JEFF WALL  Pedro mentioned earlier that he doesn’t think that cinema is a visual art. And I completely agree even though paradoxically there’s so much to see in it. Pedro, maybe in your view, it’s not even strictly a photographic art, even though there’s so much photography involved in it. Cinematography, for me, is simply the photographic techniques developed by filmmakers in order to make films. That involves technical ‘wizardry’, extensive use of artifice at various levels, and highly refined camera technique. When I first started taking films seriously, I began to recognize the fact that we can appreciate and experience them the same way we’d experience any serious work of art, a painting, a poem, a sculpture. I’m thinking of films by Bergman, Fellini, Truffaut, and so on. And I was fascinated by the beauty of the photography. So it occurred to me that the people who were making these images were indeed photographers, but they had access to a way of being photographers that was different from what had been considered the orthodox idea of what photography was. They were free from the conventional aesthetic criteria that dominated photography for about a century. When I got serious about my own photography I realized that I could detach their methods from cinema and treat them as legitimate photographic technique. What I do has nothing specific to do with cinema as such. I’m not even that interested in the cinema, I’m interested in the way the cinema looks.

PEDRO COSTA  I still like photography. Maybe I’m a bit of a photographer too. But I used to like photography much more. I guess I also used to like cinema much more… This already tells you a lot about where I’m at, about my present state… I mean, it may tell you a lot about my disappointment and even exasperation regarding all that is image and all that concerns the reproduction of reality. I’ve never lost my attachment to this idea that we desperately need images of our world. So for me it has always been a very close, intimate and realistic means: photography, film.

PC  It’s not that. When I was younger, I loved photography. I used to follow some photographers. I liked photobooks. But, as I said, the same happened with films. I see many more films from the past. The classic films that formed me, those I saw and loved when I was younger, still are the ones that move me every time. And like you, I rarely go to a theater to see a new film, I’m not at all hungry, not even curious. There’s also the blunt fact that I still have to catch up with a whole lot from the past…

PC  You may ask but I think I cannot answer. I would reverse it and tell you the same, and you would be as embarrassed. No, but I’m not.

PC  I’m trying to approach. I’ve always tried to approach reality.

PC  You should despise this cold, dumb machine. And in these digital times it’s becoming pathetic: every six months there’s a new marvel, they come up with a new camera and a set of new super slick lenses, and they say ‘here’s the ultimate 8K’ or ‘this new handy camera shoots in pitch black nights without any light’. It’s a Spring / Summer kind of situation, a Fall / Winter collection. It’s awful. It produces films that resemble this hysteria: void, formless, superficial… Anyway, like you’ve said, it’s because of the camera that a film or a photograph of our reality has a chance to come to life. Not always, though. We don’t do films in life… our eyes deceive, they are quite opaque. The camera calls for reality. And you need that call. At least I need it. It’s because you have a camera that you can do this job. Without the camera, I most probably wouldn’t be another painter or another musician. I have a few friends that are painters, photographers, sculptors, musicians – and very fine craftsmen they are – but I have this idea that film is still the best instrument that can move us closer to the reality of being. Let’s not be too philosophical here: I’m in favor of starting from the most basic cliché and then working on up… a man or a woman with a camera should be sensible and always be affected and patient towards the most basic reality around them… if they want their film or photograph to think and make us think. Then, in the end, with some luck, film might join metaphysics.

PC  When I was closer to photography, when I was younger, I had some friends that were photographers, and right away photography seemed to me a bit simpler than film. I don’t mean it negatively. In some aspects, I’ve always regarded it as the most difficult art. Or craft. But it seemed a breezier way of life… less dependent on the nuisances and troubles of money, society and all that. And you work quickly and almost only depend on yourself. On the other hand, and for lack of a better word, documentary seemed a prerogative of photography. All the photographers I loved and admired were plain realists: Evans, Frank, Arbus, Riis, Atget… Everything avant- ‑garde or experimental, either in photo or film, just bored me to death. But let’s be clear: I’m not preaching or pretending that photography or cinema should fulfill any social function. Nevertheless, I can imagine no better documentaries about a certain society, a social class and its economics, its sentimentality, than the lavish Hollywood studio productions of the thirties, forties and fifties. No, reality is not that obvious or simple to portray. Sometimes you need filters and curtains and metaphors and even a bit of imagination to straighten up reality. There’s not one single way of approaching it. It can be a chimera, a dream, a fantasy. But it is also true that behind all the illusion and manipulation, film and photography almost naturally marry reality. It’s the tangible world in front of the lens. It’s click, click, on, off. After some time I felt that cinema accepted me. And that the camera did not refuse me. I guess all the filmmakers and photographers must feel a bit the same. This is my craft. And yes, the kick and the push that documentary can give fiction, it’s still very important for our work.

JW  What I call ‘near documentary’ is similar to what in film might be called ‘docu-fiction’. The essence of photography is exactly what the so-called ‘documentary’ tradition has always been – the dependence on the immediate appearance of the world. I consider that to be the central identity of any aesthetic idea of photography. But I wanted to contemplate the effects of documentary by doing something else. That means adding other actions, other considerations to the sheer capture of appearance. I see that happening in Pedro’s films – the emphasis on the actual but also a sense of your dissatisfaction with the sheer capturing of it. A sense that you need to bring out something you feel about it that no one else can – you can’t communicate otherwise. I feel that what I do is a subjectivization while being still being devoted to the objective element. The equipment itself obliges us to behave that way, as I just said. So there’s a limitation that we try to overcome by adding something to it. The first film I saw of yours, Ossos, struck me as intensely poetic, with something restless in relation to the actuality that you were obviously very devoted to.

JW  When you’re working with people, what provokes you to intervene?