Fred Lyon has been working in photography his whole life.

Fred has experience in fashion, editorial, fine art sales, publishing a book - the full range.

His riches of experience with the medium any photographer today would love to have.

I got an email out of the blue in 2005 from a gentleman named Fred Lyon introducing himself to me.

He was someone who had been a successful photographer all of his life He hadn't had a museum show in quite a few years.

And his commissioned works were landing on the wall and he was cognisant of a collecting market that he hadn't really tapped into at this point.

Of course there was a wealth of material that no one had known yet as well.

Because Fred had been photographing of course avidly whether on assignment or for himself, for decades, in San Francisco.

The reason San Francisco is so appealing to me to photograph is I have this funny theory that people who live near the water push their boundaries to live out on the edge.

San Francisco being kind of the last jumping off place to the Pacific It has a lot of appeal and I think that's why it attracts levels of people that I like Creative people, are all in favour of risk.

Any place you... Any way you point the camera, there's something right there I met Fred at a photoshop seminar and he asked me All about what I was doing with photography I told him about how much I loved street photography Black and white work wet darkroom work and beautiful black and white prints.

He asked me if I could edit some images that he had - an archive.

I came down and found these incredible images that he s... That he shot in the 40s and 50s When I started out, after World War II, if I proposed a story to A Magazine theyd say "San Francisco?

Well, what have you got out there?"

I said "Well, we've got steep hills we've got fog we've got Chinatown funny little cable cars and Herb Caen" And they'd say "Oh!

OK.

Shoot it."

And there was such ... variety that I could get away with making a few errors and still look good We had an initial edit target in mind, and that was images t... that spoke San Francisco San Francisco has a particular kind of light and I was seeing it everywhere.

It reinforced what my Own experience of walking around photographing the street was And I was seeing images of place That don't exist any longer But I could still sort of recognise what they were where they were And just seeing beautiful light, and the vibrancy of San Francisco going on all around I opened these books of these really well organised mostly square format images, all numbered... All I had to do was pull the numbers and then start scanning.

Who knows why we still have those negatives but we do.

And she sees something in the image that she thinks shows promise So, Laurel scans them and starts to work on them.

Its a miracle.

She takes images that I wouldn't pick at all.

Most of the things that we rescued are things that have never been printed before Right now I'm just spotting the file, inevitably there are dust spots and little, missing grain that naturally happens in the Negative aging process And then, when its scanned, the scanner just sees them.

Digital sees everything And so I'm just cleaning them up So that we can have a nice, clean print.

And digital pri... Dont need to be spotted nor can they be spotted And so the spotting is done on the digital file.

Sometimes I'm saying, "Hurry up.

Don't bother with that that will never work And that makes her more stubborn, and then she insist on making something totally gorgeous out of it.

Its just very, very frustrating I'll get to a certain place and I'll have him look at it ... to a place where he wants to see, or he'll want to something brought out more He allows me a lot of space.

Sometimes I like something ... way more than he likes it This one for example.

I love that image.

Partly because it kind of reminds me of childhood, and the images of females that came together in my head when I was a kid that imprinted me.

For him its just not as important in that sense but I know that a picture like that would sell.

So he trusts me on that.

Because a lot of the buyers of images and art are more my age now and that'll resonate with them too.

This is an image that Fred says, was my discovery.

And even though there's nothing in it that says explicitly San Francisco, its just the style of the lamppost the walking up the hill like that, you know you're in ... San Francisco That is such a basic experience of living in San Francisco Is that stance 'Incline Stride' is what we named the picture because thats what you do when you live here when you live here.

You're climbing hills.

When I lived in Sausalito, early on, I'd come in to town to Just to take pictures of San Francisco Sometimes it would take me two and three hours to get into town Because I would find so much about the bridge to photograph 'Was a time when I needed to do another story for a magazine.

So I suggested that we photograph the guys that paint the bridge They would paint underneath the road bed or inside towers So it was always a popular thing, thier crew were quite constant When I got an assignment from the magazine, I went intot the office and said hey Im a photographer and this magazine thinks that your bridge painters would be a good story The guys in the office said "Sure!

Go out and see George Hes the foreman And so I worked with him for a couple of weeks.

