00:04
Marc Hom
I chose A Sitting Room from 1938, and it's painted by my grandfather, Paul Høm.

00:11
Marc Hom
And I think it's my grandmother in the front, her name is Kirsten Høm. And she was, at least she told us that, she was the first woman to get into the Royal Academy of Painting, I think in, I want to say '29 or something. Might even not be true, might be a story that she told, I'm not sure. But I do believe it actually. I have pictures of her and my grandfather dragging paintings from and into the Royal Academy. Her and my grandfather Paul, they lived in Bornholm, a little island, Danish island.

00:39
Marc Hom
I love the color feeling of it. And I like the picture. It's anonymous, in a way, because you don't really see the girl's face. You just see my grandmother's face. And it's probably my father's little sister on the side. So there's something hidden there that creates attention, I think.

00:56
Marc Hom
I actually really like his strokes. But mainly the color palette. It's probably not his best painting, I don't think. But what really touched me — and it's something I just realized in the last couple of years, it's all coming back to me — it resonates a lot with my color palette in my photographs. It has this very Scandinavian light, it has the blues, it has the warm tones. I might've been unconsciously very inspired by his colors.

01:29
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
My name is Tina Jøhnk Christensen, and I'm the host of Danish Originals, a podcast series created in partnership with the American Friends of the National Gallery of Denmark and the National Gallery of Denmark. Our goal is to celebrate Danish creatives who have made a significant mark in the US.

01:47
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Today, our guest is Mark Hom, a Danish photographer. Welcome, Mark.

01:52
Marc Hom
Thank you so much. Thank you, Tina.

01:54
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
It's very lovely having you with us. You moved to New York when you were in your 20s. What made you make this move and make New York City your home, where you've been most of your life? How did you make this big decision?

02:10
Marc Hom
When I finished my photography school in Denmark, I was 21. And I always loved being in Denmark. I loved growing up in Denmark. But early on, I started doing really, really big assignments. I just felt, in a way, Copenhagen was a very small town at that time.

02:26
Marc Hom
And I really wanted to branch out and try to be standing on my own legs and not knowing anybody. And I felt at that time, Copenhagen was a bit claustrophobic. I just wanted to try to live a different life.

02:38
Marc Hom
I had this fascination with America and with New York, 'cause my father lived there through the '80s. And I just was, all right, let's do it. And I moved with my girlfriend at that time. She was 26 and I was 21. And we just left Copenhagen — it sounds like a really old cliche — but not with a lot of money or anything to try to make a living in another place.

02:59
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Was New York quite a different place from Copenhagen?

03:03
Marc Hom
I think New York is one of those cities, because you've seen so many pictures, seen so many movies from that place. So when you arrive, you almost feel you belong already, in a weird way. You know what I say? I think in terms of distance, it was a different thing.

03:16
Marc Hom
I remember the first morning I was there, I was staying on 92nd Street and Madison Avenue. And I just woke up, obviously completely jet lagged, and started walking. And so Twin Towers, I thought, okay, that's around the corner. And then three hours later, you end up reaching your destination and understanding, okay, things are a little bit bigger than where I was living.

03:37
Marc Hom
But I really totally loved it. I still love it. I feel very much at home. I think a lot of things, in terms of a difference between Danish people and American people, they're very open-minded, and I really felt right away at home. And we got a small apartment and I started assisting some photographers. And so it was really a warm welcome. Yeah.

04:00
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
You are in Cooperstown now. We are speaking to you in your house up there. Where in New York did you settle? What did you initially call your home, and how would you describe the first home that you had in New York?

04:14
Marc Hom
The first home I had in New York was on Commerce Street in the West Village. My girlfriend Lisbeth and I, we went on our first Caribbean vacation. You know how it is coming from Denmark, I'd never seen blue water and white sand and all that. So we went and we met some friends there.

04:29
Marc Hom
And it turned out that one of the friends— his sister, had a really small little rental apartment on Commerce Street, which is such a great little street, right in the center of the village. It was a one bedroom apartment, walk-up, third floor. Really, really great. Very central.

