Parker Pfister | He Finds Art on Both Sides of His Lens

Twenty years ago, when Parker Pfister moved to Asheville, he made his living shooting photographs at the weddings of celebrities. Over the ensuing years, Pfister has explored his own curiosities, both through his viewfinder and in the darkroom.

His manipulated images resonate with dualities that convey multiple meanings and emotions. He’s a prolific photographer, and yet it’s surprising that only now is he seeing his first solo gallery exhibition, through Mars Landing Galleries in Mars Hill. The opening reception is Friday, November 1.

Here, I speak with Pfister about his unique approach to blending fine art with wedding photography, his fearless explorations into dangerous territory and the work he’s planning to show at Mars Landing Galleries. 

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Transcript

Matt Peiken: What was your photography like when you came to Asheville? 

Parker Pfister: At that time I was more of a celebrity photographer. I traveled I could live anywhere I wanted because I was, I was on a plane so I took 

Matt Peiken: celebrity photographer for who? For magazines or for? 

Parker Pfister: No, for weddings. So at weddings. Yeah. Wedding. 

Matt Peiken: You were a wedding photographer for celebrities? Yes. How did you get into that niche? 

Parker Pfister: Again, a wrong turn. Accidental, it seems like everything I just fall into, but I shot my first wedding in 1984 and I did several with my dad like that and it was like 300 bucks in a weekend and whatever, went off into my fine art world and then years later came back to wedding photography.

And I enjoyed the process. If I could put my fine art spin on it at that time, it was evolving where I could just do whatever I wanted in the wedding [00:03:00] world. And very quickly I made a name for myself, was like top 10 in the world in wedding photography and climbed to the top rung and, 

Matt Peiken: it's interesting to me that you talked about putting a fine art spin on your wedding photography and you were trying to do your fine art photography at the same time.

Have you always had the mindset, I have to earn a living so I'm going to do wedding photography, but my fine art is important to me. I'm always going to do that as well. It was always a blend of the two.

Parker Pfister: Yeah. It was a meal ticket for sure. But shot weddings a long time. It was beautiful and fun. And I love the people I met. I got to hang out with the coolest people in the world. Like George Clooney. I got to hang out with George Clooney. I drove him in my golf cart in Mexico because he was staying next to me. I was given JLo's house to stay in. So I was staying in JLo's house.

George was next to me. He needed a ride down to the beach. So I got George Clooney in my cart and I've always been good with [00:04:00] not being starstruck or anything. That's what made me really good at my job, because they were all NDAs and he grew up right across the river from me. So his dad, Nick Clooney was my weatherman.

Matt Peiken: That's right. He was Northern Kentucky.

Parker Pfister: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And so my dad and his dad actually knew each other because Nick was a fish guy. Okay. And my dad was the head of ichthyology in Ohio. So he did all the fish stuff. And so that's how, and I'm like, my dad and your dad actually knew each other. Your dad was my weatherman. He goes, no way. So we got in this awesome conversation down to the beach and it was great. 

Matt Peiken: So what were you doing with your fine art photography then at the time when you came to Asheville, what were you after? What were you looking for? You've done a wide variety of work with your fine art photography. So I want to get a sense of the evolution of what you were into, what was your motivation and where you've evolved. So what were you doing back then? 

Parker Pfister: It's always been driven by my curiosity. So whatever I'm interested in, like one [00:05:00] day I may be working on a series of decaying things in the world, decaying plants, decaying animals to decay. And then the next day I may be doing some high fashion thing. Like I'm all over the place and it just depends on what I'm interested in. 

Matt Peiken: Were you always doing both, like in nature and in the studio where, from high concept studio creations to just things you would find in nature, a hundred percent.

Really? That's interesting to me because I would think on one hand, that's while that's really liberating and just go where your flow takes you, I could see where you would have a difficult time getting traction with, let's say gallery curators, museum curators, and others who want to understand a deeper body of your work, and if you're all over the place, they may not know how to get traction with your work. Was that what was happening? 

Parker Pfister: Oh, I wasn't even trying. 

Matt Peiken: You weren't even trying. 

Parker Pfister: For me, it was all about me. I was selfish as, [00:06:00] and still am. When I go into a photo shoot, it's for me and people hire me because they love what I do, which was all done for me. So it just spins around and it spits out a product that they love, a piece that they love.

