CLICK! Photographers Make Picture Books: A Discussion with Leonard Marcus and a Team of Featured Photographers

That photography has played a significant role in children’s literature over the course of its veritable existence is without question. Even so, it’s a medium that faces a kind of scrutiny not leveled at other forms of illustration on books for kids. As an advocate for the form, I was absolutely thrilled when I learned that Leonard Marcus would be curating the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art exhibit CLICK! Photographers Make Picture Books. It was an enthusiasm only matched by the feelings I got when Leonard agreed to speak with me, not simply about the exhibit, but about the true history of children’s books and photography.

After our discussion, please read on. Three of the photographers featured in the exhibit (Nina Crews, Saxton Freymann, and Susan Kuklin) also agreed to answer my questions about both their work and their appearances in this exhibit.

And now, a talk with some of the photographers mentioned in our discussion:

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Betsy Bird: Thank you, all of you, for joining me today! Each of you represent a unique aspect of the children’s book experience with a wide range of photographic styles and techniques.

To start us off, I’m curious about you and your progression as photographers. You have, over the course of your careers, carved out paths that few take. Could you tell us a bit about how you got started doing photography, and when you began using it in your picture books?

Nina Crews: I was an art major at Yale and my concentration was in photography. Photography seemed to me to be the most exciting medium of that moment, a new and modern way to create art. Many of my favorite photographers told wonderful stories with their images. The narrative potential of photography was a big draw for me.

After college, I worked in animation production and continued to photograph personal projects along with the occasional editorial assignment. When I pitched my first picture book, One Hot Summer Day, I proposed illustrating with photocollage. I thought it would be fresh and different. The book was acquired by Greenwillow Books, which published many of Tana Hoban’s books. Editor, Susan Hirschman, and art director, Ava Weiss, were very open to my choice of medium.

Saxton Freymann: I was doing non-photographic commercial illustration and my own fine artwork when my wife met book packager Joost Elffers, who was looking for people to collectively contribute to a project involving novel ways of cutting and carving food. I bought some groceries, made some creatures out of produce, took a roll of film (this was in the last century!) and sent him the photos. He hired me to work on the book. I recommended photographer John Fortunato, and we did a few sessions. Fairly quickly, the other contributors dropped out and I created most of what would become Play With Your Food. Its success led to a series of children’s books with Arthur Levine at Scholastic. For the first four books in the series I worked with two other photographers, Maggie Nimkin and Ed Parrinello. The photography was done with a large format film camera in Maggie’s studio. 

 Since I was writing the books and creating the food sculptures, it was much easier to work in cooperation with photographers in the early years. When digital photography became sophisticated enough to rival film, and I had become more comfortable with the process, I began doing the photography myself with a Hasselblad and a digital back. This saved money and allowed me to shoot whenever I wanted, instead of only during scheduled sessions. 

Susan Kuklin: I started my career the old-fashioned way as a black and white street photographer. First, I spent two years in the mountains of Tennessee photographing “Appalachian Families” for Planned Parenthood. Once back in New York, I worked on stories for newspapers, journals, and magazines, covering everything from George Balanchine rehearsing his last ballet to riding with undercover cops in the South Bronx. At one point I was invited to do a photo essay about a scientific project at Columbia University that asked whether a chimpanzee can learn language. The chimp, Nim Chimpsky, was taught American Sign Language and to communicate with him, I needed to learn it too. My assignment was to photograph Nim during his daily activities. He lived in a mansion owned by the university with grad students, wore T-shirts and jeans, and was driven to “school” every day in the professor’s BMW. At one point I said to the students that this would make a great children’s book. One of them agreed and sent her proposal to Knopf. Long story short, the book was successful, and I became a photographer of children’s books. What a backdoor entry into publishing! What luck! I loved working in kid’s lit because I could choose subjects that interested me and had the time to dig deeply into the subjects

BB: And what is it about the medium of photography that has appealed specifically to you from the start?

Nina: I think its that connection to the real, to the true. It is the thingness of photography. A photograph of a person reveals the exact shape of their eyebrow, hair color, and texture. Each person’s smile is slightly different and special. A photograph of a building exterior includes the cracks, textures, and colors as well as the weed that has found a way to grow in a tiny crevice. It is a very direct way to tell a story.

Susan: When I was a teenager, my uncle bought a Leica camera and taught me how to use it. We went on “shoots” together around Philadelphia. Looking through the lens made me feel that I was seeing life in a new way. The camera taught me to pay attention to shapes, color, and content. Even without the camera in hand, I pretended that my eyes were a 35mm lens.  In addition, Edward Steichen’s book The Family of Man played a significant role in my reading/looking life. I was mesmerized by how Steichen portrayed a broad community in one book. What struck me most was the empathy and compassion that well up inside me while learning about so many diverse individuals. How could I meet such folks? The camera became a visual door that opened many lives for me. 

