Jennifer Yoffy  00:06

Welcome to Perfect Bound. I'm Jennifer Yoffy, the founder and publisher of Yoffy Press in Atlanta, Georgia. This is a podcast where we talk to artists about their journey, how they got where they are, what right and wrong turns they made along the way, and where they're heading next. Andres Gonzalez is an educator and visual artist whose current work engages with in depth research to investigate relationships between ritual, memory, and place within the American social landscape. He's published two books Somewhere in 2012, which was made over a decade while living in Istanbul, and American Origami in 2019, which won the Lightwork Photo Book award and was shortlisted for the Paris Photo Aperture Book Awards. He's received recognition from the Pulitzer Center, the Alexia Foundation, and as a Fulbright Fellow. His work has been exhibited at the San Francisco Museum of Art, the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, The Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, and the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago, where he's also collaborated with the Columbia College Theatre department and members from Tectonic Theater Project in a theatrical adaptation of American Origami. Please welcome Andreas Gonzales to the podcast. What are you doing in Chicago?

Andres Gonzalez  01:32

So I'm here in Chicago. Because this exhibition I was in at the Museum of Contemporary Photography, called American Epidemic: Guns in America. It's a group show and I proposed an idea to stage a kind of performance of American Oregon, I didn't know what that was like. I just talked to Karen about it, thought I, you know, it could evolve in some kind of performative piece. And, over a period of a year, it evolved into a collaboration with two members of this theatre company called Tectonic Theater Project out of New York. And I'm working with a director named Jimmy Maize, and the Columbia College Theatre Department to produce a theatrical adaptation of American Origami. And it's really interesting in that for me, I have completely given over this project that I held, in this book that I held so tightly for so long, I kind of gave it over to a group of creative people to dismantle, completely, like, deconstruct and use a completely different creative process to reconstruct it. And, you know, it's even to the point where I've, like, I'm a character in the play. As the author of the work, we decided we really wanted the students to have a lot of agency in creating the production. And, they decided, and I was involved in the script, the script writing, but mostly as a consultant, I mean, I really did give the work over to this group, to, to work with. And the students decided they wanted to, they created a set where it takes place almost in this dream like archive, so there's all the materials there in pictures, and they scanned a lot of the book and, and made photographs of the artifacts. And they're using projectors, these school projectors that, you know, project texts on the wall for students in classrooms. They're using two of them to create this, this, this kind of dreamlike archival, you know, they're like all these little worker elves are looking through the material and discovering the stories and discovering interviews with people. And what's really beautiful about the way it's structured is they all approach the audience and they speak to the audience as themselves, as you know, as themselves discovering this work, but over the term over over the hour long play, the students begin to embody the characters that they discover, and they turn into these these different people that I interviewed. And as they're doing that they they are also engage in dialogue with with each other. And so the audience disappears. And you just see these, these students become the people I interviewed, and, and they cut the interviews in a way, like they kind of found moments in the interviews, where these different characters are talking to each other in a dialogue. And it's all very fluid. Like, at one point, there's maybe four or five different characters on stage. And they're all talking to each other, through these interviews that I did, and it becomes very surreal, and no, and this swirl, this just swirl of voices and images.

Jennifer Yoffy  05:43

Yeah, wow!

Andres Gonzalez  05:45

And it's really beautiful the way they did it.

Jennifer Yoffy  05:47

And it's being recorded?

Andres Gonzalez  05:49

It is being recorded, I'm not sure when they're going to post it online, but it is going to be recorded.

Jennifer Yoffy  05:56

It's so fascinating, because I mean, so we talked about your book as very dense, there's a lot there, it was on my coffee table for months and months, because I would just pick it up and go through a bit at a time. So it's interesting, you know that to have a different experience of the work and the concept into an hour long performance.

Andres Gonzalez  06:20

Yeah, that's that's been, what's the most amazing thing for me is to experience my own work in a way that I could never have come up with on my on my own, and it and it makes me engage with the material in a totally different way. I mean, you know, the movements on stage, and the way that these different characters are speaking to each other. You know, in my head, as I was making the book, I'm like, Oh, these, there's all these different echoes, there's like these echoes of different ideas and narratives, and experiences, kind of flowing through all these different interviews and these little vignettes that I that I put in the book. And I was I kind of want the real, like, it takes a really close reader to find those. But when you see it on stage, it all kind of comes together. Like all those ideas start to weave together in this way. That's very experiential, as opposed to intellectual. I mean, it is, it is like, it is kind of kind of brainy the way they they did it. You really have to kind of pay attention. But it's much more experiential. I feel like you walk in and you're being rained on for, you know, an hour with like this, you know, just being soaked in it and soaked in all the material. And it's, it's, it was really, it's really great for me as an artist to be able to experience my own work in this totally new format, I feel like it just has kind of blown my mind a little bit.

Jennifer Yoffy  08:05

Yeah, I love that. Well, I have some questions about the American Origami work. So this is a good lead in. So you were living abroad and then you returned to the US in 2012, just a couple of weeks before the Sandy Hook shooting. That event set you on a course, which eventually became the American Origami work. And I was curious what effect you felt with the timing. So coming back to this country after observing it kind of from across the world, what effect that had on your perception of the state of America and the gun violence here.

