David Billet

Intruder, 2005

Ian Kline is a BFA Candidate at Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore, Maryland.

If you could only photograph in the same place for the rest of your life, where would it be? How does that place relate to your work?

Honestly I’d probably pick York, Pennsylvania, where I grew up.  Even though since the time I could drive I’ve been trying desperately to escape, I always end up back there eventually. Along with my personal connection to this place and all of the experiences I’ve had there, the other thing that draws me to York is that it has a little bit of everything, there are multiple conversations happening in the landscape.  It has the typical highs and lows, while in-between the two is found resting somewhere in a confused purgatory that’s all too easy to get stuck in.  Although it was one of the first capitals of the United States, something that should ground this place, it doesn’t seem that it has made up its mind.  

Is there a difference between photographing women and men?

Well, no and yes.  No because they are all people, and yes because when I photograph men there is a part that I directly relate to because I am one of them.  With women I get a totally different feeling because I truly don’t know them and up until recently I have been pretty intimidated by women, and for the most part I still am.  I also never really surrounded myself with that many girls; it has always just been the boys club.  Growing up I would hang out with the boys and skate all day then hang out at night and repeat.  But as of recently I’ve been trying to open up the doors of the boys club.

Talk to us about photographing reflective surfaces such as television screens or windows.

I think a lot of my interest in televisions comes from being surrounded by them all my life, and watching and learning and somewhat living through the TV.  It’s also interesting that most of the movies and TV shows and video games I watched and played tried to depict a more refined reality.  These football players are what men should be, this landscape is the epitome of the sublime, even though they are just pixels being experienced by someone that may never get to those things outside of the screen.  They act as a temporary escape for a couple hours, but it’s a false escape.  And with windows, the interior and exterior act on each other, sometimes you can see in and out and other times you can’t.  They act as a division between something that is internal and something that is external; it is a transparent barrier.  I find myself constantly looking out windows and trying to look into others.  A lot of it comes from being alone, constantly looking and imagining.

Tell us about the worst nightmare you ever had.

I guess I was probably five or six.  I had this big half circle chair made out of a denim fabric in the corner of my room and my bed had the blankets to match.  My room was also half painted at the time, because my dad and I were re-painting it, although we never did finish painting it the way I wanted.  I remember something freaking me out and making me shoot up in bed.  I sat up for a second, and looked around.  My room was completely dark, only slightly lit by the yellow streetlights coming through the windows.  I turned my head towards the chair and I saw my younger brother sitting there.  I was so confused as to why he would be in my room right now, in the middle of the night, just staring at me.  I loudly whispered his name and he didn’t respond, so I said it again, still nothing, he just kept staring as the light through the window blinds cast yellow shadows on him and the chair.  I said his name one more time, loudly, nothing.  I flipped to my other side facing towards my wall and quickly threw my denim convers over my head and somehow fell back asleep.  During all of this I was terrified, and I still don’t know what exactly happened, was he actually in my room, was I just imagining things, was it a ghost, or was all of this just a dream that I thought was a reality?  This still haunts me today.    

It looks as if the same figure is present throughout most of the “812” series.  Tell us about him and his significance.

There are a couple of guys and most of them have a similar body structure and look, but Nathan and David come up multiple times, and for me, they are the key players.  Nathan’s been truly one of my best friends since middle school.  He’s always there to drink a beer and just talk and has some of the realist views on life of anyone I’ve met.  After we graduated high school he went on the road working for a cell phone accessory stand that traveled to all the fairs up and down the east coast, so during that time I only got to see him once a year or so.  When Nathan left, David and I moved to Lancaster, PA to start school.  David and I first met half way through high school.  He would come to the skate park occasionally, but for a while he was just someone I’d see.  Then he started to hang out with everyone more, and we became closer.  When college time came, both of us were psyched on photography, and ended up going to the same school and moving in together.  I can definitely say that us living together and pushing each other and being up at three in the morning screaming at each other about work made me who I am today.  Two years later, we were finishing up our sophomore year of college and our friend Nick, after crashing on our floor for six months, had just bought a 5-bedroom house with a large yard on the edge of the city.  Nathan quit the carnie gig and moved back and was the first one to move into Nick’s house with our other friend Kyle.  A couple months later David and I moved out of our apartment and into the house.  At the time David and I were going to school but everything was changing.  We were in the process of knowing we wanted to transfer schools but unsure of where we would be transferring to.  So we moved into the 812 knowing that this perfect storm, living with all of our friends, wasn’t going to last because we knew we were going to be leaving them as soon as we got there.  It was as if by moving into this house we stepped through a black hole that just plopped us in this perfect place that had a darkness of knowing that we’ll be leaving soon lurking right outside of the yard.  When I photographed David, there was always some sort of tension felt with everything that was happening with the unknowingness of the school situation, which resulted in both being vulnerable but also closed off.  And with Nathan, when I photographed him there was a sadness and confusion of leaving I could feel between the two of us, which was so incredibly hard knowing that the late night porch conversations wouldn’t be there forever.  These are two of my best friends who I love so fucking much and we were all experiencing similar things so it made total sense to photograph them during this time.

Tell us about the significance of the title for your newest body of work “Mary Anne, Drive”.

With everything I have done so far, titles have had a large importance to the photographs in vaguely structuring them and guiding the viewer.  So with “Mary Anne, Drive”, a project that is stemming from my relationship and feelings found within my family and the landscape, the title partly comes from my aunt’s name, Mary Anne.  Growing up she wasn’t around that often, other than at Christmas and Thanksgiving, because she lived in Boston.  Even from a young age I could tell there was something different about her and when she was home, there was always something different about the air that filled my grandparents house.  It wasn’t until I was probably 13 that my mom and I were talking in the car and she asked if my aunt’s partner was at Thanksgiving.  The word partner threw me off, I said her friend was there, and that’s when my mom told me that she was gay.  My mom was surprised that I didn’t know.  So after that, the air made a bit more sense.  Because my grandparents are very traditional in the way they run things and with their views on living, the whole situation of running off the path that has been constructed and has confined you for the majority of your upbringing totally interested me because I could relate to not following in the footsteps of the elders.  When I started photographing, I had the intent on photographing what was felt by my aunt, being raised in a traditional house filled with all men other than my grandmother, who loomed behind the scenes holding the house together.  But as I kept working it became more and more about myself and what I felt in these spaces that were filled with a suppressed tension from events that weren’t talked about, and trying to get out of this weird landscape.  But trying to escape is impossible because even if one is to physically leave, the memories will be in your mind forever.  So the title “Mary Anne, Drive” is a statement saying drive, but who is saying it is unclear, and what the tone is, is also unclear, that’s where I feel the photographs come in and may guide the title.  The title and photographs bounce back and forth off of each other.  Also with the title, the punctuation became interesting because without the comma the title becomes a street name, a place, but one I have never visited.      

Ask yourself a question and respond.

Is the grass always greener on the other side? From a distance it always seems to be.