Saxton: In both photography and printmaking (I did a lot of etching many years ago) I enjoy that the final work stands at a distance from the work of creating it, mediated by a mechanical process. Unlike painting or drawing, in which you are always interacting with the object the viewer will interact with, working with a camera or on an etching plate is a process that is completed before the final object comes into existence. I find that distance from the final product very liberating. In my work with produce this divided my process into a sort of improvisational performance of interacting with organic forms to “sculpt” the objects, then the photo shoot itself– placing the objects, choosing the angles, adjusting the light, often working with a photographer, and then integrating the images into a book. So there is quite an arc of incremental decisions and actions that are made before you really see the work as it will finally exist.  

I also appreciate the flexibility and freedom that digital technology allows in bringing all of this together. 

BB: Speaking of digital technology, Nina, you were one of the first (THE first?) to incorporate Photoshop elements into your picture book illustrations as well. Did you receive any pushback when this first began? What was it about the tool that appealed to you?

Nina: There was no pushback at all. Ava Weiss was my art director on You Are Here, my first book assembled in Photoshop. The computer is really just another tool. Ava had been in publishing for a long time by then and had worked on dozens of books using pre-separated art. She was familiar with using technology and understood its usefulness in creating illustrations. The finished book was the art that mattered the most.

I was hesitant to make the switch at first, but once I did I found a number of benefits to working digitally. One big bonus was getting out of the darkroom. For previous books, I’d rented darkroom time at a color lab to make my prints. With Photoshop, I had more flexibility with sizing and color correction. Additionally, I had more control layering collage elements, and I could adjust the transparency of those layers easily. Contrary to what many assume, working digitally isn’t a faster way to work, because it’s very easy to spend lots of time tweaking things that no reader will notice.

BB: Meanwhile, Saxton, your books aren’t simply photography but also incorporate models of varying sorts. Unlike, say, Wegman, you don’t have to worry quite as much about your models walking away, but you must face unique challenges in terms of lighting and design. Could you tell us a little something about your photography that the average layman might not know or might usually misunderstand? 

Saxton: Produce stays put, but it also has a shelf life! From the moment you pierce the skin of a fruit or a vegetable, the clock is ticking: fruit discolors, things get soft, everything is fragile. 

 Photo shoots became improvisational performances; I would arrive at a session with bags of produce that I had selected for what I thought I needed, but as I interacted with each form I would sometimes find things I did not expect, and I had to be open to these unanticipated possibilities. My rule of thumb was to do as little as possible to the forms I was working with– to let the existing form do most of the work. This approach happened to work well with the pace and spontaneity that the material required. I worked with speed and simplicity thanks to my own rules, the discoloring or aging of the medium, and, for the early books, the pressure of a waiting photographer. 

 My more elaborate collaged images combine numerous photos, so I had to keep in my mind how these individual images would ultimately work together: consistent lighting, the angles I needed for each component, etc. 

 I was quite strict about not doing digital intervention to the object so that the final work was truly a record of something I found or made physically, not digitally. I did bend this rule to combine multiple photographs in one image, necessary in some of the more ambitious books, and once, for a book called Gus and Button, I made a community entirely of mushrooms, and suspended my rule so I could alter the relative  scales  of some objects, allowing me to fill enormous Portobello mushroom houses with mushroom people, mushroom furniture and mushroom fixtures.

BB: And Susan, the role of photography as it relates not to fiction but to nonfiction in children’s books has been too little examined, to my mind. Informational texts and photos seem inextricable in my mind, however. Can you say a little bit about how it was when you first started and how it’s changed over the years?

Susan: In the beginning I felt that children’s books treated photography as primarily informational. With few exceptions, art was not a high priority. I promised myself (and my future readers) that I would never dumb-down the artistic aspects of the medium. In my early books I used the same photo essay technique while photographing “Appalachian Families” and the New York City ballet as I did for Mine for a Year, the story of a guide dog raised by a boy who was himself losing his vision, and Thinking Big, the story about an eight-year-old achondroplastic dwarf. As photography evolved, I tried to grow artistically by experimenting with different format cameras and techniques to portray a story. I went from black and white photography where I printed my own photographs to medium format color photography to studio photography to digital photography. It’s been an exciting artistic stretch. I’m grateful that publishers gave me the freedom to do this.

BB: For each of you, your work is now featured in the Carle’s CLICK! exhibit. Can you tell us a bit about how you were first tapped to take part?

Susan: Leonard Marcus told me that he had been thinking about showcasing a program about photography in children’s literature. What a fabulous idea. This was something I had been dreaming about for years. At last people would see how diverse and imaginative and legitimate photography can be in children’s books. 

