Christopher Nakis Oral History Interview 3, 2023-03-31

Christopher Nakis Oral History Interview 3, 2023-03-31

Greek Americans

Photographers

Christopher Nakis, a 1983 graduate of the RIT School of Photographic Arts and Sciences, discusses the production of his personal documentary, "The Blue Whitetail" (2017), and how he coined his bowhunting and photographic philosophies. Nakis also discusses how his work draws inspiration from German painter Franz Marc, and French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson.

This interview is 3 of 3 conducted by Emma Truscott, RIT Archives Student Employee, during the Spring 2023 semester. Truscott also curated the inaugural RIT Archives Photo Alum exhibit, "Chasing the Rectangle: Chris Nakis (RIT Photo, '83)," which featured three of Nakis' quotes from the interview series.

2023-03-31

video

2023:023

Emma Truscott

Christopher Nakis

5.4 Christopher Nakis Oral History Interview 3, 2023-03-31 2023:023 00:48:22 RITArc.0773 RIT Photo Alum Oral History collection 2023:023 RIT Archives Greek Americans Photographers RIT Archives Photo Alum Gallery RIT School of Photographic Arts and Sciences (SPAS) Christopher Nakis Emma Truscott .mp4 oh_ritarc0773_nakisc_20230331.mp4 5:|53(6)|109(1)|160(11)|220(4)|275(13)|334(6)|392(13)|454(8)|512(3) 0 https://youtu.be/GO87DNNzRcQ YouTube video English Multiple tracks were recorded during this interview session, but have been merged into a single audio file. At 00:17:48 the first track stops abruptly due to equipment error, and resumes at 00:17:50 with the second track recording. 159 CHASING THE RECTANGLE exhibit feature: &quot ; Photographers are always looking at things...&quot ; And just like any photographer. Photographers are always looking at things, and seeing and framing things in their eyes and you don't even have to have a camera. But they're always framing things as they're looking at the outside world. And when you're shooting a bow and arrow, you're doing that also. Christopher Nakis discusses how he decided to make his personal documentary, &quot ; The Blue Whitetail&quot ; (2017), about the merger of bowhunting and fine art photography. 958 CHASING THE RECTANGLE exhibit feature: &quot ; In bowhunting, you kill life, and in photography, you capture it.&quot ; And uh, y’know, I coined, I think, inside that film, also, y’know, in photography, well: ”In bowhunting, you kill life, and in photography, you capture it.” So it's like a yin and yang-type of thing. And that also, so that is the connection that I was trying to make with my specific type of photography and my specific type of bow hunting. Which doesn't mean that other types of photography is not valid, and it doesn't mean hunting with other methods is not valid either. That's just my personal way of seeing things. And that's how I came up with this uh, a long winded way of telling you how I came up with this, with this concept. Christopher Nakis discusses coining his dual philosophy for bowhunting and photography in his personal documentary, and the inspiration he drew from French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908-2004). 1558 Chris Nakis discusses being inspired by &quot ; Blue Horses,&quot ; a painting by Franz Marc, during his third year at RIT. 2504 Christopher Nakis discusses the biggest successes of his photography career. Christopher Nakis, a 1983 graduate of the RIT School of Photographic Arts and Sciences, discusses the production of his personal documentary, &quot ; The Blue Whitetail&quot ; (2017), and how he coined his bowhunting and photographic philosophies. Nakis also discusses how his work draws inspiration from German painter Franz Marc, and French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson. This interview is 3 of 3 conducted by Emma Truscott, RIT Archives Student Employee, during the Spring 2023 semester. Truscott also curated the inaugural RIT Archives Photo Alum exhibit, &quot ; Chasing the Rectangle: Chris Nakis (RIT Photo, '83),&quot ; which featured three of Nakis' quotes from the interview series. ET: Okay, today is Friday, March 31, 2023 and the time is 1:31 [PM]. My name is Emma Truscott, I&#039 ; m a student employee with the RIT Archives and today I am interviewing Chris Nakis. This is the third interview in this series of interviews. Um. Chris graduated from RIT&#039 ; s School Photographic Arts and Sciences in 1983 and we&#039 ; re working on putting together an exhibition of his work. This interview is being conducted in Chris&#039 ; s house in Rochester, New York. And before we get started, I just want to get your verbal consent to record the interview. CN: Yes, you have my authority to record me and if you use my voice and your recordings however you wish. ET: Perfect. All right, I&#039 ; m just gonna get started by asking, um, how you decided that you wanted to make a documentary about bowhunting and photography? CN: Oh, yeah. It&#039 ; s uh, y&#039 ; know, the, the genesis of that thought came, I would say about 1999, 1998. We were uh, at that time, that year, I was in the process of producing my first motion picture, Bob Manganelli&#039 ; s screenplay. And um, during that time, I was just--Because it&#039 ; s difficult to get financing and um, I did apply to the MFA program at RIT actually a few years prior to that, and I got into the program. But about maybe a couple months afterwards, my father had a heart attack. So I had to not go to the program. Take care of my father and take care--We had a repair shop at that point. And then I applied afterwards in like, 1999, because we were still doing the film and I had an idea: &quot ; Oh, how can I mesh bowhunting and photography together?