Today if I went in there, they'd throw me out the window and say give us 7 million dollars of insurance in case you fall off They're are always concerned that you will kill yourself and I tried to assure them that I was not being paid enough for the story to make worthwhile being killed This would have been sometime in the late 1940s.

When you have an element like this to photograph it keeps your camera very happy.

And so I shot a lot of these things and, mostly, they didnt have this much excitement Here comes my taxi now.

When I first started editing these photos, Madmen was really hot and uh I saw a man that looked like Don Draper hanging off of a car and thought that has to be in the edits.

Its one of the better cable car images, and Fred shoots a lot... great cable car images Cable cars are really difficult to shoot.

I've done it dozens of times Its really hard to get a fabulous shot of cable cars.

But I knew that this image was going to resonate with people, just because it has that nostalgic resonance from Madman This is really a San Francisco image, but its so abstract ... its almost not a photograph anymore But you know that its San Francisco because of the deta...

There's a lot of movement in it, and a lot of great colour, ... and this is a slide that I did practically nothing to this, its just how the image was And its an incredible image, and makes an incredible print.

I've heard a lot of photographer say that digital is cheating And really I think that its the image that counts.

And if youre not dealing with straight photojournalism you're dealing with image as an art and its the image that counts and however you got that image You know you don't scrutinise a painter in terms of how they got thier beuatiful image at the end.

What rules are you applying to photography that makes digital cheating.

Its a beautiful image, and that's what we're after.

thats what Fred is after.

Sometimes my camera just wants to get out there on the street and you know look around becuase thier is always something You just can't hold still!

You have to get out there and do it.

If you're not grabbed, and you dont feel a terrible urgency to do it maybe you should be selling shoes Everybody sees a different picture.

You cant say thier is any hard and fast formula I like things that are graphically strong, I like compisitions that are spare.

I like big areas of tone.

I would suggest it would be absolutely marvelous if one could study poster design before doing photography.

But there are always exceptions because photography renders textures better than any other medium.

Once in a while, you find a texture that is just so fascinating that you can build that as the major factor,the element in your compistion.

so It would be hard to throw out a formula for the ultimate picture I think it has to with your taste.

And I think it has to do with your perception and reaction... to the subject matter.

Everybody takes pictures now and its terrific!

After a bit, you realise how difficult it is to make... exceptional picture I do believe that everything is derivative And so its not a terrible idea, copying the people you admire But just be sure that you're cribbing for the very best people so dont settle for less In Fred's photos, people are willing to... reveal themselves.

And I think people feel comfortable, and he's interested He's interested in everyone and they respond to that The child photos that are in his files are... just amazing.

They would perform for him.

I have a gallery that specialises in Fine art photography and paticularly classic Fine art photography So that's what we tend to sell.

In fact that's the only thing sell, things that I like Really I don't want to sell them, but if I'm forced to ... well let go of things that I personally love My touchstone was, is, was, Cartier-Bresson.

He was the man who turned me on to the power of photography So we really started up our gallery selling.

Cartier-Bresson work he was a hero to me And when I actually got to meet him.eventually we became Major world gallery So he's the reason I am still standing.

Fred Lyon is a younger version of Cartier-Bresson.

Hes a character and we like to work with characters.

who are also immensely entertaining, highly talented and very seductive and Fred is all of those things.

I only want to work with people who have the glass is half full approach to living.

I don't want to deal with miserable, complaining When I was doing the LIFE 'Food to the World' book in Italy and um I think it was a We were going in to a hotel and all of a sudden we got a lot attention I had all these horrible camera cases and everybody wanted... To carry them up to my room with me.

and we had so much help I couldn't believe.

I asked... My Italian assistant what that was He said "Don't worry, I'll tell you when we get up there."

And as I was passing off lots of lire to them, he said They think your Clint Eastwood.

I was younger then, and I had hair.

Fred is a classic, and the period in which he did many of his great great images has disappeared from our universe.

So people look at his photos and it reminds them of a life that used to be led, it reminds them of perhaps thier parents And Fred touches the soul of many people, myself included thats why hes here The image 'Foggy Night' was the image that really got me into Freds psyche Were you commissioned to do this photo?

I was Who commissioned you?

It was some magazine I don't recall at all at this point um and if I needed one fog... it was a story about San Francisco and I need one fog picture Its such an extraordinary film noir, romantic, tender mysterious photograph You can look at that photograph and see different things of it everytime you see it And that to me is a definition of a great photo.