Nina: I was thrilled when Leonard told me that he was planning this exhibit and I am honored to have The Neighborhood Mother Goose included. Photographic illustration is a niche area in our business, and I’m always gratified when someone wants to shine a light on it. I’m no historian, but I have spent some time studying up on photographic picture books. When Leonard and I talked, he mentioned a few people that he was considering including and I suggested a few names I’d come across. Of course, Leonard had it covered, but I enjoyed our conversation about it.

Saxton: I was delighted to get an email from Leonard Marcus, whose books I had read and enjoyed, asking if I would participate in the exhibit.  I was very happy that he put such an exhibition together, and included my work. I was also excited to meet the artists at the opening. I think we all have experienced the outsider status of being an illustrator whose work is photographic. It was so wonderful for all of us to be endorsed by Leonard and by the Eric Carle museum.

BB: And what do you hope folks get out of the exhibit? What takeaways would you like for them?

Saxton: Leonard did a wonderful job of showing the depth and breadth of a century of photographic picture books, and I particularly appreciate the resonances and rhymes that the exhibit shows us across decades and approaches.  I think you come away impressed with the versatility of the medium and an appreciation of how each artist found such a unique way to use photography to do something new.

Nina: First, I hope they enjoy it, because there is spectacular work in this show. I also hope that people get a better understanding of the place photography has in picture book illustration. The earliest book included is a Mother Goose book from 1893. I love that my book can be in conversation with that much earlier work. The exhibit shows that photography can be used for many kinds of storytelling. There are concept books, non-fiction books, fantasy, and realistic narratives. The books have been created using a variety of cameras, films, and processing techniques. As with any illustration medium, photography can be used for some great storytelling.

Susan: As mentioned above, I hope folks will recognize the value of photography to illustrate kid’s books. I hope they will appreciate that taking a photograph is more than just point and click. And I hope the show will inspire the next generation of photographers to illustrate children’s books.

BB: On a broader scale, what role do you feel photography fills in the world of children’s literature? What is it capable of doing that no other medium can?

Saxton: That’s a difficult question because as the exhibit shows us, photography, like any medium, is as different and varied as the artists who play with it. Photography began as a medium with a magical ability to mechanically or chemically record reality, and almost immediately set off in many different directions to undermine that premise.  

 Since photography is the currency of so much of our culture’s visual communication, it has a familiarity and an accessibility that appeals to children and adults alike. But that very familiarity offers an artist opportunities for disruption, surprise, innovation, and a challenging of assumptions.  

 Whatever the medium, an image should always raise the question “What am I looking at?” Leonard’s exhibit demonstrates this beautifully.

Susan: Windows and Mirrors. Photography is an excellent medium for children (and adults) to
recognize themselves and relate to others – authentically, genuinely, empathetically. I
especially hope readers recognize the value of young people seeing someone who
looks like themselves in a book or hanging on the wall of a museum.

Nina: Again, it is photography’s connection to the real that makes it special and a fun option for illustrators. Work by Susan Kulin, Charles R Smith, Ylla, or Shelly Rotner document the world as it is and, in my experience, that this is enormously satisfying for young readers. Concept books like, Walter Wick’s I Spy books and Saxton Freyman’s How Are You Peeling?, use real things in surprising ways. The surprise and humor of more fantastical books like William Wegman’s Cinderella or my Neighborhood Mother Goose occurs because the imagery is in tension with the real world. It’s kind of like playing dress up. A wooden spoon isn’t a magic wand except when it is.

BB: And finally, what are you working on these days?

Susan: I’ve been working on an idea that I hope will grow into a picture book for children. But it’s not quite realized so I must wait untill idea becomes reality to talk about it. Fingers crossed.  

Saxton: For many, many years I have worked with my wife Mia Galison. Her company, eeBoo corporation, makes beautiful gift products for children and lovely jigsaw puzzles for adults, all featuring original, commissioned artwork by talented illustrators.  I play a variety of roles, mostly helping to develop products, doing preliminary drawings, writing copy, and doing research for our educational products.

I continue to use photography in my personal, non-edible artwork, combining photographic imagery with drawing and anything else I can muster.

Nina: I am working on a middle grade non-fiction book about the Poor People’s Campaign of 1968, a multiracial protest that was planned by Martin Luther King to demand that the federal government do more to help the poor. The book will be picture heavy and include illustrations and archival photos. Publication is planned for early 2028 to coincide with the 60^th anniversary of the protest.

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Heavens.

I’m not entirely certain where my thank yous should even start. First and foremost, a big thank you to Leonard Marcus for taking the time to talk to me about his exhibit. Thank you to Nina Crews, Saxton Freymann, and Susan Kuklin for all the time and care and attention they paid to my questions. And finally, thank you to Sandra Soderberg and her team at the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art for helping to put all of this together.

The exhibit CLICK! Photographers Make Picture Books will run until June 7th in the East Gallery of the Eric Carle Museum in Amherst, MA. Be sure to check it out if you can!

Filed under: Interviews