Rangefinder Magazine
July 2006

Nancy Crampton by Lou Jacobs Jr.
Interpreter of Writers

Susan Sontag, 1975;

In this era of grandly manipulated photographic images, Nancy Crampton is a distinguished purveyor of black-and-white simplicity.

Her book, Writers (Quantuck Lane Press, 2005), is a handsome collection covering four decades, ranging from William Shawn, the renowned editor of The New Yorker, to Norman Mailer, Susan Sontag, James Baldwin and Philip Roth. In his foreword Mark Strand says Nancy’s photographs are more varied than the typical headshot: “There is a certain guilelessness about them, an open, responsive interest in the subject.”

He adds that Nancy’s directness and lack of theatricality are the foundation of her photographic approach. More than 100 beautifully reproduced Writers photographs speak for themselves, as does Nancy in our interview.

Q: Please tell me something about your background.

A: I grew up in suburban Philadelphia, and my only art-related activity in high school was silversmithing. At Vassar I majored in English, studied art history, and took my junior year in Paris, where I haunted museums and became a fan of classic French films. I hitchhiked around Europe looking at art, but I photographed very little while traveling.

James Baldwin,

Q: How did you get into photography?

A: In New York in the mid ’60s I was working in book publishing. In 1967 I took off to visit the wildlife parks of East Africa, where my boyfriend and I hired our own driver-guides and were constantly immersed in the rhythms of the animal world. It was a lyrical, profoundly stirring experience. I had to leave Africa behind, but it had turned me into a photographer.

I immediately sold a few of the African pictures to TWA for brochures. A friend suggested this, and I posed as a professional. It was already clear to me that I had stumbled into the right field where I could somehow make my way. But back in New York I was disoriented, a photographer without a subject.

Shirley Hazzard, 2003;

A friend let me hang out in his darkroom, and after a while I set up a darkroom in the bathroom of my studio apartment and let it be known I was taking assignments. A former contact had become assistant publicity director at the City University of New York (CUNY), and she asked me to photograph the new president of Queens College. I had no flash or lights, so I showed up with a tripod and used ambient light. I processed the film and made some dampish prints to show. More prints were ordered, which I delivered to the newspapers. The next morning one shot appeared in The New York Times, and I became a favorite of the publicity director; CUNY is a vast system, and I had regular work from them for several years.

I joined the Village Camera Club and learned a lot more about photography. I volunteered to do programming for the club, and for four years I read magazines and invited all kinds of photographers to show their images every Monday night. André Kertész, Ernst Haas and Elliott Erwitt came. Twice a month, the visiting photographer would also critique our work. It was a pleasurable way to get an education.

Truman Capote, 1984

Q: What sort of pictures did you do in your first years?

A: I loved to photograph in New York neighborhoods, especially East Harlem and the Lower East Side. I exhibited in group shows and got assignments from the USIA magazine America Illustrated to cover Italians in New York, and from The New York Times Magazine to photograph South Bronx street gangs. I met a German journalist who was covering cultural affairs for the Springer newspaper chain, the biggest in Europe, and we teamed up to do breezy interviews with whoever interested us.

Saul Bellow, 1973

During this time I also met editor Ben Bradlee and started as a stringer for the style section of the Washington Post. This was enjoyable because the Post often featured photographs, and I worked with various reporters. I began photographing writers on assignment, and continued to do more portraits on my own.

As early as 1972, I was taking pictures for what I hoped would be a book.

Q: Why do you feel writers are engaging and challenging subjects?

A: In my opinion, writers are the most interesting and the most important people. I like to read them, I like to be in their company, and I have found them endlessly fascinating to photograph. Unlike show biz people, they are not overexposed. Photographing celebrities per se has never excited me. I prefer authenticity.

Philip Roth, 1983

Q: How did you continue to build your business?

A: It’s hard for me to reconstruct, because it happened every which way. Editors or publicity people suggested or assigned writers to me. Sometimes writers would recommend me to each other.

I first photographed Philip Roth in 1973 and have been his official photographer ever since. I did Saul Bellow that summer while I was on a whirlwind tour for Publishers Weekly. I chose one of those Saul Bellow portraits for the front jacket of my book.

In 1975 I did John Cheever for Time, after which he called me whenever he finished a book. I worked for the early People magazine, proposing subjects and getting occasional assignments.

Edward Albee, 1994

Q: Do you have concerns about protecting your publication rights to pictures?

A: I don’t sell photos (except prints to a collector); I license rights to reproduce them with specific limits. Thirty years ago I took pictures of the mystery writer Lawrence Sanders for Time. Sanders was quite prolific, and over the years my photo was used on 30 different paperback titles. I knew not to agree to the publisher’s original buyout offer, thanks to membership in the American Society of Media Photographers.

I license the use of stock photos to foreign magazines plus trade and textbook publishers, and for the jackets of biographies and special editions. Publishers expect professionals to delete certain objectionable items in their standard permission forms.

Q: Do you shoot mainly with available light?

A: I like to work as simply as possible, and I love available light, but when it isn’t bright enough, I use one strobe and umbrella and a couple of reflectors. I throw a length of silk over the umbrella and clip it at the sides for diffusion.

Joyce Carol Oates, 1993

Q: What camera and lenses do you use for your portraits?

A: Typically I bring a Leica M3, 50mm and 90mm lenses, and an old manual Nikon with a 105mm lens. I favor the 50mm because I don’t like to be too far from my subjects. If I have to take both color and black-andwhite, I bring another M3 with a 50mm. Shooting visual artists in their studios, I use a Leica M4 and a 35mm lens. I don’t own a digital camera or an autofocus SLR. Tri-X has always been my film. These days, however, I shoot more color—usually Fujicolor Pro 160—for certain magazines and author publicity portraits. A nice shop around the corner makes me two sets of snapshot prints with frame numbers on the back and a mini contact sheet. The Tri-X goes downtown to my longtime printer, Ira Mandelbaum at PhotoPlex, and I send contact sheets to the subject and often to the editor too. If they still want to see larger images, my trusty store around the corner does some 4x6 prints. Custom prints are ordered later from a pro lab. My most popular pictures are also on CDs, as are retouched color portraits.

Q: How did three exhibitions of writers photographs come about?

A: I always planned to do a New York show, and it’s really a requirement from the book publisher’s point of view. Shows in other cities came about as a result of my asking friends in Los Angeles and Boston for their suggestions.

Tennessee Williams, 1975

The L.A. Central Library had a display, which closed April 2, where 45 photos were paired with statements by the writers as they are in my book. Although thede texts are fairly long, people linger to read them. At the Boston Athenaeum they used brief comments that I wrote to go alongside the photos. The New York show at the Leica Gallery had no texts, but 60 photographs. I’m now making arrangements for these shows to travel around the country. The exhibitions have been very satisfying, and the book has gone into a second printing.

Writers is an exhibition-format book with wide-bordered black-and-white photographs on the right and texts by the subjects, drawn from many sources, on opposite pages. Joyce Carol Oates says, “Nancy Crampton is one of our finest portrait photographers: subtle, thoughtful, exacting, imaginative and above all sympathetic.” To which I can add that Nancy has found a huge variety of settings, indoors and out, where writers feel at home and relaxed. Nancy’s subjects look mostly at the camera, and you are drawn back to view them.

Lou Jacobs Jr. is the author of 30 how-to photography books, the latest of which is How to Start and Operate a Digital Portrait Photography Studio (Amherst Media). He has taught at UCLA and Brooks, is a former president of ASMP national, and has also written and illustrated numerous books for children. He enjoys shooting stock during his travels in the U.S. and abroad.