Andrew Putschoegl — What Is An Artist?
I met Andrew Putschoegl, a photographer born in the U.S. and now living in Berlin, at Château Orquevaux during our 2022 artist residency in France. And even though I struggled to truly connect with all of my fellow artists during my two weeks there (due to issues that are outside of the purview of this essay), Andrew was someone whose presence was a refuge from that storm. He was deeply kind, very approachable and unflinchingly curious about the world around him. Our conversation in the chateau meandered through various topics, including masculinity, risk-taking and vulnerability. And at one point, I realised I was going to ask him to walk with me into the forest and photograph me with my clothes off. Which was a extraordinary thing for me to even contemplate, having never felt comfortable in my own body. And it was also a first step for him, having only ever photographed men in the nude before. That moment distilled everything about Andrew: his generosity, his innate gentleness, and his rare gift for turning vulnerability and intimacy into beautiful art.
Being in front of a great photographer is its own kind of surrender. Even after a couple of glasses of wine at dinner, my body felt stiff and unsure, caught between wanting to perform and wanting to disappear. It wasn’t until I broke Andy’s gaze and offered myself fully to the lens (skin bare, unguarded, exposed, head tilted back) that something real emerged. In that moment, I stopped posing and let myself be.
Here’s a little challenge for you: can you guess the exact moment in our interview when I made that decision? Let’s begin.
Hi Andrew. So tell me, what is an artist?
I think the definition of the word artist is something that, personally, I’ve struggled with. So to me, an artist is someone who creates anything that catches the attention, creates inspiration, or in some way moves the person who is experiencing it.
So what makes Andrew an artist?
Going back to the struggling, for a long time I felt I didn’t deserve the title of artist, but I think now that I’ve created enough work in my life that people have responded to — mostly positively, sometimes negatively, and I’d rather have extremes of both of those — that I feel comfortable calling myself an artist across multiple mediums.
So what was the struggle about? Why did you not feel comfortable being called an artist?
I felt that the word artist, as applied to me — not to anybody else, but just to me — felt pretentious. I used to think of an “artist” as somebody who was a fine artist, a painter, somebody who took a long time to create something. It needed to gestate, it needed to be on canvas. It had to take hours, or days, or weeks. A photograph can take a fraction of a second. How is that art when somebody else spends weeks creating something? But it is. They’re both… it’s all art.
But it took you a while to get to that point?
It took me a while to get there, and be comfortable with that.
And was there an epiphany, or was it just a slow realisation of, I have created enough and I have done the work so therefore, I am an artist?
I’ve gone back and forth over the years because, I think like many artists, we deal with imposter syndrome, and questioning whether we have any right to be doing what we’re doing. There are so many people who are, quote unquote, better than us, or more deserving than us. And so it was getting comfortable with the idea that the work I’m doing has a place in the world, and that there are people who appreciate it. And that there’s enough reason for me to continue pursuing that.
Can you tell us about something new that you’re working on that no one has seen yet?
On the filmmaking side of things, I always have half-a-dozen, a dozen, projects at various stages of development. So yes, I have one project I’ve been working on for 20 years. I have another project that I’ve been working on for two years, with a writing team. And then on the photography side, I’m hoping that the body of work that I have created so far, specifically related to the male form, and gender and sexuality, is something that I can find an outlet for. Galleries, exhibitions, prizes, competitions. And I’d like for people to know my work, and to thus know me. There’s a lot of that work that hasn’t been seen by very many people, outside of a small core group.
You mentioned working with male gender and sexuality. Tell me more about what you’ve done with that, and where you’d like to take it.
Sure, I think it’s kind of an evolving process for me to describe it, and to understand it, even for myself. But I think that being here, at the Chateau, has helped me to gain more clarity in terms of what this means to me, and to hopefully be able to project it to the outside world. I struggled for a long time to show it to anyone, because I was concerned that it could very easily be misinterpreted. And I have to let that go. Because that’s art. People will bring to it their own feelings and thoughts and ideas, and that’s nothing I can control. That’s nothing that reflects on me, or the work. I can put it out there, and I can explain myself. But sometimes it’s just about putting it out there and letting other people decide what it means to them.
