Stephen Marc: Street Cat Tales and Tangled Times

Stephen Marc: Street Cat Tales and Tangled Times by Daniel GeorgeFebruary 17, 2025

©Stephen Marc

Every spring, I try to attend the Society for Photographic Education (SPE) annual conference to reconnect with friends, hear and learn from a variety of artists, and discover new work through portfolio reviews and the portfolio walk. Last year, the conference took place in St. Louis, MO and was every bit as fun and inspiring as usual. For the next few days, I will be sharing the work of individuals who I got to know through the various SPE conference activities in 2024. Up first, we have Stephen Marc and his series, Street Cat Tales and Tangled Times: An American Journey Continues.

Stephen Marc is an Emeritus Professor of Art in the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts at Arizona State University. Raised between the South Side of Chicago and Champaign, IL, he began teaching at ASU in 1998, following 20 years at Columbia College Chicago. Marc was the Spring 2022, Stuart B. Cooper Endowed Chair in Photography at Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA), and a 2021 Guggenheim Fellow. He received his MFA from Tyler School of Art at Temple University and his BA from Pomona College. Marc is a documentary/street photographer and digital montage artist, whose work explores American identity and sense of place.

Marc’s American/True Colors (2020) received an Independent Publisher’s IPPY 2021 Gold Medal for best book in Photography and was a Finalist for both best art book and best multicultural book of the year from the 2021 New Mexico-Arizona Book Awards.Street Cat Tales andTangled Times(2023) is his visual story telling follow-up to American/True Colors that incorporates both digital montages and photographs.

Marc’s earlier three books include: Urban Notions (1983), that addressed three communities in Illinois where he had strong family ties;The Black Trans-Atlantic Experience: Street Life and Culture in Ghana, Jamaica, England, and the United States (1992); andPassage on the Underground Railroad (2009). Since 2008, Passage on the Underground Railroad has been registered as an Interpretative Program of the National UGRR Network to Freedom, a division of the National Park Service.

©Stephen Marc

Street Cat Tales and Tangled Times: An American Journey Continues

As a documentary/street photographer and digital montage artist, I am exploring American identity and sense of place. My long-term project, is an eclectic urban documentation of everyday life to special events, addressing style, character, and social atmosphere. Often my focus is on public spaces featuring the details of socio-cultural signifiers referencing popular culture and contemporary trends (including hair, body art, and fashion), national history, seasonal traditions, and current news where I observe people’s attempts to simultaneously stand out yet fit in somewhere.

How we shape our environment, define ourselves and recognize each other as Americans is racially and culturally diverse, socio-politically charged, historically layered, and constantly in flux. The challenge is to further uncover how much more we have in common, despite or within our differences. I’m searching for the ways we connect to place and interact with each other, while navigating the conundrums of coexistence.

As a black photographer, I feel that it is important during this transitionally complex and polarized time in this country to address who we are collectively as Americans. There have been other photographers who have created visual American surveys, most notably the seminal books of Walker Evans (American Photographs) and Robert Frank (The Americans). While often crossing the lines that divide this country, my work is an homage, update, and critical response to the seminal American documentary overviews, where I bring a different cultural background perspective.

My last two books, American /True Colors (2020) and Street Cat Tales and Tangled Times (2023) and ongoing work are the result of my continued efforts to document American culture through the observation of social dynamics, references to this country’s history, and as evidence of my own lived experience. Photographically, I am interested in the photograph as an interpretative visual document; and as a digital montage artist exploring strategies for combining photographs to extend the visual narrative, with varying degrees of maintaining the photographic illusion. My work is intended as a contribution to the greater archive of the American experience.

©Stephen Marc

Daniel George: This project has emerged from previous bodies of work that focus on American culture. What motivated you to begin your exhaustive survey of America and Americans—starting back in 2007?

Stephen Marc: In many ways, I’ve always been working on projects about American culture, and connections to America.

In response to the seminal survey projects about America, I felt compelled to pay homage, update, and critique those bodies of work; to develop my own view of this country at another significantly pivotal point in history. America has greatly changed since the times of Walker Evans’ American Photographs and Robert Frank’s The Americans, so I wanted to reevaluate how we define ourselves and recognize each other as Americans.

In comparison, how they saw this country is different from my experiences, and equally important is the difference of how this country sees me. Also, I was much older by the time I started my American survey projects, and I had already traversed the country numerous times (by car or plane/rental car combinations) for different reasons including earlier projects, especially the Underground Railroad project where I travelled extensively throughout the South.

While working on A/TC and Street Cat Tales, I found it interesting how many people encouraged me to do a project only about Black America, as if I was drifting outside my lane. But I was interested in exploring a more collective view of America, as an African American photographer, that of course included Black America, however in ways that reflected the broader cultural scope of my own lived experiences.