Andres Gonzalez  08:45

Yes, you know, Carolyn and I (Carolyn Drake my partner) we were abroad for a pretty long time. On and off. We were first in Ukraine, and we moved to Istanbul. And we were there you know, during the Bush years and weapons of mass destruction. It wasn't like the it wasn't the best time. I mean, now looking back at it well, to say it wasn't the best time to be an American abroad, especially, you know, I was traveling a lot for work and, you know, taking, you know, dipping in the Middle East and and it wasn't, you know, I felt like, if at first I wanted to be defensive, you know, maybe my default was be a little defensive of America. That broke down pretty quickly. As we were living abroad, but then Obama got elected, and that that was a huge mental shift as far as like what it felt like for me to be, you know, an American. So when we came back, I still had this feeling of I don't know, like, there was like a, I felt like there was a sea change happening. And, and so coming back, I really thought I was gonna do something a little more uplifting about, you know, coming home. I felt strange from, um, but yeah, when two weeks after I moved back and it just totally, it totally turned me around and just really, you know, I felt like I just put this dark cloud over anything creative that I wanted to do. And I became really interested in, in this phenomenon. Not necessarily in gun violence broadly, but I became really interested in this phenomenon of, of mass shootings, and especially mass shootings in schools, just children killing children and, and why it was so prevalent in the United States. So I started following the, you know, what was happening politically around gun control, and, and I, I just kind of fell into... I hate to use the word obsessed, but I really did become extremely concerned and interested in all things surrounding the Sandy Hook shooting. And, you know, part of it, I think, was that the emotions from that day when that happened, were so extreme. And partly, it's from, you know, moving back feeling a little uncomfortable in my skin. We moved to Mississippi, right after Istanbul to a small town, and, `I was just like, you know, there's this like, cultural shift and, and just feeling a little alienated. And, and not it's not exactly what I expected coming home, especially after the Sandy Hook shooting. So, four months later, universal background checks didn't pass in Congress and that's when that's really when I start to dig into the research and, and read about, you know, the history of gun control and why this shit just can't (sigh) why we why we can't just use common sense around this.

Jennifer Yoffy  12:50

Right, why we can just pull it together and come up with a solution.

Andres Gonzalez  12:56

Yeah, and I just, I just started reading a lot. And, and at that point, it wasn't really a project. I didn't, it was just like an interest. And I and I kept telling myself, I can't like, like, there's nothing I can, like I can do, there's nothing I can do. There's nothing that, you know, creatively, I can explore that, or immerse myself in and that's gonna make any kind of difference. Because I was really thinking from this place of like, wanting to protest and I still think that this is I think American Origami  turned into like a quiet act of protest.

Jennifer Yoffy  13:33

Absolutely.

Andres Gonzalez  13:34

But at that point, I wanted to do something really, I really wanted to, like, do something really proactive and, and I started just by researching, but um, and reading books, and you know, anything I could find online, and and pretty quickly, I started to notice patterns in the narrative that's told around school shootings and this, like, regression to you know, really oversimplified notions of like good and evil. And how the media like all these, all the imagery around in the media, around school shootings, become like tropes, and you see the same imagery over and over and over the same narratives over and over and over and then you hear presidents give their speeches, and it's the same script. And just the, the, that repetition, I became really interested in and and I started to feel like, you know, there's, we know that this is there's like a cyclical nature to this type of violence. But I wanted to see if I really leaned into thinking more deeply about that cyclical nature, and, and think about other ways that we kind of repeat ourselves in the wake of these tragedies. I started thinking a lot about that. And eventually it turned into, yeah, it turned into a project. I think the, the turning point for me, when I really started thinking that I might be able to explore something that I hadn't thought of before was when I, I sent my first Freedom of Information Act request to get the Columbine documents. And it was basically like, over 20,000 pages of forensic material. And then there were some journals, some journal entries that they had found by Dylan and Eric, the two boys that committed the murders and I just started to, to feel this form of empathy that I hadn't before. And it freaked me out. And, and, and that's, I spent, like two weeks just reading through all their journals, just reading and I think, you know, it really, it really started to test or challenge what I believed empathy could be and, and like I said, I it, it freaked me out a little bit. But that, that emotion, that very complicated emotion started to make me think that I could I could find something, that there was, there must, must be more to find within the subtext of this particular type of violence.

Jennifer Yoffy  16:45

Yeah, can you talk a little bit more about that empathy piece, I mean, I can imagine that being jarring. Because obviously, school shootings, it's something that is horrifying, and that we, you know, want to stop and we're all against and, and then reading kind of the inner thoughts of the people that perpetrated it, and feeling a connectivity in any way, you know, would be disturbing. So how do you think that..., can you just talk a little bit more about how that feeling shifted the way you approach the project?

Andres Gonzalez  17:24

So I started to, when you start to go through these journals, a lot of it is, is, is what you might expect. I mean, it's a lot of teenage angst, but incredibly intensified. And a lot of violent language. But somewhere, kind of hidden in between the lines, you start to see these two kids just their, their vulnerability really, really comes through and, you know, a lot of... I hate to try and interpret the texts, the the journals, I, I struggled with that, because, you know, I'm projecting my own bias, my own experience, and personal experiences onto these texts. So I have a hard time talking about them and presenting them in the book was a big struggle. I, you know, at one point, I had a lot of the journals in there because I wanted that jolt, I wanted that emotional jolt. I eventually ended up just putting in just a very, very few pages from the journals, but you know, there's this Toni Morrison talk that she gave at the Harvard Divinity School that I, I found, as I was right around the time that I was reading these journals and and she, she gives us talk about art and altruism. And, and it was the, the foundation of the talk was she's, it was basically a, a talk about her search for meaning after, or her search for a response for her own personal response to the Amish school shooting. That happened in I believe, is 2009. But I can't remember right now off the top of my head, I believe in 2009. And in the talk, she's, she said something like she's talking about, you know, what art can do in these situations. And she said something like she's talking about literature. But I took it as thinking about art broadly, and she said something like the, the power of, of literature is its ability to illuminate the moral questions embedded in the narrative. And that, that I took that idea, as I was thinking about, as I was reading these, these journals, I was really thinking hard about that thought about what the moral questions might be. And, and, you know, I'm sorry, if this is kind of going off on a tangent...

