NSFW: Some images in this gallery contain explicit content.
Michael Jang's portfolio is an eclectic mixture of gripping moments, shot with skill and attitude. Luminaries such as David Bowie, Johnny Rotten and Richard Pryor are caught with their guard down. Frenetic explosions are fixed in time: Penelope Houston of the Avengers whipping her hair; Fritz Fox of The Mutants collapsed on stage (above); the body of San Francisco supervisor Harvey Milk being wheeled out of City Hall.
Amidst the swirling chaos of roaring parties, the crowded streets of Havana or the intimate environs of a garage, Jang's eye quickly finds a focal point — highlighting details as brazen as a stolen snort of cocaine or as lost as the sadness in a child's eyes.
But while Jang has shot professionally for three decades, he never did the marketing dance that would've assuredly made him a street photography icon. And now his work is starting to trickle into the open.
His trek out of the relative underground started in 2002 when the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art acquired several of his prints for their collection. Subsequently, University High School in San Francisco hosted an exhibition of early photographs of the Jang family and more recently a local Bay Area pirate radio station and cafe featured a slideshow of 300 images.
Hailing from the remote gold country town of Marysville, California, Jang found salvation from the rigors of academic life at the famous Fillmore Auditorium. Struggling to make the grade at his college preparatory school and dogged by difficulty focusing on his studies, the psychedelic light shows splayed across the walls and ceiling of the historic venue intrigued him. He amassed a collection of projectors and created his own colorful performances in the garage.
His talent with visuals brought him back to the Fillmore to work for rock promoter Bill Graham, and then eventually to the California Institute of the Arts where he took the school's sole photography class. His initial homework assignment produced the first prints to be acquired by the SFMOMA.
Read on for an abridged interview with Jang, minus our annoying questions, and see some of our favorite Jang snaps.
Jang at his home in San Francisco.
Top photo: Michael Jang
Bottom photo: Keith Axline/Wired.com
Michael Jang: The fact that the [San Francisco] Museum of Modern Art saw the very first thing I ever did, which was the Beverly Hilton project, and they purchased some of that for their permanent collection kind of woke me up. Recently I showed them the second thing I did which was the Jangs (above), and they purchased some of that for their collection. You've got validation when something like that happens. As a result, I can proceed with confidence that I'm on a good track. So what am I doing? I showed a high school and a coffee shop.
Just get your stuff out there and see what happens. You can't really try to control stuff because it naturally finds its way. If it's right, if it's good, people find it.
Life gets really interesting when you say, "Yeah, okay, let's see what happens." So, we got this Pirate Cat Radio thing – okay, let's just see what they can do. It's kind of luck by design or career by design. So by choosing that, I'm finding a certain segment of our younger society that is really hot and doing stuff. By being part of it, I get to intermingle with it, see how it works in a way that I wouldn't normally have access to.
Jang's studio in his home in San Francisco.
Top photo: Michael Jang
Bottom photos: Keith Axline/Wired.com
Interest in his collection has grown and Jang is in a prime position to shop his portfolio for exhibitions. However, after a long career in commercial photography and having pursued his own muse he sees no purpose contorting himself to the whims of art galleries. He's content reflecting on the effects of time on his personal collection.
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Jang: Well, why would you [pursue galley shows]? Ego. If I haven't had it in 30 years I don't need my name out there. That's a major drive for a lot of people who want a career. I can pick and choose what I want to do. We've all been to art gallery shows and it's kind of a scene. Think about that. Why would you want to run your whole life for that?
I've made my money in other ways so you take away the motivation of ego and show and reputation and money – there's no reason to do it. My reward is just the pure pleasure of taking a good picture.
Put [a photo] away and let it age like a fine wine. Pull it out later and it's like, "Oh, this got better." That seems to be what happens to what I do. Some of the work I question, like the Beverly Hilton or the Jangs, if it would have been good when it first came out, or appreciated. I think maybe not. I think maybe you need to age 30 years so that we can look back on it.
You get this freedom when you don't have a reputation, you can do whatever you want. I wouldn't be doing high schools and Pirate Cat Radio if I was a certain level.
One of Jang's cameras sits on his studio table while Raw File grills him about his photography.
Top photo: Michael Jang
Bottom photo: Keith Axline/Wired.com
Although as a professional he would ultimately focus on commercial photography, Jang's early portfolio was a gutsy accomplishment. Desperate for access to events beyond the reach of normal people, he fabricated his own press passes to sneak past security, grabbing photos of people like Frank Sinatra with Ronald Reagan (above). Obviously passionate about street-shooting and verité exposures, his keen eye would have been naturally suited to photojournalism. It was the threat of compromise that eventually decided his direction of instead paying the bills with studio photography.
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Jang: Packs of press people will go out to an event. They say it was going to be on at six, people get there at three, he comes on at 10. We're talking about five or six hours and those guys are there with their two big digital cameras waiting all that time for one shot for the paper the next day.
I did it enough to earn a living and to have some fun and meet some celebrities. Actually that was another way to have a show. Have it on the front cover of a magazine. Maybe that's a way, more practically speaking, to reach people.
I noticed photographers who had started out as fine artists. The more successful they got, they paid a price. Their eye had to switch over and get totally cleaned up. And then when they would try to do fine art the pictures were just neutralized in some way.