That youre completely intrigued completely haunts you and the execution of that photo is as great as any Brassaï , or any Cartier-Bresson that I have ever seen.

So its a magical moment you know Usually we have something that we have to get accomplished so we dont have time to peruse his archives And Fred likes to keep doing new things, And doesn't want to get bogged down in the archives.

He wants to keep going and trying new things.

Fred is so good at styling images and, any way that he can find to view something in a new way.

Play around with the image, when you're in the shooting stage, or when you're in the post-production stage he's always willing to make something new out of it, try something new with it Fred likes to use the scanner as a camera.

He arranges a still life in the scanner makes a camera out of it I started doing the shells because I felt that there were people going to galleries who got excited uh by what they saw and would want to take something home with themselves Having never done this before, they might not want to do something too brave and to avant And so I felt that sea shells would probably not be very threatening You can see here, I think I must have put a arched a card over it And so I have a little ground here, and the normal progression of tones uh, in nature would be from dark in the foreground um, back to light in the distanc Now here, we've pulled that natural thing inside out, and we light in the foreground And... the peculiar quality of this light on a 3 D object is something I would find hard to duplicate easily, in a studio situation, because I would tend to put something behind it to put it in relief.

This is just a quality of light that... is not unique but its... its different.

I don't think that this says a lot about my photography, I think what this says is that I'm showing some really exotic material Hopefully heightens the effect, the dramatic effect of a very dramatic couple of objects The thing about playing on the scanner is that you're working upside down In effect, the viewer will be lying on his back inside the scanner This can become quite ornate... some things, now We also have to watch out for the fact that the scanner will pick up reflections of overhead lights Well, this is a little bit formal but...

I think the thing to do... Is to run a scan and see what it looks like.

Its not starting up as high as I thought, so I think I'll move the whole composition down.

And so I'm just going to see if I can slide things down a little bit Every time you gain something you lose something.

That's the way it is in this life.

But its a very flexible way to go, and you can get quite intoxicated with your sense of great power.

Its a, you know, if If you're a gardener and have occasionally a great bloom... in your garden what a great thing that is to do.

and that can be sensational, a lot of people do plant materials Often I have a frame here that I can take this lid off and put the frame on around it so that I have a flat you know, I extend the flat work surface because sometimes ... the objects extend And I have some little wood blocks and I will set them their and put a card Might be a white card if I wanted to get a little lighter.

Or it might be a fabric.

you know there's lots of different things.

Laurel would you like to see if we can find this thing and then lets quickly take into uh into photoshop and get a little saturation back here.

The problem is that you'll get lost in this and you'll spend day after day However you might get to be the next great artist.

Thats always you know, thats what That's the big tease of being a creative.

Everything you do, you see more possibilities then you really want to Keep on... seeing how far you can extend it, and when you have new tools, or tools that please you...

It just gets you so excited that even when you've been at it... as long as I have you think "Oh wow!

Lets do that, see what happens and then maybe we can push it a little further here or there..." Its my 'what if' theory.

On assignment I always do the safe picture that the client expects first but once I have that, then we think well, what if we looked at it from around back What if we looked from above or down below?

What if the subject were moving, what if we turned off the key light, what if we turned off the fill light You find that you can spend all day making one image, and so you dont get to play that much all the time, but when you do get to play, its really a high.

At the moment I think that of the people who are familiar w... the most obvious body of work is the San Francisco collection.

The fact is, I had a wife and two wonderful sons, and when you have a house full of purchasing agents you have to think of a lot of other things to do.

I didn't care what it was, I wanted to do everything, I did a lot of advertising, I did a great deal of editorial work and I managed to photograph just about everything except combat and I dont feel badly about that My first magazine assignment was for HOUSE & GARDEN, was to shoot interiors of a lavish apartment.

All these years later though I went away from it for a while I'm still shooting interiors, architecture and housing.

Its the discipline that brings together all the other arts.

And so its inevitable that this should continue to fascinate me.

And I keep seeing wonderful new things, at the moment ... Im working with a San Francisco designer who I admire a great deal.

A lot of people think that design is just putting pretty colors together and And textures and that sort of thing but there's really lots more work that goes on Fred is, he's essentially a designer in so many ways.

