The Talented Mr. Toledano
The self proclaimed genius talks about phone sex, the state of America and being cool.
by GABRIELLE SWAN
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I understand that you have only been photographing for about five years?
That’s right. This is year six as a photographer.
Some people have been taking photos for twice as long, and are not half as good as you. How did you become so fantastic, so quickly?
Because I’m a genius! I’m a goddamn genius! (Laughs). Print that. I’ll sound like more of an ass than I normally sound.
I guess some people are better than others. I just have a lot of ideas. I’m not really a snapshot kind of photographer. Advertising made me the photographer I am today even though it's not a nice thing to admit because a lot of people are snobby about that thing today, but advertising trained me in the idea of ideas. I like to have concepts. When I shoot fashion I really want there to be a story around it. I don’t just want the story to be India or the color blue. I want there to be more of a story than that.
I guess if anything that mainly differentiates me from other photographers, not to say there aren’t other people who do that, it’s just very specifically my thing – ideas. I guess like everything else, there are some people who are a little bit better at doing things than other people and that’s always going to be the case. There’s one or two percent of people who a really good at doing stuff, three or four percent of people who are pretty good at doing stuff and a lot of people who are really bad at doing stuff.
So you’re just lucky to be in that top one percent?
I don’t want to say that because then I sound like an ass. (Laughs).
Your images are intriguing, thought provoking, graphically dark, yet comical. Where does your inspiration come from? When do you feel the most inspired?
My best ideas often come immediately. For instance, one of my friends called me up and said we want you to do this story, and then she sent me the jpegs and right away as we were talking, I said “alright there the idea”. It’s hard to say where the inspiration comes from. Generally speaking it will just come out, although I have to say I’m working on a bunch of other projects that have nothing to do with photography and those ideas kind of happen in the very early stages of the morning in the time between being fully conscious and fully unconscious.
They just sort of drift into my mind and I’ll be thinking about it for a bit and I’ll just start writing things down. For a lot of the fashion ideas, people will say “this is what we want” and I’ll say “OK, here is the idea”. They say they want to do a story about the dresses that kind of look like Jackson Pollock paintings and I’ll say “here is the idea”. It’s not so much building off of their ideas, but rather nuggets of information that they give me
Is there any one person that inspires you?
Generally speaking, it's the concept or the subject matter that inspires me. All of the ideas come from a lot of places. I mean I spend a lot of time, because I’m such an amazing loser looking at stuff on the web. I just like looking at design stuff, and photography stuff, and paintings, and art, and sculptures, and furniture, or whatever it is because I’m interested in all that stuff and then I think that eventually some of it surfaces.
I saw something with balloons the other day that I thought was kind of cool and I did this thing a few weeks ago, where they asked me to shoot these dresses, so I thought let's shoot theses dresses with helium balloons so the look like they’re floating. It was because I was looking at this picture, I really like the idea of working with balloons.
Sometimes you can kind of directly trace the origin of an idea from the little thing that you saw in a magazine, but sometimes you don’t really know where it comes from.
I think that so many people are able to connect with your photos because they are so open ended. There is no one answer or explanation. Have you ever disagreed with someone's interpretation of your work?
No, that’s intentional. The way I like my images to be is as if you are walking past a strange house and you hear a phone ringing and you go inside and pick it up and you hear part of a conversation. That's like my pictures. I like it when people say "I thought your picture was this or that" and it has nothing to do with what I though about. That’s great for me.
I just really like that it’s making different people think different things. It's fantastic that you can stimulate people's mind to come up with different answers, that’s great. I love that. You’re provoking, you're asking questions and not just spoonfeeding people.
In an interview with F Stop, you said that “the soul of a country is reflected in the way it entertains itself.” Based on that statement, which country do you think has the purest soul?
A lot of my stuff is about America. Obviously I’m not American but I feel quite strongly that things have gone really wrong in the last eight years or so. I would say that the soul of the country is the darkest. Actually, my wife is Canadian so I really like going to Canada. I was there over Christmas time. I love being in Canada because I don’t feel overwhelmed by the religion and/or war machinery. It’s hard to say if it’s a pure country. I like Japan a lot. I find it very interesting. And I like Canada a lot because I feel quite comfortable there. I like being in England. I like being in Europe a lot. I’ve spent fourteen years in New York and I like to be back in Europe because I like hearing the sound of voices like mine. It’s not a purity thing, It’s just about what makes me happier. I went to the Arctic Circle and that made me happy. It was just beautiful because there was just nothing there. I guess I like places where there is nothing.
You also mentioned that you are looking into the reverse of that theory. What have you come up with so far?
I’ve been working on a book called The United States of Entertainment, based around that premise. I’ve been shooting for about two years and I have to say I’ve been struggling. I’ve been working on another book, which is going to be coming out next September, because I got fed up with making The United States of Entertainment work, and started working on this other book. I really like the pictures I’ve been taking, but it’s just tough. It’s like giving birth and normally ideas shouldn’t be that hard. In my experience it just should just come out in a very fluid way.
I did this other book coming out in September, which is portraits of phone sex operators. That happened relatively easy and that has been pretty great.