Matt Peiken: That's interesting to me that you said, I just do it for me, and because you always had your wedding photography, you didn't have to worry about earning a dollar with your fine art photography. So you just did it for the love.

Parker Pfister: I was a collector and I still am like I still have my pocket camera with me every day, always, and I make photos. Like out the door this morning, I had to make a photo of these granddaddy long legs in the corner of the door because it was interesting.

Matt Peiken: Is it one of those pocket Leica cameras or what kind of 

Parker Pfister: well, no, I had this for a while, but I have switched to a little old, vintage Ricoh GR2.

Matt Peiken: Now those do qualify as vintage today. Yeah, Yeah. Even though they're digital. 

Parker Pfister: I think they quit this and, yeah, it's digital. It is, I had the film version of this for [00:07:00] years. Yeah. And that's what turned me on to the to the digital version. Gosh, probably half of the show I'm getting ready to have was made with this little camera.

Matt Peiken: So you're just shooting whatever strikes your mind. You never sought out to have a gallery show or museum show. 

Parker Pfister: It was a dream, sure. And I loosely put it out there. In 1981, when I was 11, I won the world fair in second place next door over here in Knoxville.

And from that point on, I was just hooked with photography. It was just, it was my life. It was my air. I had my own dark room when I was eight years old and was doing crazy cibachrome stuff when I was nine or 10, which most people don't even know what that is now. 

Now I've done, oh my gosh, a lot of jobs. Until the weddings really started picking up, I've done everything you can imagine for work. I was a rescue, a firefighter, diver, EMT, I worked in a funeral home. I worked in a pheasant [00:08:00] farm. Like I've done a little bit of everything. So McDonald's.

Matt Peiken: Wow. I did McDonald's for two weeks.

Parker Pfister: I did two weeks. 

Matt Peiken: So. It didn't matter to you how you earned a living. You found a really fertile vein with the wedding photography. That proved lucrative. You were kind of circulating some high paying circumstances. And so that's fantastic. You finally did get some traction with your fine art photography. How did that even happen? And with what body? How did that happen? 

Parker Pfister: It actually happened through the wedding and portrait I was putting the spins on my portraiture and my weddings with this heavy fine art influence, whatever that is. It's whatever I said it was, I think. And, It was 2002, I guess, this world organization called WPPI, Wedding and Portrait Photographers International, which at that time was 40, [00:09:00] 000 people would show up in Las Vegas for this massive convention and they would have two rooms where two speakers were going. So each room would have over 20, 000 people and they're huge. 

So the first time I ever spoke in front of any photographers or about what I do was in front of 20, 000 people. And it was terrifying, but I got up and I watched several of the other presenters and I'm like, Oh my God, my work looks nothing like this.

They're going to laugh at me. They're just like, it's so. different here. And I, wow, like the head of Canon was actually in the audience. And that night I became what they call an explorer of light. They took me to dinner and it's you need to be our bridge between fine art and weddings. 

Matt Peiken: Because I imagine the wedding photographers association, their wedding photographers might have a stigma in a sense of, oh, they just do schlock, you know, that any photographer is the same as any other wedding photographer. Bottom of the barrel. And they're just [00:10:00] scraping for dollars, and so you, I get the sense that others saw, hey, this guy, Parker, lends a real artistic legitimacy to what we do. What were you doing with wedding photography, or maybe still continue to do with wedding photography, that was that bridge into the conceptual fine art world?

Parker Pfister: Oh my gosh. Letting go of The ideas and the rules, first of all, that everything has to be in focus. Everything has to be framed perfectly. You have to see all the highlights and all the shadows. You have to smile at the camera, you have to hold hands and your hand has to be turned in a certain angle and the light has to be this way. It can't be that way. It has to be this way.

And there's so many rules around that. And I didn't grow up with internet, of course, cause I'm 56 and we didn't have any conventions. So when I grew up, I learned from just doing. My dad was a scientist. My grandfather was an inventor and that's how I learned [00:11:00] everything.

When I go to my dad and ask him how to do something, he'd be like just go do it and find out how to do it. And I'm like, okay. So that's what I was doing with my photography. And I started doing wedding photography for me, and I promise my brides that I'm going to make something, whatever you've seen me do, I'm not going to do.