He can walk into a room and see what needs to be done.

I think we'll start with the long shot, an overall, maybe a couple of those and then we'll go in and do vignettes.

Fred Yeah I was wondering, on the dining room space, is there some way you could make the space between the two mirrors off center Because its so deadly being symmetrical.

Yes, yes we can do that.

I was going to try to make a vertical but I may end of up making a horizontal here Okay... Alright It'll describe the room.

Yeah that Giacometti, star looks great there Really pops against the mirror.

he knows He almost knows in advance what the designer would want in terms of an overall pictures of the whole room Or a very tight close-up, showing a detail or, that kind of thing Its the one area of photography that I feel very strongly about, that the photographer must not interfere, because there there is a homeowner or a client Then there is an architect, and there are engineers.

And then the interior designer comes and very often covers up some of the mistakes that the previous crew have done I think if I try to impress my personality on it, it would be a total disaster My feeling is that I'm a storyteller.

You cant have the readership of a magazine marching through your living room but they want to know what's happening in that room.

And so, my idea is just to find a place where you can see whats going on emphasise the important parts of the story that make it tick.

Its a never-ending challenge because each thing you go to... is totally different If its not different, it means you have some kind of a cookie cutter approach which is the worst, deadly, mistake you can possibly have... in my opinion Fred had started doing interior photography before it even existed as a field He's worked with all the best big design people in ... San Francisco, Michael Taylor and Frances Elkin Frances Elkins was a marvellous, forceful lady.

She had gr... She had great authority and taught me a lot about handling clients.

Her clients all loved her, in-spite of quite a bit... brow beating And she said, well, for instance the Zellerbachs, both of t... both of them were very strong personalities She said she had some magnificent fights with them.

She said but, they were anxious to learn, and she said out... those fights she thought she did some of her best work.

She came to be the west coast choice interior designer.

Af... after she died I think it was about 1953, there was a little vacuum there.

And there were various people who rushed in to fill that.

Notable among them was a young man named Michael Taylor.

Brash, funny, tall, good looking I first came across him after Frances Elkins died, and... and we started to do his picture for magazines that had us under contract.

Largely HOUSE & GARDEN and VOGUE.

He was frustrating... to work with because sometimes, he didn't show up at the same hour of morning that we would and there would be some waiting But it was worth the wait, and he would very often create ... the room right in front of our eyes he was a little bit difficult but very humorous and everyone ended up loving him even if we were exasperated with him.

He was charming, and he did very good design.

I've always felt, that my role in doing these interiors ... was merely providing a substitute for a walk through the house.

So my feeling is that unlike any of the other work I do this is not a place to let my ego run You look great today, you really, oh pay no attention My dresser... My dress so I won't be too offensive.

(Laughing) ..

I thought the first time we met was when we went to do ...

The Zellerbach gallery.

No no, Did I know you before then?

Yeah well, I lived in L.A. at that point, although I was from San Francisco And I was an amateur photographe I was just a snap shooter And I read LIFE and LOOK and everything I could lay my hands on that was cutting edge journalism, photojournalism.

And I kept noticing in LIFE and LOOK for example, that stories that I really liked there was always a credit line by some guy named Fred Lyon.

And I learned that you were in a studio in Sausalito.

So I wrote you a letter, there was no email then.

And I wrote you a letter, and I told you, it was kind of a mash note, you know admiring your work, you wrote back and said If you ever come to San Francisco, get a hold of me.... so I did and thats how met Incredible Yeah that was the early '60s.

I've always been a sucker for a little flattery.

(laughing) And that's where we started down the slippery slope.

That's where we started down.

Yeah.

He had this wonderful magazine called POSH.

I did that magazine for a passenger steamship company P&O.

I did that magazine for a passenger steamship company P&O.

And my only ground rules were, that whatever I published had... to be about a region where they sailed.

This was a great magazine.

Remember the one we did on Supermarkets?

Ah!

That was incredible.

I couldn't believe when you had...

I said supermarkets, that's ugly And I said what supermarket And he said well, the Safeway the Marina Safeway was brand new in San Francisco at that time I said What can I do with a supermarket?

And I remember you saying You're gonna make it look like art.

And what an incredible challenge that was!

