Through-the-door photos

Jennifer Yoffy: 0:08

Welcome to perfect bound, a podcast where we talk to artists about their journey, how they got where they are, what right and wrong turns they made along the way and where they're heading next. David Hilliard was born in Lowell, Massachusetts, and he lives and works in Boston. He received his BFA from Massachusetts College of Art in 1992, and his MFA from Yale University in 1994. He was the recipient of a Fulbright grant and a Guggenheim Fellowship, and he was awarded the Bok Center Award for Excellence in Teaching by Harvard University in 2012. Documenting his life and the lives of those around him. Each work is made up of a number of images that employs slightly different focal points, offering multiple perspectives of a single scene. Hilliard takes the personal, unfamiliar and manipulates them to provide a commentary on larger issues such as masculinity, coming of age, sexuality, and spirituality, striking a balance between autobiography and fiction. It is my great honor to welcome David Hilliard to the podcast. I wanted to start by talking about the format, your triptychs. And you've talked about how the decision to create work and a multi-panel presentation that way. It came from your love of film and theater and storytelling and the desire to create more associations and implied narratives in the work and within a certain piece. So I wanted to know, have you found that that way of presenting an image allows the viewer to connect more strongly with it, like maybe they're subconsciously being invited to fill the gaps within the story? Have you gotten any feedback like that?

David Hilliard: 1:58

I would say for sure the work has a lot of visual play, it's kind of jumping in the ways that you described because it's this a little bit of a hybrid way of making and seeing. But it's also a little bit I always joke about this, but it's kind of true, it's a little bit bossy, meaning that it tells you at points in a way that photography is supposed to be kind of, you know, objective, it shows the world as it is, but it kind of doesn't in my work, because I'm asking you to make associations between pictures. And beyond that between like, moments of focus within those pictures, like look at the surface of this, and then maybe make a formal or conceptual association with the next picture to the right or the left or up or down and make connections. The trick. So I think it's been it invites the viewer to kind of like, have a I think a strong hopefully if I do my job, well a strong visual connection between pictures, but also and maybe more importantly, for me to conceptually make associations about the world, about identity about politics, whatever, our family. And then but this is my key point. And you're not asking this question, but maybe I'll just go for that. Although I said it's a little bit bossy, but not to be all kidding aside not to be too bossy, meaning, there's a difference between being kind of didactic, and saying like, this is what I want you to think. And this is just what I want you to maybe consider, you know, like this could be. And that's kind of what my last show in New York was about it was a show called just so was inviting the viewer to make associations, but kind of trying to find that sweet spot between my experience my identity, my life, and maybe yours.

Jennifer Yoffy: 3:44

So instead of saying, "this is what I want you to think and feel", you're like, "if you're going to look at this, you might want to explore this avenue or that avenue of approach to experience this thing."

David Hilliard: 3:54

And, and that's what I think a lot of us would say is great about, you know, life in general, but about certainly about visual culture is that associations are offered to us and hopefully not shoved down our throat.

Jennifer Yoffy: 4:07

You know that I own your piece Boys, Tethered, which I adore. And as a side note, I was texting with a photographer last night and saying that I was doing this interview today. And he was like, "Oh, I love David Hilliard's work", and I said, "Me too. I have Boys Tethered hanging in my bedroom". And he wrote that doesn't translate very well over text. I was like, excellent point.

David Hilliard: 4:55

You know, and what I will say about that picture is that if I could pick one or two photographs that hit if I had to, like have the the cliff note visual guide for David Hilliard photograph thematically and formally, that would be one of the pictures because it kind of does everything that I want my work to do, at least in to my humble eye, it does that well.

Jennifer Yoffy: 5:20

What is that? What are the things that you want your work to do?

David Hilliard: 5:22

I think it describes the way I work visually, the way the interplay between photographs and focus work, the way I use water as a metaphor as a mediator of experience, the way I use color in different ways. And because that picture has a kind of muted, primary gray, grim primary color, the way I use weather - it has all the fog, it has the relationships between people, connection, and also separation, the boys are either drifting together or drifting apart, open ended, right? So that it suggests associations, it is temporal, meaning that it deals with weather and time. You know, so physical aging, 15 year old boys aging, emotionally and physically, weather changing as the perfect metaphor for kind of trying to see and change and all that and queerness of course.

Jennifer Yoffy: 6:12

Yeah, and it's got a yearning to it. That I think is a strong theme that I connect to really strongly in that piece. And in a lot of your work.

David Hilliard: 6:21

Yeah. And the fact that it hangs in your bedroom, I thought an interesting podcast would be an interview, not that I'm telling you things that you should do. But like, you know, interviewing artists about the work that they hang in their bedroom.

Jennifer Yoffy: 6:31

Yeah, it is interesting.