&quot ; So I came up with a, with a synopsis, and I applied to the MFA, uh, program again at RIT, I got rejected. (laughs) But the way--What as I was thinking about shooting a bow, and shooting photographs, I was, y&#039 ; know, it came as a development from over a few years. And just like any photographer. Photographers are always looking at things, and seeing and framing things in their eyes and you don&#039 ; t even have to have a camera. But they&#039 ; re always framing things as they&#039 ; re looking at the outside world. And when you&#039 ; re shooting a bow and arrow, you&#039 ; re doing that also. Now, then I was shooting with a compound bow, and not with regular stick bows, the old traditional type. Uh, compound bows have two cams wheels on it, and you pull it back--and I can show you the difference, I have one over there. And you can hold it and there&#039 ; s a right, a front side and rear side, there&#039 ; s a trigger, and boom, it&#039 ; s a lot more accurate and it feels like you&#039 ; re shooting a gun. And so as I was coming up with some type of, y&#039 ; know, theory about seeing at that point, I read this book, it&#039 ; s called Golf in the Kingdom. And it&#039 ; s my friend, actually, Bob [who] told me about that book and it&#039 ; s like a spiritual existential, ooh, book. But, it&#039 ; s not like it&#039 ; s not horrible, but it&#039 ; s a spiritual thing where this guy is going to go to Scotland, to golf, and he meets this guy and anyways--I will get into that story. But it was, and golfers, I think, have the same type of look, because it&#039 ; s all hand-eye coordination. And it&#039 ; s technique and it&#039 ; s a swing, and it&#039 ; s the concept of--Well, you have the ball and you&#039 ; re playing, you&#039 ; re playing the course and the ball has to go into the hole and everything you have--And they become fanatics about hitting the ball just right to get into the hole, to get the score as low as possible. So I was thinking about that with shooting an arrow even though I suck at golf, y&#039 ; know? And I may play once every 10 years, but reading that book gave me that idea. And then in 1999, I decided, &quot ; Well if I don&#039 ; t get into the MFA program, and I&#039 ; m not able to make this film if we don&#039 ; t get finance, I&#039 ; ll see if I can make a documentary, shooting by putting those two together.&quot ; So what I did--and sorry, this is a long way of explaining this theory. So, once I started contemplating shooting--the way I shoot with the, with the camera, it&#039 ; s a Leica-- well, I shoot with different other cameras, but predominantly Leicas. And it&#039 ; s a Rangefinder. It&#039 ; s not a single lens reflex, you&#039 ; re not seeing directly through the lens, the lens is offset, and you&#039 ; re looking through a viewfinder of--There&#039 ; s a parallax that, y&#039 ; know, compensates for everything. But you&#039 ; re not, when you&#039 ; re, when you&#039 ; re looking through a single line freeflix it&#039 ; s like you&#039 ; re looking through a movie camera, because everything is black around it and you see your image, your frame. With the Leica, with the Rangefinder, things are a little bit more organic. You put your eye to the Rangefinder, but things are still happening all around it and the Rangefinder has a little bit of a square in it, so you&#039 ; re not seeing--you&#039 ; re not capturing the whole thing, you&#039 ; re just capturing what&#039 ; s inside that little square that is in the viewfinder. So that over there gave me an idea and saying, &quot ; Okay, now that type of, that type of scene, is [when] you&#039 ; re getting so many things happening at one time, and you have to pick and choose where your image is going to be. And everything is happening around you, you&#039 ; re not just focusing a black box, like a single lens reflex.&quot ; So then I said, &quot ; Okay, if I&#039 ; m going to coordinate that with shooting a bow, then I can&#039 ; t use a compound bow where everything is pretty mechanical, and you have rear front sight and everything like this.&quot ; So I decided to go with a primitive bow, longbow, and a recurve bow, because there aren&#039 ; t any sights, it&#039 ; s--You see your target and after, y&#039 ; know practicing, practicing from five yards, 10 yards of 15 to 20 yards, then your hand and I are automatically know where the arrow is going to hit. So that came a little bit more organic, just like shooting with a Leica as opposed to like, a single lens reflex. So I thought that was a pretty good concept. And to shoot an arrow, just, it&#039 ; s just like--You just play basketball, or you ever throw a football? Or, let&#039 ; s say basketball. Now, if you&#039 ; re five feet away from the hoop, you know pretty much the trajectory that you have to, y&#039 ; know, throw the ball, it&#039 ; s gonna go play that kind of feedback, y&#039 ; know, you have to compensate for that if you go 20 feet back, you have to compensate a little bit more, just like throwing a football or baseball. If you&#039 ; re five feet away, you know how to throw that ball for 10 feet away, y&#039 ; know, 20 feet, and the arch gets bigger as your, as your target gets farther away. The same thing with an arrow without any sights. Once you practice enough, it&#039 ; s like shooting a bow. When you&#039 ; re five feet away, you&#039 ; re looking at your target, concentrating on it, and your hand automatically knows where to point towards your target, your bow hand and you release [the] arrow 10 feet away or 10 yards away. Your hand automatically compensates it as you go farther ; closer, and your hand will compensate with your eye. So once obviously, you practice enough, then you&#039 ; ll be able to hit your target. But there was a problem with that. (laughs) When you use a compound--Or not a compound, I&#039 ; m sorry, a, a recurve or a longbow, a primitive bow. Once you draw that arrow has to be as close to the back of the arrow--to your eye as possible, as you&#039 ; re looking at your target and your bow. Now, I&#039 ; m right handed, but I&#039 ; m left eye dominant. Usually if you&#039 ; re right handed, you&#039 ; re right eye dominant. If you&#039 ; re left handed, you&#039 ; re left eye dominant. So--But I&#039 ; m right handed, but I&#039 ; m left eye dominant. So as I&#039 ; m drawing my bow, y&#039 ; know, I&#039 ; m not using my dominant eye because I&#039 ; m shooting right handed, so I can never hit the target that well, so I suck at it really badly. (laughs) So now what I had to do, if I was going to pursue this, I said, &quot ; Well, what I have to do is change, because if I want my arrow to come to my eye I have to change, I have to start shooting left handed instead of right handed.