"I think being a farmer is fascinating," he says. "It fits in nicely with photography. Most physical labor is like farming: you are out there forking the hay and letting your mind drift here and there. In photography, with the weight of the equipment and the constant moving about, the physical labor is, in fact, about as severe. But there's the added factor of concentration. I couldn't physically do the kind of photographs that I do, seven or even five days a week, every week. I'd be wiped out. The people who try to do it burn out and disappear.
"Concentration is the one thing I bring to photography that the average kid who walks through the door doesn't. I can go to an event like Mardi Gras and focus for eighteen hours. Most people can't focus on anything for more than three seconds. And photography, like flying, requires total concentration; it can take everything you have. The great tragedy of photography," says Gardner with a grin, "is that if you can't do it, you don't die."
"Do you consider photography work?" I want to know.
"I've always known that if you wanted to do something, you probably wanted to do it for about ten per cent of what was involved in doing it. The rest is just work. But it's not a problem for me.
"I think you must get pleasure out of the act of photography, and to do it on a more or less continuous basis over a period of years, you have to love it."
"When you began," I ask, "did you ever think about art?"
"No, never."
"Go to museums and look?"
"Not then. I read a lot, and photographs struck me, somehow, as something more than just spaces between type."
"Are you interested in journalism?"
"No, I'm interested in pictures."
"Are you interested in facts, conveying facts?"
"Not in pictures."
"Do you view your subjects as real people?"
"God yes. Sure."
It strikes me that George W. Gardner would be a perfect subject for one of his pictures.
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