waking up in my apartment in Medellin looking over the Andes and falling asleep in the bedroom I grew up in suburban Minneapolis that night somehow have become normal. 

You split time between Medellin and Mexico City?

I was in Mexico City almost exclusively from 2020-2022, three years. Now I have a foot in both cities, but I'm mostly in Medellin at the moment. And also the US on occasion. My parents still live in Minneapolis where I grew up. I also get to Philadelphia twice a year where I still have a house that I rent out. It's a pain to deal with the property from a distance sometimes, but the rental income helps make the math of my life work. 

Your mention of Minneapolis bedroom might be a good segue to the book. I spent some time with it today and it was quite interesting. I think it turned out really well, good mix of photos and writing. And the design is pretty novel. I've never seen a book with two sandwiched case covers. Or however you call them.

Thanks for taking time with it Blake. The covers have been called a "double slipcase"...I guess that sounds technical enough to be right.

The texts were great. Most regular books I read are memoir or bio, so it kind of fits right into that style, telling the story of your family history, etc. Very honest and vulnerable like a journal. The whole thing left me hanging though. What happened with your dad? Did he resolve his mental health issues?

Yes, thankfully he is doing well today. After two hospitalizations for depression in the 2000s, he's done well, returning to short term interim work positions before eventually retiring. Now he enjoys traveling with my mom, spending time with his granddaughter and doing some writing of his own. The last chapter of the book is a psalm-styled "song of ascents,” and after the end of the text section color returns to the images in the book after the progressive loss of color in the images before the texts. The return hints at his recovery, as the loss of color is a metaphor for depression throughout the book. 

Got it. I guess that was too subtle for my dense brain. I didn't pick up on that without the tip. 

Hopefully there are layers to the book that reward going back through it. 

What does your dad think of the book? (Glad he is better). 

I think honestly he feels kind of proud about it, both as a father whose son made a book about him, and also that he had a chance to have his story told. I talked with him quite a bit about the book as I worked on it, and at points it felt that having a concrete, written account of his story was an important experience for him, and that helped him to set a definitive version of his own narrative for himself as well.

What about when you were first getting into photography? Not sure when/how that was? Maybe you can tell a bit. But I'm curious what he thought of that path. Since I think for most non-photographers it might be hard to fathom. It might be a bit like your dad's path into ministry as perceived by your grandfather.

That's a good question. I don't know a real answer. I would guess that he likes my more observational photography - from Mexico City and Medellin for example - more than the types of images used in this book. Like most people outside of the arts, he probably has more familiarity with landscapes, portraits and cityscapes and it's therefore easier for him to appreciate them than the more "artistic" images or the use of archival images to help tell a story. I moved slowly from painting into photography by the mid-2000s as I burned out of being alone painting in a studio. Photography became a way to be out in the world living life while also creating. Both my parents have actually been very supportive of my decision to work in the arts. 

Hallelujah! Sorry, religious reference.

Hahaha. I'm curious actually on how you understood this...as far as my grandfather's take on my dad's movement into becoming a minister.

I read that passage as pretty standard generation gap. Which was of course exaggerated during the 60s-70s with the hippies, flower power, etc. The part when your parents went on a date and your dad quoted Marx. That felt very 1974ish. So when your dad decided to become a minister, it might get lumped it with all the crazy young people pursuing stuff that the older generation can't relate to.

That seems right. I believe that I asked my Dad that straight question—how did your father understand your becoming a minister—and I don't think my Dad actually knows for sure. He left home, and the American South, at 18, and never really went back for more than a few days here and there. I think I benefited from that moment in parenting where parents told kids that they could be whatever they wanted in the 1980s, practicalities be damned. It seems like the world then filled with disappointed but-I-wanted-to-be-an-astronauts working office jobs and I don't think that's how parenting manuals say to do things anymore.

Remind me when were you born?

Manchester, New Hampshire in 1974. My family moved to Saint Louis Park, just outside of Minneapolis, in 1979 when I was four.

This is a quick aside, but Saint Louis Park has a very good high school ultimate team. My son's high school team played them at nationals this summer

I did not know that! It's had a long line of alumni that have gone on to do things from the city's Jewish community—the Cohen Brothers, Al Franken, etc.