Jennifer Yoffy  20:47

No, no, I love this.  But as I was, as I was reading these journals, and just thinking a lot about empathy, and what that what that might mean, in this context, when you're, when, you know, I'm, I'm looking at these two kids and, you know, they're writing about their broken hearts, and, you know, being teased. And there's one entry, where, you know, one of the boys is writing, he wrote a memory, it was a memory about, and this isn't his personal journal, but a memory about being on the school bus as a kid, and how is a refuge and where they could talk about personal things, and he talked about his friend with his big goofy brown eyes and talking about a girlfriend, and it just, you know, you, you, you see, I started to see where there were these turning points that might have occurred, and again, I'm just projecting, that's what I kind of have a hard time talking about these journals, because a lot of it is really just interpretation.  I think it is super interesting, though, because, you know, at face value, you the school shooting, it's about gun violence, you know, but then if you take it to a, you know, the next level deeper about, you know, and kind of turn the gaze on to the shooters and what, you know, what must have, like, the pain that they must have felt or what, you know, experiences they went through, that brought them to this point of desperation, or whatever you would want to call it, you know, to do this incredibly horrific act of violence. But it kind of calls the question a deeper, or an additional layer of systemic problem of bullying, or, you know, like, just kind of the way that people are with each other, that can cause these deep wounds.

Andres Gonzalez  23:02

Right, and, you know, I, I don't want to, again, I struggled to talk about these journals, and what I felt because I risk romanticizing these, these murders, and, you know, there is a movement, to not name the perpetrators of these crimes. And, you know, like in the play, we decided,w e're not going to name them. We're just going to, you know, anytime their names come up in, in, in the interviews, we just substitute the shooter, and, and so, I have a really hard time talking about talking about them, because what I really am talking about is the feeling that that empathy that confused me, and, and thinking, you know, when I look at the research I was doing online at first, and seeing the narratives broken down into these really oversimpli`fied terms that angered me, because, I felt like the humanity, there's, there's a piece of humanity that was missing. And especially, you know, after every one of these shootings, there's always some kind of, in depth profile of these kids, or, you know, or a parent or one of the parents or the kids and that always really bothered me, because I felt it did, like, give so much attention to the perpetrator of a crime. And so sensational, it just ends up being so sensationalized. And the journals are very sensational. You know, if you'd see them, if you take a look at them, it's they're just really extreme. So I have a hard time reconciling all of it.

Jennifer Yoffy  25:11

Yeah, all of that makes sense. Yeah, its a very thin line.

Andres Gonzalez  25:19

But I only mention it, you know, and maybe we're taking too much time here talking about them, but I only mentioned it because when I was going through them, I, I felt something different. And I thought, Okay, what else is there that I can look at? Where, where else? Are there gaps? What else can I bring forward, that may activate a different kind of thinking around this very unique type of violence. So that that's why I mentioned it because it really was a turning point. But in the end, it wasn't a focus, it was just what led me to start looking at other things and, and wondering what was just under the surface, and literally, I found you know, in these archives, I found these all these material objects that were left at the sites, and that's, that's where I found kind of the bulk of my attention being focused on.

Jennifer Yoffy  26:25

Yeah, so it kind of shifted from being maybe more like, factual reporting to a more like, human reaction or response to it, would you say that's true? I mean, because it's like, it's the two kind of halves of the book, right?

Andres Gonzalez  26:47

Yeah. What I ended up focusing on you know, I sent in, I got this material from from, from Columbine. And, and then after that, I thought, Okay, this is gonna be a research, I need to just really dig into research, and find, you know, original texts and materials, and archival and forensic materials to compile and, and start to sift through and see what what I find. The photography part of it, you know, initially, I didn't think of it as a, as a photo project, even though I just, I thought, okay, am I gonna write, like, is this gonna be something that I write, write for? Or, you know, maybe it's something that's purely archival, and curating, you know, all this forensic material, I didn't really know, for a long time, what it what it was gonna turn into. But it did end up being more about, about our about the collective response to to these shootings, as opposed to, you know, looking at the shootings, specifically themselves. And that happened when I went to the first the first place I went to, and this is maybe this is probably like, maybe eight months after I started really, really researching, going to Northern Illinois University. Here actually really close to Chicago. And I went there thinking, because at that point I was still collecting archival stuff. And I thought, Okay, I'm going to go through their microfiche, and, you know, see if they'd collected any like, I don't know, like, local, like media clips, media, archival stuff that I might want to put in the book. And I thought, Okay, I'm gonna go to every site of these, you know, different schools, and I'm just gonna collect stuff. And when I got here, the librarian there, I guess she's the, the director of the archives, she's like, Oh, have you seen our, you know, our T 14 collection? Because this the the shooting happened on on Valentine's Day, when I was like, oh, no, what's your collection, and she brought out this binder. And in the binder was just this list of all the stuff that they'd collected. And I was like, Whoa, what is this? And so I just chose a box. And she brought out a box, and it was just filled with letters and photographs, and, you know, paintings and like, there's a big, big box and just sifting through it. And it was just, you know, I had heard that some of this stuff was collected at different, you know, sites. I just didn't realize the amount like it, the binder, just, you know, the list, the catalog just went on and on and on. And I was like, wow, what is this stuff? And I said, I started going through it You read these letters, you know, I mean, I was, initially I was really moved by these, these long handwritten letters. They were just so trying so hard to, to grasp what had happened. Yeah, but they also, you know, like, some were like confessionals, like, people would write anonymously about their own tragedy. And the letters weren't sent to anyone specifically, it was just like, sent to the school or sent to the city and to the hospital. And

Jennifer Yoffy  30:33

Ah, like communal therapy.  So interesting...

