Richard - Photography was not a big priority while I was growing up. I was just an average hobby snapshot photographer. I suppose like many of us, I took my first pictures when I was a child, with a small Kodak Brownie I received as a Christmas present when I was 5. I did not know from the beginning that I wanted to be a photographer, I just liked taking pictures and it became a hobby. My father too loved photography, but perhaps he loved playing with many different cameras as much as the results. Though he loved Photography, She did not return his affections.

My childhood was comfortable enough, but we moved around a lot, which is difficult for a child and for me rather lonely. My father's career - he was a sales representative in the clothing business - took us all over the States. I was constantly starting over in a new town and a new school. I grew up in very different regions both physically and culturally within the continent that is the United States. As a small child, we were in four different towns in northern Ohio, geographically mostly flat plain, farmland mixed with industrial cities and the Great Lakes ports on the north. When I was 9 we moved west to Salt Lake City, Utah, a big valley surrounded by high, snow-covered peaks. There I grew up in the peculiar atmosphere of the center of the Mormon Church. It is a very conservative though outdoors-y sort of place. (We heard about the turmoils of "the Sixties" but they were mostly going on somewhere else.) However, I still have fond memories of skiing November to March and taking vacations all over the West of the United States, one of the most varied and magnificent natural regions of the world. Finally settling in Phoenix, Arizona, when I was 16, I finished high school in the much more open atmosphere of the suburban desert Southwest. There I attended Arizona State University and then the American Graduate School of International Management, earning those degrees you mention.

Following the formal education was a series of lack-luster jobs in assorted businesses: international shipping clerk in Texas, export manager for an industrial firm in Pennsylvania, even briefly a security guard to keep the rent paid, finally landing in Louisville, Kentucky in 1980 as a children's clothing salesman. When this too ended badly at the beginning of 1984, I told a friend who'd run a fine art photography school in Louisville that I was thinking of becoming a photographer. His advice: "Don't! You shouldn't be a photographer unless there is nothing else you can do." He was right. I am simply unable to do anything else. So armed with ignorance and courage, I went forth and proceeded to starve for a couple of years. I went to the Library and devoured everything about photography, especially looking at photographers' monographs and deciding whom and what I really liked. It wasn't easy, as I was but a talented amateur with the art but not the craft. But I had a few breaks early on and for the first time was prepared when Chance chose to favor me, something I had never been.

Those first few years were my 'starving artist' period. I was indeed hungry and got so far behind in my rent that I nearly got thrown out into the street. But I began a career as a public relations and public event photography and in a couple of years began to earn enough to be able to eat regularly and to build a reputation. In 1986, the biggest break came: I became one of the official photographers for the Kentucky Derby Festival, the biggest series of events in that state's event calendar, and America's most prestigious horse race. Through the Festival work I met all the corporations in the region and within a couple of years was as busy as I could handle with corporate work, specializing in public relations, public events, portraiture and performing arts photography.

Nick - Your project 'Big Hair and True Love' has been a favorite of mine since I first saw it, it captures wonderfully an aspect of the cultural life of the midwest states at a period in our recent cultural history that we all look back at with a slight embarrassment. Can you tell us about the circumstances in which you made those pictures?

'Sacred Reich' 1991: Richard Bram

Richard - "Big Hair and True Love" grew out of the 12 years I spent shooting for the Kentucky Derby Festival. Several of the two-week-long series of events preceding the first Saturday in May were outdoor beer gardens with music stages at two or three locations around Louisville. Early on, one of my regular assignments was to cover these KDF "Chow Wagons." The best shooting and the biggest crowds were at night which means flash. I also shot other outdoor events around town, especially the downtown Strassenfest and the Kentucky State Fair, both of which took place annually in late Summer, and had similar atmospheres, especially once the sun went down. All three events contributed to what became "Big Hair & True Love." The Chow Wagon and Strassenfest photos, being commercial assignments, were generally made with one of my two workhorses, the Nikon F2 or Leica M3 with a big melt-yer-eyeballs Vivitar 283 flash. The State Fair photos, however, being just for myself and usually with friends along, were made with a little Olympus XA rangefinder and its own tiny-but-powerful attached flash. This camera is small, light, unobtrusive and doesn't attract attention, as opposed to the big pro camera that screams "Here's the Photographer!" especially after you set off a powerful flash. However, when you use a flash, large or small, you only get one shot - the flash fires, everyone knows you're there and you have to move.