You had a client who allowed you to do good stuff and gave you good paper and and you were allowed to do incredible range of stuff without being hampered with people sitting on your shoulder.

What was the best assignment we ever did?

Oh God!

Ernie we've been through such adventures.

You know what was my favourite?

The jazz thing at the Jazz workshop That was good.

That was such a wonderful thing because you left it wide open Actually we scanned a lot of that tape in the last year because a couple of people asked for Jazz pictures We went through it today, to take a look at it, and You know, once in a while, you look at things like that and you say Gee Fred you work's not so bad (laughing) Lets march through some of these.

James P. Johnson Leonard Ware Ben Webster That's Zooey Urtekin, the great promoter Errol Garner Billy Holiday Denny Zeitlin, the pianist The Doctor Mabel Mercer This was a poetry reading if you can imagine.

In some artist's studio in North beach Kenneth Rexroth was reading his poetry.

It was a great session.

See I use this, this funny thing over the lens.

You can look through it.

By maneuvering a little bit, sometimes we'd use the back side of it just to pick up some reflections of lights from somewhere else.

It was just a matter of trying and seeing what the effect was.

A curtain tie-back, it had a hole through it with a piece... of hardware that screwed in to the wall to hold back the draper And I just enlarged the hole a little bit so we could get a little bit of clear image in the center if we really wantd to And depending upon whether you stopped down or opened up you'd get a different effect.

That's Bobby Troup, and Percy Heath and this was a private club in the old Doc Ricketts lab which was on the waterfront in the hay day of Monterey's cannery row.

And this was during the, one of the very early Monterey jazz festival Isn't that remarkable?

And you had the greatest restraint to just put this... this lovely little black place in my composition.

Yeah Yeah, exactly.

Sonny Rollins... yeah I love that picture Don't you think its neat that there are three of us that ... are still around doing this sort of thing well You and me and Sonny Rollins (laughing) Well I don't know where you and I are, but Sonny Rollins is producing great music even today Absolutely, he was just here a week ago by the way.

Incredible 'Course things are really different now.

No!

You've detected that?

First of all, everybody thinks they're a photographer now.

Everybody that's got a cellphone is a photographer.

But I think that's good.

There are two things, you can either 'make' pictures take pictures Now street photographers, by and large, 'take' pictures.

Which is not to say its not creative, but what you're doing there is isolating.

a little chunk of almost reality.

Yeah.

Or... That's one kind of photography.

And, once you're doing commissioned photography, you usually find yourself making pictures And that is where you can separate the men from the boys.

We used to talk about professionals and amateurs.

And its been a long time since we've been able to do that, because there are professionals and non-professionals And some of the most glorious pictures I've ever seen are done by non professional The difference of course, is that, a non-professional can take as long as he wants he can do it however he wants and if he finally sees something and gets it that's a considerable accomplishment and I wouldnt denegrate that all On the other hand, a professional has to go out, ... and usually has a time limit has all sorts of requirements that have to do with the purpose the picture is made for.

And he may be filming on a grey day instead of blazing sunshine.

Doesn't mean that its going to be easy, but he has to come back with something thats useful and...

So there is that difference.

And I don't...

I wouldn't say that either kind of picture is one better than the other I do think that what I enjoyed always with you is we were working on pictures with a purpose But we wanted to raise their value beyond that to give them a really asthetic impact And I just loved it because we were working the same direction we brought it off more often than not.

I've always done loosely what we, I call food photography.

Sometimes it involves wine as in this case.

This happens to be something I'm working on with my clients, Ali and Charles Banks.

they're a wonder team of modern winemaking.

We have an ongoing thing that I have just delivered part of, ... and they need some PR pictures That's terrific.

You are immortalized on... what used to celluloid.

They've come up with this series of new wines, they've allowed me to design a label for it.

They just threw out they said we want to do a wine called 'The Gambler' and what can you think of?

I was able to think of a half dozen approaches.

Happily, t... Happily, they responded to my favourite, which is this hand flinging the dice.

I guess its been quite a success, to be their hottest seller All we had to do was get you involved somehow and you would figure out how to make it better And you'd make our project better (laughing) We were using you Fred I'm sorry (laughing) I couldn't be more pleased.

but isn't that what business is about?

As long as we have fun doing it and the win is a win all the way right We believe with all the wineries the idea is to tell a story.