And I did not know that! So what was your path from St. Louis Park into photography? Through painting?

I went to a big public high school and it was a situation where I was put on the AP track and had no time in my schedule for art classes. My identity in high school was “the kid that would get into solid college.” When I arrived at Wesleyan University it was like, shit! Everyone here is not only very smart, they are also First Violin for the New York Junior Philharmonic or something like that. It was disorienting because and on arrival I suddenly lost my identity. It felt like everybody was that kid that would get into a solid college, but then more.

I realized in that context I didn't want to be an academic, that I had friends that were brilliant and made for that. I ended up taking drawing classes and found the meditative practice of drawing a salve for my burned out academic mind. I then took a sort of random sculpture class where I discovered that I could use art to take on any subject that interested me—science, economics, my Dad's story—and that felt right to me. It helped me discover that wanted a way of exploring the world more omnivorous than a single academic discipline would allow me. Art has allowed me that.

Classic liberal arts experience.

Exactly. I took introductory classes in eight majors and had no idea what I wanted to do. The arts was an escape hatch.

One person's escape hatch is another one's rocket ship.

I guess so! I started in the arts by drawing and painting for a number of years before I began to feel very isolated in the studio. Photography came into the picture because it became a way to be in the world—to travel, walk the streets, hang out with friends—and still be creative.

So you were doing photography walking the streets at first.

Yes, I started with a Minolta SRT-101 and Tri-X, walking the streets of Boston, taking street photographs.

When I say "classic liberal arts experience" I mean that the system is kind of working like it should. Present a bunch of options, let the student find their own voice and connections. As opposed to more directed studies like engineering, medicine, etc. A corollary for photographic practice, perhaps...

That's a good take on it. It worked for me this way, and I think despite myself I got funneled into the right place by the system. I also stumbled into a F. Holland Day exhibit at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston during that time and I really loved his printmaking. His subjects are easy to find hokey, but I loved the collapsed tones in his prints, their middle to dark gray glow. So very quickly I started manipulating my very straight street photographs to explore printmaking outside the proverbial zone system.

Where can I see these early street photos? Not on your site it seems?

They're not on my site. In fact I think I only have the actual negatives and prints, nothing digitized. They're pretty typical I guess of a young photographer just getting excited about the medium. I can call a few shots to mind, but most of it was just learning how to compose and deal with the world and people through a camera with not very exciting results. I still make a lot of photographs in the world and have large archives from Medellín—like 14,000 medium format color negatives—and from Mexico City as well. It's just that over time I've started making other types of work as well.

What happened after F. Holland Day?

There was a sort of fusion early on, I think, of looking at the world in a documentary mode with influences from his printmaking. I bought a digital camera in 2006 and my work from the first few years with it continued to be observational photography, but I photographed a lot at night and in limited lighting to achieve his particular type of tonal compression. Basically I underexposed three years of photographs. I added to that my own interest in particular color palettes that came from studying painting, someone like Bonnard would represent the kind of colors I came to love.

I see some of those aspects in the book. Maybe the gradual erasure of color is sort of an unconscious stab toward the palette of F. Holland Day? Or not. F Holland Day definitely tinkered with religious imagery. I don't know the background there. 

I think he was just a deeply religious man. He would gather his neighbors to help him organize a photo shoot of a model as Jesus in his backyard, things like that. It seems to me that it was of a purely devotional motivation. Day was a black and white photographer, but his sense of tonal grays definitely appears in this book, as well as the colors of the painters that I loved when I painted.

Can I go back to your dad for a sec, before we get too far ahead. I'm curious about his role as a minister and if/how it affected your sense of religion/spirituality. Did you have a religious upbringing? Are you religious/spiritual? Is that a component in your photography?

It is a little awkward to be a preacher's kid. My friends weren't sure if they could cuss around me or if my house would be covered in crosses, things like that. 

Well I just cussed around you and I wasn't struck down by lightning. So it seems good to go.

Draw your shades Blake! The fire is coming for you! My father studied philosophy before religion and his movement into religion is largely through the "big questions”—how should we treat others? What is a life well lived? Things like that. His placing big questions on the table definitely has influenced how I approach life. But I am not a religious person. I went to Sunday School until I was confirmed—13 or so?—and then given a choice of continuing to attend church or not. I haven't been back to church since, nor do I think it religion is a component in my photography or writing. 