Andres Gonzalez  30:37

You could see how it was, like really cathartic for people. But, you know, for people that would write them. A lot of it though, was really a lot of it was also like this. I'm using this like, sentimental language is kind of embedded in our collective consciousness, you know, thoughts and prayers language? Yeah. You know, um, you know, our hearts are with you, or Jesus loves you or whatever, whatever it may be. A lot of religious memorabilia.

Jennifer Yoffy  31:10

I read about the teddy bears.

Andres Gonzalez  31:13

Yeah. I just never thought about that before, like, the volume of teddy bears that gets sent, you know, like you see, you know, like you were saying just these kind of common news images, you know, you see where they create these memorial things with candles and flowers and so many teddy bears and I didn't realize they got saved in a lot of cases. A lot of times. Yeah, these like, I mean, it's like everything from teddy bears to huge banners to somebody sent like a tricycle, there's a tricycle, I found a tricycle in the Columbine Museum. That was like painted in Columbine colors. There was I'm sorry, I'm blanking here. Oh, there's like a there is a like a bowling pin that was signed. There's like goggles that I find from chemistry labs, you know, that were from like they're left by lab partners. The teddy bears, you're probably thinking about the statistics or the number that I got from. She was, she's an amateur photographer and resident of Newtown. She told me that Newtown received over 65,000 teddy bears. And that stuff all got incinerated, which is a whole other story I could tell you about but yeah, the Newtown stuff the Newtown archive, when I when I got to Hartford, its in the Hartford State Archive, the archive, they didn't have a lot of stuff. It was really tightly curated. Most of it got incinerated, because they were just inundated like

Jennifer Yoffy  32:59

the same. What do you do with 65,000 teddy bears...

Andres Gonzalez  33:02

And like half a million letters and like every, you know, and they, they moved it from place to place trying to store it. And eventually it ended up in this small airplane hangar outside of town and it just filled up the airplane hangar and eventually the city just didn't know what to do with it. So they they decided to incinerate it in in the the town over called Bridgeport. And that stuff, you know, it all came down to like a three by three by three foot box. It's a they they call it sacred soil. I'd actually tried to go see it but I wasn't able to, it's locked underneath city hall. But yeah, I mean, those that material, you know, when you started going through it, and you see that was another thing where I started really recognizing patterns in the language and how we respond and and that's one thing that I really ended up focusing on is just the grief ritual around school shootings, the grief rituals around things around school shootings and and that's where the title comes from American Origami. So many origami cranes, hundreds of them. I can became really obsessed with that, with how that tradition, that Japanese tradition had... I thought that was really interesting too, and not something I expected that would be repeated from place to place. Yeah, it's it's really interesting to me how that story was appropriated. You know, through this children's children's book that was written in the 70s called Sadako and the 1000 Paper Cranes. The story about it is there's you know, in Japanese culture, there's a story that if you if you make 1000 paper cranes in a year, you're granted a wish. And there's this little girl she's 12 years old Sadako Sasaki who had, she had been diagnosed with this really acute form of leukemia because of the bombing, the atomic bomb in Hiroshima and she ended up dying. But within a year, she made over 1400 cranes and, and became this national heroine, there's the this beautiful memorial to her in People's Park, and people come and like leave cranes there all the time. The Obamas left two cranes there when he was in office, but um, but there's this children's book, it's an American children's book that was written in the 70s by Eleanor Coerr, and she, she basically retold the story to an American audience. And what I found really fascinating about it was that she changed the narrative so that Sadako actually doesn't make 1400 cranes she only makes, she makes, I think 646.

Jennifer Yoffy  36:00

Okay.

Andres Gonzalez  36:02

The remaining cranes were made by her friends and classmates. It was such an such an interesting twist to the narrative or change to the narrative. I obsessed over that. I reached out, she passed away by the time I found out about the book.

Jennifer Yoffy  36:20

The author?

Andres Gonzalez  36:21

The author, yeah, I reached out to the illustrator to see if he knew why and he didn't. So it remains a mystery. But I, you know, I found it very, almost like an American, a very American ending, you know, it's, it's, it's, um, it's not like, Oh, she made over 1000 cranes, and she didn't get a wish, it's, it's that she didn't make it, but her community came together to like, you know, to help heal and, you know, heal the country or whatever. And that's, that, to me, felt very American, especially like, you know, relating that narrative to a lot of the script in presidential speeches, how, you know, they always mentioned that, this, these tragedies bring Americans together, they bring us together as a nation. I just found that really interesting, especially since it's you know, this shooting comes from this really incredible, incredibly horrific act of violence that Americans dropped on the Japenese.

Jennifer Yoffy  37:33

Yes, yeah. Yeah. Right.

Andres Gonzalez  37:36

Almost this like subtext of absolution, you know, that I found really interesting. But yeah, that's, that's kind of where that all came from.

Jennifer Yoffy  37:45

So I wanted to ask you about the design, which, obviously, is super unique. And we can get into that in a second, but I read that you had an original design, and that mock up was shortlisted for the Mac First Book Award, but then you ended up collaborating with Hans Gremmen with FW books and Light Work they both co published a final design that Hans came up with or that you enhance came up with together. Can you talk about the differences between the two designs and why you wanted to push the original concept further?