04:47
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
What made you make the move out to Cooperstown?

04:50
Marc Hom
We still have a house in Brooklyn. I have a house in Brooklyn Heights. We have a brownstone there. It was under the pandemic. I came back from a shoot in London and I started unpacking my suitcase and my wife Marie-Louise came up and said, you don't have to unpack, COVID is coming. And Saint Ann's, where the kids went to school, is closing down and they're now practicing e-learning. So, we might not be back next week.

05:16
Marc Hom
And when that happened, we had a place up here, which was obviously a safe haven for us. We were lucky that we had a place to go to and then we ended up buying the place and renovating it. And we have this amazing place with 20 acres of land. And then when we were supposed to go back last August, we looked at each other and it was, okay, why leave?

05:37
Marc Hom
So at the moment we're here and it's really quite fantastic. It's a long commute, I go in and out, I'm in every week. And it's a different, different living, but it's also very soothing at this time.

05:49
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
You mentioned before that you got started very fast, that you were lucky. Today you are known as an immensely successful photographer who's captured some of the world's most famous faces, including Hollywood stars like Robert Redford, Angelina Jolie, and Samuel L. Jackson, just to mention a few. How did you get your beginning? What was the job that made the first step towards becoming what you are today?

06:18
Marc Hom
I think of course, you have to have the appetite, right? That's one thing. I think the American approach to foreigners and the way I was at 22, I think in a way you create, I wouldn't say luck, but it is a bit of luck. I think you create your own opportunities by being open-minded. I've always been very interested in meeting new people, and getting inspired by people, really. I was very lucky.

06:42
Marc Hom
I met, early on, a woman called Elena Tchernichova. She was at the American Ballet Theater with Baryshnikov, and she was the ballet mistress there. And she was doing a project in Vienna with the Vienna Ballet. And because of the Philharmonic in Vienna, that's what they've always been known for, she was trying to create a ballet company there.

07:02
Marc Hom
And she invited me to go and do a small project, a book actually, surrounding her new developments of having all these amazing dancers from all over the world, from the Paris Opera, from the New York City Ballet. Nureyev was just stopping dancing. He was actually the conductor.

07:20
Marc Hom
Anyway, so I spent four months under that umbrella of being in a theater and creating this little book, which turned out really, really well. And it was my first big project. And I really felt proud that I had a project that I could show, and go around meeting all these people at magazines, instead of walking around with, what should I say, portfolio — model pictures, and other kinds of pictures. I started approaching the big magazines.

07:46
Marc Hom
And in '92, there was a very wonderful woman called Liz Tilberis who came from British Vogue and she took over Harper's Bazaar. And I met her and met the creative director Fabien Baron, who is still one of the most incredible art directors in the world. And they took me under their wing really early on in '93.

08:06
Marc Hom
And I started working there regularly with a group of photographers that were like the old guard, like Patrick Demarchelier, Peter Lindbergh. And then there were the younger ones, which was me and David Sims, Mario Sorrenti, Glen Luchford, different people. So we were kind of the young guard and I worked with them for many, many years.

08:24
Marc Hom
And it was totally amazing, 'cause at that time, magazine print work was everything, right? It was really a product that was so fantastic, 'cause you had almost each position filled with the most superior person under that field. So it was really an incredibly strong brand. It was a stamp of approval.

08:46
Marc Hom
And from there on, I got my first agent, Giovanni Testino. We opened a company called Art Partner, me and his brother, Mario Testino, and a good friend of mine, a photographer called Enrique Badulescu. And then it just took on, really, it just kept going and building and building.

09:03
Marc Hom
But it's so important that you surround yourself with people that have the same way of thinking, but also support you in the right way. But you don't really understand it until, almost, you look a bit back at it seeing, okay, this was incredibly lucky meeting this great group of people that took me under their wing at Harper's Bazaar.

09:22
Marc Hom
But you also just get one chance, right? That's the thing. There's so many people waiting in line to prove themselves. So I think, the openness and the open-mindedness of America in terms of getting a chance.