David Hilliard: 6:33

I cuz I've just moved in. I'm like, what do I hang over my bed? And I can tell you in this podcast, or privately like what I have in my room, but it's it's a big choice, you know, cuz you got to look at that thing in bed while you're sleeping while you're not sleeping. While you're making love whatever.

Jennifer Yoffy: 6:50

And you don't have your own work in your home.

David Hilliard: 6:53

I don't, no. Well, I do have one piece that I can talk about. That's kind of sad, but because it's symbolic. For me, it's a piece that I made in college, actually. But it's it's a picture of my father who recently passed, a victim of COVID. And also a friend who died, one of my best friends, my very first boyfriend, actually, who died a couple of years ago. And it's a picture I made of the two of them. It's a black and white, though. I'll send it to you. I'll email it to you.

Jennifer Yoffy: 7:21

Yeah, please do. I can include it in the show notes. I don't know what that means, but I hear other podcasters say it, so I'll figure it out.

David Hilliard: 7:28

Show notes. That's going to be the title of. . . Yeah, no, but it's a really beautiful picture of two formative men in my life, that are together in this little cabin in Canada, we had been together and we inadvertently got stuck in a room, a bedroom, my father and myself and my partner, were supposed to have two rooms and ended up in double beds. And so it was the next morning. A beautiful story, but it's a portrait of the two of them side by side. And that's lovely. And now they're both gone. You know, they live on? Well.

Jennifer Yoffy: 8:03

The, so I was really familiar with your work, like I said, before we met. And because your work is so emotional, and personal and vulnerable. It felt like I already knew so much about you before we met. Do you think a lot of people respond to the openness in your work and immediately feel more connected to you when you meet? I feel like you, when we first met, it felt like we were instant friends. And I get the impression that a lot of people feel that way about you. And that you make friends and build community sort of everywhere you go. So I'm curious if you feel that your work is part of that, that people already feel a connection to you and it closeness to you before they have the first conversation?

David Hilliard: 8:49

Wow, that's a good question. I don't know. Um, my instinct is to deflect that question in general, but because I do try to be an open person and but my, but honestly, my nature is, for multiple reasons. I'm kind of closed. Like, I'll always be polite, and I'll always be that, but and I'll always, I think outwardly look like I'm accessible. And but I'm very I'm immensely private, right? And I have like 10 best friends and there are very few people who really know me. And I don't mean to sound like I mean, a lot of us could probably say a version of that, like we I think we all have a private side. But but yet at the same time I do challenge myself in my my professional career, my choice that I made for my professional life has forced me to kind of fly counter to my, to my fabric of like who I really am a little bit meaning that I live a very public Well, not very not like but a pretty public life. I'm in art and education and so there's a level of performance or being present for other people and with that comes responsibility. I think so I tried it like, you know, I try to be honest with what I make and I do my work is very personal. Even though I said like I don't I'm not bossy my politics are there, right my identity. And like my thoughts like, you know, if I read lean right or left or straight or gay, like, you know a lot about David Hillier before you ever meet him? Right? And I would say some artists, some people not as much. So I do put it out there. And so yeah, people, depending on the person like to think that they know me, but takes people a while to get to know me really, really discover, like, what a mess I am. I do try to like, you know, put myself out there. And I don't know, it's, it's I think it's I'm not saying I'm brave. But I think it's a brave thing to do for artists is to be vulnerable to a certain extent.

Jennifer Yoffy: 10:50

Sure. Well, I mean, it's very clear, and especially looking at the trajectory of your work. I mean, the themes that you're exploring, and that you're figuring out and becoming more comfortable with yourself is evident in the work. So it's almost like a therapy or a journal in a way if you're looking through.

David Hilliard: 11:09

Yeah, without a doubt. Thank you. Therapeutic is a word that comes up a lot in my work. And in the way I teach in the kind of workshops that I lead either with other people like Eleanor Carucci and I are doing this like ongoing workshop called What About Love? Mm hmm. Oh, my God. It's like a group hug. You know, it's like, really, it's all about, like, sharing and anything I'm joking, but in a really great way. It's about becoming vulnerable. And, you know, and finding, finding emotion and love in a kind of tumultuous world we live in right now. Yeah, more and more. Totally therapeutic.

Jennifer Yoffy: 11:45

Yeah. Wow, that sounds amazing. Yeah. So I need to know more about the through the door photos, and why we haven't already made a photo book.

David Hilliard: 11:57

So you're talking about the pictures My father used to make of us when we're Yes,

Jennifer Yoffy: 12:00

yes. Yeah. Tell me about them. And how many are there? Can I see a young David Hilliard coming through the door over and over again?