I want to do something different. I have no idea what it's going to be. I'd show up literally with this camera or one like it, and that's it. And get paid ridiculous amounts of money. And I'd show up with a pocket camera and they're like, do you need to unload your van back here? And I'm like, no, I'm good.

Matt Peiken: Did your wedding photography at all influence what you were wanting to do with your fine art photography? 

Parker Pfister: Oh yeah, I think it, it went back and forth. I for years called Weddings my whetstone, so it was to sharpen my knife. It was to sharpen, because I show up on wedding day, I get to be a landscape photographer, which I used to be, and still am.

I get to be a portrait photographer, which I used to be and still am. I get to be a documentary photographer. [00:12:00] I get to be the family's historian, which is a pretty big honor. And I get to see the people the way I see them, the way they are, not t he way they want to act in front of a camera. 

Matt Peiken: That's really interesting. I've seen some bodies of your work that they look like you're taking different photographs and merging them together. It's one thing to be In the studio and do things. It's one thing to be outside and do things. You're saying it doesn't matter what captures your eye. If something captures your eye, you shoot it, but that's not the end of your images. No, not by far.

Yeah. So talk about what happens after you shoot your images to create your artwork. 

Parker Pfister: Oh my gosh, I really started pushing hard and doing masking, double negatives in the dark room flipping things upside down and playing around with that. I shot on a large format camera, so I see the world upside down, so every photo I make is upside down to my eyes. And it [00:13:00] looks right to me. So why not display them like that? What if I just display half of the photo like that? So how can I do that? And then modern technology takes off and I switched, not completely, but I tried out digital in 1999. So I was a very early adopter. The first big Nikon digital camera SLR that came out, I had, and it was Awful, just absolutely awful. But it was also magical at the same time. 

Matt Peiken: Yeah. I can see where it would be attractive to you to just experiment with this new technology.Yeah. Yet you've never really abandoned film, right? Yeah.

Parker Pfister: I Still play with film. 

Matt Peiken: Yeah. What is the difference for you in terms of what you're after in terms of whether you're using film or doing digital? 

Parker Pfister: Well, I think a lot of it is process for me. It's ingrained within me. I see a radical difference between the two. It's getting closer and closer [00:14:00] with certain technique and attention to certain things.

You can get very close to film and where I'll even fool myself every once in a while now. I helped develop a couple softwares that are out there that Help mimic that. So now I can use either one. 

Matt Peiken: I noticed in your work, you yourself are a subject matter in quite a bit of your work.

Basically all of it. A lot of, okay. All of it. Why? 

Parker Pfister: It's my therapy. Photography is my therapy. I've been to a therapist a little bit and never really saw any value in it. I see more value in getting in nature and being curious and playing and understanding. And I see myself in a different way through that or meeting other people when I'm doing portraiture, it's all kind of a self portrait of how I would like to be or who I used to be or how can I help this person through me?

Matt Peiken: These are all tight portraits are for the most part, very tightly, [00:15:00] zoomed in portraits, very finally focused as well. And you could see the individual hairs in your beard and their mustache. You said this is therapy for you. I imagine you've accumulated a pretty large body of these portraits of yourself. What have you realized about yourself through this photography of yourself? 

Parker Pfister: To backtrack, I was speaking that almost every photograph I make is a self portrait, not a literal portrait of myself, but more of a a deeper understanding for me of What it is like it. When I'm photographing another person, it feels like I'm photographing, like how would I want to be seen? Looking like you look and knowing what I know and knowing your story I try to get to know everybody and it somehow it becomes like a portrait of myself 

Matt Peiken: Oh, I see what you mean. Yeah, not a literal self portrait, right? But there are a lot of self portraits in your [00:16:00] body of work and you said it's like therapy. So I was curious about that vein of your work and what you're studying about yourself through the accumulation of these self photos.

Parker Pfister: Oh my gosh. Comedy I think is deep in it. I have fun with the camera and myself, but it's more just watching myself grow as an artist and grow as a human. I've been through I'll just say the ringer in my life, like I've had some horrific accidents and been it's been a, it's been a long list of experiences.

