Clay Enos: The Watchmen Portrait Book Interview

By Cole Smithey

If you've walked by a book store in recent weeks you've probably noticed a batch of Watchmen books, of which one very large coffee table book loomed bigger than the rest. If you dared to lift the hefty tome to peer into it's fetishistic celebration of Watchmen characters, you were rewarded with some of the most gorgeous, thought-provoking black and white images of faces, costumes, and characters that you could imagine. Documenting every day of the filming of the Watchmen movie, photographer Clay Enos amassed over 40,000 photographs. In this book of Watchmen portraits, the photographer places a different kind of artistic filter over the humanistic quality of the Watchmen ensemble and milieu to enable for the reader a more intimate interaction with the material. I spoke with Clay to find out more about the creation of this amazing art project.   

CS: It seems like a golden opportunity to have such a great range of characters to photograph.

CE: Not only just characters, but perfectly cast, made up--hair, make-up, wardrobe. I've done this kind of thing all over the world, but to have the world come to you is pretty rockin'--and across generations like that.

CS: Your book puts an entirely different spin on the Watchmen characters, costume designers, and other crew members who worked to put these people on screen.

CE: I think when you strip away the context of the soundtrack, the drama, and the narrative, you really do get to find a sanctuary and maybe a meditation with those faces. While you're removed visually, I think you're still in the world of the Watchmen.

CS: What did Watchmen graphic artist Dave Gibbons think of it?

CE: He loved it. It's a treat for him because I think the two of us are much more used to a two-dimensional world. And we're both thrilled by what [director] Zack (Snyder) presented. For him it was a transformation of his imagination into the three dimensions--for him to be able to bounce around the Owl Ship--I can't even imagine what that's like. For me, I harnessed that world back to a place that I'm more accustomed, and that's a place where the two of us meet.

CS: How was it working with the actors to attain the cohesion that the photographs have?

CE: Everybody kind of understood that I was working on this as an art project. Maybe the first few times I shot the actors it was very scientific--3/4 view, head-on view, turnaround--and it was being used by make-up artists and graphic artists to make some posters and things like that. But as the work progressed and my methods were distilled to their essentials in terms of gear and stuff, it was very much a shared art form. They [the actors] knew I was making art over here, and were happy to oblige. It didn't take a lot of time--we're talking about 30 seconds when they were on their way to or from somewhere.

CS: That seems like very little time to have with your subject.

CE: It wasn't that I needed a lot of time. I remember one time I shot Billy--I got one frame; it's not in the book, but it was just a very spontaneous thing. I would often be setting up strategically to and from the set--usually in the garage door of the studio.

CS: Have you ever done this for any other films?

CE: No, this was my feature debut--can you imagine?

CS: On your blog there's an Errol Morris reference. What's that about?

CE: He is a brilliant thinker, not just a filmmaker, and he is well-versed in the documentary spirit. My website and my blog are very much a place to keep people thinking, to sort of strip away some of the mysteries. I've been keeping it for four or five years now. It's part travel diary, but it's very much intended to inspire folks, to allow folks to know how my pictures are made. I think that's a big part of people's curiosity. I think often what intimidates folks when they first approach photography is, "How do I do that?" I have no objection at least to talking about how I go about it.

CS: How did you come to photography? Was your initial goal to do commercial photography?

CE: I'm interested in experiencing the world with a little more purpose that just blending through it, and for whatever reason photography has been the way of doing it. You move with a little more intention, with a little more attentiveness when you have a camera in your hand--or at least I do. And I think that that facilitates  a dialogue with the world, and it also gives you an excuse to engage the world and then you have a responsibility, if that's your chosen way, to then share those images. I'm very much into that.

CS: You're involved with something called "Street Studio," what is that?

CE: Well, the "Street Studio" is essentially what the Watchmen portraits book is--it's a way of engaging a place through its faces, to strip out the landscape and explore the peoplescape. If I find myself in any place for more than a day or two, I'll try to figure out a way to spend some time on the street photographing random passersby as a way to really know a place very differently than visiting landmarks.

CS: In looking at the photographs in the book, it gives the reader time to contemplate other aspects of the people in the story.

CE: Yeah, that would be an ideal, because it's that kind of return. Socially, we're not allowed to stare; it's frowned upon. In the Street Studio mode you don't just get to stare, you get to tap them on the shoulder.

CS: Do you shoot in black and white when you do that?

CE: It is generally how I go. I've explored color but I find it distracting. Part of that is because color is powerful, but often powerful in a more negative sense; it's distracting, it doesn't have a cohesive quality as you start to amass a collection. These are very straight, un-retouched documents. Also, because they're black and white, they tap into a kind of dream memory. It immediately also feels like an artistic interpretation.