Andres Gonzalez  38:21

Yeah, in 2017, so I was, I was pretty much done with the project in 2017. And I went to Light Work, I applied to Light Work to come with all my work and you know, in these like seven hard drives and, and put a book dummy together. Um, so I actually ended up continuing the project because Parkland happened, and that was a chapter I really needed to include, but, but at that point, what, um, you know, I was still thinking really visually, and I made this, I made my first my first design was still leaning into the media. So the way that I had it was, it was like, all the all the different schools were blended together. It wasn't one It wasn't chronological, the way that we ended up doing it. In Hans's version. Everything was mixed together. And it was there were a lot of these tip-ins there are a lot of these, these media clips that I printed on newsprint and and replicated, because I had collected so much, so much material from newspapers and magazines and an online archives. And I printed them out. And I curated them so that I was hoping, my hope was that as you're going through the book, you know, you start out and just starts with these quiet landscapes. And then you start to see these media clips come in, and eventually they started to pile up over each other but that they were all from different shooting. And, and as he went through that, I really my hope was that the reader would actually look closely at the, at the media clips, because there were different texts that I put together that were kind of who were connected. And you start to find, you know, if you do a close reading of these clips, you start to make these connections and find these patterns. And, you know, it talks about a lot of the ideas that end up, you know, about grief, and you know, the, the repetition, and just the, the way that we collectively respond to these, and these shootings, and there were other there are other things at that point, other ideas floating around that I was trying to connect. And then and then you start to see these artifacts, come come into the book, and eventually the artifacts overwhelm the landscape. And, and, and it just an escalated like the exponentially, you just start seeing more and more and more of this material that I collected from the archives, these photographs of you know, the different artifacts that I found these archives. And I was actually really happy with that book, I thought it was it was a much more poetic approach than what we ended up with. And but the, the issue I had with it was, you know, I made this book, and I had, I had somebody actually like hand bind a few copies for me. And then I went around and showed it to people. And I happen to have, you know, most of my community at that point. And still, actually, I think most of my community is in Europe, because we lived in Istanbul so long, and we have a lot of friends there. And I happen to have, I can't remember why actually, why was I out there, I had to go to, to Germany for some reason. And I think it's for a job. So I went out there and I took my book with me. And, and then I did like a little tour and I visited all my friends in Europe, I went to Germany, I went to a friend in Paris, and then I spent some time in London to see some friends and I bought my book, and I just showed it to everyone. And as I was going to these places, I would reach out to them and say, Hey, I'd love to show this to you know, is there anyone else I could show this to and, and I got to show to a lot of writers, curators, photographers. And, you know, as I was showing it to my friends, and my peers, I saw as I was watching them look through the book, they would just skip over like they were taking it in as a photo book. And I really, the text was really important for me for the the reader to really engage with. And then at the end, I forgot one last thing. There are all these short vignettes, these little short stories that I had, I had compiled these stories within the larger narrative that I had found over the years, you know, as I'm digging through these archives, and all this research, and I compiled these vignettes at the end. So there's a series of short stories at the end of the book. And now those short stories are, are integrated into the book much more fluidly. But at that point, my photographer friends were just kind of looking through it and, and see seeing it as a photo book primarily and not as a book of photos with text. And that really bothered me and I felt like a lot was being missed in the reading because this is you really to really get something out of this you have to engage with interviews, you have to engage with the media clips, with the journals with the these like little vignettes, you have to read the you have to read some of the letters that are you know, in in that second part of the book and that like hidden part of the book, you really have to engage with, with the words and and no one was really doing that. And I and I could tell that they were left feeling kind of gypped like oh, here you did this massive project about school shootings. But what's what's going on? Like, what's it about? Like, I don't get it.

Jennifer Yoffy  44:17

Right. So even though like you personally were proud of what you'd put together and that it was, you know, very lyrical, it wasn't achieving what you wanted it to for the viewer.

Andres Gonzalez  44:29

It wasn't communicating. But you know, what I found was interesting was when I would sit down with a writer and to show them the book, they they or a curator they spent much more time trying to understand okay, why are these media clips together? What's in these texts? And maybe that you know, because we were sitting there together, they weren't reading them in depth. They were definitely scanning them and reading a lot more than my photographer friends. And that's when I realized okay, this needs a total redesign. This needs to have the texts be much more integrated or even be the primary reading of, of the book. And eventually, you know, with Hans, we ended up finding a happy medium, where where the text and the imagery are kind of hand in hand taking equal part, importance, but it took us a little bit to get there and, but I knew that the texts and the interviews needed to be presented in a way that the reader would engage with them and I knew it was going to be difficult is going to be difficult sell and I don't mean sell as in like, people aren't gonna buy the book. I mean, like it's gonna, it was gonna be in a difficult, it was gonna be a challenging book. Because it's gonna be released as a photo book, because primarily, I'm a photographer. I tried to get some, like academic presses and some other types of book publishers interested in the work because I thought, wow, what if, like, you know, I get like a, I don't know, some, like, text publisher to publish a photo book. I thought maybe it could get an audience of readers that, you know, that would look at the text primarily, but I wasn't able to do that. It's just too too many photographs. But um, but yeah, then I you know, then I remembered when I when I realized I needed to redesign. I remembered Hans. I had met Hans years ago, like years before in Germany and really loved his imprint. And I think he does a, he's a great designer, when text is involved, and...

Jennifer Yoffy  46:37

He is..., I just need to do a Hans gushing moment, I interviewed him for the podcast, and we talked about your book a bit. And I am now co publishing a second project with him. And he is a genius.

Andres Gonzalez  46:57

Oh, I love him, yeah.

Jennifer Yoffy  46:59

I think Doug Dubois first introduced me to him, because he did My Last Day at 17. And, and just seeing that book, and there were a couple of other ones. And it just, I always say like, he's just next level. And then there's next next level. It's like, if I had my entire life to design a wedding dress, like it would be white, but it wouldn't look like a Vera Wang, you know, like, just the level of you know, detail and thoughtfulness, it just so he is...

Andres Gonzalez  47:36

Yeah, he is brilliant.

Jennifer Yoffy  47:37

He is brilliant! And your book is just like, the shining example of like, where, like, if I could just access 1/10th of his brain, you know, I would be.... (laughs) It's unbelievable, just that unlock that he can do?