09:34
Marc Hom
I always came from, I would say, a portrait background, but then it evolved into more of a fashion moment for me. I did a lot of fashion stories and everything. And then by, I would say, 2006 or 2007, I felt that I really liked going back to the roots of doing my portraiture more than really doing all the fashion shoots and all that, because it's a completely different animal.

09:58
Marc Hom
Fashion photography today is, or it has always been, you have to have, let's say, all the right ingredients. Every single person has to be superior. Otherwise, it just becomes totally mediocre. I think if you don't have the right girl, you don't have the right stylist, right hair and makeup and all that. And when you're lucky to have all that, you create something that's superior.

10:18
Marc Hom
I think, with my portraits, I use fashion as a tool. I use it as a spice. But at the end of the day, it's not about the clothes, it's about the person that is in front of my camera.

10:29
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
And recently, you published a book, and you also held an exhibition called Re-Framed in the Fenimore Art Museum, and also at the Genesis House in the Hamptons. How did this come about, and how did you select the iconic pictures that were part of it? I assume you have a huge collection to choose from.

10:49
Marc Hom
This is my fourth book. And I got invited at the Fenimore Museum, I think this was in '21, to do this exhibition. And it's a wonderful museum. It's actually my first museum show. It's not far from where we have our house. And I saw there was a great Elliott Erwitt show. And then the next year they had a great Herb Ritts show. And so I was, all right, finally, this is getting into a place where I feel they have admiration for photography.

11:18
Marc Hom
And they showed me the room and it was a beautiful room. Very typical, it's a big manor house. It's a very old fashioned place, architecturally. Also, they have a lot of master paintings. It's quite substantial. And I saw the room, and I kept going around, of course being very happy that I was going to do an exhibition there, but also kept trying to figure out, what can I do that's different?

11:41
Marc Hom
Because I've done so many gallery shows around the world and I was like, I needed to try, first of all, to challenge myself, but also for the viewer to get a different perspective on how can we view photography in a different way.

11:53
Marc Hom
And one day I was driving up, passing Storm King sculpture park upstate here, which is a place that I go to quite a lot. And what's so fascinating about this place is that you have all these outdoor sculptures that totally change during the season in different weathers and all that.

12:09
Marc Hom
And then I was like, all right, let me try to do two things with this exhibition. Let's do a more traditional — photographs beautifully printed, framed, hanging on the wall — and then try to go into something that's unexpected.

12:23
Marc Hom
So I had this idea that I wanted to do these huge frames that would be three by four meters, turning in the wind, outside, and the experience would be that you would see things in a different way every day. It would be wind, it would be turning, it would be shadows, whatever.

12:38
Marc Hom
And then, I was like, all right, so how do I do this? How do we get to this point and how do I actually sell the idea to the museum, which was, of course, one thing is to get an idea, how do you execute something like that, right?

12:51
Marc Hom
So, we did some tests, of course. I went through many, many tests. We did a complete frame, and we started doing different printing processes, working with my lab Griffin Editions in Brooklyn, and started printing these humongous big pictures. And one thing that was very important for me, was that the quality had to be as good as a small photograph, right? We didn't want to lose any quality.

13:16
Marc Hom
And also, I was very lucky that there's an opera up here called the Glimmerglass Opera, which hires 40 people all year round. And in the summer, all the amazing singers and conductors from the Met come up here. And they have a whole — had a whole stage department.

13:31
Marc Hom
And I hooked up with a couple of people there, trying to explain my idea and how do we do it. Of course it was a lot of engineering going into this, but we made a huge demo and we brought it down last August and we put it up and it looked fantastic and it worked and all that stuff. So now it's just, how do we, how do I sell that?

13:52
Marc Hom
I'm standing there with this idea of wanting to do something that worked. And also, I've never really seen, it hasn't been done before, that you see photography on that scale outside. What you've seen in the past is photography decorating a building side or that kind of thing. So it worked and we got hold of an engineer. We did all the engineering and did the printing and did the framing and the show opened June 1st.

14:18
Marc Hom
It's been a tremendous success. And it was also obviously educational in many ways, for young kids or younger people. We had a lot of schools coming up here from all over New York State. We did a lot of lectures. It was great. It's so funny because in these so called AI times, I had a school class up there and there were 700 kids up here in two days.