You say religion isn't a component in your work. But to me the book feels spiritual, maybe even religious with the Psalms format. I mean, the photos of starry nights and eerie spectral figures. The light leaks. All the stories about your dad trying to make cosmic connections. And maybe the ultimate subject, you yourself. Making some cosmic something?

I think that's right. On some level—and maybe this is a legacy of growing up with my Dad—I find making "meaningful" work is associated with the broadest of pictures, the fundamental questions, the slightly esoteric, the not-able-to-be-explained-by-logic-alone. In the work of others, I can find things like humor or wit or dry logic deeply meaningful, it's just that as a maker I don't know how to - or understand how to - make work that has some weight behind it in those modes. 

Ghost Guessed, 2018, published by Mesaestandar

I left this out earlier, but my VERY first creative work was short story writing. I then left writing and painting aside for twenty years as I became a photographer only for them both to reappear in two books—"Ghost Guessed" which I did with Paul Kwiatkowski—and the newest book, "A Creature Obeys..." that we’re talking about. It's felt good to rediscover those interests and bring them into what I do, and feels sort of redemptive of all the years working on stuff that ended up in wastebaskets and my parent's closets.

You're a great writer. The texts in your book are very precise and articulate. A pleasure to read, in a world of shitty shitty writing.

Thank you! I can write on a smaller scale. I don't have a novel in me. But writing has allowed me to tell more specific stories alongside my images than I could have done with just photographs. I hope that the two books that have come up in the conversation—“Ghost Guessed" and "Creature"—plus a third that will come out next year with Raya Editorial add up to something between the three of them and that they have something to say about the big picture. Maybe then I'll get back to those negatives from Medellín and do something with them finally!

You mentioned the “fundamental questions". If you could pick one question which is closest to the "big picture" what would it be and how would you answer it?

The strategy is to use detail and the specific of family narratives to try to get the "big picture" on the table.

In "Ghost Guessed" I guess the big question is about drift, or maybe free fall. What happens when you get lost inside your own life and are not sure what the next step is? It addresses that feeling of not knowing what you want for yourself from the too many choices on the table, that sense that something should be happening in your life and it’s not…and time continues sliding by.

In "Creature" it would be how we build a sense of who we are. That sense of "Blake"...where does it come from? From family? How and where you grew up? How much can you choose to define “Blake” for yourself? It ultimately explores what can happen to us when the forces that shaped us also left us unbalanced.

Woah, heavy shit (watch out for lightning).

Welp, as mentioned above, as a maker, (shit) x (weight) = (meaning).

The "Creature" book made reference to your own mental health issues, in relation to your dad. Maybe a mid-life crisis or something? I don't know. Is that still an active issue? 

I went through a divorce that also meant leaving my apartment and dog and eventually leaving Colombia for Mexico—for several years at least. It was a few years of chaos that all of a sudden they put questions about the big building block of life on the table again after having felt that they were long since settled —partner, location, job, etc. My interest in understanding not just what happened to my Dad, but also WHY it had happened to him became more acute in light of my hard stretch, but more as a preventative measure. I never came close to the crisis my Dad did, thankfully, despite some darker times. 

"The sea came for me too in my middle age..." I mean, that could be all of us. I'm 55. Past the midpoint probably. More like 2/3?

So I have a new way to think about this to convince myself I have more time ahead. Imagine life as one 24-hour day. You—Blake—are at say 3 pm if you’re 55. But you were asleep from midnight to 7 am (the years as a child and an adolescent), meaning you've only been fully awake as an adult for roughly half the time—30 years—you will be if you life an average lifespan. 

There was a time in my life when I could stay up until 3 am and wake up the next day ready to go no prob. Those days are mostly gone. I don't seem to engage with early morning events any more, not any conscious choice but just life patterns or?? And when I do stay up late I feel it later. All of which is to say, the hour glass is running out...

The 3 am night for me now means 2-3 days of recovery. More than two beers and I'm wobbly on my feet the next day. I'm 49, so same ballpark. And the body just changes on you.