David Hilliard: 12:16

So my father, my dad was a great guy. My dad was amazing. And I make a lot of work kind of honoring him. But he loves photography. He was like, we grew up kind of poor, lower middle class and, but there was always this kind of reverence for the photographic for the photograph. And so even in ways not in a highbrow way, let me be clear, but certainly in a playful somewhat even not knowing that it was that therapeutic way, a way of gathering a way of controlling the world that was out of control. But my father would take pictures of my brother and I mostly other people do, but really my brother myself, unbeknownst coming through a door like that we would be pounced on photographically. So there's lots of pictures of us kind of coming through sometimes coming home from school. And they're really cut the best ones are really beautiful because you can see before we even know sometimes we're being photographed the weight of the world on a young kids, And that's kind of in my work too. Like we talked about Boys Tethered. That's what that picture is about. Right? Yeah. It's it's young boy psychology and but sometimes they're playful and it's us like giving my dad the middle finger back because he caught meand beautiful pictures of us just like a divorced dad and his two kids these dogs on weekends and summertime and but he recorded us constantly in his journaling. Like he every day. I've said this before in interviews. From the day I was born until July 28, 2015. I could tell you where I was on any given day at any given time in military father documented his life you know, you know scrupulous kind of meticulous notes been very tiny, beautiful penmanship on little calendars like from a chemical company he used to work for they're like yearly tracking. He documented everywhere. We were not in a waxy poetic way, but it was just like, oh, wait 100 hours. David does the Baba ba Scott does that. And so why do you think that's, you know? That's, that's the question, right? I don't think my father ever went back and occasionally we would go back because we were like, we needed to fact check something or like I've used it for a wide array of things. My last blah, blah, blah. So I've lost that when my father had his like cardiac event and went into a nursing home and gone was that great gift he gave us of like, knowing where we were for like decades,

Jennifer Yoffy: 14:51

You have said that he suffered from dementia near the end. That must have been really hard for someone who kept such a tight grip on real time in reality?

David Hilliard: 15:04

Yeah, it was, you know, he. . . My dad was my dad was a kind of control freak in a weird way. Like he wanted to have the world kind of at right angles and everything where it was and he was very cerebral, never was highly educated like that was he always carried a sense of shame about that? Never, I don't think he ever finished high school, I kind of know he didn't, we never talked about it. He was also brilliant. My father was self-taught. You know, when I was when we were kids, he helped us with our book reports and was interested in existentialism in politics and was as left leaning as you could like, question church and state and you know, with that, because there was damage to like, we would my brother and I were trained not to join anything or believe in any like, we were like, I'll save that for my therapist's couch. But my dad had a lot of like, really strong beliefs and ways that he wanted us to think and wanted a lot of exerted a lot of control on the world. When and your question was really good, why, like, why did he do so many of the things, and it was very sad after he passed, my brother and I were taxed with going through the kind of stuff the rubble of his life and it was just like crazy, not to the point of hoarding, but like, copious amounts of ephemera - books with marginalia that you wouldn't believe and weird notes we found in a pocket when he was losing his, his memory, we discovered this, what he cut into the envelopes had crib notes on it, it was all the things he was afraid of forgetting. I'll send you that photograph as well. Yeah, please. It's called Crib Notes. And it was my father. Like, he was so proud. He had a lot of pride. He didn't want people to know, he was forgetting things. And so he, he loved the written word he loved, he loved words, and he loved self improvement. And I would go to visit him and it'd be sticky, sticky notes on his fingers and whiteout and his fingernails. And he was a closeted academic.

Jennifer Yoffy: 17:09

When he passed in April, there was a Boston Globe article that I read, then, and then I read it again, in prepping for this, and you said that he was the great love of your life. And I bawled both times, reading that. So the relationship that you've had with your father's always permeated your work, and he was a frequent subject and collaborator all the way from your earliest work until he passed. And it's interesting, because the two of you are so different. But you're obviously so connected. And are you able to step back from the images with your father and look at them as a collective whole? Or? And do you see the evolution of your relationship in them? Or did they tell a different story to you?

David Hilliard: 17:55

Yeah, my dad, my dad and I are very different people, right? So many ways. But one of the things about us is that my father, like I mentioned, I think he understood having a son who was a bit different, right? Like, I was not like the other boys that from a very early age, it was obvious that I was queer on some level, right? I was just not in sync with everyone else. Right. And my dad was my champion. He, I mean, not to the point, I have to be careful. Like he didn't like say, son, I think you're different. And here's like this, but he just kind of, let me be who I was, right? And if I didn't want to, like do what my brother was doing on sports, and this and that, like, you know, he I wanted to, you know, I was interested in miniatures and doll houses, and he would like, take me shopping for things he would build me these beautiful cardboard, because we were poor, like really like, and I would go away for a week because I would live with my mother because they were divorced. I'd come back and my father would have built me a cardboard dollhouse. From the chemical company that he would swipe. And there would be like cardboard and duct tape and but these were artful. Like, I am not kidding, Jennifer, like, you should see there's more pictures I have to send you.