CS: Two of the images that jumped out of the book were the images involving the swastika.

CE: Anybody with a modicum of progressive thinking responds to the swastika with a kind of repulsion. A lot of those were prisoners--and they had some amazing casting going on there--and then of course there's Captain X, which is more formal with the gas mask and stuff. It also has to do with the way black and white mixes fantasy and reality. Those two are kind of in that space. These are actors playing prisoners. They're not real Nazis, but for a moment you can be there in that space.

CS: One of my favorites is the Billy Crudup picture with the green screen dots all over his face because it's got everything going on; it's the actor with the artifice in this hyper realistic context.

CE: That's Billy Crudup playing Dr. Manhattan. We've stripped away the computer graphics and it still has importance as a document for Watchmen fans. Also, it's such a bizarre photo. It's the closest thing to Avedon's Bee Keeper photo that I think I have.

CS: There's a lot of campy stuff that goes on in the movie, and I think with your photos you've taken the camp element away.

CE: Yeah, I think that's it. For some camp helps them engage in a character. When you take it away you get to focus on other things that I think are often lost or taken for granted. Just as I've privileged super heroes, I think I've maybe equally privileged what I'm calling the unsung heroes--the extras, the crew--folks who are equally valuable.

CS: How long were you on the set to take all of these photos?

CE: I was there from three weeks prior to shooting, and then all 106 days of actual shooting. I made about 45,000 photographs.

CS: What was your editorial process like for putting together the book?

CE: The editing was very gradual because I didn't make all those pictures in one day. I would shoot a dozen a day or so--very quickly three or four would sort of rise to the top. I have a work flow that allows me to rank images, so when it came time to do the book, the entire thing came together in a weekend--from final edit to layout. Layout took about 15-minutes on Zack's floor.

CS: Has there been any kind of interest in any kind of gallery or museum exhibit?

CE: By me there is (laughs). Let's get this thing on a world tour baby! (laughs).

CS: If you did a show, would the images be the same size that they are in the book?

CE: They could go bigger. It's all up to the computer algorithms. It would be wise to do so if you're really going to hold it up in a gallery, but then there are so many of them that it might be fun just to have them the book size. But I think you'd have to go twice as large. That close-up of Mothman is so neat. It's part of the selective focus. The photo of the original Night Owl close-up. If you lift up the dust jacket of the book--I really love that they made that the cover.

CS: Yeah, for me anyway, it really brings out the integrity of the character. You see this character who's subjectively a real person who has decided to spend his time doing this.

CE: There you are filtering it through the Watchmen reality. And I really like that. Then you'll flip to Matthew Goode--he's faking it, it's an actor--I really love that. That's a black and white province. If they were all in color, they'd all just start to feel like Rolling Stone covers.

On some level I was the only journalist that was there [on the set of Watchmen] everyday. While I was a publicity shill, I was getting paid. It's not pure journalism. My approach as a photographer is very much that of a documentarian aside from the portraits.

CS: What kind of camera were you shooting on?

CE: I was shooting a Nikon D-200, nothing crazy or too fancy--shooting raw. All the portraits are made with 50mm 1.4 lens. I shot in front of a 4x8 piece of foam core I'd pull off the grip truck. I'd throw the flag over their heads to keep the uplight from overwhelming. I shot everything in natural light. With a few exceptions during some of the night shoots when I had some friends in the electric department who hooked me up with the biggest bounces they could muster to emulate daylight.

CS: Have you had any feedback from the actors about their photos?

CE: Carla Gugino and Jackie [Earle Haley] both said it's their favorite take-away from the movie. For this art book to be a favorite of theirs is not just rewarding, it's also a testament to Watchmen. How many films could support an art book? You could do a Watchmen portraits drinking game. Every time you spot one of the folks from the book, you've gotta take a drink.

CS: So what else are you working on Clay?

CE: Well, I'm doing a little advertising work to pay the bills. There are a couple of Zack Snyder projects on the horizon that I'll more likely be attached to. I'm giving a talk at the Apple Store in Soho on Friday, March 20 at 7pm.

I also made a Night Owl coffee company. I got inspired on a photo assignment to start this coffee company. It's super high-quality coffee, completely organic. There's a scene in the graphic novel where Night Owl and Laurie have coffee, and I thought wouldn't it be fun to sort of spin off and make a real coffee. I thought, what coffee would they serve in the Owl Ship? "Night Owl" is a great name for a coffee--now we have this limited edition collector's item can for the geeks, but for the rest of us who just like good coffee it's some of the best coffee in the world--single origin Peruvian. People can get it at organiccoffee.com. If you use the checkout code of "watchmen" you get a dollar off. http://www.organiccoffee.com/Nite-Owl-Dark-Roast/M/B001O2KSZA.htm