Matt Peiken: These horrific accidents were, did they happen when you were much younger or have they happened periodically throughout your life, 

Parker Pfister: periodically throughout my life. 

Matt Peiken: Have they been like freak things or things that, wow, I was stupid to get myself into this situation?

Parker Pfister: Oh gosh. But a little bit of both. Yeah. I tend to be fearless of most things, except anxiety, which I'm terrified [00:17:00] from, which is just ironic. 

Matt Peiken: That is, I don't know how being fearless and having high anxiety coexist. 

Parker Pfister: Yeah, but fearless in a sense of I will go anywhere to photograph in anywhere, the barrios of Mexico and photograph prostitutes to get awareness around this is going on in the world.

This is, and being escorted out with AK 47s and it's been a wild ride. I'm not scared to go in and do the work. 

Matt Peiken: I'm surprised given that fearlessness that you didn't devote yourself more to photojournalism and going out into War zones or very dangerous parts of this world and shoot photography for time magazine or the New York times or the New Yorker.

I'm just curious. Why did that never really crossed your mind? 

Parker Pfister: It just didn't, it seemed like I would have to be working, I would have to be producing for someone. And for the longest time. I didn't think [00:18:00] I could do that outside of I don't even know what. It's I just, I want to do my thing. And every time I would work with an art director, they would push their thing, which I would make for them.

And then I would, it's can I have 15 minutes just to do what I want to do? And I did this for my weddings too. That's how it all got started. And I would just do 15 minutes and guess which ones they would always pick. They'd always pick mine. 

Matt Peiken: You said you didn't go to these places unless you were hired to do so. Tell me about the kinds of jobs that would bring you into these very dangerous places. What kind of work was this? 

Parker Pfister: I did a DP job in conjunction with Tribeca Films, and we spent three weeks, maybe a month in South Memphis, which at that time was the highest crime rate in the United States and got to see from the inside of like we couldn't even get a police escort in some of the places. They wouldn't even give us one. 

Matt Peiken: What were you shooting in South Memphis? 

Parker Pfister: It was [00:19:00] film. So we did a, 

Matt Peiken: what was the project? 

Parker Pfister: It was a, and it's still not out yet. Can you say what it's about? Yeah. Yeah. It's a, it's about this rise to stardom from the streets in modern dance. There's a dancer named Lil Buck, L I L Buck.

And the guy is like Mikhail Baryshnikov. Passed him the torch of the king of modern dance like the guy can levitate It's the most amazing things he can do. So I got brought on this project for a director of photography or Creative they didn't even know they came to town. They're like we just want your eye, We see what you can do. At that time, I wasn't doing anything with video I was doing stop motion weird shit for me. We went to Iceland first and so Iceland.

We went from 

Matt Peiken: Iceland to South Memphis? 

Parker Pfister: Yeah, so we spent three weeks, three weeks in Iceland, three weeks in South Memphis, and then it went to Washington D. C. for a while [00:20:00] too. But the dancer, little buck would go into the sewers to dance, to stay out of the gangs and not get killed. Like all his friends were killed. To this day it's still really rough. Wow. It's, Terrified, but he would, he, it's like, what did you envision down there when you were down there dancing in this sewer, like, where were you in your mind?

It's Oh, it was just beautiful. Just ice and just snow and just nothingness. And so we're like, we got to go to Iceland. So literally on a whim a week, I think advanced notice, we all flew to Iceland and started making a movie. 

Matt Peiken: What's the most dangerous situation you've been in as a photographer?

Parker Pfister: Oh my gosh I'd love to make a joke here and say it's the mother of the bride in New York when she thought I didn't show up to the ceremony because I'm very much a fly on the wall. And she was livid, like screaming at me after the ceremony. 

Matt Peiken: Okay, not counting wedding photography. Where have you been in the world [00:21:00] that , despite your fearlessness, you were in this situation that, in retrospect, you look back like, holy shit, this was a really weird dangerous place.

Parker Pfister: Probably Mexico, that, that time in Mexico, like It was pretty sketchy. Like they had vans blocking the alley so we couldn't get out. And yeah, it got nothing really, I didn't spend any jail time in Mexico, but I didn't speak Spanish, so it was a lot of back and forth and gun pointing and finger pointing and wanting to take my camera and it was, 

Matt Peiken: Were you by yourself?