But to me, it’s exploring the male form in a way that has both eroticism, in some cases, and intrigue. And hopefully it has some degree of being captivating, something that people want to see. I mean, I’m a gay man. I think there’s definitely an audience of gay men who would want to see this work. I also think that there’s probably a broader audience that would also appreciate it. It’s just a question of how they discover it.
What are your goals for the future? What would you like to achieve artistically and professionally? Are you happy with where you’re at? You did mention that you wanted to get into galleries, and to be seen, but is there anything else that you’d like to achieve?
Yeah, I think that I thrive on relationships, and getting to know new people and having deep, meaningful conversations with people who have a shared passion or experience in life, and getting to understand how they came to that space and that place. So for me, it’s an ongoing, lifelong thing. There are goals — short-term and long-term — but achieving them doesn’t mean it’s over. Something new will come up, or I will continue to work and evolve and develop. And the work that I did ten years ago will be very different to the work that I’m doing today, which will be very different from the work I’ll be doing in ten years. So I think that it’s continuing to explore subjects that I find intriguing, continuing to expand that for myself and my audience. And, telling stories through my work, whether that’s film or photography, bringing a point of view and perspective and continuing to shape that and make that evolve.
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Tell us about someone who has inspired you artistically, whether it was someone that you knew personally or someone whose work you’ve admired along the way.
That’s a great question because I can’t say that there’s just one person, as far as photography goes. It’s kind of an amalgamation of multiple people whose work I have admired. I can name one artist in particular, Mona Kuhn. A friend of mine introduced me to her work through one of her books of photography. I found myself lost in her images, and the sort of gentleness and warmth that emanated from them. And I find a lot of inspiration in that. I think that she has a perspective that comes from a place of authenticity and kindness. So that’s what I get from her work, and that’s what I hope to emulate in mine. And she has explored some similar thematic and subject-oriented pieces. So I think she’s probably someone who, in my recent past, has been an inspiration for the work I continue to do.
Were you always interested in photography? Was there a standout moment that sparked your interest?
I grew up always knowing that I was interested in filmmaking. And it feels to me that photography is both a natural extension, and a parallel art form, to that. I say that one of the things I love most about filmmaking is the collaboration. I could be on a set with a hundred other people, and we’re all working together towards this end goal. Whereas photography is more of a solo experience, or it can be two people — the photographer and the subject. And I think that after many years as a filmmaker, playing with photography as a way of expressing myself creatively, in a way that didn’t involve other people having input, felt maybe a little bit more pure. It also felt a little bit more vulnerable, because if somebody liked it, or didn’t like it, it was all on me. There was nobody else, no excuse. If a film doesn’t work, it often falls on the director’s shoulders but you still have a lot of other people who share responsibility. So I felt very vulnerable, especially moving into photographing people.
When did you do that?
That was about four or five years ago. But I started with a proper camera. I’d always had point-and-shoot cameras going back 20 years, but I really got more serious about my gear about ten years ago. And about five years ago I said, yes, I think I can start doing portrait work. And everything that encompasses.
And you obviously enjoy it.
Yeah, yeah. I love it. It’s finding those moments, and seeing people in a way that’s different to how they see themselves. And often in a way that is different to how other people perceive them.
You show them something about themselves that they’ve never seen. Or that, maybe, no-one has ever seen. That’s a gift.
I think we often see photos of ourselves, and more often than not, most of us don’t like it. So I think it is a gift. I have found on occasion, a photo of myself that makes me think, “Oh, I love this. This feels authentic. I like the composition, and the lighting, and the feeling that I get from seeing this.” And as a photographer, I love giving that experience to other people.
I imagine that’s so rewarding. It’s such a rare thing, for a lot of people, to have a photo of themselves that they actually love. Not everyone, of course, some people are just naturally photogenic.
Or narcissists [laughs]. Or both.
So tell me about your training. What kind of formal, or informal, training have you had? Any self-teaching, or life experiences, that have added to your skill set.