And what's the best way to tell the story of a vineyard o... or a winery is to of anything To photograph it.

Because you can't just write about... "Oh and then we tore out the vineyards and re-planted" What does that look like?

I want to see it.

We have a new project in Burgundy and its called Maison L'Orée The winery, all the growing, is bio-dynamic.

Its a really unique, wonderful project and we'd love to get you down there to photograph it.

How exciting.

-Help us tell the story.

I would love to do that.

We know you love France.

Somebody once said to me that they'd rather be unhappy... in Paris than happy somewhere else And I...

I'm normally a happy person but I'm thinking "Yes, I'll go with that one" I keep looking for the ghosts of a lot of my heroes, people like Cartier-Bresson, Brassaï who I knew a little bit I especially admire some of the Hungarians, André Kertész I met Doisneau a couple of times But I keep having... feeling that, they are guiding me and I keep looking for their vision, and I keep finding little bits of it here and there I especially liked the way some of them expressed a little ... bit of humour and had little inside jokes for themselves.

I'd always wanted to go to Peré Lachiase, somehow never managed to get there Where to start?

I had heard that it was a very large area, there is no way I can describe how large it is because I had no way to possibly see all of it.

But I was terribly impressed with all the architectural wonders Wildly fanciful, a number of them, real percentage of them various levels of decay being expressed Doors that were rusted all the way through, I kept expecting... to see a hand... come out a door and beckon to me And I say "Uh uh, I'm not quite ready yet."

Bye bye...

The vistas here and there were incredible, and of course everything is... is cheek by jowl, just jammed up against one another.

It is an architectural overload, that is wildly impressive.

Its amazing, I did it right (laughing) Couldn't be more surprised I put on my widest angle lens and my camera thought it ... was working with Eugène Atget.

I had the feeling that Atget was standing nearby.

Place just had a tremendous.. for.. considering the nature... of what it really is It had a tremendous vitality.

Was strangely very very attractive I'd like to see some of your work, did you bring some for... me to look at Yeah, I brought a few shots.

I like these a lot, and this is great.

Just great.

This one is very, this is all in the metro, on the metro in Paris This is shooting through the glass in the metro.

But it is great because, this mystic figure over here against against these realistic ones is terrific.

Well you have a lot of fun with this I can see, and I think you're prepared to go in any direction you please.

Thank you.

That's very encouraging.

Oh!

Hey!

I wish I had made these pictures.

They're terrific.

As you move into professional photography, what are your concerns Well, I have been working as an event photographer in New York for about two years now.

OKAY And while I enjoy being surrounded by people, I love being in those moments, I love getting to enjoy the vibes of ev events, I really sort of feel like everything I take there is completely creatively devoid and all of the people there... you know, just the fake faces of New York, that sort of thing.

Its really difficult to look back on a night of shooting ... and not find anything that has merit.

You always want to make the most exciting, beautiful image regardless of what the requirement is.

Sometimes people will say well, we just need a headshot.

A headshot is always going to be with us but if you can make a beautiful potrait you're going to find that people are going to flock to you through your portrait work as well And then you'll be able to charge some a premium.

Event photography is a real baptism of fire, and if you can handle that, then you're really ready to go out and do the rest of it.

But you have to be sure you know what it is you're doing, t... that from here on over its for love, and from here on over its for money.

And this has to support that and a little bit more I'm not a believer in starving artists.

So each picture that you make you've got to try to make it somehow a winner.

You think how can I do this so that if a photo review magazine would want to publish it later on... you do have that possibility.

So Fred I would love to hear about your early experiences... at the art center and your meeting Ansel Adams Oh!

Ansel was marvellous.

He was always inspirational, and we all revered him, he was a little bit older One time I had a print that I was making in the dark room ... and I had a tray and I walked out into the patio And there was Ansel.

And I said "Ansel what do you think... of this And he looked at it carefully and said "The reality of the light does not exist" (laughing) I said "Oh.

Umm...

Thank you, thank you" (laughing) What the hell does he mean by that?

What he meant was I was making damn well dark prints.

You know, its not that I selected photography, I always had the feeling that photography had selected me And, because I don't think anybody makes pictures ... for themselves I think they're expressions, its our effort to communicate,... to make contact with somebody else, we don't know who or why or what... expect from it.