'Corn Dogs' 1993 image: Richard Bram

People came to hear the music, but more than anything else it was an excuse to meet one's friends and hang out on a warm evening, eat bad food, drink beer, cruise and check out the opposite sex. Louisville is an odd cultural mix of Midwest and South. Relatively close to Nashville, the biggest direct cultural influence is the world of country music, which in the early 90's when most of the pictures were made still meant peroxide and lots of hairspray for women - i.e. Big Hair - and lots of mullets or heavy-metal haircuts for guys. I'm not particularly into country music nor were most of my peers. But I found this whole scene fascinating because it was a different tribe to mine, a generally blue-collar culture as opposed to my suburban middle-class background, to observe with curiosity, amusement, and wonder. Also, as I was 10-15 years older than most of the crowd, there was perhaps a bit of longing for those younger years now past. I didn't see all these photos as a particularly distinct body of work, however, until 1993. I was labeling negative pages from that week's Festival shoot and scrawled on top of one page "24 Apr 93 - Waterfront Chow Wagon, Saturday Night: Stalking Mall Hair + true luv." [I'm looking at that page as I type]

'Shades' 1993 image: Richard Bram

'Chicken' 1993 image: Richard Bram

Nick - It's fairly rare to see this kind of observed photography illuminated by a flash; it reminds me a little of some of Winogrand's "Public Relations" images. Is there a reason that you haven't employed this method again as it was so successful with this project?

Richard - The correlation with Winogrand's "Public Relations" cannot be avoided. Though separated by 20 years and in different locales, we were both doing essentially the same thing: taking public relations photographs for a sponsor paying us to record an event. It means using flash, working with carefully scripted schedules, making sure you get what the sponsor, who has hired and will hopefully pay you, wants. However, what sets Winogrand's work apart is his equal willingness to take the photograph that the sponsor definitely does not want to see: the off-script moment, the uncomfortable confrontation, someone obviously not at their best, not smiling, exposed and vulnerable. When I was first studying in the library I kept looking at Winogrand's work and wondering why would anyone take such ugly photos? Who would want to see that? After two or three years of PR work, I saw those same uncomfortable, off-script moments occur in front of me and I took them too.

In most of my personal work, however, I have very rarely used flash under any circumstance, both for the reason that it attracts immediate attention as well as that it destroys the ambient light that drew me to the scene in the first place. What moves me to click a shutter is what I see unfolding in front of me, and I see it in available light, not lit by a flash. I also dislike, even fear the reaction one gets from a subject who would otherwise be unaware that I’d made a photograph. If you set a flash off in someone’s face, blinding them momentarily without permission, it is an inherently hostile act and will often engender an equally hostile response. I'm not trying to emulate the work of Bruce Gilden, for example. I am rarely hostile toward the subjects of my photographs and really do not want to disturb them from whatever they were doing at the moment I made their picture.

'Great American Hog' 1993 image: Richard Bram

'Iron Maiden' 1993 image: Richard Bram

'Genuine Draft' 1993 image: Richard Bram

'Silver Bullet' 1993 image: Richard Bram

'Tasmanian Devil' 1993 image: Richard Bram

Nick - Martin Parr's flash-lit observations of the working classes at play seem so cruel and condemning. His approach has been described as capturing the 'derisive moment.' How have you managed to maintain a playful affinity with the people in these pictures?

Richard - We differ in our opinions of this part of Martin Parr's work. Though I'd first seen some of his work in Aperture before I left the States, when I moved to Britain in 1997 I immediately noticed the same uncomfortable things that Parr photographed in "The Last Resort:" The grottiness of resorts, people throwing litter on the ground while standing next to a bin, sunburned pale people in front of over-priced tatty shopworn seaside attractions. He turned the same sharp eye on the middle classes in "The Cost of Living," which engendered even a bigger outcry, as he was looking at those who write letters to editors or might even be the editors. His work evoked the same reaction in Britain as Frank's "The Americans" and Winogrand's "Public Relations" did in America in their time. (My mother would think both books horrible and not worth the paper they were printed on. However, my late father, a quick, sharp and usually accurate observer of people, recognized the genius in "The Americans.") While "Public Relations" doesn't bother you, it bothered me a lot at first. "The Last Resort" spoke to me, but repelled you. I photographed a lot of middle- and upper-class cocktail parties and receptions in my Louisville PR years and recognized the same things Parr put in "The Cost of Living." It all depends upon whose ox is being gored.