&quot ; So that&#039 ; s what y&#039 ; know, with a compound bow. It&#039 ; s easy. If--all you do is you draw it right hand, and you close your left eye, and then you just look through the rear sight and the front sight and you can shoot your bow. But with this type of shooting you can&#039 ; t, you want to shoot with your, with your dominant eye and I photograph with my left eye instead of shooting with my--I always shoot with my left eye. So that&#039 ; s why I&#039 ; m--so I&#039 ; m dominant, my eye, my dominant eye is my left eye in photographing and in shooting. So what I did, and I came up with a concept of, &quot ; Alright, what I will do is train myself to start shooting left handed on my bow.&quot ; And that&#039 ; s why I started with my documentary too. And actually, the whole documentary was the beginning of bowhunting season, all the way to the end of bowhunting season. So in the beginning of the season, which is your pre-season, preparation of shooting of, of, of getting ready, understanding where you&#039 ; re going to go into the woods and everything like that. So it was one whole documentary, it was like, what did they call it? Cinema, verit-, vérité, it&#039 ; s a French word. (CN sounds out &quot ; vérité&quot ; in a French accent). Okay. And so what I was--So I started, and the whole film is like that, it&#039 ; s in the Spring, I think it&#039 ; s 2014, all the way till the end of bow season to January 2015. And I just pieced everything together. So all the hunting aspect was exactly what had happened hunting. I didn&#039 ; t, y&#039 ; know, cover anything up, whether it&#039 ; s a miss, or whether it&#039 ; s a kill whatever it was, and the photography was during those seasons, also what I was doing. And so, um, so my whole theory was, &quot ; Alright, if I can shoot an arrow and get good at shooting, or hitting my target, and not only hitting the target [just] bowhunting with it.&quot ; Because the difference is a big difference between just shooting the target, and shooting a live anima you have. You don&#039 ; t, you don&#039 ; t want to miss, you don&#039 ; t want to have a bad shot. Missing the deer is fine. Y&#039 ; know, you just, y&#039 ; know, wounds your, your ego. Which, who cares about that? But wounding a deer is a terrible thing, you don&#039 ; t want a wounded deer. So you want to make sure you have a clean kill and um, so there&#039 ; s no suffering of the animal. And, uh, obviously, you want a clean ethical kill each time. So you must practice and the better that you get at it, obviously, you&#039 ; ll become a better bowhunter. So I was thinking, &quot ; So if I start using that technique, which makes you concentrate even harder on your target, on your motion, the, the technique that you&#039 ; re using for shooting a bow at an animal, well, that should translate over as when you&#039 ; re shooting something in, in your camera.&quot ; You take that extra second or split second, when to frame, when not to frame, when to shoot the, when to hit the shutter, when not to hit the shutter. And, y&#039 ; know, with, with digital, y&#039 ; know, I don&#039 ; t want to, y&#039 ; know, I don&#039 ; t want to be thi,s &quot ; Oh, I&#039 ; m such a purist.&quot ; I&#039 ; m not, but digital you can, or with an automatic--What is it? An autofocus, and auto that, y&#039 ; know, (CN makes descriptive noise like a camera shutter) you can shoot. And you have a lot of images that you can pick and choose from and everything, that it becomes more of a ping, ping, ping, ping, ping. You just plucking away a thing, instead of really seeing and trying to capture that image by hand and eye coordination that has been mastered, so to speak. So it, so y&#039 ; know, when to focus and when to shoot. Not even using hyperfocal distance, a lot of times I use that. But when to focus on an object really quickly that you want to shoot and click the shutter. Now that doesn&#039 ; t always happen. Obviously, you can still waste film, but it&#039 ; s not as mindless as (CN makes descriptive noise like a camera shutter), just shooting and shooting, and shooting and shooting. So, that, so that was what I was trying to portray in the film. Now there&#039 ; s a lot more to it, that you can&#039 ; t put everything in a movie and I would--My, my, my goal after making that film was to make a book actually, and write the theory out that I&#039 ; m talking about, and then have photographs, obviously put my photographs into the book. And uh, and, and that&#039 ; s it, and hopefully now I&#039 ; m an old man now, so. Hopefully I--And the whole goal is, like obviously for bow hunting, is to to kill your animal, which is because you&#039 ; re, you&#039 ; re going to eat it actually. And if it&#039 ; s a mature whitetail buck, you have your trophy head. And with your camera, you&#039 ; re always trying to get that masterpiece photograph. Not everything&#039 ; s gonna be a masterpiece, but to you personally, to you, what you would think is a masterpiece photograph. And I think I have a few of them that I consider for myself. I mean, people may not think it, but for me personally, I--This is the photograph that I was, &quot ; Okay now, everything fell into place and I can be happy with this photograph.&quot ; Just like, &quot ; Alright, I&#039 ; m after this particular whitetail buck, and if I&#039 ; m able to kill that buck, then I&#039 ; ve mastered that.