Where Waves Break
I first encountered Charlie Hoberman through his designated Zoom window on my MacBook screen. It was 2020 during the height of the pandemic, and I was a college freshman taking my first semester of classes from my childhood bedroom. Charlie, I remember, in true Southern Californian fashion, would log onto our evening lecture sessions while swinging from the hammock in his backyard. He describes himself as someone who struggles to find the balance between work and play, but, at least to me, he seemed to already have that all figured out.
A few weeks into the course, Charlie and I were partnered for a presentation on Walter Benjamin’s 1935 essay, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, a seminal text that was discussed at length throughout the following four years I’d spend studying art history. In the essay, Benjamin draws a clear distinction between traditional art forms – such as painting and sculpture – and products of mechanical reproduction – namely photographs. The former, he argues, possesses what he calls an “aura,” an essential quality that depends upon its unique presence in time, space, and tradition. Photographs, he continues, lack the same aura because they’re often made to be infinitely reproduced, thus detaching them from any specific spatial or historical context.
I’m not sure if Charlie even remembers our project from all those years ago, and I certainly wouldn’t blame him if he doesn’t – those online years have become a blur of blinking webcams and red mute buttons and too many distractions living in all those open desktop tabs. I’m confident, though, that Benjamin’s ideas embedded themselves into Charlie’s subconscious because, four years later, he calls to mind the philosopher’s musings on the aura when describing the “tangible magic of analog photography.” Although Benjamin was skeptical about photography, I can confidently assert that a photographic print can possess the aura in the same way as an oil painting because I’ve had the privilege of experiencing it for myself.
I’ll set the scene: it was well into 2021 when Charlie and I finally met. We were both taking that semester’s section of Contemporary Gallery Practices, a five-hour chunk carved into fifteen straight Fridays. Fridays are precious to college students – it’s rare that classes are scheduled that day, and, even if they are, they tend to be avoided at all costs. It’s usually only the students most eager to learn or desperate to finish their credits who are willing to forego their long weekends. I assumed that Charlie, ever-curious as he is, fell into the first category.
Our class syllabus was more of an itinerary that time-blocked our biweekly trips to a selection of Los Angeles’s contemporary art galleries. One of my favorite shows was Wolfgang Tillmans’s Concrete Column at Regen Projects. Tillmans often discusses his pictures as three-dimensional objects, and while his work circulates widely online – most notably permeating popular culture through his iconic album art for Frank Ocean’s Blonde – the true essence of his practice emerges in the exhibition space.
There’s something special about existing within one of Tillmans’s installations and moving through corridor after corridor of his carefully arranged collages. There’s something special about having to step back to take in a massive, larger-than-life print and getting up close and personal with a triptych of postcard-sized images taped to the wall. You’re experiencing all of it at once, considering not only how you’re relating to each image but also how they’re engaging with each other in that space at that moment in time. This is a phenomenon that can never be exactly replicated, and it’s precisely what Benjamin is referring to when he writes about an artwork’s aura.
This is all to say that what makes a successful photograph usually transcends its formal or technical qualities. In an episode of the Talk Art podcast, Wolfgang Tillmans explains that a photograph’s meaning surpasses “what can be technically [or] specifically described.” He continues, “that act – what physically happens there – how the diaphragm goes to 5.6 and the shutter goes five hundredths of a second onto those silver halide crystals in that film – that doesn’t explain why [a] picture is what it is and touches you the way it does.”
Talent depends on something intangible, something felt. It’s a life spent in relentless pursuit of evolution. Charlie admits that school was never his strongest suit, and yet he’s enrolled himself in what he likes to call his graduate program in photography by working as Peter Fetterman’s gallery assistant. When he’s off the clock, he’s either roaming the streets with his camera in hand or working on building a darkroom into his Santa Monica apartment. He’s driven by the force of his enthusiasm for both his choice of medium and subject matter, and his passion is palpable in his portfolio.
Charlie grew up in Malibu, where he met his first muse: the Pacific. The ocean is a mercurial subject, he explains, with her “multiple personalities.” Her shifting currents eventually pulled him towards photography when he became obsessed with documenting her many moods, capturing velvet ripples and violent whitewash with the kind of attention that only a lover affords the object of his affection. “I was completely hooked,” he recalls.
When I ask Charlie about his early artistic influences, he reminisces on the “Clark Little days,” referencing the photographer whose highly saturated images of waves taken from within the barrel came to define early 2010s ocean photography. Back then, Little’s shorebreaks lined the walls of nearly every coffee shop along the Southern Californian coast. Even now, a decade deep, there’s certainly still a glimmer of Clark Little in Charlie’s body of work. In one of his images, a wave curls around a flare of golden-hour sunlight. In another, the sea seems to bite her lip as a band of turquoise water folds over itself.
As he’s gotten older, Charlie’s turned his lens from the sea to the shore. His fascination with surf culture has waned, and he’s not quite sure whether it’s because surf culture is simply overdocumented or because he’s immersed himself in it for so long that he’s become immune to its charm. In any case, Charlie now finds himself shooting from land more often than not, drifting through the crowds packed onto piers or long stretches of sand. The once-territorial surfer now appreciates the opportunity to share the beach, and is creatively fueled by the diverse demographic that popular spots attract. “It feels endless, inspiring, and constantly exciting,” he says.
From his list of current favorite photographers – Joel Meyerowitz, Lee Friedlander, Jill Friedman, Anthony Friedkin – I can most clearly detect Martin Parr’s impact on Charlie’s work. Parr’s known to capture candid moments, often on the beach, that emphasize the eccentricities of human behavior. He isn’t afraid to shoot complete strangers from within close range, and his unapologetic approach yields the sense of intimacy that makes his photographs so compelling. Charlie achieves a similar effect when he dares to cast his camera-wielding shadow upon a beachgoer’s bare back, or gets so close to a mustached, Speedo-clad man that he smirks right into his lens.
Like surfing, though, street photography isn’t always easy. For someone who describes himself as socially anxious, the prospect of being caught taking an unsuspecting stranger’s portrait is mortifying. But the fact that street photography poses such a challenge is precisely why Charlie loves it. When he sees a big set approaching, he paddles straight into it. Like catching a wave, there’s no room for hesitation when it comes time to fire the shutter. It’s all about trusting his instincts, completely committing to taking advantage of those precious, perfect moments as soon as they present themselves to him, and riding that high all the way to shore.