Jennifer Yoffy: 19:09

Yes.

David Hilliard: 19:10

But I would come home and he built me these little cardboard houses, one inch to a foot scale, with turrets and bay windows and working elevators and he was a frickin artist. But to that point, so he knew that I was different. But my dad also was out of step with society to a certain extent because although he was outwardly, there's kind of rough and tumble Navy guy, chemical worker. He also like had a very sensitive side and, you know, wanted to be something he wasn't afforded the opportunities.

Jennifer Yoffy: 19:41

Right. He was a scholar and an artist.

David Hilliard: 19:44

So he got what it was like to feel different. And he allowed my brother to be who we were, who we are, how we're and are. And that was great. And then we were photographing together. And so his love of photography became my love of photography. In some of his habits, his visual habits became my visual habits. And we just collaborated because he was my best friend. He was like everything to me. He was interesting photographically, he put it out there. He was like, as my father would say, quote, unquote, he was a photo slut. For the camera, like he didn't care, he put on a Hawaiian shirt and do this and that and but to that point, in a very serious note, with time I realized that I needed to think of something my father wasn't thinking about, was that I was in charge of his photographic legacy, if you will, I didn't want to cast him as like just a one-liner. And so I realized that I was not showing things about him. I was making a lot of jokes, and I had the veneer of him down. But I wasn't really getting to the sense of privacy and shame and longing and all these other things that I over time, snuck up on and he trusted me enough and we over time, you can see my work, evolve, start starting around 1999. Okay, when I made a picture called dad, which was him where I took away the Hawaiian shirts and the some of the trappings, like the kind of, I don't know, they were kind of easy fish in a barrel kind of pictures, good ones, but like, easy and repetitive to a certain extent. And so I started to show other sides of him that to your point, parallels a relationship, a father-son relationship, but also a photographic relationship becoming more complex and more trusting in a more nuanced and, and right up to the day he died. We were collaborating right up to the day he died. He wanted me to photograph he scripted, his casket photograph. He knew what he wanted. He told me what he wanted. Wow. What did he want? He wanted to be, initially he wanted to be embalmed. Okay, you know, the casket that we picked out together, he wanted to be holding the first edition of Playboy magazine. I think he was half kidding, like, cuz I just like

Jennifer Yoffy: 22:06

In one of the first photos you took of him, he's holding the first issue of Playboy.

David Hilliard: 22:11

I made that in graduate school.

Jennifer Yoffy: 22:12

Okay, so this would be bookending.

David Hilliard: 22:14

Exactly, and it would have been but in the end, it got bookended in a very different way. So because we had agreed that instead he would be holding Walden, Henry David Thoreau's Walden. And there would be pine needles in his pocket. And like we had the whole thing was going to be beautiful. It was freaking incredible picture of my father's death picture. And it was going to be our last collaboration, it was going to be something. But instead, he went into the nursing home and all this stuff happened. In the day on Good Friday, around Easter, my father succumbed. And just after three days of diagnosis of COVID, he died. Wow. And it happened very quickly. It was merciful in that he had a lot of health issues. And it took him painlessly and quickly. Super sad. That's another story. But like, you know, I got to talk to him on the phone, got to talk at him. Right. He heard me and he had to be cremated, because of COVID. And it was the holiday. They weren't digging holes in the ground. And people couldn't gather. Right? So why go through all of that. And so instead - he never wanted to be cremated. He didn't want to be in a vase, quote, unquote. Yeah. So I've got him a box, that's a stone it looks more like a small casket. And that was the last picture. So instead of making the picture I wanted to make, I made and I'm still making because he still has not been inturred. Like, I still have him in my living room. I made a series of pictures where I took his, his cremation remains to different locations that he loved. And I've made landscape pictures and my brother would be with me for many of them. And, and I got a little table on Craigslist, which is this little oak table that there's a whole story about the table that I chose. But and so it sits at Walden Pond that he loved. It sits on a mountain that he loves. It's Maine, New Hampshire, the Concord River. I have one that I want to take in his favorite diner in Lowell, Massachusetts. Bringing funerary remains into a diner, so that might involve breaking the law. I don't know but it my dad would have liked that. I was gonna say I think your dad would have loved that. Do you feel like you've been able to make peace with not being able to make that final collaborative photo? Yeah, without a doubt. Like when I described that picture it's probably way better than it would have been in real life. I don't know if I would have really liked looking at a picture of my father's waxy. . . See, I'm not a big fan of the embalming of bodies anyway, right and so to have him brought down to ash which he loved the earth so much - to see him like that in this box and, and they also give you the like, the cremation swag like I have the smaller version box. They gave me a piece of him to have

Jennifer Yoffy: 25:05

I had no idea.