&quot ; Everything came into place. I did my homework in the woods, picked my ambush spot, the time was right, and I was able to shoot it. CN: Now, Henri Cartier-Bresson, we&#039 ; re talking about his way of photography, is called &quot ; the decisive moment.&quot ; The decisive moment is when everything falls into the frame, and it doesn&#039 ; t have to be people, it can be anything. But the composition makes itself as you&#039 ; re--Because there, there are infinite possibilities. As you&#039 ; re walking outside doing anything, anywhere, objects come together, you come together, your eye looks at things and it frames it. And then the moment that you shoot the shutter and you get that shot, that becomes the quote, the decisive moment of the photograph, that is, that you want to show. With bowhunting or any type of hunting, that&#039 ; s called &quot ; the moment of truth.&quot ; Which, because, once you let that arrow go, you can&#039 ; t bring it back. And the moment of truth is, when you see the, your object, when you&#039 ; re going to shoot it, you draw back and you shoot it ; once it&#039 ; s gone, it&#039 ; s gone. You can&#039 ; t bring it back. And uh, y&#039 ; know, I coined, I think, inside that film, also, y&#039 ; know, in photography, well: &quot ; In bowhunting, you kill life, and in photography, you capture it.&quot ; So it&#039 ; s like a yin and yang-type of thing. And that also, so that is the connection that I was trying to make with my specific type of photography and my specific type of bow hunting. Which doesn&#039 ; t mean that other types of photography is not valid, and it doesn&#039 ; t mean hunting with other methods is not valid either. That&#039 ; s just my personal way of seeing things. And that&#039 ; s how I came up with this uh, a long winded way of telling you how I came up with this, with this concept. ET: Thank you, but I&#039 ; m going to pause this real quick because I-- [Audio ends abruptly at 00:17:48, and resumes with the second track recording.] ET: Okay, we&#039 ; re resuming the interview with Chris Nakis on March 31st. Okay. Um. I guess then, like, how did you--How did you feel when you saw the product of, the final product of the movie? CN: Of the movie? It was a, y&#039 ; know, it was, it was a small documentary. I think it was about $20,000 which, I mean, that&#039 ; s not, for filmmaking purposes, not a lot of money. And I wanted to make sure that I paid everybody that worked on it. When we made our first film, we did pay everybody and they were interns, also, that didn&#039 ; t get paid. And so this time, and they were, and they were perfectly happy to be interns, because they were on, they were on set, and they were in the production office and they learned a lot about making a film. But for the documentary, I wanted to use everybody as much as I could, from the people I had at Dogtown. And so I would use kids that were helping as PA&#039 ; s and I would pay them, y&#039 ; know, every day for helping out. And uh, so, as a small, independent film, it&#039 ; s alright. It&#039 ; s okay. It&#039 ; s not great production value, but it&#039 ; s not bad, and we didn&#039 ; t have um, y&#039 ; know, let&#039 ; s say the three deer that I killed in there were giant deer, like I have over here. Then I&#039 ; d be known in the bowhunting [community]--It would go to, I&#039 ; d be able to sell this film on, you know, the Outdoor Channel or something like that. And people would know me: &quot ; Oh, man, y&#039 ; know, the guy from Rochester? The bow hunter, and he&#039 ; s like, a photographer. But look at these big deer that he got.&quot ; Because that&#039 ; s what sells on those programs. Unfortunately, uh, the big deer that I was after, the Poison Ivy Buck, I didn&#039 ; t get it on film, but I got him next year. So I edited that in, in the end of the film. But the film could have been better in the sense that, once again, my partner in filmmaking, Bob Manganelli, I asked him: &quot ; Alright, you&#039 ; re not a bowhunter, but you&#039 ; re a photographer. So why don&#039 ; t we make this documentary, you come over here, you learn about bow hunting and let&#039 ; s see how you shoot because you&#039 ; re a photographer? And we&#039 ; ll follow you photographing also.&quot ; And then we can have a picture [of] the interaction between he and I, which would be pretty good, because we destroy each other really well, and it would&#039 ; ve, it would&#039 ; ve-- (laughs) It would have a good narration over it, and then we would have seen him as not being a bowhunter, but a photographer using the concept of seeing in photography, now transferring that over into shooting a bow. Whether he would have had a kill or not, or a miss, or whatever. Or whether he would have been able to do anything, and then we would have gone back and forth. And actually, he would have put money into it, and then we would have had a bigger film, a bigger narration, a bigger thing. So it may have been a, it may have been a better film, but unfortunately, he didn&#039 ; t really want to do it, and his son died that year also, and so he wasn&#039 ; t in the position mentally to do anything. But for, for what the film is, I think it&#039 ; s okay. For uh, for just a, y&#039 ; know, small, little independent film with--I mean, the editor worked at Dogtown also, he was in high school, and he learned how to edit film and he was a pretty sharp kid, so I wanted to give him the opportunity to, to edit the film. And uh, it was, it&#039 ; s alright, it&#039 ; s not bad. It&#039 ; s not bad for uh, for a small little documentary on a concept. [When] telling, when people would ask me, &quot ; What, what&#039 ; s your concept? What&#039 ; s this film about?&quot ; I would tell them, y&#039 ; know, &quot ; It&#039 ; s, y&#039 ; know, it&#039 ; s the merger of bow hunting and fine art photography.