SALON

We Sat down with our Friend, Fine Art Photographer Melanie Pullen, to LEarn a bit about her Her passion, her Process, and Her purpose.

How did you find yourself in such a chic profession?

I grew up in Greenwich Village in the '70s, '80s, kind of the right place at the right time with a family of artists, writers, photographers. No businessmen at all. It was inevitable that it was what I fell into.

So what was it about photography that called to you?

When I was about six, I picked up a Polaroid camera and asked my very loud New York family to freeze for a photo and they all stopped what they were doing, put down their cigarettes and froze and I was like, "This is crazy. What is this thing?" And so, that was the moment I think I was like, "I want to be a photographer.”

There really are two types of photography, capturing moments and creating moments. You'll find that people are really good in one or the other and I happen to be, as much as I like capturing moments, it's not as much my thing. But creating moments feels far more like a painting to me. I don't have a formal training in photography and so, for me, it's always been something in my imagination and then problem solving to make that a reality.

What’s your process for creating an image?

To create a photo, usually it starts with years of research. I create references and storyboards and then I kind of write out a photo like somebody would a movie. It’s a lot of pre-production. For example, the crime scenes; I worked with the LAPD and the LA County Coroner for years and I'm on the advisory panel at the Forensic Center now. I go pretty deep into things and it's probably why I don't have a lot more work. The work is very, very long and it's a drawn out process to create it.

“the foundation for any series I embark on or photo project I go into. There's always a story, AND LAYERS”

When you get your proofs, what’s the bit of magic that you're looking for?

I have a story: When I was a little girl, there was this photo that won a big photo contest that my grandmother was running. She was judging a big competition for the Natural History Museum on nature photography. It was a mix between these great photographers and some amateur photographers and they removed the names so anyone could win. I was around eight and in her apartment, there were just pictures of all these beautiful animals everywhere.

I asked her which photo won, and she pulled out this completely white photograph with no animals in it at all. It was like there was nothing in it. I said "Well, why? Why did that win over all of these incredible photos of animals in an animal contest?" And she said, "Well, if you look closely, you can see little footprints and those are the footprints from, a fox or a little mouse.” And then she said, "And then if you keep looking up in the white, you'll see where some prints of wings. And then the prints stop, the little footprints stop.”  

"That photo tells a story. That's a complete story because everything that happened is right there. While everything else, they're beautiful photos, but they don't have a story." To me, that's always the foundation for any series I embark on or photo project I go into. There's always a story, and layers.

Do you have to have the whole story or do you embrace some ambiguities?

Creatively, I always set up parameters. For the crime scenes, for example, I set up a set of rules. The crime scenes all had to be pre 1950 that I worked with. They, primarily, had lost the crime file. Also, high fashion crime scenes is primarily women so there's a long explanation for that but then I did a follow up series, which was based on war photography, which was all men so I had the masculine and feminine. There's always these parameters and I find you kind of have to have that. 

“THE GREAT COLLECTORS, IT'S LIKE THEY'RE TELLING A STORY TOO. YOUR WORK BECOMES A PIECE IN THEIR PUZZLE.”

So the story becomes the parameter, in some way?

Each photo tells a story, and then the whole grouping of photos tell a story, and then in the end- I recently did retrospective, it was interesting for me to see because- my life's work actually really follows an entire story, which was never really my intention but you can see this line that goes through all of my work and it kind of makes sense.

What is your hope for a piece as it goes out into the world?

You know, it's interesting because it's such a personal process to me and it's something I own up until that point. It's a very tricky thing because it becomes so- It’s hard to let it go, you know what I mean? And in the end, the viewer is who makes it art because people filter it through their own experiences or their own tastes or what they think. When you let it go, it becomes its own entity.

I've been fortunate. My work is in some of the great collections in the world, which that sounds really pretentious to say, but it's true. The thing I find really interesting about collectors is the great collectors, it's like they're telling a story too. Your work becomes a piece in their puzzle. The work, to me, is a piece of my puzzle and then when you let it go, it oftentimes finds itself in another puzzle and it tells another story or ... Because when work ends up in a collector's home, their collection tells their story. I find that to be the most interesting.

Gently edited for clarity