Andres Gonzalez  47:57

Absolutely. And I mean, I've I felt, I when I sent him the work, actually, I'd sent him the work a little bit earlier, because I just wanted his opinion about it. And I never thought he would be interested in publishing it. But we had had, you know, a correspondence on other stuff in the past and I was like, I wonder what Hans would think about this idea. At that point, I was struggling with one particular idea. Not in the book design, but early on, when I was thinking about, you know, this one hurdle, that I was toying with on the project. And I was Oh I wonder what Hans would think. And he, of course, he gave like, you know, really brilliant feedback. But, yeah, I remember, you know, when I, when I realized I needed to redesign, I reached out to him, I was like, Hey, I've got this messy, messy project. Here's here, I'm gonna send you a bunch of like, I sent him a PDF. He's like, Sure, it's send me some material, let me see. I just sent him these folders, you know, I tried to organize them as I could. But I had collected so much material. And the great thing about about it was that he came back and he's, he's excited to work with me on it. But I can tell that he had really studied what I compiled, like he had, it wasn't just like, you know, he looked at some pictures and thought, oh, this might be fun, or this might be interesting to work on. He came back and I know he had read the interviews. I know he read some of the letters and like the all these little short stories like he really spent time reading and I think you know, sometimes I kind of he is kind of like the scholar of the all the you know, those Dutch designers in a way, but yeah, then, you know, he came back and he's like, I'm I'm busy right now, but I I want to work with you on this and he disappeared for a little while. And then finally is like okay, I have some time like a few months laters like I have some time to work on this. I'm gonna give it a thought and then again, then he like disappeared. For like, almost six weeks, I was like, what's going on?

Jennifer Yoffy  50:03

He has like fallen into a hole. (laughs)

Andres Gonzalez  50:07

And then suddenly, he's, he sent me like this video. And He's, um, you know, he sent me this video of like this little dummy that he had created. That was just a blank, it was just a blank book. There was no pictures in it, it was just like, just the just the binding, he sent me a picture or a video of just the binding.

Jennifer Yoffy  50:32

And then did your brain explode?

Andres Gonzalez  50:33

Yeah. Oh, and I was like, oh my god, this is brilliant. It's perfect. It's like, you know, and in that same video, like, I think he recorded it much later. But, um, but he put two videos together. And in that same video, he showed me like, here's like, a really rough, you know, with some pictures and like, the interviews, but it was just such a brilliant, just such a brilliant fix to this problem that the material had. And, and just wrapped around, you know, I mean, everything about it was the way it feels like this pile of papers, it feels like a forensic...

Jennifer Yoffy  51:14

Yeah, like a folder.

Andres Gonzalez  51:15

Yeah and you know, I love that the the two tiers of, you know, these really quiet landscapes and as you're going through it, you know, you have to, you have to choose to like open the book, you can easily just breeze through it, and not open it and not choose to engage with the trauma and way the language that, that the landscapes almost become radioactive in a way as you're going through it. And it just, it all just fell, fell together so brilliantly. I was, you know, I was really excited about it. And then we went back and start editing and deciding, you know, we decided to, like, make it chronological. And then we went through and edited the images and, and the structure of where the vignettes would go, and which vignettes to use. Because I collected so much, I'd photographed so many artifacts, so much of the memorabilia we went through and decided which ones we should include and which was more important.

Jennifer Yoffy  52:20

Yeah, he's great with working with a lot of volume, I feel like because my impulse is always to like, Oh, we've got to trim this down, you know, significantly and then even in the project, I'm working with him right now called This Is Bliss and he/we as similarly the artist John Horvath has collected just so many different ways to represent his work, this project and Hans just went big. Like it is a thick, thick, book. But like it came back similar like he, you know, went away for a couple months and then came back with this insane mock up that again, just like wow, I wouldn't have gotten there. You know, so Right.

Andres Gonzalez  53:14

Yeah, I love I love how he does he doesn't shy away from big you know, from including a lot. The book that really moved me when I was thinking about this was, um, when I was thinking about working with him was Edges of the Experiment where it's like this double book, and it's just filled with material, with all this text. It's so heavy. Yeah, I was like, Okay, I gotta, I gotta...

Jennifer Yoffy  53:39

This guy can handle it. (laughs)

Andres Gonzalez  53:41

Do some voodoo on this guy, so he works with me.

Jennifer Yoffy  53:43

Right, right. Switching gears a little bit, I was I wanted to talk about, you know, you talked about Carolyn, and what it's like having another photographer as a partner, like, how do you feel having that in house collaborator in a way and thought partner has impacted your work?

Andres Gonzalez  54:08

Um, sometimes I feel like we're one brain. It's hard to like, know, where my, my thoughts end or start and hers end and start.

Jennifer Yoffy  54:24

It's like Calvin Klein commercial. Remember? Like, I don't know where I began and you end. Eternity Eternity. (laughs)

Andres Gonzalez  54:34

Yeah. Right. I mean, it is a bit of a cliche, but it really does feel that way sometimes. And we've been together for like, 20 years. So, you know, we we've been through a lot, moved a lot of places, lived a lot of places and worked on a lot of projects together and a part and I mean, you know, it's, I know that like her, you know, Carolyn's got her bylines, like, and I've got my bylines, but really, it's our relationship, our working relationship is just one big collaboration, we're constantly asking each other to look over work and, you know, giving each other ideas and knocking down ideas and telling us when we're full of shit, and you know, when we've got a brilliant, you know, start on something, and it's just, it's, it's very fluid. I mean, I don't, I mean, it's really hard to answer because it's like, it's like, everything, like, it's all so organic, and, and messy, and, you know, we fight a lot about our work. And, you know, Carolyn gives me a lot of feedback. And my, always my default is like, you have no idea what you're talking about, you do not understand at all, you know, go away. And then an hour later, like the next step, I'm like Ahhh shit, she's totally right.

Jennifer Yoffy  56:13

She's like, I'll wait.

