The Forbidden Planet International Blog Log

Unsurprisingly the arrival of the Watchmen movie has created a huge amount of discussion and coverage online and in the traditional media. However, I think today we have something a bit different from most of the Watchmen articles, as New York based writer Tom Crosshill looks at the recently published Watchmen: Portraits, a coffee table book full of some beautiful photographic work by Clay Enos, some of which can currently be seen at the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art’s The Art of Watchmen exhibition in New York (alongside art from Dave Gibbons and more images from the movie set). There are some gorgeous black and white portraits in the book, ranging across a variety of subjects, from the film’s stars to background extras and crew members, all given equal treatment. I think there’s something about the detailed stillness of the photographic portraits that has an echo in the original comics frames in the way that they represent a frozen instant that the viewer can take in for as long as they wish, leave, turn back to, in a way that the film doesn’t (sure on DVD you can freeze, rewind and so on, but its not quite the same as comic frames and, here, photographs for that ability to take a captured moment and pore over it).

A book review and interview by Tom Crosshill

(Rorschach strikes a pose. Clay Enos/Watchmen Portraits (Titan Books); Watchmen and all related characters and elements are trademarks of DC Comics © 2009.  All Rights Reserved; click the pic for the larger version)

“My favourites from the book? Definitely some of the vintage superhero portraits. There is a timelessness in the eyes…  I wouldn’t say it’s the photographer’s accomplishment. There’s the actor, there are the costumes and the props.”

So says Clay Enos, still photographer for the newly released Watchmen film and author of Watchmen: Portraits. On closer inspection this modesty does not seem fully warranted. Clay has shot portraits all over the world, from Columbia to East Africa to Cambodia, to his native New York. That look of timelessness in the eyes? It crops up in his work again and again, almost as if he can’t keep from bringing out the melancholy in his subjects.

(1940s woman from Watchmen and a photo from Clay’s personal portfolio. A certain timelessness about the eyes? Image on the left: Clay Enos/Watchmen Portraits (Titan Books); Watchmen and all related characters and elements are trademarks of DC Comics © 2009.  All Rights Reserved. Image on the right: Clay Enos © 2009. All Rights Reserved; click the pic for the larger version)

Portraits is a rare treat. A movie companion book that does not rely primarily on stills from the movie, its photographs are black-and-white, stark, in places gritty – and always genuine. Full-page portraits of characters both major and minor share the book with shots of camera operators, costume designers and coffee-bearing assistants. Some vintage-style images maintain verisimilitude, while in others the camera pulls back to reveal the framed white backdrop. A few of the portraits could have come straight from a dated fashion magazine, but most shine with a raw honesty reminiscent of a photojournalist’s work. It is not surprising to hear Clay Enos refer to himself as a documentarian.

In a field often dominated by gloss and glamour, the book’s subdued, un-Photoshopped approach packs a punch. It is almost as if, by not seeking to glamorize a shot, the photographer brings us closer to his subject, allowing us a sense of immediacy both visceral and vicarious. This rawness is also what enables the book’s democratic approach to its selection of subjects. Sometimes it’s not easy to tell without referring to the index in the back if a portrait is of an actor or perhaps a producer or a rigger. Crew and cast are treated as equal. For all of them, the book seems to say – we were there. We did this.

The book’s striking shots of Rorschach and Moloch and other fan favorites are impressive, but it is exactly this democratic sensibility that elevates this book above just another marketing product for the movie. One of my favorite shots in the book is a whole-page image of an old woman’s face. That image in itself is beautiful, and it is further enriched by a clever contrast with the portrait of an alluring actress in her prime on the opposite page. There is little to betray that either image belongs to Watchmen, but their place in the broader context of the other photographs enriches the book and gives it a claim to art.

(Actor or crew? Not easy to tell. Clay Enos/Watchmen Portraits (Titan Books); Watchmen and all related characters and elements are trademarks of DC Comics © 2009.  All Rights Reserved; click the pic for the larger version)

I met Clay Enos at a reception organized by the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art (MoCCA) in New York (MoCCA is running an “Art of Watchmen” exhibit through early May that includes original Watchmen art by Dave Gibbons as well as Clay Enos’ photographs and concept photos from director Zack Snyder). We had a brief conversation at the museum, but Clay was clearly much sought after that evening, so we met for a follow-up interview a few days later at Ninth Street Espresso, an Alphabet City coffee shop.

The choice of venue was no accident, as Clay is quite the coffee connoisseur. He is the driving force behind the Organic Coffee Cartel, a gourmet coffee label that donates most of its profits to charity – and, among other products, sells the Nite Owl Dark Roast, as brewed aboard Archie. At the museum reception, surrounded by a crowd of Watchmen fans, Clay seemed almost a little startled to have become the man of the hour. In the coffee shop, he was clearly in his element – happy, relaxed and ready to talk about his work.

(Photographer Clay Enos as American Soldier in Vietnam; Clay Enos/Watchmen Portraits (Titan Books); Watchmen and all related characters and elements are trademarks of DC Comics © 2009.  All Rights Reserved, click on the pic for the larger version)

Tom: To start off, how did you come to be connected with the Watchmen film?

