Alex King at Aesthetics for Birds:
AK: Let’s start off where your story with philosophers begins. Could you tell me a bit about the original “Philosophers” series?
SP: I’ve made two series of portraits of philosophers. The first series was during the late ’80s and ’90s and contained about eighty people, and the second continued through the ’90s until 2008 and contained a hundred more.
The first series came about after Sir A.J. Ayer suggested I do it. The series had a big impact because it outed what philosophers actually looked like. Remember, when I photographed the philosophers the first time around, there was no internet. There was no way of knowing what a philosopher looked like unless they were pictured on a book jacket. I think Quine had a picture that was photographed in the forties! They were not that image-conscious a bunch. Not then.
I met the most amazing people—people like Jack Rawls and David Lewis. When I met Freddie Ayer, he was an 88- or 90-year-old man. He was very much seen as the face of philosophy after Bertrand Russell.
More here.
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