How did you wind up in Medellin?

Like all expats that arrived before the tourist boom, it's a love story. I met a Colombian woman at a residency in New York state, fell in love, got married and we moved to Medellin—her home town—in 2010.

What's it like there? In the US I think it's known as a drug center. But I'm sure there is more to the story...

Medellin was the most violent city in the world and a drug center for much of the 80s and 90s (Narcos isn't that far off the reality). It then had a mayor named Sergio Fajardo who radically reshaped the city in the 2000s, using progressive models of urban design and transportation in ways that helped begin to cut the crime and murder rates.

By 2010 the city was pretty stable. It went through a huge tourist boom like many other cities have in the last decade, and then the left few years has reentered a bit of a darker moment. The tourism became more sex- and drug-based, crime rates rose again and the city feels less safe now than it did for many years. The huge influx of Venezuelans into the city is a hard situation and a part of the city's complicated conversations on social issues right now.

I was about to comment on the power of progressive policy, and its positive role in every day living. But then, hmm, maybe it's not such an open and shut case.

I think it's a pretty open and shut case—the city's down turn parallels a return to corrupt/inept center-right politicians as mayor. I’m looking at you Daniel Quintero.

It works in Minnesota, right? Why not Colombia? I don't know the specifics of the scene there. But if the leaders are corrupt, you can't make any longterm forecasts.

Colombia has a leftist President—Gustavo Petro—for the first time in its history right now. The reason the Left has never traditionally done well in Colombia is that in many minds, "the Left" still means Marxist guerrillas and in particular Las FARC. A lot of people seem to still have those kinds of outdated associations of the years of violence and guerrillas with leftist politics.

Same deal here. The left is still tarred with "Marxist/Socialist" labels, which have no real basis in reality. If we all woke up, GOP would hopefully crater. The US could learn from Colombia. 

Fingers crossed man! It seems like major unions and others with a long socialist history are moving farther right and are having a hard time waking up for this election. I'm over here with fingers crossed, rubbing my rabbit's foot and stroking my four-leaf clover. Whatever it takes.

We'll see. America could go either way. No biggie, the fate of the free world hinges on a small number of undecided voters who can't be bothered to choose between fascism and optimism. What could go wrong?

Hahaha….man, I may as well start growing my fingernails now so I have enough material to chew on election night and the days after.

Could be a long night... Can I switch gears and ask about an earlier message? When you told me about your book you said it's "quite a bit outside the work I connect with you." I couldn't tell what that meant. And I’m still not sure. Any insight?

Sure, I just meant that the work I know of yours as a photographer is quite a ways from this book of mine. The work of yours I know best is 35mm, black and white, made in the world, sharp, intelligent, humorous. This book is image-text, explores color, uses images for multiple sources...just something not much related to your own interests and explorations as a photographer.

Hmm. Yes you are right I don't shoot in that style. But that doesn't really limit my appreciation for other work. I try to keep an open mind, especially when considering/reviewing photobooks. 

I feel that I have met a lot of people that dismiss entire genres of photography that are unlike their own way of working out of hand—in the general photo world, but also a former mentor, with friends in casual conversation, and in the 1-star reviews that a particular Goodreads troll gives all my books out of hand. 

I greatly respect conversations where people judge the quality and value of the premise and resolution of the premise within a work of art as separate from their own sense of taste. You can tell me you like SciFi movies, but that won’t get us too far as a reviewer or interesting conversationalist. If you can argue with me about why Dune is a shitty movie, that moves the ball. 

Knowing you, Blake, from the blog era when we were in more contact, and reading your reviews and knowing how your write, you definitely do have an openness of mind to a wide-range of work, and write fairly about books well outside your personal interests within your own photography. I appreciate that a lot.

I am maybe overly sensitive to being pigeonholed. Because the world of photography is vast, and I try to keep an open mind toward all of it.

I hear you. I have the same sensitivities to being categorized or to having people try to define what I do. It seems many of us now a multi-channel practice—writing, blogging, books, whatever—that people still want to categorize and to label us as an “X” type of photographer.

(All photos above are from "A Creature Obeys A Creature That Wants" unless otherwise noted.)