David Hilliard: 25:06

Yeah

Jennifer Yoffy: 25:06

So you can have like, you know, a travel version

David Hilliard: 25:10

Exactly, and because I loved miniatures so much, my friend tressa, who lives in New York, she made me a one inch to a foot like she made me an even smaller sculptural version. Three sizes of them kind of like matryoshka dolls. So my dad's in different scales right now. I mean, the smallest one does not have him inside of it. But I digress. Sorry, what? Oh, the picture that was really great was were these landscape photographs that became serendipitous, serendipitous in that that's not how we wanted things to go. And that's what's so great about art and I think my best pictures and Boys Tethered that photograph we referenced earlier had that foggy day, which was a gift of weather like that metaphor. Fog is so amazing, right? I need a foggy day for one of these with my dad. So the pictures are really kind of beautiful. They are, they become these kind of travel photographs, his last World Tour, if you will, a very humble tour because my dad never really traveled very much. He loved you know, you know, he really loved being within just a few miles radius of downtown Lowell.

Jennifer Yoffy: 26:24

And he loved Transcendentalism and Thoreau and Walden, and so it him in the ash form. . . like you said, it is kind of beautiful.

David Hilliard: 26:34

Yeah. And I don't I don't talk about it, in fact, I think is the first time I actually thought about the ashy part of him, but it's kind of great. And, and also, I should say that his headstone, he still has a cemetery plot at the historical cemetery, it's a really beautiful spot has to swallows at the top of the grave, because he had those tattoos, as do I, and at the bottom of his headstone, it says, There's a quote, a little part of Thoreau language, it says, "Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads."

Jennifer Yoffy: 27:07

That's amazing,

David Hilliard: 27:09

So but he did all of that knowing that it was going to be emblazoned on film.

Jennifer Yoffy: 27:16

So I mean, he's lived most of his life knowing that he every step of it would be documented, which is really interesting, if you think about how he took these meticulous notes about everything that was happening in his life. And here you are photographing that, so you're kind of, you know, were bouncing off of each other.

David Hilliard: 27:39

Like I returned the favor, if you will.

Jennifer Yoffy: 27:41

Yes, exactly.

David Hilliard: 27:43

I feel good about the photographic part. I do wonder, like, his calendars and all those like, I, I have, if something keeps me awake at night, sometimes it's that like, what do I do with all of this, because I'm still traumatized by my father's death, obviously, I get teary. But I do carry the responsibility of trying to squeeze out as much meaning out of all this stuff I've been left with, I still have a bag in my garage. That the day my father day before my father died, I was allowed to go into the nursing home, like in a hazmat suit, and empty out his stuff. And I just through because of COVID and grief, I just filled this like Angry trash bag, I call it and filled it. And it stayed in my garage because it was COVID. Right, and it needed to just die. I'm not an expert, but the COVID needed to die.

Jennifer Yoffy: 28:38

Right? If you put something in a trash bag and leave it in your garage, it kills the COVID.

David Hilliard: 28:42

The COVID is dead, but like I still can't open that bag, because in there is going to be the grizzly remains of the last vestiges of stuff my father had by his bed, and it's going to be like a weird, because as he was losing his memory, he was like it was scribbly. And really painfully sad to see. Yeah. Oh, I'm sorry, I'm talking a lot you can edit this after. . .

Jennifer Yoffy: 29:06

I wouldn't dare!

David Hilliard: 29:07

In the nursing home, there was this, there is this great, great nurse Sue Ellen, who's about my age, and was very kind and loved my father and showed him a lot of kindness. But she recommended along with it, maybe some other people too, that my father, because he was losing his memory and he loved photography, that I would take these little Polaroids when I would go to visit.

Jennifer Yoffy: 29:28

Okay, and leave him with him. Yeah, and I would write the date on it, because he liked dates. I would write like what it was a stupid note. And sometimes with a sharpie, I would point things and put like cat ears on it. And then we had this bulletin board and I could send you pictures of that, but it was like loaded with so I have a boatload of these very small Polaroids that are really just about keeping Ray Hilliard aloat, right? Yeah. . .

David Hilliard: 29:52

They're heartbreaking. It's a lot of selfies of the two of us and my father eating a jelly doughnut or looking kind of confused. Some of them are hard to look at. But I think in a book, just, if I knew a publisher. . .

Jennifer Yoffy: 30:06

I was just gonna say, "When are we doing the book?" Are we calling it crib notes?

David Hilliard: 30:12

Yeah, no, it really, I think that's gonna be that's a big thing. But it could be just a book of these Polaroids because they're really, and I think they're so universally poignant for people who have lost anyone to dementia and Alzheimer's, or just in general losing a parent, it's so hard, but to see me just kind of with him, in it with him. And both of us just kind of shell-shocked.