Clay: I’d known Debbie Snyder since college, which is how I met her husband Zack. They knew I was a photographer and, although I hadn’t done a movie before, Zack asked to me to do still photography for Watchmen. It was quite an experience. Working on a movie is unlike any other individual artistic pursuit – I compare it to modern cathedral-building, with all the talent and planning that has to come together just right.

Tom: Was it frustrating to be so dependent on the decisions of other individuals?

Clay: The only part that frustrated me a bit was being the only guy on the set every day who wasn’t involved in the cathedral-building, wasn’t directly involved in making the movie. I really had to embrace the role of a documentarian. I was there to document, not to make art. But I think I managed to sneak in my artist self by making the portraits. I mean, it was commercial – they based a figurine on my portrait of Rorschach, for instance – but I’m okay with that. I had no frustrations in the sense of being used to flying by myself and now having all these co-pilots flying the plane with me. I’m comfortable with being a documentarian – it’s in my nature.

(A young Janey Slater; Clay Enos/Watchmen Portraits (Titan Books); Watchmen and all related characters and elements are trademarks of DC Comics © 2009.  All Rights Reserved, click for the larger image)

Tom: On the topic of ’sneaking in’ your art – having this collection of portraits independent of actual stills from the movie is a bit unusual. Was it your hope create a work of art apart from the film?

Clay: The world of Watchmen is so rich that each thread of the tapestry is worthy of a closer look. For 20 years the graphic novel has captured people’s imaginations frame by frame. Why not explore some of the film’s nuance and attention to detail in the same way?

Also, the way the graphic novel doesn’t privilege one frame over another due to its density, its nine panel grid – I can really relate to that on a certain level. In Watchmen: Portraits, each character, each superhero stands along an unsung hero of the film. I think there’s real value in that. Everybody’s contributing equally. They may not get as much screen time, but the on-set painter has as much value to me as Nite Owl or a rioter. Each of the actual characters was given such attention in hair, makeup, costume, even casting, that it would be a shame not to recognize those efforts.

Another thing – these are portraits of people in character, but they’re also portraits of actors in costume. I never knew which one was which. I was shooting people pretending to be fictional people dressed up as superheroes. So I guess in my eye I vacillated between seeing the fiction and seeing the reality.

I think that’s really part of the poignancy of these portraits. While on one level you’re looking at costumes, make-up, and so on, on another level that costume is also real clothing – and those are real eyes we’re looking into. This perhaps reflects my interest in portraiture way beyond the construct of the movie.

(Matt Frewer as Moloch; I love the way the photo captures details not so apparent in the film such as the fine suit now clearly visible as frayed at the edges, once grand, now past its prime, like Moloch himself. Clay Enos/Watchmen Portraits (Titan Books); Watchmen and all related characters and elements are trademarks of DC Comics © 2009.  All Rights Reserved)

Tom: You’re anticipating my next question. In a sense, since this was your first film, you were coming in with less baggage than an experienced movie photographer. In what ways did you find that your previous work informed what you did and perhaps made it different?

Clay: Well… to call what I have a bag of tricks is a little unfair and maybe demeaning, but it’s kind of how I operate. When I’m in a new place, when I’m in an interesting place, my impulse is to make portraits. It’s a way of distilling a place – of not getting distracted by context, of not making a pretty sunset picture or a landscape, but of really knowing a place through its faces.

Before I started I had a couple of pictures in my head. One was this image of New York in the rain, with all this dirt and grime. I did make that shot. It was a Moloch shot, a distillation of the Watchmen universe the way I’d imagined it as a place. And then this book is the other thing I imagined and hoped for – it’s more than what I hoped for, actually.

I hope it has resonance beyond the movie. We as a culture are awash in celebrity and Photoshopped images – a constructed, mediated, filtered view of humanity. My images are straight, un-Photoshopped, natural light, and they have a resonance that people seem to recognize. It’s almost like something they haven’t seen in a long time. The friend they forgot they were missing. I think that’s important. That real people are beautiful. Even if they’re made up or whatever.

Tom: You didn’t feel pressure to Photoshop this kind of work?

Clay: I think Photoshop has its role, but I view it in traditional darkroom terms – burning and dodging. That is, making certain parts of the image darker or lighter. I call it cleanup, not retouching. I used software to make the backgrounds whiter and so on, but that was it. I hold to old school notions even with digital technology. Straight photography is another term for it. Almost all of the photographs in the book are un-cropped. Maybe two or three are cropped. Almost all of them are natural light.

(A Vietnamese girl, Clay Enos/Watchmen Portraits (Titan Books); Watchmen and all related characters and elements are trademarks of DC Comics © 2009.  All Rights Reserved, click for the larger image)

Tom: Did you draw a lot of inspiration from Dave Gibbons’  visual style from the graphic novel? Did you try to capture the same visual sensibility?

Clay: Well, Dave Gibbons is certainly the point of departure for everything connected to the film visually, but I benefited from the work of a wide range of people: the casting director, the actors, the costume people, the prop people. And I captured how it all came together.