&quot ; And then, y&#039 ; know, (CN mumbles) it&#039 ; s not going to work. But when I had a premiere at the cinema, I invited everybody and we, we showed the film at the cinema. And people got it, and they understood the concept and uh, there&#039 ; s a story, and the story was told, and people understood the story. So I guess that&#039 ; s okay. So-- ET: Yeah, I feel like that makes it successful. And you mentioned a book before, like, would you ever want to pursue that? ET: Oh, yeah, that&#039 ; s uh, that&#039 ; s what I&#039 ; m hoping to do and uh, that&#039 ; s why I have all these other little projects in mind that I&#039 ; m going to photograph and uh, put, y&#039 ; know, my newest work in there also. I haven&#039 ; t, I haven&#039 ; t photographed for about a year now, and so I have to pick up and start photographing, again. And--But I still have a lot of other photographs that I, that I haven&#039 ; t put on my, on my blog, that I still have to, y&#039 ; know, digitize somehow, and begin again. And I want to continue on, and have a continuation of it, and once the book is--y&#039 ; know, I&#039 ; d like to put as many photographs in the book as possible, to make a more photographic book, and then obviously, put the bow hunting aspect in it. Um, and the photographs of deer kills, I want to juxtapose those insights, because it&#039 ; s for bowhunters also. So I don&#039 ; t want to, y&#039 ; know--whoever is going to be offended with it, and I don&#039 ; t see why anybody should be offended with it. But I want to put both aspects of this um, exercise in there. Having photography and the bowhunting. And that&#039 ; s why when I--Every time that I shoot a deer, I have my friends photograph me. Now most of them, alright, I kill mostly does, because I let the smaller bucks go. I let them get to at least four-and-a-half, five-and-a-half years of age so their antlers are bigger, and the does are--Why I kill them, because we have so many over here, and the DEC, the Department of Environmental Conservation, as bowhunters in this area, Section Eight C, they want us to kill as many does as possible to keep the population down. Because there&#039 ; s too many car deer accidents, they&#039 ; re destroying the uh, y&#039 ; know, the vegetation, the petunias and everything from uh, from the neighbors. And if there are too many deer, like they were in Irondequoit, you get disease, starvation. And that&#039 ; s never good for a deer herd. So I try to--And the venison is delicious. So as many does as possible, I fill up my freezer. And um, so I do have those pictures were I would put on there--But the big trophies, like they say, the big antler deer, I&#039 ; ve got two of them and I always let the other ones, the smaller ones go. So if I get another couple of those, I will have those inside the book also. But hopefully within the next five years, I&#039 ; ll have that all set and done. And whether it makes money or not, it probably won&#039 ; t. But I&#039 ; ll still put as much money into it too, so it&#039 ; s uh, so it&#039 ; s a well crafted book and not like junky, y&#039 ; know, reproductions of photographs. So and hopefully, by that time um, my concept would have developed even further, so we shall see. ET: Okay, now I&#039 ; m like, kind of jumping into something else, but it relates to just--your photographic process. I remember you mentioned a few times back, the &quot ; Blue Horses?&quot ; I forget exactly who the artist is for that. CN: Franz Marc. ET: Franz Marc. And um, how you like felt like you knew you would always do photography from then on. Can you tell me a little bit more about that story? CN: Okay, well, the story. Um. I&#039 ; ll go from the beginning. So obviously, I&#039 ; ll regurgitate it and you can cut out whatever you need, and everything. So it was in Austria, my third year at RIT. We, we went to Austria. Salzburg, Austria at Salzburg College was the college that we started for when everything transferred over to RIT. So we decided to stay the whole year instead of half-year--some kids stayed half-year, we decided to stay a whole year and the director of the college, Dr. Ina Stegen, she was also the Art History Instructor. Great. We drove her crazy, oh we drove her crazy, we probably have too many stories of--but did pretty well in her class though, and uh, she was a great instructor. So she took us all the way from like primitive art all the way till, y&#039 ; know, modern art (CN sighs) by that time, in the &#039 ; 80s. And so, and it was, it was really, it was really enlightening. And you know, going through the development of art, all the different movements--like y&#039 ; know, Jackson Pollock is my favorite painter. So when I was a kid, I hated it. I said, &quot ; What is this thing?&quot ; We used to play this game, it was called Masterpiece, and then you have the--and you would bid on these paintings (CN mumbles) and everything, and you would see a lavender mist, I remember the painting: &quot ; What the heck, it&#039 ; s all scribbles.&quot ; But then when you understand the concept of it, and the progression of it, and abstract expressionism. Now, he&#039 ; s my favorite artist. I didn&#039 ; t realize that until that class, but prior to Jackson Pollock, that was a German expressionist period, and Franz Marc, and that was in the early 1900s. And Franz Marc was an up and coming expressionist painter and um, unfortunately, in World War I, he was drafted and he died in the Battle of Verdun. And uh, I remember Dr. Stegen narrating that uh, that piece, and uh, his life and with the &quot ; Blue Horses,&quot ; and at that point, it&#039 ; s just something that just triggered my mind, and just made me think about it. I said, &quot ; Aha! Here was this guy that was going to be, y&#039 ; know, very influential as an artist going forward. And all of a sudden, he dies in World War One, and everything stops.