Jennifer Yoffy: 30:35

And I think too, if you think about the formal pictures of your father, through these years, and then in a book format to counterbalance that with these really intimate things, like his journal notes, and these Polaroids and these things that really show both sides, yeah, you know, the constructed, which is real, but it's also staged in a lot of instances. And then this, what is happening beneath the surface, almost like what's happening between the frame, you know, between the panels, in a way, like filling in some of that information for the viewer, and just contextualizing him and your relationship with him in a deeper way?

David Hilliard: 31:20

Yeah, that's a good point. And like, you know, a teachable moment, if you will, for all of us, be it as an artist or as a person, as a parent, as a lover. When you sign on to something, You sign on to it. Right, right, right. So obviously, I signed on, we had a father son relationship that's kind of built in. But when we started this project, and it should not have ended my father, like when he started losing his memory went into a nursing home. He said to me, like, we're still gonna photograph, right. Like, I think he wanted that because he never wanted to go to a nursing home full of like, French provincial reproduction, furniture and like, furs. And so I started, you know, we made photographs in the nursing home, and it wasn't fun. No, it was a kind of dutiful kind of responsibility to each other, but to the project. And one of the first pictures I made was a picture called furniture walker, which is a clinical term for somebody who won't use a walker or a wheelchair. And so it's this triptych of my father just kind of moving through space throwing himself from piece of furniture to piece of furniture. So because he had this dignity, like that was more dignified to him, rather than use a walker. He would like to stumble from table to chair to table. But I made I think, a beautiful picture of him, but it's sad.

Jennifer Yoffy: 32:43

Yeah, like, you have this obligation to document all the parts.

David Hilliard: 32:48

Yeah, it's an obligation, I think so. Like, it's like, if it's a studio practice, whether you believe in that phrase or not, you owe it to yourself. And certainly I tell my students that like, you know, when it gets hard, it's, I don't buy it. You know, I live by example. It's like, you make it. And who knows, not all of them are good. Some of them are like really awful pictures. The very last picture I made of my father before he died, like a week before he died, was him holding his dentures in his hand. One was his dentures from 1955 and then is from 2019. That was like the his new dentures he had just gotten. So it's called Another Bite. Like, it's a beautiful picture, and I have my hand on the top of his head, the lighting is kind of grim, Vermeer lighting and, and then he was gone. I couldn't like, it was not the last picture I would have liked to have made of him.

Jennifer Yoffy: 33:39

Right. And yeah, you just don't know. It's true. Wow. Yeah. So switching gears a little bit. You've had a pretty charmed and successful career, deservedly so. But what would you say was your biggest wrong turn? And what did you learn from it?

David Hilliard: 34:01

Well, that's like a Miss America question.

Jennifer Yoffy: 34:03

You're welcome.

David Hilliard: 34:06

My biggest wrong turn. Your mean artistically?

Jennifer Yoffy: 34:14

I mean, open ended.

David Hilliard: 34:18

Well, I've had some things - not to overshare but I've had some things happen in my personal life, because I always think that our artistic life and our personal lives, they kind of run in tandem.

Jennifer Yoffy: 34:30

Yours especially I would say, given that your work is so personal.

David Hilliard: 34:33

Where we end up geographically and who we meet and, you know, or the kind of art we make is made, sometimes predicated upon, where our physical health takes us, where a partner might take us, or like what happens, and so I've always been kind of open to that. But early in my young life I had, I was a survivor of domestic violence. My very first boyfriend was violent and I had a series of very unpleasant, lucky-to-be-alive kind of experiences. Turning this into a dark podcast, but it's I think it's important to talk about it. And I'm always a believer and an advocate for people, survivors of domestic violence. And I get really irritated by people saying, "why don't you get out of there?" And it's usually directed to women who were abused by somebody. And I totally know why you don't get out of there. You're fearful, you have low self-esteem, you like don't know, but like, there's a million reasons. So anyway, so I had one of those situations and almost didn't come out of it alive. But I did, and it changed my life, it really gave me a new. So that was, in a way a kind of gift. And it's like physics, for every action is something equal opposition or kind of reaction. And so I came out of it with a new-found gratitude for my life that I was given a chance to keep living, but also priorities. And it's it shifted my photography, I think, in a really good way. I know you want something bad.

Jennifer Yoffy: 35:58

And when did that happen? Like was it after undergrad and before grad school?