How did you come up with idea?
I don’t know. I just thought about it and it seemed like an interesting idea. I like the hidden, and I like the unseen and I like the unexplained and I like cultural myths. The first book I did, Bankrupt was also about the hidden. It was about bankrupt offices and the thing people left behind in the offices. There was this invisible world and I like the fact that phone sex is a little bit like that. What’s interesting about phone sex is there is a mutually delusional agreement between two people. The guy calling knows that he’s not calling some sexy seventeen-year-old Swedish girl, and the girl on the phone knows that he knows that but they play along anyways. The thing that’s nice about the book is that I ask the women to write stuff and the stuff they've written was really fantastic. If it were just a book of pictures it wouldn't have been nearly as good as it is.
Is that the first time you have included text with images?
Bankrupt had text. I got a hold of the emails from bankrupt companies that they sent out to the employees as they were going bankrupt.
I really liked the picture of the plastic cup.
I love that picture. That’s one of those crowd pleaser pictures. There’s certain pictures everyone likes.
Gallery shows give you the most creative freedom. Do you have a favorite show? What was it like showing at Colette?
Galleries are good because either the gallery likes your work, or they don’t. If they like your work there’s no editing. I’ve been happy with all of the gallery shows because I’m really surprised that people are that interested. The Colette thing was exciting because it’s different from a gallery in a sense that it’s a cultural thing in Paris. It just made me feel cool! With a gallery show you’re not supposed to feel that because it’s art and it’s a gallery, but with Colette it’s art but it’s also culturally relevant and fashionable and trendy. I've always been an eccentric as opposed to a cool person so it's always fun to be within that cool world.
Did you create those images specifically for Collete?
I didn’t create those for Collette. I sat down with the woman who runs that and we ended up deciding on various bodies of work.
Did they contact you?
Yes.
That must have been exciting?
It is. That’s the good thing about being freelance. I always get up at six in the morning and I love opening my email because every now and then there’s a surprise email. I got an email this afternoon from The Photo Center of Thessaloniki, which is in Greece.
That’s what’s so fantastic about what I’m doing because every now and then you get an email from someone and you go “Who’s this person, and what do they want. This is flattering and fun!”
It sounds like you’re living the dream ever since you left advertising.
I’m living the dream man! I don’t know what I was expecting, but I don’t think I was expecting to live the dream so quickly.
From seeing your work, it is easy to see that you look beyond the surface, and really analyze what is going on around you. Not everyone is able to see what you see, and make the conclusions that you make. How has this ability affected your work?
I guess I can say it’s a positive thing. All my personal work is very political, and all my art stuff is very socio-political. I’m very focused on saying something about the culture, so I want to be saying something about the world we live in, and in particular I want to be striking back. It’s a protest, and I like that. I’m sure plenty of people are doing that, but it's important for me to be saying something other than just showing beauty, because I do feel that a lot of photography is about beauty only, and I just think that there is too much beauty in the world.
How did you make the decision to shoot almost exclusively with film? Do you deal with any limitations? Are there any other mediums you plan to work with in the future?
That’s not true. I shoot the art pieces with film and then do everything else with digital. Although, I have to say ultimately most of my work is going to be digital, with just a little bit of it being film.
Do you work with any other mediums?
I’m working on a project called America’s A Gift Shop. It’s basically about the commercialism of America, how everything is for sale, and what if American foreign policy or politics as a whole had a gift shop? What would they sell in the gift shop?
For America’s A Gift Shop, I’m going to be shooting the stuff and it will be on a website, but it will primarily be installations. It’s all so new for me. I’m actually shooting my first TV commercial, which I’m pretty nervous about. I’m interested in doing everything - film and sculpture and instillation. As long as it's ideas, everything is interesting to me. I feel that way about photography. Everything is interesting to me, except for maybe food.
You wouldn’t shoot food?
Actually, I had an idea where I found out a bunch of prisoners last meals and I had them made up as plastic food, you know the like you see in restaurant windows. And then I shot them as well, but I had an installation piece of all the prisoners last meals. That was a food project. So I guess I’m interested in anything because there’s always some interesting aspect to everything.
But you’re not into the conventional food photography to make it look good, but rather the story behind something?
If I can do something in my own way, I’m happy to do it. I know that sounds arrogant, but that’s not to say I’m not open to other peoples ideas. I am. I just think in particular for magazines because of the time constraints, there’s a tendency to go for the easy things, and generally people tend to not want to go for the new things because new things are weird and scary, and old things are safe and comfortable. We’ve seen them and you know that if you go for the old thing, no one is going to yell at you, and your boss is going to be happy and you won't get enraged letters.
Well I admire that you are able to use your voice and really push the envelope and be true to your self.
It's easy for me to be true to myself because I work for myself, but I understand magazines photo editors go to their boss and say, “Phil took a picture of this guy…” – I did a story for fast company and they asked for me to think about some ideas regarding the alpha male so I said “alright, what about this man eating raw meat, with blood dripping down his chin?” And they said yes because they’ve got balls, but I know they’ve gotten a lot of enraged messages from readers.
Phil's work can be viewed online at www.mrtoledano.com
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