That said, I'm not usually hostile to the people I photograph. When doing formal PR work, I am conscious that they have invited me into their places of work and homes and feel that I owe them a measure of civility for this. They are also paying me for being there and biting the feeding hand is never a good policy. Also, I have always been somewhat of an outsider wherever I've lived and am conscious of rarely being included in the phrase "one of us." Being both curious about and a little wary of those among whom I move, I do not want to offend, and feel bad if I do, especially if they have done nothing to offend me. So while I may get a bit hostile and snarl if I'm sleep-deprived and my blood sugar level is on the floor from not eating enough protein, I still don't want to hurt anyone or portray them as something they are not or to put too much of my own psychological judgments on to them. I'd much rather make people laugh than irritate them.

'Pine Street, Yankees Parade' 2009 Image: Richard Bram

'Baseball Cap, Yankees Parade' 2009 Image: Richard Bram

(An exception: Last November the New York Yankees won the American Baseball World Series and a proper New York City ticker-tape parade was duly arranged for a few days later so that the team, its coaches, staff and retainers could be feted by the fans up Broadway to City Hall where they would get a pat on the head from the Mayor. On the morning of the big parade, my wife and I were awakened at 5:30 AM by drunken, shouting and hooting fans in the streets 25 floors below. I could see the police barriers all going into place in anticipation of a big crowd. About 8:30 I grabbed the XA, flash and three rolls of film, bundled up against the bitter cold and went out feeling sleep-deprived, hostile and in need of a good breakfast into the quickly-growing crowd to shoot. I used the flash for all the exposures I made that morning, very close in, squeezing through what became a real crush of bodies as the hour of the parade approached. The series does have a different feel to my regular work.)

'Unbutton My Fly' image: Richard Bram

While my upbringing makes me cringe at the sartorial taste of a young girl who goes out wearing a t-shirt that says "Un-Button my Fly" on it, I didn't make her wear it, I just chose to record it and the little drama of body language between her and her boyfriend on the State Fair Midway. I'm actually more interested in the relationship between these two young people as an example of the angst of growing up and of relationships everywhere. The young, being less adept at hiding their emotions, make it all easier for a jaded middle-aged photographer like me to see and record it.

I've always believed that our psychological states are reflected in the art that we make, no matter what the medium may be. Perhaps for a photographer not in an individual image, but looking through a few months' contact sheets or the modern digital equivalent can give one an insight in to the state of mind of that photographer. Most of what became "Big Hair & True Love" was shot in 1993 and 1994. I was going through a personal crisis that led in June of 1993 to the ending of a 5-year relationship. Looking back on this I see the state of my emotional psyche reflected in the photographs I made at that time. In many of them I see a peculiar combination of anger at and longing for one younger woman in particular, women in general, a relationship, a love of my own, for my lost youth.

In the Summer of 2007, I found myself again In Kentucky at State Fair time. On a very hot Saturday night I took my old XA and its flash and went out to the Midway to see what I could see. I shot a couple of rolls of film and got some good images, but not yet enough for a project. they are different though - Big Hair is gone, replaced by big bellies and hip-hop clothes. Kids are still cruising, though, eating bad food and checking out the opposite sex.

Nick - Having recently returned from Europe to the US to live in New York, do you find it a noticeably different experience shooting on the streets of NYC to those of London?

Richard - Both yes and no is the answer. In some ways, it is easier to work on the streets here in New York as it is so crowded that no one notices you. There are more neuroses on view per square yard of ground than any place I've ever been, so who notices another guy with a camera in a city swarming with tourists? The police aren't pulling Section 44 notices on anyone caught suspiciously taking pictures of the Empire State Building or a Papaya Dog storefront.

However, people are a bit more suspicious than they used to be and there are a lot more 'No Photography' signs everywhere. After eight years of the government telling them to always be afraid, the Terrorists are out to get them, the general background level of paranoia is higher. Private security guards are more hostile and full of themselves than they used to be, and seem to feel, as they do in London, that they own not only the territory of the building that hired them but the public sidewalks around as well. But with all that, it generally seems more relaxed in terms of walking around with a small camera and making photographs than it seems to have become in London. I've even taken pictures of policemen and had them smile at me and pose! Now there is a difference.

Thanks to Richard for taking the time to speak with me and you can see more of his work over on his site.

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