David Hilliard: 36:03

It was before college, I okay, I was like, 18 years old, okay. Um, but that event went on for a while, a couple of years, because even after it ended, he stalked me and it was bad. So eventually, it ended. And I ended up in art school, and I was so ready to be there. Knowing that I needed to change gears in my life, I was making bad choices and, and it was a game changer. And it changed my life. And I went to mass College of Art, a great state funded art school in Boston, worked with amazing people. And then from there got like, went right to graduate school got into Yale. So I had like the other kind of like, you know, world that I was never should have been a part of. So all of that was a great gift. And it just kept continuing. And so yeah, I've been very, not a word that I use, but my mother does. So say I was very blessed to, you know, have a lot of great things happen that I totally earned, and was lucky enough through fate, and maybe a higher power survived at all. And it did change my work and bad decisions during that might have been, you know, getting a little lazy or letting things distract me to a point. . . at one point, I had a partner who lived in Spain, and I moved to Spain, initially on a Fulbright, so I'm not complaining, it was great and I stayed for a long time, for love, or what I thought was love. And I allowed my artistic career to kind of get soft. So I thought, so I have a tendency sometimes to let people especially partners, sway my, my decisions. A victim, you know, right back to back to the domestic violence days, but I'm a victim to the heart sometimes. So I've learned over time that I really need to keep that muscle. Like, you know, I need to kind of stand up for myself and my practice, and I'm going to advocate for that. Mm hmm. Yeah. So you know, those kinds of decisions. And I've done that I've taken on projects that I kind of regretted because my heart wasn't in it. But like, you know, I don't want to go into details because it's kind of embarrassing. And some people like the work but I made decisions about my work at times in my career, that were based more upon trends that were going on in the art world, and less about what David Hilliard really cared about.

Jennifer Yoffy: 38:30

Following instead of leading, maybe

David Hilliard: 38:33

I lost, I lost the threads of personal truths that were important to me. And so so now that I'm at the age I'm at and where I am in my career, I don't think that's going to happen so much anymore. Because I'm, I'm pretty much cooked. Like I'm going to what I'm doing, I'm going to keep using a view camera and shooting film until Kodak gives its last death gasps and I'm going to keep working the way I work. But enough people support my work and enough, and I love what I do. And I still push subject matter in contemporary ways. But the way I work is so enjoyable, like so enjoyable.

Jennifer Yoffy: 39:11

How wonderful that you've found. . . that you feel settled in and great about that.

David Hilliard: 39:16

I feel great about that. I try to challenge it, but I work the way I work.

Jennifer Yoffy: 39:21

The flip side is, what what was the best decision you made? And did you see it that way at the time?

David Hilliard: 39:28

The best decision that I made was a big one was after college, being at the precipice of going right and going left or going right, was committing to myself. And I remember this moment, I was at my father's cottage in Southern New Hampshire and by myself and I thought like what do I want to do with my life? And I was kind of scared because I know that I could have done I had the opportunities to study different things, and I decided to be an artist. And I didn't want any regret, you know, I spent enough time even in those days in my young life I had been, you know, I, I had, you know, been repressed and secretive about my sexuality and secretive about like a lot of like, had been kind of through this abuse that I had received. But I didn't want to do things for reasons that society expected me to do, or, and I said, I'm going to be an I want to be an artist like I don't, there isn't anything else that I want to do. But that. And also, and I've never really talked about this and thought about it in this way. So that's the gift of doing this interview for you today is that my father didn't have opportunities I had the opportunity to although it was kind of scary, because how do you live as an artist, or a book publisher, like you know, it's we are in a luxury field, man. But you signed on to that, and, and so I made the decision to take the chance jump in with both feet, it was the best thing I ever did. And when I went to grad school, I was so on fire, I was so ready to do it. And I applied to two schools didn't want to go to really like both, I'd like to equally I didn't want to go to my second choice, I shot high, right, I really wanted what I want. And I excelled because I was so I was like a complete art geek and a lover of voraciously loving photography and its history and practitioners of the medium and and I do believe that I will never be the visiting artists or the teacher who will look at a room of students and dissuade them from the path, because somebody's got to do it. Right. Somebody has to do it. And I'm not going to say, "don't do it".

Jennifer Yoffy: 41:48

Do you feel that part of the ways that you have pushed yourself to explore the themes that you explore in your work is part of that, like if you're going to go all in and do this hard thing that you're going to really do it and have it make a difference?

David Hilliard: 42:09

Yeah, I mean, I tried to I mean, that sounds funny. Like, I think every artist would say that they try to like I I know that like, you know, I'm just another person, I'm just another my case and other gay white guy like I there are things about me that hit an average, right like that. But it's trying to say things with the clearest, most unique voice possible, try to be honest, whatever, whatever that means in art. But try to tell unique stories, specificity is universal, right? So I try to see things that are kind of skew fun way that is different. And I try to tell stories that are kind of different. Or at least spins on other story versions of other stories. So I try to keep it fresh because to keep myself interested and to get your attention and try to get people to care. Right. And that's I try to do that doesn't just apply to art, it's applies to life and relationships. And you got to show up to the party. So I have tried to the best of my ability to honor that. The craft of storytelling and art making. And that's through practice. That's through chance and failure. And toughening your hide when it doesn't go right and, and it's through just like really letting yourself be vulnerable. And that's kind of how I live.

