Artist’s Corner: Q&A with Karl Herber

Area native Karl Herber makes his way with a combination of commercial and fine art photography. With an affinity for extremities in scale and a knack for visually unexpected pairings, Herber has the technical skill of a perfectionist professional and the vision of a true artist.

Patch sat down to coffee with Herber to learn about his journey and the challenges of striking a balance.

Southwest Minneapolis Patch: When did you first start doing photography?

Karl Herber: Boy, since I was a kid I guess. But it took a while to figure out that I could actually be a photographer. I’ve been interested in photography since I was a kid. I studied fine art in college and assisted for a commercial photographer after college. There’s something about the fine arts background where they never even talked about commercial photography. It was a long process, I guess. I always had art on my mind but it was a long process where now I do commercial work that helps support that and I sell a fair amount of fine art, so it’s a parallel process.

Southwest Minneapolis Patch: How did it progress?

Karl Herber: It seems so long ago and so different. My fine arts education made me who I am. When I was done with college I didn’t call myself a photographer, I was an artist who made photographs. When I graduated I was a delivery driver–I had a little truck I drove around, I would pick up from suppliers, warehouses, clients–some of our clients were commercial photographers. At the time, there were about a dozen commercial photographers in our building. I got to know them and realize, ‘What is this other thing? You can be a commercial photographer and do art.’ So I started freelance assisting for a few years but still didn’t know if I wanted to do photography because the work I was doing was totally non-applicable to commercial stuff. It’s hard when you see other people making a living with pictures. Through my assisting, I started developing skills and realized I can make a living doing commercial photography and do fine art. That was hard because, you know, just not knowing what to do. Another key factor–I spent a year in Salzburg–my junior year–I studied photography there and that was a pretty pivotal, crystallizing year, the exposure, the influence. I developed my work and solidified things; that was a big part of my sensibility. 

Southwest Minneapolis Patch: I didn’t hear anything in there about weddings.

Karl Herber: I’ve shot a couple weddings but somewhere I learned, I guess from assisting, that not only is it important to figure out what kind of work you want to do, it’s important to figure out what you don’t want to do. Fortunately, I had a friend who did weddings and could do a better job than I could, so I could pass it on to them. In the past, a couple years ago, I’ve shot a couple parties; it’s a little less pressure.

Southwest Minneapolis Patch: Do you do work in any other art forms?

Karl Herber: When I do what I do, it’s photography.

Southwest Minneapolis Patch: Where do you find the subjects for your work?

Karl Herber: Museums–I like shooting in museums, although they’re not terribly conducive all the time. A lot of my work is of dioramas. I like really really little things and really really big things. I’m drawn to those types of scale.

Southwest Minneapolis Patch: Do you know the reason behind that?

Karl Herber: I’ve never worried about explaining it or trying to justify it–the same way where why do I like salty food? I just do, so I eat it. When I had a show at about four years ago, I went through a lot of older work and I found that I was kind of taking the same picture. That’s kind of refreshing and validating, and yeah, it makes sense; it’s like taste, you like what you like. What kind of things do you like to take pictures of? I don’t know, what kind of food do you like to eat? Because sometimes I guess I don’t see it so much a matter of taking pictures of things but as a record of what I’m seeing. 

Southwest Minneapolis Patch: That seems like a good way to keep the work natural and keep it from being contrived.

Karl Herber: Right–it’s more about how I’m seeing what I’m seeing and recording that, and worrying about [the rest] later. And I think this is true about all media–photography is so much about choices–editing and when and how you’re going to pick, all those things, whether you’re conscious of them or not, have an effect. Photography is different than other media in that the viewer feels entitled to know how it was done. With a painting, you can look at it and enjoy it and that’s all you need. But if it’s a photograph, you need to know what it is and how’d they do that.

Southwest Minneapolis Patch: You choose to work exclusively in digital photography rather than with film. That’s a rapidly evolving thing.

