Hello and welcome to the 75th 3 Art Questions With Jackson interview! This time I interviewed super talented photographer, artist, filmmaker and Minneapolis neighbor Steve Ozone. I think this may be the first time I have interviewed an artist that I see on my neighborhood walks. Steve has a very interesting back story and a lot of interesting things to say. I think you will agree. Thank you for reading! (steveozone.com / Instagram: @steveozone1 ) / (All images courtesy of the artist) (Art-A-Whirl, Solar Arts Building #202, 711 NE 15th Street, Minneapolis, MN. May 15th - 5-10pm, May 16th - 12-8pm, May 17th - 12-5pm)
Jackson: What was your initial inspiration to be a photographer? Did you have a specific experience?
Steve: My father was my inspiration to be a photographer. As a teenager he took pictures of his family that I still have to this day. After he got married and had children he bought an 8mm movie camera. He filmed our family birthdays, Christmases, and summer vacations. My father's home movies planted the seed for me to make films. I have a documentary on Amazon Prime called The Registry (@theregistry1941). It's about how the U.S. Army recruited young Japanese Americans from the incarceration camps to serve as interrogators and interpreters in the Pacific Theatre during WWII. One year into the making of the film I discovered my father wanted to join that unit (the Military Intelligence Service) but he couldn't pass the physical due to health reasons.
I do not remember a specific experience that made me want to be a photographer, but my father always told me and my siblings to do what you love. As a young man he wanted to be an artist. Following the bombing of Pearl Harbor by Japan during WWII his entire family was incarcerated due to his Japanese ancestry. He was allowed to leave college after being accepted to college. He picked a major, electrical engineering, that would offer a job to be able to support his family when they were released. His sacrifice allowed his sisters and my siblings to choose careers in whatever we wanted. In 1882, the United States passed the Chinese Exclusion Act banning Chinese people from entering the U.S., except in special cases. To work around this mother's father was a Paper Son. Paper Sons (and daughters) were people from from China who claimed to be born in the United States and were returning from China to live in the U.S. They purchased false papers to prove this. The discovery of my family history led to my work with immigrants of all nationalities and their journey to America.
Jackson: Do you like to plan your photographs or do you hope for happy accidents? Or both?
Steve: I'm working on a project now in preparation for an exhibit at Metro State's Gordon Parks Gallery in October. Gordon Parks was a renaissance man, equally skilled in photography (Life Magazine), filmmaking (Shaft), poetry, music and writing. Born in Kansas, he lived in St. Paul and Minneapolis for 7 years. I have been travelling to cities where Parks photographed for Life Magazine and where he would have photographed if he were alive today. My aim is to visit those cities and make photographs in my style, rather than copy his ideas, so that will be a happy accident.
Jackson: If you could meet any artist living or dead, who would it be and why?
Steve: Most of my close friends are painters and sculptors, not photographers. Having said that, I would like to have met Jun Fujita. Similar to Gordon Parks, Fujita was a photographer. He was also a poet, silent film actor and environmentalist. As a young man he immigrated from Japan and worked as a photojournalist at several newspapers in Chicago. He was present at whatever was happening in Chicago that was newsworthy in the early 1900s, from covering the St. Valentine's Day Massacre to the capsizing of the Eastland ship on the Chicago River. He photographed four presidents and Albert Einstein and considered the poet Carl Sandburg and the novelist Pearl S. Buck as friends. His photographs of what is now Voyageurs National Park were used to show the beauty of northern Minnesota to an international panel to prevent loggers from damming Rainy Lake. He and his wife held artist salons in Chicago which included many local artists and internationally known figures who would stop by when in town. He and his wife Florence would have been fascinating people to hang around with. I'm working on a documentary (@junfujitadoc) about his life and have become friends with his great nephew, Graham Lee. Graham has a book out called Jun Fujita: Behind the Camera.