By the way, afterwards I showed the book to Dave Gibbons and I said to him – see, they took your drawings in black and white, colored them, then made a movie out of them with real people, and then I took that and transformed it back into black and white.

Tom: How did he react?

Clay: Oh, he loved it. When he created the drawings, he couldn’t show every hair, every pore on the skin, every gritty detail. Dave Gibbons is a great guy, by the way. You couldn’t have asked for a better spokesman for the film, with all his enthusiasm and dedication.

(“Dumb Thug, Big Figure, Fat Thug” – crime comes in all sizes; Clay Enos/Watchmen Portraits (Titan Books); Watchmen and all related characters and elements are trademarks of DC Comics © 2009.  All Rights Reserved, click the pic for the larger image)

Tom: Any parts of your work that you’d like to mention that you are particularly proud of?

Clay: Oh, definitely, some of the vintage superhero portraits. There is a timelessness in their eyes… I wouldn’t say it’s the photographer’s accomplishment. There’s the actor, there are the costumes, the props. But I think the black-and-white medium adds to it.

Tom: Did you actively direct the actors in terms of posture, attitude, expression or did you give them free rein?

Clay: The process was all very fluid – there was never much time for direction. Depending on who it was, their enthusiasm and free time, we might explore a pose or two. Jackie Earle Haley with a grappling gun, for instance – he’s going to strike a few poses. Mothman standing there with wings – well, actually, my favourite shot of Mothman is a close-up, with the wings in the background, out of focus. There wasn’t a lot of posing, but I did move around a lot myself.

By the way, I’m often asked – are Moloch’s ears real? No, they’re not, but they are, sort of. They are if you think of this as a book of the Watchmen universe. But they’re nothing at all like that in life – I mean, you can see Matt Frewer’s wig in one of the photographs. It’s Matt Frewer playing a character.

The same way that Watchmen stripped away, traded in the vernacular of comic books, to tell a very sparse story – stripped away all the artifice of superheroes -  well, maybe my book is doing the same thing. Maybe it’s stripping away some of the artifice of filmmaking and allowing you to see it in a new light. I’m not trying to hide anything. Of course you can see Matt Frewer’s wig from three inches away – that doesn’t lessen it. It’s all out there, all impressive.

(Close-up of Mothman, wings out of focus. Clay Enos/Watchmen Portraits (Titan Books); Watchmen and all related characters and elements are trademarks of DC Comics © 2009.  All Rights Reserved, click for the larger image)

Tom: The film aside, you’ve done some interesting work in far-flung places like Cambodia and East Africa. Would you speak a little about that?

Clay: I’m a sucker for a plane ticket, really. The work in East Africa was photographing coffee farmers and pursuing my interest in specialty coffee through photography. I enjoy the notion that photography can be a powerful tool for change, hopefully change for the better. I was working with a coffee importer called Sustainable Harvest. And I was in Southeast Asia studying with a great group called the “VII” photographers. They’re a group of war photographers and accomplished photojournalists.

The camera gives you a reason to go places. Maybe it gives you courage sometimes. It can also make you more shy, because you don’t want to disrespect somebody. In every encounter something hinges on the presence of the camera. It allows you a new way to see and a new way to move, and I really appreciate that about the medium.

We’re all photographers these days, by the way. We all have cameras in our pockets. The only difference is the intent. It’s intent and attention that can distinguish you. You must be very aware of the role you’re playing. As a photographer, I have responsibilities. There is profundity everywhere, and once you frame it there’s new weight added to it. All of a sudden it ends up on Flickr and has a world-wide audience, or on Facebook and you’ll never get a job again. And to me that’s remarkable. It’s my bane – well, perhaps bane is not the right word. It’s my responsibility.

(A beautiful African child by Clay Enos © 2009. All Rights Reserved, click for the larger image)

Tom: Any current projects you’d like to mention?

Clay: I’m always excited about my crazy coffee project. It’s an interesting way to share – not just my photography, because my photos are part of the branding, but a product that itself has a value to people. It seems very different from just observing something. I like being able to branch out, to see something that was inspired by photography become something much more. Hopefully, because we have a movie tie-in with this Watchmen coffee, it all starts to swirl into this tempest of art and commerce.

Tom: Thank you.

As we stood up to leave the coffee shop, Clay walked up to the barista and asked, “Are you a fan of Watchmen?” The man nodded, so Clay reached into his bag, pulled out a can of the Nite Owl Dark Roast, handed it over and launched into a quick rundown using some names and terms I didn’t even recognize. “Got to spread the word among coffee people,” he explained outside before hopping on his bicycle. Clearly a man of many passions.

Watchmen: Portraits, by photographer Clay Enos, is published by Titan Books and is available now. The MoCCA Art of Watchmen exhibition runs in New York until the 2nd of May.

Tom Crosshill is a freelance writer living in New York. FPI would very much like to thank Tom for generously sharing this article with our readers and also extend thanks to Clay for his time and letting us share some of his beautiful photography work; you can learn more about Clay’s work via his website.

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