Andres Gonzalez  56:15

So, you know, um, yeah, it's, it's great. I mean, I think, I think the challenge is not the collaboration, but like, Okay, how, like, how do we establish our own identities? And we do, I mean, I think, ultimately do but there's always, you know, sometimes, like, we see each other doing something, we're like, oh, I want to try that. And it's, there's like, you, you got to kind of resist, you gotta, you know, let the other person has space. And, and to keep, you know, have their own identity creatively. But, but, you know, ultimately, it's, it's been like, it's been really great to have someone to turn to. The downside might be that we are obsessive about work, and we don't really have, it's hard to find, it's hard to remember to have a life outside of work...

Jennifer Yoffy  57:18

Because you don't have other hobbies. Right?

Andres Gonzalez  57:21

Yeah. Because we don't have a partner that's like, you know, involved in other things and can kind of pull us away. We become so immersed in, in project Life and work life that it's hard to detach, and remember to, like, you know, escape into the woods once in a while and find our humanity in, you know, different places and different landscapes, and different intellectual landscapes. So, you know, the other thing is, we have a lot of photographer friends, so we're trying to diversify so that we have friends that are like bringing us into their communities.

Jennifer Yoffy  58:00

That makes sense. And so I always asked these questions at the end. So I wanted to put them to you. What has been the best career decision you've made so far?

Andres Gonzalez  58:16

Um, my best career decision was going abroad on a Fulbright in 2007. That's probably my, that was probably the most pivotal moment of my career. Because before that, I was working in newspapers, and I, you know, I knew I wanted to break out of that I didn't know how. I had, you know, I went to grad school in photojournalism, I'd come from a very journalistic background, and I still consider myself a journalist to some, to some extent. I think I break from ethics, so maybe a little bit by reinterpreting the material that I researched, or that I'm kind of compiling as I work but I do have roots in journalism and documentary photography. But when I was working at these newspapers, as I was working in newspapers for a couple years in Florida, and I just felt that it was limiting, it was just too narrow. Creatively, I felt limited. And I also felt that there wasn't enough room for complexity, as a visual storyteller, there's not really enough room to really complicate things and to leave open endings and everything felt the need to be nice and tidy, too nice and tidy. And so I tried to find you know, as as I was working these newspapers, I was also making work on the side, I bought a medium format camera so that I could really separate myself from my, you know, from my day job. But Carolyn, first, she applied for a Fulbright in 2005. And that was just supposed to be a year long thing, then we're gonna come back and you know, I was, didn't think it was going to be like this huge life shift. But when she went abroad, I went with her. And maybe that was a decision and actually made the decision to go with Carolyn to Ukraine, because there was a moment where I thought I was gonna stay back, I had a job, I can, you know, come and visit and just be a year, we will, you know, do long distance. But I decided to go with her. And, and while I was there, I also applied for my own Fulbright in Istanbul, because we decided we wanted to stay abroad and figure stuff out. And we were enjoying our time experiencing like this other culture and, and I think is like, leaving the US and moving to this city that was filled with artists and journalists and writers from all over Europe, that really expanded my idea of what art can be, what photography can be, what storytelling can be. There was I had a lot of issues living abroad, and making work abroad. Because, you know, if my, if my roots were in journalism, the ability to actually talk to people, which was so integral to my process, before leaving the US, that was completely gone. Because there was cultural barriers, there was a language barrier. And I really struggled with that. And Carolyn struggled with it too. We, we ended up dealing with in very different ways. Carolyn, leaned into collaboration with her work. And I actually, my work, I ended up drifting further and further away from, from people in my images. And in the first project I, I made that turned into a book is actually very, it's very devoid of people, it's mostly landscape and small still life images, because I just never was able to reconcile that thing that I really needed or reconcile the fact that I really needed connection with people, and I wasn't really getting it. And I learned Turkish.

Jennifer Yoffy  1:02:31

What?!?

Andres Gonzalez  1:02:32

Yeah, when I... With the Fulbright, you know, you immerse yourself in the language. And so I learned Turkish, and was able to communicate, for the most part, but was still really basic, I wasn't really able to, like, you know, understand the nuances in the conversations I was having. And so, I struggled with that, um, but being abroad, and really, you know, meeting all these different artists from all these different backgrounds and realizing that there's this whole other world out there of international thinking around art and creativity and storytelling, I started to realize that, you know, American storytelling felt a little narrow, I felt like, you know, there's a certain canon and tradition of photography that is very prevalent in the US, and, and it was good to break out of that. So, so that was probably the most pivotal moment in my career. Yeah.

Jennifer Yoffy  1:02:33

That sounds hard.

Andres Gonzalez  1:02:39

I can imagine. Can you talk about a wrong turn you made? Or that you feel at the time felt wrong? And what you learned from it? A wrong turn...

Jennifer Yoffy  1:03:55

Yeah, just a decision that at the time, you're like, maybe that wasn't the right way to go.

Andres Gonzalez  1:04:01

I don't know if I really believe in wrong turns. I don't have any regrets. Because, you know, sometimes I'm like, oh, I should have gone to art school instead of photojournalism school. But actually, I'm really happy I didn't go to art school.

Jennifer Yoffy  1:04:14

Yeah, because everything kind of led you to where you are now.