Karl Herber: [Photography] has always been that way. I guess I’ve always felt that with each successive change, you know, ‘Oh, it’s not photography because it’s not film.’ Photography is by its nature technical. I’m sure there was a point where someone said, ‘Oh, it’s not photography because it’s color.’ I had a dark room in my basement. There was always a gap between what you’re seeing and what you’re shooting. With digital, I can have my hand in the process the whole way along. I like that control. I never got too hung up on the process. It’s all about the work in the end–how you make it doesn’t really matter so much. There’s a little bit of nostalgia for the film look and the way some of the cameras handle but that’s entirely nostalgic. It just doesn’t make sense when there’s money and time to be spent on other things.  

Southwest Minneapolis Patch: Can you describe your process?

Karl Herber: I don’t think about it too much. I don’t think, ‘I’m gonna take a picture today and I want it to be about this,’–that doesn’t happen very often. It’s more a case of ‘I’m gonna be somewhere that I think will be interesting, so I’ll take my camera along.’ A given amount of time later I’ll look at them and let them be what they need to be. There’s a passivity, an allowance; I’ll let things happen and see how it feels. 

Southwest Minneapolis Patch: What’s it like being a working artist in Southwest Minneapolis?  

Karl Herber: It’s a good place to be an artist because there’s a lot going on. It’s pretty supportive. I didn’t locate here for the art, though. 

Southwest Minneapolis Patch: What did you come to Minneapolis for?

Karl Herber: I kind of already was here. I grew up in Minnetonka and went to school in Eugene but kind of always knew that I’d come back to Minneapolis. My wife is from Minneapolis, so we stayed here. The more I travel, the more I like it. I heard this from some corporate HR person: Minneapolis is one of the hardest places to get people to transfer to but also one of the hardest places to get people to leave. I don’t take advantage of all the art things going on because I’m doing it all day long, but it’s nice that it’s here. 

Southwest Minneapolis Patch: Where do you find inspiration?

Karl Herber: Just trying to be observant. I always think if I’m looking for one thing, I’m only going to find that thing and nothing else, whereas if I let things come to me it’ll work better.

I like being close to the . I can walk there and look at fantastic work. I take my daughter. Look at Alec Soth, a national guy that came from here, they’re the one gallery outside New York that has his work. I took my daughter and she was just really, really drawn to it.

Southwest Minneapolis Patch: Is your daughter interested in art?

Karl Herber: Yeah, she’s always been into art; it’s like breathing for her. Ironically, in school art is her least favorite class–she’s in first grade–because they say, ‘Okay, we’re going to draw a snowman,’ and maybe she doesn’t want to draw a snowman that day. At home, she draws whatever she wants. I find the conversation about ‘what is art’ very very tiresome and pointless. One person said, ‘Take whatever you do every day without thinking about it and call that art.’ Everybody does it and whether it’s good or bad is up to the curator. It’s like, ‘The difference between hoarding and collecting is wardrobe, hygiene and representation.’

Southwest Minneapolis Patch: What’s next for Karl Herber?

Karl Herber: I have this brand new series of extractions that I’m not sure how to talk about yet because they’re completely different from anything I’ve done and it’s exciting. They just kind of fell into my lap. 

Southwest Minneapolis Patch: Where can people find your work?

Karl Herber: At Gallery 360–occasionally I send stuff there–and my site. The fine art marketing thing is a full time job and that’s sort of whenever I get time for it. I know more of the trade end; I know interior designers and decorators and people like that. The thing that I’ve ended up doing is I’d get to know a designer and they’d say, ‘Hey, can I buy a couple pieces for a client?’ or selling directly. We have a show at our house twice a year maybe; my wife does some crafts and I have some prints up. 

Southwest Minneapolis Patch: Any advice for aspiring artists?

Karl Herber: You have to love it because it’s so hard and you’re going to feel weird and no one else is really going to understand you. So you have to do it for yourself and have other skills or totally go for it, but be prepared for kind of a hard life. Or figure out what you want to do, find one thing, one niche, and immerse yourself in that. There is such diversity that you kind of need to specialize. And I think art is a hard thing to teach–it’s more like the packaging. Most of art education is looking at art–knowing what not to repeat or what to do and knowing what’s been done. I totally get it though because it’s stuff we all want to do.