Featured Photographer, Bill Durgin

Bill Durgin
Photographer, Age Older than Jesus, billdurgin.com

Member since March 2007

3W: What do you do at 3rd Ward?

BD: I really only use the photo studios.

3W: How & when did you discover your talent for photography?

BD: When I was twelve my father bought me a 35mm Konica SLR for a vacation – the pictures came back and weren’t that bad. I claimed the title of photographer from then on.

3W: What was the first picture you ever took?

BD: My dog wearing sunglasses.

3W: Can we get this photo?

BD: I’ve looked, but that photo is nowhere to be found. I seem to remember that I lost my earliest negatives and prints in a move many years back. It may be better that way. The legend is often more impressive than the actual artifact.

3W: Is there one moment where you just KNEW that you would be a photographer for your full time profession?

BD: Pretty much since I was twelve and my father gave me that Konica, before that I wanted to make money.

3W: What sort of projects do you typically work on?

BD: Artistic fashion spreads with no budget.

3W: Who or what inspires you the most?

BD: Painters and sculptors mainly: Hans Belmer, Francis Bacon, Louise Bourgeois, and Jenny Saville, to name a few.

3W: How is their influence reflected in your work? Can you give us a specific example that relates to the shots you did of Bodkin for our publication?

BD: It is probably easiest to see Hans Bellmer’s influence on my work, especially his photographic work with the doll La Poupée. He made these pseudo life size dolls that had bulbous joints and were often headless. There is one with two sets of legs joined at a torso. He photographed them in the woods and domestic settings. They are really quite surreal and fantastic, and you may see a similarity to the one of the Bodkin shots - the one with the white dress is similar to a a photo he made of one of his disjointed dolls, as I just noticed.

With Bacon, Bourgeois, Saville, along with lucien Freud and Inca Essenhigh, the influence on my work is much more in my approach to the figure. As painters and sculptures they can present a figure in any shape they choose to produce. In my photographs I am bound to the physical limitations of the body, but I approach the figure with the idea of presenting it in anyway I want. I work with my self and my models to push our physical boundaries and present the figure as a moving sculpture of muscle fat and bone.

3W: What’s your dream project?

BD: Besides the 3rd Ward Fashion feature story? A fashion advertising campaign for Maison Martin Margiella using their garments made out of wig hair.

3W: What NYC museum or gallery would be the best home for your work? Why?

BD: MOMA for its history with photography, and I would love to show with Tanya Bonakdar’s Gallery.

3W: If you had to be the subject of a photo, who would you want behind the camera?

BD: I often take self portraits, so the answer is me. If it had to be someone else, either David Armstrong or Daniel Jackson

3W: In a movie about your life, who would star as Bill Durgin?

BD: Keiran Culkin

3W: If it was up to you, what profession would your son grow up to take?

BD: International playboy.

3W: If you were on a desert island:

1. What two things would you bring with you?

BD: My family and a pregnant cow.

2. What food item would you have an unlimited supply of?

BD: Eggs

3. Who would you want to pay you a week long visit?

BD: Padma Lakshmi [host of Top Chef] to help me figure out what to do with all that milk and eggs.