Andres Gonzalez  1:04:17

Yeah. And you know, I've had a really I've had a lot of really incredible experiences because of the path that I took. And and I wouldn't, you know, if I would have gone to an art school in the US, I feel like it could have been a trap into another way of thinking that I appreciate now as an outsider. And you know, the, the free education you can get online now is kind of amazing. I spend a lot of time kind of relearning a lot of things through podcasts like yours, or, you know, YouTube lectures, but, you know, I think one one thing that I felt while I was in the moment, maybe I felt like it wasn't the right choice. And I wish maybe I could have researched a little more. And again, when I say this with kind of... I say this very lightly because it's, I don't completely feel it, but just to to answer your question, because, you know, when I went to grad school, I didn't really research what grad schools I could go to. And I followed the lead that my mentor.... I did this workshop, in Portland, Maine, a photo workshop. It's really where I learned that documentary photography was a thing. But before that, I really loved taking pictures. This is when I, after I graduated from college, I went abroad for a year and a half, I was teaching in Namibia. And I always really wanted to be a writer. And so I went, and I thought, I need to, like, go and see the world. So I took this teaching position in Namibia for a year and a half and, and was writing and writing and thinking, you know, I wanted to be some kind of like, journalist, but I was also taking pictures and photography ended up being a much more natural way for me to express my experiences there somehow. So I came back and I did a workshop in Portland, Maine, at the Salt Institute for Documentary Studies, that is now defunct. But when I was there, my mentor, you know, I said, I don't know what to do next. What do I do? He's like, go to photojournalism school, and get a job in newspaper, you know, you'll have a job as a photographer. I was like, oh, that sounds amazing. Like, I'll have a job in photography, holy shit. And so I, I ended up applying to Ohio University, which is/was one of the top photojournalism schools at that time. As a grad student, that's where I'm met Carolyn. So, you know, maybe I may regret having gone there. I do not regret going on, because I wouldn't have met Carlin. But, but while I was there, I definitely, I definitely realized quickly, it wasn't really what I wanted to do. And, and, you know, the other thing that kind of sucks, you know, I did meet some really interesting people there. And I learned a lot about the tools around photography. So like, how to use Photoshop and how to use InDesign. Not that I couldn't have learned that. But I was able, you know, the good thing about is that I walked out and I was able to, like, shoot a magazine story. And that, you know, that helped with freelancing, but I didn't walk out of there with an MFA so I could actually get a teaching job, like a tenured teaching job. And that's been a real struggle, because as my work has drifted further and further away from editorial, the editorial style and less work as a magazine photographer, because I was really living off that for a long time. But as my work has been drifting off, away from that kind of photography, I've had a hard time, you know, financially supporting myself. So I really want to teach. I've taught at a few different schools and really loved it. As an adjunct, but I just can't seem to find a place that I can, you know, get a full time teaching position. So maybe like a wrong turn, I would say is like, not realizing that I would want to teach in the future. You know, not getting an MFA. But that said, you know, I'm piecing things together here and there and like, you know, it's been part of my creative process. Part of my creative life has also been, you know, finding creative ways to support myself. So, now, you know, it's like, I do a little photo editing, I teach an adjunct, you know, as an adjunct professor, I'll, you know, sell some prints. I'll do maybe a portrait or two for a magazine. Work, as you know, um, I don't know, Carolyn and I will do a workshop together. So that's, that's been, you know, the thing that's the other side of the hustle.

Jennifer Yoffy  1:09:11

Yeah. You know, the hustle is real.

Andres Gonzalez  1:09:13

Yeah, definitely.

Jennifer Yoffy  1:09:15

My last question is, how do you define success for yourself?

Andres Gonzalez  1:09:21

I, you know, I really put a lot importance to learning. I think success for me is when I feel immersed in something where I'm learning and being educated. I think that's where I feel like I'm succeeding.

Jennifer Yoffy  1:09:48

Like you're kind of hitting on all cylinders.

Andres Gonzalez  1:09:50

Yeah, like when I feel like really invigorated with when I'm really engaged with my mind and immersing myself in a project or in, in a stream of thought, or a text, and feeling like, I'm starting to make connections and, and build, something's building, whether it's physical or just in my mind, something is growing. I feel like that's, that's success. It's so hard to get there for me, it's hard to find time where you're not just being, you know, swallowed up by the pressures of just living and you're taking care of yourself and, and surviving. If I have time, to allow myself to really be immersed in thought, I think that's, that's when I feel like I'm succeeding. Because I've, I've made a life where I or at least I'm finding a way to find a life where that is part of it.

Jennifer Yoffy  1:11:01

Yeah, I love it. Thank you for listening to the Perfect Bound podcast. I'm Jennifer Yoffy. You can listen to previous episodes by going on to the Yoffy Press website. You can also find this podcast on Spotify, Apple podcasts, or any other podcast streaming platform. And if you love it, which I hope you do, please go on to one of those places and give it all the stars. Thank you so much again, and I'll see you next time.  This is so wonderful.

Andres Gonzalez  1:11:35

Oh, sure, it was fun.

Jennifer Yoffy  1:11:36

I had a thought you had talked about microfiche earlier. That's still a thing?

Andres Gonzalez  1:11:46

Yeah, yeah, you can go to any library and go through their microfiche. Yeah.

Jennifer Yoffy  1:11:50

When I was in fifth grade, I had this entrepreneurial little club, it was like me and three friends that I bossed around because of course I was the president and one of the girls had a bunch of the microfiche little, you know, it's blue, and like kind of transparent. And we made sunglasses out of them with like, potholder loops on the side.

Andres Gonzalez  1:12:17

Oh cool.

Jennifer Yoffy  1:12:17

Yeah. And we were selling them in elementary school and really rocking it in until some horrible person we sold them to took him to her eye doctor, who said that they could really mess up your eyes and it really put us out of business.

Andres Gonzalez  1:12:34

Oh noooo.

Jennifer Yoffy  1:12:35

Yeah, but I haven't thought about microfiche since then.

Andres Gonzalez  1:12:38

Wow.

Jennifer Yoffy  1:12:40

Yeah, yeah. So don't don't make sunglasses out of them. Not a good, not a good business model.

Andres Gonzalez  1:12:47

It's good to know good.

Jennifer Yoffy  1:12:48

Yeah, yeah, word to the wise, don't incorporate it in the hustle. (laughs)