14:43
Marc Hom
And there was one girl asking, wow, so did you meet all these people? I said, yes, I did meet these people. Oh wow. And there was a picture of Taylor Swift. And she's like, Oh, so did you meet her? I said, yes, I did. Oh wow. Okay. Did you shake her hand? And I said, yes, I shook her hand. How was she? She was very nice. And then she said, can I shake your hand? Hahahahaha!

15:06
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Hahahahaha!

15:07
Marc Hom
Anyway, it was very cute. But anyway, so I just think it was very important for me to show photography in this way and also to kind of recreate the respect for the medium of photography, right? Because everything is, what is the truth today? What is not the truth? What is comped? What is not comped? What is real? What is not real?

15:25
Marc Hom
We're living in this era where it's like, do we really believe in what we're seeing? Is this really something that was captured? So it's been great in many, many ways like that. And then of course, I went to my publisher teNeues and came up with the idea and they were like, Oh, we love it, we love it, we love it. And they wanted to do a book about it.

15:41
Marc Hom
But that was already obviously the summer before. We all got going, but we didn't really have a final approved budget before the beginning of January last year. So it all came together quite quickly. And then it's very different from the other books that I've done, because it's very much a museum book about the process of this.

16:00
Marc Hom
And I'm very fond of a writer called Nathan Heller, who writes for The New Yorker and Vogue and Vanity Fair, among other things. And I contacted him and I said, listen, do you want to be part of this? Do you want to write something? And he was like, I love this idea, I would love to do it.

16:16
Marc Hom
And then it was like, okay, great. So little by little, everything built up to the final book. And also, just having him on board was really great. And then you're sitting there waiting for the text to come back. What should I say? He went much deeper than I thought. He went all back to childhood and upbringing and blah, blah, blah. But it's great.

16:34
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Very nice. Can you talk a little bit about the pictures that were on the green lawn? They're all black and white and you mentioned Taylor Swift. There's Anne Hathaway, there's quite a few prominent people. And maybe talk a little bit about the story behind a few of the pictures that are very dear to you that are standing on that lawn.

16:56
Marc Hom
First of all, I made a very kind of conscious decision: all the big pictures outside should be black and white because I didn't want to have any strange hues from green grass, a blue sky or anything like that. So we stayed with those 28 pictures — yeah, it was a very conscious decision to just make them black and white.

17:15
Marc Hom
And then inside there was a combination of 37 pictures, both color and black and white, obviously. There's pictures back from '93, there's pictures back from last Christmas. So it's over 30 years of pictures.

17:27
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Can you mention a few that stand out for you that have a special story behind it? For instance, Anne Hathaway. I mentioned her before.

17:36
Marc Hom
Anne Hathaway was, you know, when you meet people in different times of your lives, right? This was a time where she was just getting her big break and she went through a lot of complications in her private life. I think I captured a very kind of —

17:51
Marc Hom
It's one of my favorite pictures because it's a very fragile moment in her life, I think. It's open and it's very youthful at the same time. And we worked many times after that together. It's fun to revisit or reconnect different times in your life, right? You have a story there.

18:07
Marc Hom
They all have a special story, one way or another. Otherwise they wouldn't be in the show, I don't think. It's a hard edit when you have to edit down to 75 or 78 pictures. They all have special meaning to me, I think.

18:20
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
When you're taking portraits of people, what do you look for when you decide how to portray them? And how long do you usually know a person before you get behind the camera and portray the version of them that you see?

18:33
Marc Hom
Obviously, I do a tremendous amount of research, and getting to know people. And I think I'm at a time in my career now where I choose who I want to photograph, which is a wonderful thing. So I always, of course, say yes to jobs where I find he's interesting or she's an interesting person that I want to get to know and want to photograph.

18:54
Marc Hom
It depends. It's a very— the camera, it's a kind of weapon, in a weird way. Because it's very intimidating being in front of a camera, I think. The most important thing is that you have to build up trust really, really, really quickly.

