John Pinderhughes: A People Photographer
John Pinderhughes, one of America's leading photographers, is known both for his award-winning commercial work and for his striking fine-art photographs, which hang in many museums.
Operating out of a studio in Manhattan's Flatiron District for the past 20 years, he lives on the Upper West Side with his wife, Victoria, a psychologist, and their daughters, Sienna, 13, and Ghenet, 9. The family also owns a house in Sag Harbor they visit at every opportunity.
During a recent interview, he spoke about his life and work, about the East End, where he is on the board of The Nature Conservancy, and about the racial prejudice he has encountered, and still must deal with, both at work and at play.
Trip To Africa
Born in Washington, D.C., Mr. Pinderhughes lived in Alabama before moving to New Jersey, where, as a teenager in Montclair, he was left cold by a high school photography course and aspired to be a painter and graphic artist.
An eye-opening trip to Ethiopia during the summer of 1966 changed all that, however. Stunned by the beauty of Africa and its people, he felt inspired to photograph everything in sight.
"I was 20, and had desperately wanted to visit Africa," he said. "I stumbled upon my calling quite by chance."
Found His Way
Rejecting a small camera his father had given him, he quietly appropriated a friend's, which had two lenses, and started taking pictures.
"I knew at once that I had found my tool. That was it. I never looked back."
As a marketing major at Howard University in Washington, D.C., he photographed the anti-war protests and student uprisings then in full swing.
Those years not only deepened his commitment to his art but led to collaboration on a book, "Centennial Plus One: A Photographic and Narrative Account of the Black Student Revolution; Howard University, 1964-1968."
"I grappled with technique, learning to express myself and make the statements that were important to me. You never completely master your craft, of course, but you become comfortable with your equipment."
Photography And Cooking
Mr. Pinderhughes likens photography to cooking, at which he also excels. He has published articles about food and cookbooks, among them "Family of the Spirit Cookbook: Recipes and Remembrances from African American Kitchens," and is an expert at the outdoor grill.
"Both photography and cooking require some scientific knowledge - chemistry and optics, for example - but they're things I've learned to do instinctively," he said.
"I grill year-round. I even go out there in the snow and grill. It's the same with taking pictures. I just go out and do it, because it's what I love."
A Quick Study
His first job out of college was with McGraw-Hill, where he coordinated the printing of brochures, but not until he was hired by Cowles Communications, publishers of Look, Family Circle, and Venture magazines, did he get his first taste of commercial photography.
"I was doing paste-ups and mechanicals, all done by computer now, in order to be near these big-time photographers in their labs," Mr. Pinderhughes recalled. "If they'd known I was a photographer they wouldn't have talked to me, so, as a young black kid, I let them think I was a messenger."
He was a good listener and a quick study. "They'd go into long, detailed explanations because they didn't think I was a threat, or would even understand what they were saying. It was quite humorous, and they unwittingly taught me a heck of a lot that I'd go home at night and try out on my own."
Big-Name Clients
After studying at the WNET Black Journal Film and Television Workshop, he struck out on his own, stubbornly lugging his portfolio around, taking pictures, and, at times, getting pretty hungry.
Small jobs started coming in, then big ones. For the past 25 years Mr. Pinderhughes has worked exclusively as a freelance photographer, on assignments ranging from national ads, posters, album covers, and magazine illustrations to billboards and bus-stop shelter placards.
His impressive list of clients includes Miller and Anheuser Busch beers, McDonald's, General Foods, the American Cancer Society, Bell Telephone, Equitable Life Assurance, Western Electric, Gulf Oil, RCA, Essence, and the United States Army, to name but a smattering.
"I'm a problem-solver for my clients," he said. "My job is to translate their ideas into photographs."
Two weeks ago, for example, he did a shoot for an AT&T program that provides medical scholarships to minority students. The photo featured a 9-year-old girl fighting with her older brother.
"I will so be a doctor," was the caption.
"I'm primarily a people photographer," said Mr. Pinderhughes. "I did the casting, looking for that snap and pride that says, 'I will succeed!' I interviewed about 40 kids at an agency, putting them through a little scene I devised of a pretend fight in which the little girl gets the last word."
"I submitted two girls to my client just in case one conked out - you never know - and one of them was just terrific."
Warm And Fuzzy
Last week it was off to Chicago to do an ad for American Family Insurance about fathers and babies. "It was already cast, this father with his little baby, so my job was to make it all warm and fuzzy," said the photographer.
"Another AT&T ad showing a happy college grad jumping for joy was warm and fuzzy, too. My specialty is warm and fuzzy, actually. Personally, I think of myself as warm but not fuzzy. I tend to be a little serious and overthink things at work; my kids get the crazy side of me at home."
Mr. Pinderhughes's fine-art photographs, unlike his commercial work, are black and white. Panoramic landscapes, many with water, and surreally evocative interiors, they have a serene intimacy with mood and place.
"My work is quiet and understated," he said. "I don't like to smack people between the eyes. I'm not a street photographer who puts a camera on his shoulder and rushes out to see what he can find. I immerse myself in my subject. I sit and watch and listen and speculate. I like to make people really look at my work."
A 1991 show at the Museum of Modern Art, for example, was called "Pleasures and Terrors of Domestic Comfort." "It was a series of portraits of old folks," said the artist. "I just adore their quiet dignity and the wonderful knowledge and love they emanate. They know that they know. The museum bought one for its permanent collection."
Mr. Pinderhughes also likes to photograph "little clumps of things that have been cast up on the beach and spewed about in wavelines," and "the unbelievably beautiful local landscapes."
"I'll go back and back to a certain salt marsh or stretch of beach and ocean and sit there until I hit it right. My landscapes now are all about the water."
Grew Up By The Sea
His choice of Sag Harbor for his summer home and his involvement in the Nature Conservancy both come from his love of the sea.
As a boy on his grandparents' farm on Chesapeake Bay, he learned to fish, crab, and oyster, and, as a teenager visiting a favorite aunt on Martha's Vineyard, he discovered the joys of bluefishing.
"Just being near the water blissed me out," he said. "Now I love taking my children crabbing, fishing, and clamming, and I want to make sure these joys are preserved for them and for their children."
Racial Prejudice
Has he encountered racial prejudice in the Hamptons?
"Oh yeah, are you kidding?" he asked. "But most of the bad vibes come from the summer people with a lot of money who come out here in big cars and look down on the year-round residents anyway."
"I don't think many outside people understand there's an indigenous black population that's been here a long time. I have a lot of friends in the black community where I live, and I have no problems with the local people. The shopkeepers and everyone all know me. And through the conservancy, I've made a lot of white friends."
Racial prejudice at work?
"We live in the U.S., don't we? Unfortunately, the idea of 'The Ugly American' is not without grounds. Opportunities for a black photographer are not what they would be for a white photographer."
Subtle Or Overt
"In the advertising industry people form relationships; it's an Old Boys' club. I didn't go to school with them and I don't come out to the Hamptons with them."
Sometimes, said Mr. Pinderhughes, put-downs are subtle, like the receptionist who automatically tells him the mail room is down the hall. And sometimes they're overt, as when a magazine editor dismissed him and his portfolio because the publication had just done an issue on blacks, as if he were qualified to photograph no one and nothing else.
"I've been at this a long time," he said thoughtfully. "I've been successful, but probably not as successful as I could have been. The fortunate thing, however, is that I love and respect my people. I enjoy interpreting them, and showing them in a good light. The great thing is that I've been able to do the work I love."