Parker Pfister: We were a group of four that decided to split up. 

Matt Peiken: How long ago was this? 

Parker Pfister: Oh gosh, that was, Ooh, that was early two thousands. Okay. Yeah. 

Matt Peiken: Tell me about the body of work you're planning for Mars Landing Galleries. I find it really interesting that you've lived a really varied life through the lens of your camera, and probably outside that lens of your camera, through the viewfinder of your camera and [00:22:00] outside the viewfinder of your camera.

And this is going to be your first real big solo exhibition. Why do you think it's taken this long for you and given this body of work that you've amassed to have your first solo exhibition, was it just something you just never really sought out? 

Parker Pfister: No, I didn't really seek it out and I felt like it wasn't my time yet. And I've had some big opportunities. My stuff has been in the United Nations, It's been in the Mayor's Summit in Mexico City, the Royal Palace in Thailand for Climate awareness and all this is revolving around climate awareness.

And so it's been around the world hanging, a hundred photographs that changed the world. And then after that it became 50 photographs. And I had two of my photographs in there hanging between Sebastian Sogato and Steve McCurry, which is, that's my pinnacle, right? So I didn't even, I don't need a solo show. I got to hang next to Sebastian Sogato. 

Matt Peiken: But you have one coming up at Mars [00:23:00] Landing in Mars Hill. Tell me about the work you're going to bring. Is any of it new and never been seen? Is some of it very 

Parker Pfister: old? More than half of it. It is I think there's going to be about 30 pieces. More than half of it has never been seen by anybody, like my lady friend and that's it. And it's really exciting. I've been pushing really hard for this. It's a body of work that, wow, I get to tell a story. I get to ask questions with. 

Matt Peiken: You said you get to tell a story. What is the connecting thread if there is one through most, if not all of this work?

Parker Pfister: So the thread connected through is that they are all reflected back at me again. Like they're all my struggles and my self portraits. Although I use other people to depict what I have gone through. They're not single photographs either. Each photograph is actually a merging of two or more photographs.

Matt Peiken: That's what I was alluding to [00:24:00] earlier, right? You're merging of photographs and what you're trying to achieve after the shoot to create an image. 

Parker Pfister: So these days a merging of a photograph seems computer animated, right? You do it in the computer. And I went back to my old way of doing things to making a physical tactile print.

And then what can I do with this print now that it's done? I've done all the toning. I've done all the sloppy borders and all the things you can do to a print. It's whoa, Why can't I have prints talk to one another? How do I do that? I put them next to each other and it's one of one's tone this way and one's tone this and what does that say?

And it's that's not working. So then, it ended up being a scrap pile of stuff ripped up. And I started playing around with laying prints on top of one another. And some of the information has gone off of one print and added information from another print is put behind it. And all of a sudden these new narratives and new dialogues that were Really stronger than the single photograph was, [00:25:00] that was ever meant to be made.

And it really gets deep. It gets deep into religion. It gets deep into politics, definitely the human condition. The human mental condition for sure. 

Matt Peiken: You said a lot of this for you is about process and I'm wondering, do you think it comes across tangibly to the eye afterward, that the difference between making an image in your studio after the fact using real darkroom techniques versus doing it all digitally, is there a difference that ends up tangibly in the print itself?

Parker Pfister: To some, yes. To some, no. Like to me, there, there is a different these are all digitally printed but they're printed on a technology. It's basically the same printer the Smithsonian uses to do all their stuff. It's a 12 pigment printer. So it's 12 color pigment printer. 

Matt Peiken: Now, this being your first solo exhibition, do you now have a desire [00:26:00] to be collected to be, is this something that now to be, to lean more into the fine art world versus wedding photography, is that something that's motivating you? 

Parker Pfister: Yeah, I have several collectors that have collected my stuff over the years. Many actually, but to have it in public, this is all people that know me, people that know this stuff.

They have this vision of me. Yeah. Someday this is going to be worth a lot more than I paid for it. So that's great. And to have it here in my home, which is lovely. It's the first podcast I've been on in Asheville in 20 years. So thank you. 

Matt Peiken: I don't know that podcasting has been around for 20 years.