&quot ; So, and that can happen, no matter what, whether you went to war, whether you have cancer, whether you get hit by a car, you fall off a bike, whatever happened, you stopped. So in my mind [it] was, I never knew when I was going to die. So, no matter what was going to happen, I had to keep shooting, because I knew these type of photographs that I&#039 ; m trying to master, I&#039 ; m not going to make a lot of money on it. Well, I&#039 ; m not going to be a wedding photographer, I&#039 ; m not going to be a studio photographer. I&#039 ; m going, I&#039 ; m going to try to master the black and white full frame. So I knew I just had to keep shooting no matter what and uh, until I die, just keep shooting and producing work, because I didn&#039 ; t want to be like Franz Marc, that boom, just died right in the, y&#039 ; know, right in the beginning when he&#039 ; s about to, to create his best work. So whether I was gonna die, or whatever, but I just said, &quot ; Don&#039 ; t stop, just keep going. Just keep going because you never know what could happen.&quot ; And that was the genesis of the, the Blue Whitetail is that, the &quot ; Blue Horses.&quot ; Now I&#039 ; m, y&#039 ; know, 62, so when I did the Blue Whitetail that was, I was 50-something. And so I made it that far, and made it farther than Franz Marc. So, that is like my homage to Franz Marc. I&#039 ; m here, so the Blue Whitetail is my uh, progression, so to speak. In our--As I promised myself, I wouldn&#039 ; t stop and um, as a matter of fact, I had our colleague, she was an artist, graduated [1983] with us. She was in my first freshman class, she was really good. I had her uh, make the the logo for me via, both those logos. So Jeannie Arnolds is her name, and she&#039 ; s a good artist. ETL Cool. Alright and then from there, can you just tell me a little bit about um, your process as a photographer? And like, why 35 millimeter? Like, why full frame? I guess you&#039 ; ve kind of incorporated it in other things, but-- CN: Yeah, the full frame. Well, I didn&#039 ; t know about full frame photography. Uh, I, y&#039 ; know, all I knew was--well, in high school, Rush-Henrietta. In high school, I had, I was all, I was in all the egghead classes, Honors and AP and all that stuff. And so I wanted to have a little break in the winter season, because wrestling is really hard, and you have to cut weight and everything. I thought Photography would be an easy thing to, to jump into, to get to have an easy course. So I jumped into that, and I told you the story before, but the teacher was an industry--the industrial arts teacher, so he really didn&#039 ; t know that much about it. He knew you had to have contrast and y&#039 ; know, your leading lines, and you got this and that. So he gave us a little--basic type of stuff, and that&#039 ; s what I started shooting. And um, y&#039 ; know, you, you have your enlarger, and you have your negative, and you start, y&#039 ; know, lifting your enlarger up, and you&#039 ; re cropping the picture to get whatever you like. &quot ; Oh, okay, this looks good.&quot ; So you would crop it, and it&#039 ; s just normal photography, and I didn&#039 ; t know anything about anything, just what I had learned in high school. And then I took some classes at RIT as a Senior. It was $1 a class that you can take as a Senior. So, and the night school guys that were the instructors there, they weren&#039 ; t anything, they were the same type of thing, um, a little bit more advanced. But yeah, you just photograph and you&#039 ; re cropping, you&#039 ; re doing all this stuff and it was just the same normal photography. They loved my photographs of my tigers that I went to the zoo--when I took these portraits of these tigers, but I was able to uh, y&#039 ; know, crop the picture. And so, &quot ; Alright.&quot ; And then finally, in freshman class with our Michael Soluri, he started showing us all these things with full frame photography, and he gave us all a cardboard cutout. &#039 ; Cause when you put your negative into the negative carrier, 35 millimeter carrier, it will automatically crop everything out. You don&#039 ; t get a full frame, you don&#039 ; t get that black border around. So he gave us all cardboard holders that we can put into the 2-1/4 carrier, and you have a full frame image there, and you knew that because you had a black border. So [he] always told us crop in the viewfinder, not in the enlarger, not in the darkroom. So that forced us and the other guys in my class, they were way far more advanced than this because they took, y&#039 ; know, better photography courses before they came there. And I would look at him and say, &quot ; Wow, how are you shooting like that? I can&#039 ; t believe--&quot ; I remember Dave [unintelligible], he would always laugh. I&#039 ; d go, &quot ; How did you do that over there?&quot ; And then I saw the photograph of, it&#039 ; s called &quot ; Aires,&quot ; it&#039 ; s Henri Cartier-Bresson. There&#039 ; s a staircase with the railing also and a bicyclist going out of the frame. I went, wow. Okay, this is what I have to try to learn how to do and from then on it was, let me try to master that full frame for--And it&#039 ; s got to be black and white, and I don&#039 ; t care about color for anything. You have to master the black, white. Now, Bresson, he&#039 ; s a junkie printer, he couldn&#039 ; t print well. So not only did I want to master shooting, but I wanted to master black and white printing. Uh, Eugene Smith, who was my other favorite photographer, W. Eugene Smith, he was a master printer and so, printing inside, there&#039 ; s so many tricks in the darkroom. So I want to make sure that I could shoot those photographs and print them with um, with the chemicals. And so, uh, you know, obviously, going through Owen Butler&#039 ; s class, who, he taught us his own system and printing and he was tough. If he were looking at your photo here, &quot ; What&#039 ; s this junk?