How His iPhone Got into the Smithsonian with Gifted Artist John Paul Caponigro

I'm here today and excited to bring to you one of the brightest lights in the world of photography worldwide, John Paul Campanegro. Hello, John. How are you?

Hey, Larry. I'm well, thank you.

Thank you for that. Now, am I doing a decent job on Camponagro?

Yes, you are. Absolutely.

Okay. Okay, good. I don't like to bungle pronunciation and then keep it going throughout the call. So, anyway, thanks for being with us. Thanks for taking time. And you are incredibly prolific and productive in reaching the highest levels in photography. And in addition to that, you do have workshops that people can come to and learn this stuff. And the great thing about these workshops, I'll sell your workshop for you, is the fact that you're going to get, you know, decades of blood, sweat and tears and learning and trial and error and experimenting crammed into a few days. And those things are just priceless. And it's not a matter of what it costs. It's a matter of if this is something you want to be serious about in your life. What will it cost you not to get that kind of heads up? You know, it's like Isaac Newton said, if I have seen farther than other people in the world of mathematics and physics and all this because I stood on the shoulders of those who came before me. And so I know you're big on quotes, so I thought I would.

And that's one of my favorites.

Absolutely. So I would. I'm sure I bungled a little bit. But anyway, that's the idea.

You're pretty darn close. You know where it actually comes from?

Where's that?

It comes from Greek mythology, where one of the giants is putting a figure on his shoulder so he can see further. I don't think it's Chiron the centaur, but it goes way back and it's followed us. But, you know, the thing I like about it most is it suggests that our community is not just the living, but all of those who have gone before us and what they've passed on to others.

Exactly. And looking at time as a straight line, you know, rather than just now. So, you know, John, tell people, you know, you got things. I could start and go down the list, but, you know, we'd be here for a long time. What are you most excited about? I mean, you got like, your first. I don't even know how you did that. I told my assistant, like, I didn't even know they were looking for these things. I could have given them some somehow. Your first iPhone is in the collection of the Smithsonian Sure.

Right, right.

Like, how do things. Like, I mean, that's the kind of thing that John Paul Campanegro does. You know, pioneering, you know, reaching the top and all of these things. How did that happen?

Well, I don't know. Let's quote Woody Allen there. 99% of success is just showing up. So, actually, Shannon Parrish, who runs the photography collection down at the American Museum down there, approached me a long time ago and said she wanted to collect one of every kind of medium that I've ever used. And so she pulled together this very interesting collection, which included my first copy of Photoshop, my first Macintosh, as well as pastel drawings, platinum prints, new inkjet prints. It was a very interesting collection. And so I've worked with her to expand that collection over the years. When something new comes through, like the iPhone, or like the new metal prints, or like the MagCloud print on demand catalogs, I'll either send them to her or I'll find a collector who will donate it to the collection just to make that really interesting collection even more interesting.

Yeah, I didn't know that was there. I'd love to go see it.

Well, they have a phenomenal collection. Phenomenal. All kinds of things. And I kind of blushed, and I think she was being. It was flattery when she said, this iPhone is fantastic. It's kind of like having one of Muybridge's cameras. Like, that's very kind of you, but, you know, these. These things have. Have really changed culture, changed photography.

Absolutely. Especially the cameras that are in them now. She might have been hitting on you, John. Actually.

No, no, she's greatly. Just great. And it's a great collection.

Tell people where you came from to. To get started in photography. Where did you start?

Well, everybody says your dad's a fine art photographer, so you were fated to be a photographer, when, in fact, I really didn't make that decision firmly until I was in my 20s, sometime in the, well, 1990. So that would make me 25 when Photoshop came out.

Tell people about your dad.

So my dad is a fine art photographer, kind of the youngest of the West Coast east coast collision. He would hang out and teach at Ansel Adams workshops out there. His work is landscape, and he's got that influence. But he also mentored with or was taught. Kind of started in with Minor White here on the east coast. And so that sense of the intimate landscape was very much a part of his sensibility as well. So he's always kind of been bi. Coastal, younger than most of those folks, so he's 88 and still working. In fact, right now we're remastering some of his classic negatives. I was just drinking scotch with him last night, working, working out a few things. We're scanning the original prints, making him a new negative, and I'm just delighted to see him come in with a smile and new energy while he's printing some of his classics, because it's coming a little easier and he can get where he wants to go faster, and then he can go a little further with it. So that's neat. But, you know, I. I almost got us kicked out of our apartment in Dublin, Ireland, when he first got his Guggenheim Grant, I was 2 years old. We took the boat over to Ireland, and I took a mural making. So my parents had to paper train me. They put blocks of paper all over the walls and said, hey, kid, on the wall. Not mean on the paper, not on the wall. We got to stay, you know. My mother was a painter, and she turned graphic designer and designed most of his books and many of Ellie Porter's books, Stuart o' Keeffe's book, so many others. And I get to meet all of these different people and watch that process of her putting these books together. And she's more than just graphic designer. She's also a great picture editor. So I remember Elliot would often call her in a panic, eleanor, I've got this new book. Come quick, Help me pick the pictures. He could make them. He could not necessarily select them and sequence them. And she was an ace at that.