Sure, so training, training, training. That could be a 45 minute answer, because I think that training is something that is ongoing through life, right. When I was much younger, about ten, I started taking a class in video production. And I worked on several films, in Minnesota. When I was about 16 — there was a lot happening then — I had an opportunity to attend a workshop at USC. And when I was 17, I went to film school. I worked on a film in between my sophomore and junior year. That was far more valuable to me as an educational experience than sitting in a classroom.
I’ve had mentors, I’ve had professors, I’ve had teachers in my life; and continue to have all of those people in my life. And I think that training can be anything from sitting in a classroom and learning, to watching a YouTube tutorial, to having a one-on-one conversation with an expert in their field, to self exploration. You know, I’ve learned as much from trying things as I have from reading about somebody else doing it. And I think that’s just about play — trying things, discovering things — even if other people have already perfected them. If you come to that on your own, that’s just as valuable. It doesn’t matter if other people have done it before. Or, maybe other people do something that inspires you to try something new, and you grow from that. And the next time you want to do it, you build upon it. So for me, training in the arts is something that I have been fortunate enough to have always had in some way, shape or form.
What advice would you give to yourself when you first started pursuing filmmaking, or photography, in a more serious way. And what advice would you give to any young person wanting to get into these fields? Would that advice be different or the same?
I think a lot of it would overlap, or be the same. Looking back at when I started, and was maybe tiptoeing a little bit into it — dipping a toe in the water — I would tell myself, and any young person who’s looking to get into any of these art forms, to just play and create. And don’t worry about all of the bad photos you’re going to take. More of them are going to be bad than good. You could shoot 500 photos and get only one that you like. But it’s that one that you like that you’re going to remember, and that other people are going to remember. I have 120,000 photos on my drive, from 15 years of work. And most of them are terrible or just not good enough.
That’s mindboggling. Do you ever delete them?
I get rid of some, but others I don’t. And I may never revisit them. They may just be lost to the digital dustbin. When I’m going through them, there are some that are very clearly like… just get rid of it, get rid of it, get rid of it. And others that, if I went through them now… I could easily delete many more. So, it’s just a matter of having time. It’s just easier to keep them. And storage is cheap, time isn’t.
Do you think of yourself more as a filmmaker or more as a photographer?
I probably think of myself more as a filmmaker, because that’s my day-to-day life. But because projects can take so long to gestate and come to fruition (if ever) the photography has become more important in my life as a creative outlet. And so it is something I seek out more actively, perhaps, than some of the filmmaking at this point, because it can be done relatively quickly. The results can be seen much faster than a film. I don’t know if it will overtake my passion for film. I don’t think so, but never say never. And we’ll see what happens.
What kind of films have you made?
I’ve made a whole lot of films, from feature length narrative films, feature documentaries, short films, short documentaries, music videos, commercials, public service announcements, digital work, comedies, dramas. I don’t like to think of myself as being in a box. I don’t like to watch just one kind of film. And I don’t love to make just one kind of film. I think there’s something beautiful about a feature film that could take two or three years, or more, to be produced and completed. Whereas a music video might take one day to film, and it might be finished a week later and out in the world. So I have a balance of the needs for immediate gratification, and delayed gratification.
So, when you say you’re a filmmaker, does that mean you’re the director, or the screenwriter? Are you the cinematographer? Or are you an auteur, someone who does it all?
I have capabilities in multiple roles because I’ve been fortunate enough to have fulfilled multiple roles in my life. So I direct, I produce, I edit and I shoot. I wouldn’t call myself a Director of Photography per se. When I’m shooting things, it’s usually more documentary-style or interviews, things like that. But editing could be anything. Directing could be anything. Producing could be anything.
Do you write?
I don’t write. I don’t love the process of writing as much. But I do love the process of collaborating with writers.
Bringing their vision to reality.
Yeah.
You can’t do it all, right?
No, exactly. If you know your strengths and stick to them, then I think that makes you stronger. And I think that being an editor and director are my strengths, and writing is something I find very frustrating. And I’m in awe of people who can do it well.
All photos courtesy of Andrew Putschoegl (except the one I took of him, at top).
Incidentally, Andrew also took, and has kindly allowed me to use, the photo of me that appears in my Substack banner.❤️