&quot ; Boom, and he&#039 ; d throw it. (laughs) He was like a drill sergeant, and you were afraid to have junky stuff in front of him. So that upped our game and uh, that&#039 ; s, that&#039 ; s where I was. I knew that this is the type of photography that I was, that I wanted to do. And I&#039 ; m still a poor photographer, because I hardly sell anything. (laughs) So after how many years? Uh. It&#039 ; s 40 years now, &#039 ; 83 to 2023. How you like that? I put a lot of money into it, hardly any money came to me from it. So I&#039 ; m in the negative. (laughs) ET: (laughs) What are some things that you value the most about photography? CN: Oh, the main thing is once you get that image that y&#039 ; know, &quot ; Okay, this is this is this is it.&quot ; This is, this is the trophy. This is your trophy picture. You went--Yeah, I mean, you get pictures you say, &quot ; Okay, these are alright&quot ; You can put things up on your--But when you get that image, you go, &quot ; Ah, that&#039 ; s it!&quot ; That is the most fulfilling thing. And it&#039 ; s great uh, when you have it in the darkroom, and you&#039 ; re processing it and it&#039 ; s, because it&#039 ; s not just a picture, it&#039 ; s printing it, and dodging and burning, and making it perfect. And then making the Selenium, taking off the silver and replacing it with Selenium and making that, and then you have that and you&#039 ; re looking at it, and it&#039 ; s there and you&#039 ; re going, &quot ; Alright, yeah. This is a good shot, this is something that is preserved perfectly.&quot ; And this is what you wanted. That is the best part of photography, when you have that picture, when y&#039 ; know--A lot of times, you know it when you shoot it, you go, &quot ; Yes, this is going to be it.&quot ; And you can&#039 ; t wait to process that film. Then you process it, &quot ; Yeah, that&#039 ; s it.&quot ; And then you print that up, and that is the shot that you like, that you want. That&#039 ; s your quote, &quot ; masterpiece,&quot ; that you&#039 ; ve taken. That&#039 ; s the best part of photography. ET: And would you say that you do just as much work in the darkroom processing, as you do when you&#039 ; re out? CN: Oh, more in the darkroom. Shooting is the fun part because you&#039 ; re outside. I mean, sometimes you can get--heck, y&#039 ; know, people get mad at you, and get into fights and arguments sometimes, because they don&#039 ; t know you&#039 ; re in the public square, you can get photographed anytime by anybody. (CN imitates noises of people fighting) &quot ; Oh, shut up.&quot ; So you get into arguments a lot of times, but what can you do? So sometimes, and y&#039 ; know, sometimes you get tired out there, but in the dark, in the dark room, there&#039 ; s no place where time flies faster than when you&#039 ; re in the dark room. That&#039 ; s why, y&#039 ; know, when we&#039 ; re trying to get into the dark room over there was only four hour shifts and everything. You get inside there, alright, you just started. You: &quot ; Ahh, I&#039 ; m not done!&quot ; But you gotta clean up, and everything [goes] like this, and you had a whole line. Now, how are you going to get out and go back to the back of the line, so you can get another four hours? Oh, it was terrible. But in the dark room, time will fly, will fly so fast, you wouldn&#039 ; t believe how fast it flies in the dark room. And yeah, that is, it&#039 ; s a lot harder in the darkroom working on it. Now, I don&#039 ; t have that much, well, digitally, because now for the blog that I was doing. When I would take the photograph of the negative and I would digitize it, and then I put it into Photoshop. I&#039 ; m not doing it right, &#039 ; cause you&#039 ; re supposed to section things off and do that. I don&#039 ; t know how to do that, but there&#039 ; s a dodging tool and a burning tool. So I&#039 ; m destroying the image, I guess, (laughs) but I&#039 ; m just playing with it as if I&#039 ; m in the dark room, and I&#039 ; m dodging here and burning there. Make it look kind of crisp here, (CN makes descriptive &quot ; buzzing&quot ; noise) lightening up and everything. So it&#039 ; s just like me in the dark room and that&#039 ; s, I mean, it&#039 ; s easier because it&#039 ; s in the screen, you&#039 ; re in white light, you&#039 ; re not in a dark room. And uh, but I haven&#039 ; t really printed that much, I just printed so I can put it on the blog, but I&#039 ; ve only printed a couple images where I took the uh, the manipulated image and put it into a printer or a computer with the printer with photographic paper, digital paper--dyes, they&#039 ; re all dyes now, and only did a couple of those. So I don&#039 ; t know. I mean, that&#039 ; s, that&#039 ; s easier. It looks easier. So I&#039 ; ll have to try that sometime. Hopefully I can get a big &#039 ; ol printer in and do that sometime. ET: Yeah, yeah, that would be nice. Are you doing, so are you doing mostly--? How do I want to ask this? Are you going into any dark rooms lately and processing? CN: No darkrooms. I had, I built a beautiful dark room in my house. Oh, it was giant, two giant stainless steel sinks and everyone. I had the Omega enlarger, oh the four by five just like we had at RIT. Schneider lenses, I had a light table, but I had to sell the house. So I gave all my equipment to another filmmaker here. He has a darkroom and he, I give him--when I&#039 ; m shooting, he processes my film for me. So, but, I gave--And he has a um, he has a darkroom, which eventually I hope to use, because I have another project in mind that I want to do before I die. Also [one] that I thought up when I was in college, after I learned about Jackson Pollock. I think I told you about that. And so, as a matter of fact, he came back from Utah, and that&#039 ; s the topography of the Moab desert. That is what I will use for my next project, that is going away from full frame photography, but not really, but I will have to process it with, with chemicals, that thing with the brushes and everything like that. So I will use that. When I get a chance to do that, then I&#039 ; ll use the darkrooms again. ET: Awesome. I&#039 ; m just gonna check where we&#039 ; re at. Okay, perfect. So, what would you say up until now is like, your biggest success in your career? CN: Hmm. In, in photography? Um. I would say-- whew, well, it&#039 ; s--I kind of think of that I have made some pretty good photographs. I really haven&#039 ; t had big exhibits or anything like that. I had um, I had one at the U of R as a matter of fact, I just just remembered that. That uh, they needed, they wanted somebody to put some photographs up there. So I put a bunch of photographs up there and uh, got a lot of really good accolades from the people writing on the book. So, it&#039 ; s not really. Uh, I mean, everything that I&#039 ; ve shot is just for me, because everything goes into the, the portfolio boxes and it&#039 ; s--There&#039 ; s not really that many accolades, just that exhibit where everybody kind of liked the photographs, and well actually, yeah. When I came back from Greece, I took a class at RIT again, just a two credit class, just so I can get into the dark rooms. And the instructors, the one that I knew, he used to run the, the Cage, his name was Dwayne. So he knew, all I have to do, just go in, he knew I was working. I didn&#039 ; t have to give him his photographs to look at, because he was teaching the night class. But he said, &quot ; Just make sure you come to the final, y&#039 ; know, critique.&quot ; All right. So I came in, and I&#039 ; m, I&#039 ; m making 16 by 20 prints, archival prints with Selenium tone. So I think I brought maybe 20 of them, and I was the first one there, so I just put them on the, around the room like that. Even on the desks. And then everyone came up in there, put their photographs up and everything. And they all started laughing because they thought Dwayne had come in and gotten some, like, master photographer to put his pictures up over there. And they were laughing like, &quot ; Okay, Dwayne. Who, where did you get these photographs from?&quot ; (laughs) And, &quot ; No, they&#039 ; re his over there.&quot ; So they gave me an ovation, and I guess that was an accolade. (laughs) I mean, it doesn&#039 ; t really mean anything, because guaranteed everyone that was in that class, they forgot about it. And that was how many years ago, that was in the 80s. So that&#039 ; s, that&#039 ; s, that&#039 ; s the only thing. So, the only accolade I have is when I get something, I just put it in the box, and put it away. That&#039 ; s about it. ET: And what kind of things are you shooting now, nowadays? CN: Oh, I can say I haven&#039 ; t shot in a year, but it doesn&#039 ; t matter. I just, wherever I go, like just walking into the store, I will photograph things when I see things around here. I&#039 ; ll just come up and shoot. Doesn&#039 ; t matter where, I will just shoot. I didn&#039 ; t go to, I didn&#039 ; t shoot in Utah but I just--where I just came back from, I just wanted to look at it first, plus I wanted to ski. So I didn&#039 ; t want to take the time to shoot, and at the desert, but just to see whether I will ever come back and shoot that. But for me, it&#039 ; s just wherever, um I get dropped a lot of times, I will just get dropped off um, like into the city and I&#039 ; ll just walk home and just walk from there and photograph and uh, go to Watkins Glen or anything down south. Wherever I&#039 ; m going to go, festivals like uh, Park Avenue festival or, or Greek--But I&#039 ; ve done a bunch of those again. I had a, I wanted to do a bunch of portraits. I like to do portraits of people in available light without, y&#039 ; know, lights and everything like that. So I had a whole group that I wanted to photograph from, from Dogtown, but I&#039 ; m not going to do them now. So, I have to find other people to shoot. (laughs) ET: And where do you see the rest of your photography career going from now on? CN: (exhales) That&#039 ; s a good question. Um. All I&#039 ; ve--The only thing I think will happen is I will continue to shoot, I will continue shooting. And hopefully, I&#039 ; ll be able to get the equipment where I can print my photographs digitally, because to go into the darkroom, it&#039 ; s just a lot more expensive and I don&#039 ; t have my setup with me. I&#039 ; d have to go to somebody else&#039 ; s darkroom and that&#039 ; s--So if I can do that, then I will make some, another exhibit, but the focus is trying to make a book and put as many images that I can in a book with my bowhunting photography theory. And that will be the uh, the culmination, the climax of my photographic quest, I guess, at that point. So um, and you never know. And with that book, I would like to have a photographic opening, because it&#039 ; s always good to see the actual image behind a frame that you see in a book and, and some of the things that go along with it that aren&#039 ; t in the book. And so, I would always try to do that and--but y&#039 ; know, those are, y&#039 ; know, to get exhibits, I would just have to go around to see where I can exhibit them. There aren&#039 ; t that many places to exhibit, but if I can make a book and then put some exhibitions on, I will be happy. I have to obviously pay for it myself and uh, and go from there. ET: Great. Awesome. That&#039 ; s the end of my questions. Unless you have anything else to add. CN: Nope. That&#039 ; s it. RIT Libraries makes materials from its collections available for educational and research purposes pursuant to U.S. Copyright Law. You are free to use this item in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. It is your responsibility to obtain permission from the copyright holder to publish or reproduce images in print or electronic form. video This collection is open to researchers. For more information on the RIT Archives Photo Alum Oral History collection, please email ritarchive

rit.edu. 0 OHMS_Nakis_20230331.xml OHMS_Nakis_20230331.xml

RIT Archives Photo Alum Gallery

RIT School of Photographic Arts and Sciences (SPAS)