Jennifer Yoffy: 43:38

Yeah, well, that's the gift to all of us for sure. For me. So one last question for you. This podcast is about the journey - where you went right, where you went wrong. By anyone's account, you're a successful artist. Do you feel that way? Do you feel like you've surpassed all of your professional and artistic goals or do you feel like there's still a lot on the table that you want to learn or achieve?

David Hilliard: 44:07

That's a good question. And since I talked about being vulnerable and honesty, on a very personal level, and it's so funny that you say this - I'm not kidding, Jennifer, last night I was lying in bed next to my boyfriend talking about this same thing. Like if, and I said verbatim, "if I were to die tomorrow I would have no regrets. I've done exactly what I want to do".

Jennifer Yoffy: 44:33

amazing

David Hilliard: 44:34

You know, I'm not living on the street. I'm not rich, I'm not poor. People have supported my work. Every day I wake up and I love doing what I do. You know, I have family and friends. I feel very successful in a very like inner gratitude spiritual way, if you will. No regrets. The danger is, and you might know about this, or some of us might know about this, is that when you start to use things, I'm just going to say like, the tenor or the Zeitgeist, if you will, of the art world, or dare I say social media, and start to look at others. That can be dangerous because I am fragile and I am on some level competitive and desirous of success. Sometimes for the right reasons, sometimes for the wrong reasons because who doesn't want to be loved a little bit? But it's unhealthy if I spend too much time on Instagram or to like, you know, I'm a bad poster, although, please follow me on Instagram.

Jennifer Yoffy: 45:40

Oh, I do! I love your posts.

David Hilliard: 45:42

I try. I've been a little lazy lately, but I try to keep it real. Not every one is about me and my career. Sometimes. I try not to make too many like food pictures. I'm not like, in my opinion, I'm not like a blue chip artist. I show with I think the best photograph gallery in New York. I feel so lucky to have my relationship with Yancey Richardson, and it has been strong in Atlanta. As you know, Jackson Fine Art. I have the galleries behind me. I have a gallery in Provincetown, the Schoolhouse Gallery, like amazing. So I'm not a slouch. I know that but I'm, you know, I'm no I won't name names, but you there are these like super art stars that like I will forever. . . Even some of my former students have gone on to these, like upper echelon careers that are just like, you know, I'm parking their cars, you know. I'm not a good parker. But um, but I, but I do feel like, I have to be careful not to measure myself against that. So on a personal level, yes, I am very happy with where I'm at. I do feel like also back to what's really, I don't feel like it's over for me back to my work, not for the wrong reasons. For the right reasons. I think there are more stories to tell, the world is ever-changing. And I still try to like find ways to address those stories. And also, I'm not 20 I don't want to make pictures, I don't want to make the equivalent of a 50 year old man in an Abercrombie sweatshirt that is too small for him. I don't want to make pictures that feel that way either. I don't know, if you get the reference. I want to make pictures that are photographs made by a middle aged aging guy who is not running with a different crowd who has a different kind of wisdom, a different kind of life experience. So I try to be honest with myself to like look at. . . to make pictures that address where I'm at, in my life, where the world is at, where queer culture is at, where politics. . . like, where consumers, where American culture, like whatever. So try to stay on point with, not to get stuck in the kind of habits that I have. And

Jennifer Yoffy: 47:54

You want to be honest and authentic, and so that people can continue to tap into that vulnerability. Yeah.

David Hilliard: 48:02

Yeah. I use the term I want to throw a can of like visual fresca. Like, I want to like, I want to make sure that my work is as up to date as I can possibly make it.

Jennifer Yoffy: 48:13

That's wonderful.

David Hilliard: 48:15

Anyway,

Jennifer Yoffy: 48:16

This was the most fun.

David Hilliard: 48:18

Well, I mean, you couldn't shut me up.

Jennifer Yoffy: 48:21

I didn't want to!

David Hilliard: 48:23

So that's my journey.

Jennifer Yoffy: 48:48

So when are we doing the dad book?

David Hilliard: 48:50

I don't know. Let's talk. Yeah. I really do believe that I have. That is, my dad would say, to and to honor him one more time in this like, as he was losing his memory, he said to me, "David, I hope you're going to keep photographing us because you know, your work with me is your best work." So he had to remind me that like,

Jennifer Yoffy: 49:13

Photographic slut to the end!

David Hilliard: 49:15

He was a slut, man. But he, he was right. You know, it is my best work. At least for me. It's my best work and I think people either see me as the dad photographer, or as the the queer dialogue guy or both. But the work of my father is the closest to my heart.