I didn't want it to ruin this kind of work that I do, so I kept it totally separate by doing just portraits. I just had an umbrella light and a gray backdrop. In [the studio] the light was always set up and people came in; the only variable was the person. And I would just shoot it with a Hasselblad and make prints. Apples and oranges. So when I picked up this Leica and walked out there was no conflict.
Raw File is quite jealous of Jang's watch-on-shirt style.
Top photo: Michael Jang
Bottom photo: Keith Axline/Wired.com
Jang was inspired by the likes of Diane Arbus, Lee Friedlander and Robert Frank, and so is aesthetically and philosophically inclined towards film. The advent of affordable digital cameras has created an ideological crisis for many photographers, and Jang is both critical and entranced by the possibilities of the new cameras and post-production.
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Jang: I'm not sure I've taken a good picture yet with a digital camera. Everything that I've done that's good is film. [Digital] is perfect within a certain scale: There's no dust, no scratches; you can Photoshop it till it's ultra-whatever. I probably will cover myself by doing both, but if you really push me to take one camera I'll take a Leica. There's three mechanical things: There's focus, and your shutter and your f-stop, and I'm good with that. I can just walk in and you can throw me the camera and I know exactly where the crank is on the focus for six feet.
After seeing the Robert Frank show and the film and those prints, I'm just going, "you know what, there's something about that." But because you can put unlimited gig cards in there and shoot all day without ever loading again. That's like a dream.
I want it to work but I'm not sure that I'm behaving right with that. It's too easy, you know? If you have an 8 x 10 camera and you can only take four or five plates with you, you're really going to be careful. If you've got a thousand shots you're just gonna go snap, snap, snap and hope you get it.
I still think Photoshop is probably the most amazing invention in our lifetime. It blows my mind, what it can do. My level of Photoshop, it's simply brightness and contrast, but that's like a darkroom. That's the danger of where we are with this digital thing. It used to be you could take it to a lab and they'll do it, now you can just do it yourself. Well guess what? You're doing it yourself.
How often have you taken the camera and gone out, just walking around shooting? Go back to the six- to eight-hour days that you've been at the computer over a year or two or three and you will find that you probably are not shooting that much.
Photo: Michael Jang
Things have changed in the 30 years since Jang began taking pictures. Digital processes and instant communication have saturated our culture with images – to the arguable detriment of aesthetic standards. Professional photographers find themselves crowded out by amateurs while the market for their work shrinks.
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Jang: In the '70s you could pick a subject: freaks, twins, brothers and sisters, and you'd be the first one to get it. Everyone's done everything now. You've got dead body parts – we've done everything. So how do you carve out a niche for yourself now as a photographer? Is it more about the best person who can market themselves? The best schmoozer? The person who can make the connections? It's a whole new ball game. I don't know what I would do now.
Part of the desire and drive to want to shoot something is because you know no one's doing it. Remember when Hussein got hung, someone got it who just happened to be going up the stairs. That's access. Even if you've gone to five years of school or worked 20 years, some person that's just in there has got the shot because they're already in there.
In the '70s I happened to get a guy who committed suicide in Golden Gate Park. I knew I had the only pictures – I sold that stuff to the 11 o'clock news. But now it's like, "send it to us for free" and you go, "yeah, I can get my name on there." That kind of sucks for photographers making a living, right? It's just so diluted now.
I just don't know if this stuff is really going to help you take a better picture. It used to be like, wow, this is a good picture but now you've seen so many pictures – you've seen it! How many ways can you shoot something? How many different subject matters are there that you haven't seen?
It might be a wonderful evolution of things. Maybe what I'm doing is kind of just a period. Documentary photography, I don't know. And what would we call what's happening now? I don't know. My God, with Facebook and everything, there's just so many images now that are out there.
Photo: Michael Jang
Amidst all the changes, Jang still goes out hunting for subjects, like kids wielding guitars in their parents' garage or the faded dreams of middle America. Reserves remain untapped, waiting for the most dedicated and intrepid of photographers. Each new scenario requires new access, and Jang's forged press passes have been replaced by new scams. Waiting at the end of the day is, as always, the picture.
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Jang: The Garage Band series (above) was great because someone my age has no business being around 15-, 16-year-old kids. That's, first of all, kind of creepy. That was probably the toughest thing that I've ever infiltrated, that whole world.
My daughter had friends that were in a band in high school and I said, "Oh man, can I shoot this?" and she said, "No! ... Oh please? ... No!" So what happened is they played the band shell in Golden Gate Park one day on a Saturday. Look, that's fair game. They're out in public. So I go there and I'm laying back; I don't want to embarrass my kid. Eventually I start shooting and one kid kind of comes up and he starts talking to me and I end up telling him that I shot The Ramones. And that was it.
We've all seen pictures of rock and roll but this is really young. This is 15. They can't go to clubs, they can't play anywhere so they play in their garages. This is when rock and roll starts. So, for me, I don't think I'd ever seen it that young, you know, in pictures. So that was kind of fun.
And I like danger too because I need to get my adrenaline going sometimes so I like to go where it's not totally right or welcome. It just makes me think, okay, good, I'm definitely pushing it. If it's too easy, well, then it's too easy, right? I did Cuba and I went right into Castro's army. My mantra was "shoot till they say no." Just to see what would happen. I shot the whole crowd and I got closer and I shot them and they kind of looked at me and I go, "No one said no." Ended up I was this close and I kept shooting and no one said no. No fear, right? Sometimes you gotta shoot like it could be your last shot.
Photo: Michael Jang