Besides, before my last two books, I had already completed The Black Trans-Atlantic Experience an African diaspora journey (a contemporary documentation of the British Colonial Slave Trade Routes exploring Ghana, Jamaica, England, and the United States), and Passage on the Underground Railroad and subsequent work that addressed Black history which is American history (and not just a segregated chapter or footnote).

Marc_05_SCT_NYC Graffitti cash station_2021

©Stephen Marc

DG: I’m curious about your interests in this manner of documentary photography in general. What draws you to the streets? What do they offer in terms of narrative that you cannot find anywhere else? Where do you feel this impulse to photograph people originates?

SM: Living in the second-best city for street photography is the reason that I moved back to Chicago after teaching for 26 years at Arizona State University (following 20 years at Columbia College Chicago). My years in the Phoenix area were rewarding, but I felt that I had accomplished most of what I wanted to do in Arizona, so upon retirement it was time to return home.

The impulse to photographing people started with my curiosity to explore the streets, long before becoming a photographer. Before picking up a camera, I had spent several years wandering through the streets of Chicago and Champaign-Urbana walking (and sometimes running), riding a bike, and “turning corners” in a car just to see what was out there around and beyond the neighborhood.

After definitively declaring that I was going to be a photographer in college, everyone was surprised except one of my closest friends who was an artist. He responded: “You’ve been a photographer as long as I’ve known you, it’s about time you learned how to use a camera!”

©Stephen Marc

DG: When we talked about this series, it was evident to me that you care about the people you photograph—and that they trust you, despite differing ideological perspectives on political or social views. What insights can you share as it relates to understanding your subjects, and perhaps their motivations or challenges?

SM: I enjoy being out on the streets and at special events, observing, interacting, and making a few photographs. My conversations are to get to know and better understand people in different places, respecting what they share with me without being judgmental.

“Special friends” is a term that I have come to use to refer to people who I greatly appreciate, who may not look, think, and act like me that either engage in conversations with me and/or allow me to photograph. With these encounters I learn more about the events, group politics, and people’s personal views. Without these encounters I would only be illustrating my own preconceived ideas. I have had some very serious, insightful, and enjoyable conversations and photographic interactions that may seem unimaginable, especially considering who I am.

Marc_07_SCT_Boston BMX Cruiser Bikes_2022

©Stephen Marc

DG: Tell us a little about your process—from the panoramic format to the montage. What importance do these technical approaches have as it relates to your work?

SM: American/True Colors contains 250 photographs (an advance nod to this country’s 250th birthday in 2026) with a few digital montages as accent fillers between text pages in both and back of the book, while the follow-up: Street Cat Tales and Tangled Times alternates digital montages and photographs throughout the book. The photographs are the traditional 2:3 ratio while the digital montages are 9:26 ratio which I have adopted and maintained after working on a CEPA bus exhibition where this was the standard for bus panels graphics displayed above the seats. This was just a hair shorter than the 1:3 ratio of several panoramic film cameras of the past, basically a double wide 35mm film format. Utilized these two formats allows viewers to easily differentiate between the straight images and post-production constructions.

As a photographer, I am interested in photographs as interpretative document fragments; and as a digital montage artist, creating visual short stories that explore the strategies and objectives for combining photographs (with varying degrees of maintaining the photographic illusion) to extend the visual narrative, bearing in mind the constructive nature of memory as an informed witness.

Although I had been working digitally since 1992, compositing street photographs seriously began in 2019, and this “woodshedding” way of virtual traveling was a natural progression in my work that greatly helped me maintain my creative momentum during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Casually referred to as the ‘street story montages,” the digital montages usually combine between two to seven photographs each. Some of the Photoshop created images are or appear to be chronophotographic or panoramic stitches, while others incorporate a range of strategies to intertwine different situations and events, occasionally spanning several years.

©Stephen Marc

DG: For me, the photographs in the series highlight the turbulence that exists within American culture—in the wake of, well pretty much everything that has happened in the past 5 years (the Covid-19 pandemic, the January 6th insurrection, economic instability, and growing political division, to name a few). What do you feel photographs, even these specifically, can offer in terms of relief?

SM: I’m not sure that my photographs can really offer relief, but I believe that the work provides evidence that we are a resilient people. My approach to the work is to identify the special within the ordinary, the celebratory rituals of culture, and as a reality check social critique. Documenting how the everyday proceeds despite the turbulence, I am hopefully providing ground level insight into what we have in common, alongside our differences. As long people are getting out and socializing in person, working together, talking to each other (especially to someone like me), and at least diversity tolerant; then something’s going right.