And that is Elliot.

Elliot Porter.

Porter, yeah. And so the thing is that, unlike most of us, you grew up in a family where your father had kind of set the standard, set the mold, you know, something to live up to. And, of course, there were a lot of advantages where you like people who grow up and their parents were in the theater and they grew up with actors and comedians, like Billy Crystal grew up in that kind of family in New York. And he talked about all these comedians, and people would be over at his house for dinner and after the show and stuff like that. And so, you know, it was in the blood. But you. What kind of pressure does that put? So you're the revert, you know, you're the reverse of where most of us start. And nobody has any idea about whatever this. Our calling seems to be, you know, like, if you want to be a swimmer, nobody can swim in your family, you know, for three generations. All of a sudden you want to be an Olympic swimmer, but you, you know, Starting out with a world famous fine art photographer as your dad, how did. What kind of pressure did that. Did that put pressure on you? Did you feel pressure to go into it? What was that mentality like? And why did it take you to the mid-20s, your mid-20s, before you decided, I'm going to do this?

Well, there's like three parts in there. I'll tell you the colorful part of it. In part, I didn't embrace straight photography fully. Even though I came to it relatively late in my college years. I figured, you know, I've got this wonderful teacher here and I'd be moving away and I won't have that much more time with dad, so it'd be nice to spend time with him. At least I'll learn to make good reference for paintings. That drawing that I started at 2 years old always stayed with me. And I studied in school when I went to Yale, when I went to University of Santa Cruz. So during those summer years I worked with Dad. I was particularly fascinated with straight photography's ability to speak in metaphor. Dad photographs this apple, but it looks like a galaxy. How does that sense of transformation happen? I was fascinated by Siskind's work. How does a literal recording of the world look so abstract, so other? There were things about photographic vision that just fascinated me. And at the same time, it didn't satisfy the painter in me. I remember going to. When I was starting up, I took a semester off. I helped dad teach a workshop in Ireland, and we went around Ireland and parts of Europe together. It was a wonderful semester. We visited an old friend in Fergusburg who was the photographer for the Abbey Theatre. Also got one of their National Treasure Awards later as well. And so he starts in. So you're going into the family business, are you? So who are your influences? Blake Bosch. No, no, no, I mean photographers. Oh, Jerry Oseman. No, pick another. He doesn't count. This was long pre Photoshop, but can you imagine saying Jerry Oseman doesn't count in this day and age?

Yeah.

You know, I wanted to realize the visions that were in my mind's eye. It wasn't enough for me to just simply record the literal world in front of me, even though you could work it abstractly and speak in metaphor. I needed to go a little further. And so when I saw Scitex machines, Mom was overseeing the production of Elliot Porter's Intimate Landscapes book at Acme Press in Boston, and they were using Scitex machines to do the color separations, but they could also do all that digital retouching. The minute they cloned a palm olive bottle, changed the proportions, changed green to purple, and twirled it around. Oh, my God. What if an artist could get a hold of that? I want one of those. But she called them million dollar coloring books. And I was like, how am I gonna get a million dollars? Maybe when I'm 50, if I get lucky. And then in 1990, just after I'd moved to Maine, Kodak sets up their digital training center. And there's Photoshop one and a Macintosh. And there's my million dollar coloring book. It didn't cost a million dollars. It did take the second mortgage, but I was off and running. I knew exactly what I wanted to do with it.

Absolutely. And did you feel pressure or did you feel excitement about being able to do what was really inside you? I mean, you seemed like well into. And this is what I'm trying to wake up a certain segment of the people listening to this is. You really need to. The power in your life is going to come when you tap into that stuff that's inside you. You don't have to put it in there. You don't have to read a book and memorize it and try and follow formula. Whatever the greatness is that you're capable of is trying to get out, probably.

You know, just have to listen to it, you know, and it's a combination. So many people will just pass it off as talent. Yeah, come on. It's overrated. There's hard work, but then what trumps that is smart work. But then what trumps that is persistence. You know, if you stay in a game long enough, something's going to happen. But if you bail too soon, nothing's going to happen, you know, so you got to show up. Yeah, it actually takes all of those things. But I think if you don't have passion for what you're doing, you're not going to stay in the game long enough, and you're not going to bring your full resources to it. There always going to be parts of you that are trying to find fulfillment in other ways. I tried actually to go into comic books because I didn't want to make fine art, to go over people's couches or to be locked in people's collections in a museum and never be seen. I wanted to be part of the fabric of their life, but I kept getting these reviews and, like, this is. This is fantastic stuff. But if you want to draw for us, you got to draw like us. It was like trying to cram a round peg in a square Hole. It just wasn't the right fit. And I wasn't looking at it really clearly. I gained some really great skills from that, some wonderful friends. It was a good journey, but that failure was very revealing for me about me, about what I ultimately wanted to do. And along the way, I learned a great deal, not only about business, but also some visual skills about storytelling that extended the kind of picture editing mom was talking about. And I use those every day. Today I still storyboard my projects.

