ReadysetDC A CREATIVE URBAN ENTERPRISE

Words w/ Pat Padua [Fixation Fotog]

Photo by: Chris Chen

You should have heard these church ladies on the 36 bus going on after Michael Jackson died. That wouldn’t happen on the subway!

One can’t help but enjoy a conversation with DC native and Fixation photographer Pat Padua. Pat is a lapsed Catholic who enjoys travel and ventriloquism. We talked about the upcoming show, Michael Jackson, cemeteries and subcultures.

TC: Wow time flies I haven’t seen you since the Bloombars exhibit, you had some interesting photos on display there. Can you tell us about the photos you’ll be showing at Fixation?

PP: I work on the Hill and I see a lot of people coming here looking for whatever they’re looking for when they come to DC. The tourists seem happy and maybe even enlightened for that brief moment when they’re posing in front of the Capitol but I also see lots of people who seem eternally transient and lost, and that alienated subculture – the subculture without a subculture? – is what you see in my slice of Fixation.

TC: What are your thoughts on the DC art scene or DC photography scene in general? Do you think us, as photogs are a subculture?

PP: There’s a significant and enthusiastic creative class in DC. I think it doesn’t hurt to be among so many great and free museums. Local photogs are so diverse there are probably subcultures within subcultures – every photographer, like every human being, is their own subculture, and it’s the interactions between cultures that makes things interesting.

TC: What’s up with the cemetery photography?

DM: Cemeteries are a good way of looking into a city’s subcultures.

There’s an amazing cemetery in Tarpon Springs, Florida that if you didn’t already know anything about the town shows the intense contribution of the Greek community – a sponge farming community! –  to that culture. A few months ago I stumbled on a cemetery that tells you lots of things about this city. Have you ever been to Mount Zion cemetery, at the edge of Georgetown? It’s an old African-American cemetery and the grounds have been allowed to deteriorate – there are piles and piles of broken headstones there. But right across the fence from Mount Zion is Oak Hill Cemetery, this gated and perfectly manicured final resting place that must have an endowment out the wazoo.

TC: I’d describe your photography as quirky, how would you describe your photographic style?

DM: I’ll take a picture of anything!

Don’t be hatin’!

TC: How did you get into photography?

PP: My first lessons in photography came from the collection of photo books at the Martin Luther King Library. I poured through most of the classics, and some things clicked and some things didn’t, but then I started clicking myself. I got out of photography for a while but signing up for Flickr inspired me to try different techniques. It’s also sobering to see your own body of work laid out in calendar form like that, it keeps me challenged.

TC: You prefer digital or film? Why?

DM: It depends what happens to be in my bag. I resisted digital for a long time, but when I finally turned I just saw it as another tool with its own limitations and advantages. But ironically, it was Flickr that got me back to shooting a lot of film. Right now I’m shooting more digital but most of the time it’s about 50/50.

TC: Any advice for photographers just starting out?

DM: There’s a quote by Henry Wessel I just love:

“[It is] a process that might be called soft eyes. It is a physical sensation. You are not looking for something. You are open, receptive. At some point you are in front of something that you cannot ignore.”

What I’d add is that this can happen anywhere at all, so don’t just look for something that people tell you is photogenic, seek out the subjects that you haven’t seen a million photos of already.

TC: What do you love about DC?

DM: I’m a DC native, and I think the most interesting conversations in this town happen not on Capitol Hill but on the Metrobus. You should have heard these church ladies on the 36 bus going on after Michael Jackson died. That wouldn’t happen on the subway!

TC: What do you hate about DC?

PP: Don’t be hatin’!

TC: Is there a place in DC you go to find inspiration for your work?

PP: Anywhere I haven’t been before.

TC: Any upcoming projects or shows, beyond Fixation?

PP: I still have photos up, with Jennifer Wade, at Hounshell – I’ve had one or two pictures in a bunch of group shows but it’s the largest body of my work I’ve displayed anywhere and it looks swell, I must say.

You can follow Pat’s photography on Flickr his handle is  a nameless yeast, or visit his web site patpadua.com.  You can also see his photographs at the  Industry Gallery on Saturday November 6th, along with the work of nine local photographers for the second annual Fixation exhibit, part of the FotoweekDC festival.