Carl Rage - interviewed by Albert Hofer for Channel 83

(Interview by A. Hofer, March 2004)

Would you like to tell us about how your photographic style developed through the years? What elements have become prominent and which edges have become smoother while you were perfecting your technique?

I’ve always been an artist, whether it be drawings, paintings, sculptures, designs (furniture and art) or photography. I've never taken any courses or anything, I just go where my mind tells me to go...

You have been working under two different guises, Carl Rage and Carl Dange. Why did you decide to do such a thing?

Are you trying to separate your ‘professional’ work from the work you are trying to develop for your own enjoyment, or do the two aliases simply serve the purpose of ‘hinting’ towards the mood of the work you have created (more fashion-oriented and erotic in Carl Dange’s case, while Carl Rage’s work explores darker tints and subjects)?

Do you think Carl Rage and Carl Dange’s photographs are linked by some evident elements, or would you say that they actually are quite different the one from the other, as for the subjects they explore?

I’ve been Carl Rage since 1992 when I did my first painting gallery show, I had only 6 pictures at that show, but continued with the pictures as I slowly became a professional fashion photographer...

As for the two names, its because I might not get some jobs if, say, a children’s clothing manufacturer who I’d be working for would see the Carl Rage stuff....

You never know.

Your photographs resemble an investigation, a journalistic reportage, a documentary of sort. They often portray crime-scenes, or rooms were tragedy (suicide/homicide) has struck. As far as your photographic work is concerned, what makes so interested in violence and its portrayal?

I don’t necessarily see violence in my pictures....
I see an explosion of emotion, girls, and peace (in death).
Three beautiful things.

Or maybe Dr. Freud would say I hate my mother....who knows
:-)

In connection to the question above, what makes you focus on victims? Would you say that Carl Rage’s photography enacts an inversion of fashion, from the ‘dressed up’ (fashionable) body to the bare flesh of a corpse, from the body being placed at the centre of attention on the catwalk, to its becoming the “centre of abjection” on the crime-scene?

I often think nothing is important... Life, sex, death or fashion.
We live, we dress, we die, we never existed.

One of the photographs of yours that are currently being showcased in the Channel 83’s gallery reminded me of a ‘vision’ of another Canadian artist, namely the gynaecological instruments used by the brothers in David Cronenberg’s “Dead Ringers”. One might also argue that some of your works, by being shot in bathrooms, echo the tense atmospheres of some of Alfred Hitchcock’s movies (an impression that is made even stronger by your choice of black and white, which seems to place the images “in the past”).

Would you say that your work is at all influenced by what comes to life in other fields of creative/artistic production, such as cinema, literature or the visual arts? Could you name any person who has been particularly relevant to you as an artist, in terms of inspiration, influence, etc?

I’d say David Lynch, especially for the movie “Twin Peaks” (“Fire Walk with Me”)...best murder scene ever! Music and all...

I have an extensive gynaecological/medical tools collection and yes, “Dead Ringers” is where it started ;)

As for the black and white, I like my shots because they're beautiful, quiet and soft.

They are emotion and beauty and not made for gratuitous shock value at all.

Do you think wounds are assuming a new ambivalent character in contemporary art, functioning as a sort of metaphor or, even more peculiarly, as a ‘fashion accessory’, a beautifying element of sort? Are we moving towards an aesthetic of ‘exponential woundification’, as if fashion had suddenly shifted its interest from the decoration of the body through clothing and accessory to a decoration of the body itself?

In real life, I’m actually a little intolerant in the face of an actual wound.

There is MUCH more meaning in my pictures than one might see...
I’m proud to say that they've inspired poems by other people.

Starting from a wound, the blood splatter is what has meaning for me in my pictures...
Loosing control, exploding, feeling alive, being God...
And then the flowing drips...letting go in death..

Blood appears to be a recurring element in many of your photographs, so it seems natural to me to ask you something about it.

Frequently, when thinking about blood, one tends to overlook some of its characteristics in favour of its immediate one, the colour: red. This is the most obvious and widespread equation to be made when considering the metaphors associated to the blood, I suppose.

Blood as red; blood is red.

Indeed, you seem to regard blood as a prominent element of your photographs, including it extremely often within the composition of the photos, and often giving it great visibility. However you (as far as I have seen) always shoot in black and white, somehow neglecting the most ‘obvious’ and ‘immediate’ dimension of blood. In your work, blood is black, dark, thick; one wouldn’t relate it to the crimson red steaming from fresh wounds, more likely one might be tempted to relate the blood in your photos to an ‘old’, crusty, dense pool of blood.

This is, I would argue, the blood you find when it is “too late”, after something has already happened, it is a blood whose stains are impossible to cancel, a dramatic blood; it somehow makes visible, obvious, the tragedy permeating the picture’s surrounding, the darker side of your photography. What kind of role does blood recover in your works? Is there a specific reason for choosing to focus your attention on black and white photography rather than making use of colour and black and white depending from the occasions?

The blood has dried, she is alone, peaceful...
Maybe happier...

You're very right, it's always too late in my scenes...

But there is no story as to how she got there...
She is there, she is dead, she is Carl Rage.

Thanx.......

-- Carl Rage
March 5th 2004

This interview is © Albert Hofer (2004), no parts of it can be reproduced without the author’s written permission.

Carl Rage can be contacted at: carlrage@hotmail.com

Albert Hofer can be contacted at: info@channel83.co.uk, or metamorphic@libero.it