Yeah, I'm embarrassed. I can't remember the guy's name. He's one of the greatest artists or designers in the world. He does a lot of these installations, these mind blowing installations. You know him instantly, but he's. They have a special on him on Netflix. He's part of that design series. They have greatest designers in the world and artists and talk about how they go about their business, but. And this guy's got a staff, he's got installations, he's got everything. But he was talking like we're talking, and he said, you know, I find the greatest inspiration comes the harder I work.

Right. I think somebody asked W.H. auden, the writer, you know, do you only write when you're inspired? He says, yes. Thankfully, Muse comes every morning at 9 o' clock when I sit, sit down to my desk.

Yeah. There's such a misconception about how you get to a place of greatness in life that would be intriguing to you. And basically you gotta go with what, you know, what's available right now. And the dynamic starts changing. People don't think about this, but like, if you were to take where you are right now, if you were standing and you take a step or two forward, the perspective and the light changes. And it's like in photography, you know, we're always moving around and, you know, looking up, looking down, looking at it this way. And it's amazing when you're totally locked in, if you give into that, you stay paralyzed. But if you take one step forward breaks the paralysis.

That's right. That's absolutely right.

Nothing else happens. You break the paralysis or the confusion or whatever is like, okay, I'll be confused and paralyzed, but I'll be one step closer to where I want to be, you know? And so what caused. So what I'm hearing from that is that you had something inside of you, you wanted to get out. Yeah. And the next step, you know, at that particular point, I'm still trying to figure it out. Yeah, aren't we all? And, yeah, that's why people don't quit. We'll talk about.

That's right.

We could talk about. Well, we'll talk about it now. The thing is, like, people come and see people are super successful to say, you know, you got it made, you got this, you got that. Why don't you kick back? Why don't you back off? Why? You see, it's like it's just starting to get fun now.

And I'm just starting to get good.

Yeah.

Pablo Gonzalez was like, 87. He says, I'm only now beginning to learn how to play.

Isn't that something?

It's a shame I don't have another hundred years in me.

Yeah.

And it's true.

But Tiger woods, you know, when he was at his peak, he said, I'll go out, I'll hit, you know, 70 shots, you know, somewhere between 68, 70, 65 and 70. And if I'm lucky, I'll hit one shot the way I want to hit it, you know?

Right.

And so it's that. But it feels so good, you know, when you get it right. You know, the. The feedback from that, the satisfaction from the joy. And so be able to get to the point where you. You got a higher percentage of those things happening. Even if it's a low percentage, it's higher than it was before. Plus, it's possible. And where, like, going through the thing with the experience with Marvel Comics, that was a huge win, win for you because you worked at it. You know, you had an idea, you tried it, and you got what the experience had for you. But also you got the education of where you needed to go next. And you wouldn't have been so clear on that had you not followed through on that step. Don't you think?

I do. You know, I think the clarity is it comes over time. It's triangulated. We make a series of missteps, and we don't always know exactly where we're going. And I think that's particularly true in the creative arts, where you're looking for your voice when your voice has never existed before. There's only been one of you, and there always will only be one of you. So how do you find that thing that has never existed before that's particularly challenging. That said, I don't think that we celebrate failure enough. I don't think that we emulate Edison's practice of setting a quota for failure every month. He felt that if he didn't make a certain number of failures in his lab, he wasn't pushing the envelope enough. And then he tried to Apply what he learned from each failure to all of the other experiments that were going on, not just that one. So I think we need to celebrate failure and learn how to fail well and be able to maximize as we get as much out of those failures as we possibly. Otherwise it really truly is a failure. But if you learn from it, if you iterate, if you move forward, if you find your next step, if you find what you're not, don't want to do, those are successes.

You just have to follow up. And you get that by giving that next stage or next step everything you've got. You know, you got to give an honest effort to get the lesson or the result out of it. Like the Bible says, whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might, you know, and no, I used to tell people, you know, trainees on the way up, I said right now you're getting started. You want, you've got dreams of sugar plums and all this thing. You don't know if you're good enough. And I said I don't know if you're good enough. But I know one thing, you'll never be good enough to do it if giving it a half butted effort, you know, you know, piddling your way. You do not piddle your way to greatness and glory.

No, you don't.

Right, Right, Yeah, you don't shut.

It's not just grinding through, it's not just putting in a 10,000 hour. And it probably doesn't take all that long, 10,000 hours. It's more like perfect practice. But how do we figure out what perfect is? I think part of that is the reflection and getting some feedback from other people. It's like okay, what just happened first?

What's going on when you, after it.

Happened, you have to reflect and say what happened then it's useful to get some outside perspectives about how did they see it. And then you're much more informed about what next step to make because you can make a million next steps. What, what's the one that's best for you? How do you try and optimize that?

Yeah, and I call that, just put an acronym on it like abi Always be improving. You don't just do things, you do it and you reflect on now how could we do that better, quicker, faster, better. And that allows you to basically put a sharp edge, a sharper edge on yourself moving forward in the future. This has been great, John, thanks so much for sharing. I can't wait to get back and dig into some of your outlooks on different stages of your life you went through moving forward to where you are today. Thanks so much.

Thank you.