19:12
Marc Hom
And common respect. I think it's very important that I'm there for you, but you're also here for me. And we're here to create something that we can be proud of hopefully for years to come. And let's enjoy this moment that we're spending together.

19:25
Marc Hom
So it's a bit like being a shrink or a psychologist in terms of getting people to relax and putting down their guards to capture something that's not, what should I say, autopilot. A lot of these people that are in this particular show have been photographed many, many times before. So how do you — how do I get a picture that I feel is mine of this person, right?

19:49
Marc Hom
And you have to be careful 'cause a lot of these times, let's say, if it's for Vanity Fair or Vogue or Bazaar or whatever, they're there to promote something, right? They're there to promote a movie or play or book or something, concert or concert tour. People are there to work, but also get them to understand that I don't want to do what you just did two days ago.

20:08
Marc Hom
You know what I mean? People get very much into an autopilot thing if you don't stop them and shake them, and just say, listen, this is what I'm after. I think it's very much about making it comfortable and being in front of the camera, and getting people to relax. So you get something that's vulnerable.

20:26
Marc Hom
A good example is Samuel L. Jackson, that picture where he's shaving his head, which is one of my favorite pictures. But that's also one of those — it was a big shoot for Esquire and we were shooting in this big mansion up in, I think it was Beverly Hills. These days, you storyboard things a little bit, you come up with concepts, what does that go with the styling, blah, blah, blah, all that stuff.

20:49
Marc Hom
And that night I woke up and I had a strange dream about him shaving his head. And I was just like, okay, that's so weird. But I didn't want to leave my consciousness. I was just like, okay, I got to do this picture somehow. And I never met him before. And it's like, you also have to gamble, because here you are, as you know better than anybody, arrived with 30 people, right?

21:14
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Yeah, yeah.And I'm sure his publicist was skeptical when you—

21:19
Marc Hom
Yeah, yeah, of course. Everybody's so afraid of doing something that's not the normal thing.

21:26
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
And I met Samuel and I know he has a mind of his own. So how did you convince him to do this?

21:32
Marc Hom
He was really quite tough in the beginning.

21:35
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
I know, I could imagine.

21:37
Marc Hom
On all levels, also a racial thing. But anyway, I showed him one of my books and he was like looking for people of color right away and that kind of thing. We got over that. And then, as I said, that idea kept being in my head. I said, I have to get it out of my system. How do I do this?

21:54
Marc Hom
So I actually totally gambled on it and did it as the first picture. I said, listen, come with me. And I just escaped with him and went up to this bathroom. I was just with one assistant. There was daylight coming in from the right. And I just started shooting and said, can you just shave your head? And he's like, yeah, sure.

22:08
Marc Hom
And then of course, five minutes later, [knocking sounds], not even five minutes, as you can imagine, 60 seconds later, What are you doing in there? This is not what we were supposed to do! Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, well, you know.

22:21
Marc Hom
And he just winked at me and I said, okay, fine. So we just kept shooting. I got the picture really quick, and then we started the day, but it could have been a total disaster. But you have to be brave sometimes.

22:31
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
I'm sure you have to work with many obstacles. The entourage of people coming. I heard that while you were trying to shoot Amy Winehouse, she was under the influence, and you had to cancel. Are there many obstacles that make it hard to do your job?

22:47
Marc Hom
There's a lot of obstacles, I think, all the time. Really early in my career, I used to draw every picture before I would take it, right? So I had the sketchbook of pictures, this is where I would frame it, and this is what's going to happen in the background and all that. And I used to get so disappointed when things didn't exactly pan out 100%, but maybe 50% of what I had in mind.

23:10
Marc Hom
But then also you have to be flexible. I think it also comes with — I've been doing it for a while, right? So it comes with confidence, in that you also have to shift gears and follow the unexpected, which is sometimes much better than what you had in mind, right? And it could also go the opposite way. It could be much worse than what you had in mind.

23:30
Marc Hom
It happens once in a while, but I think it's really important to go with your instinct, go with the flow. And also, you are working with people who have a lot of knowledge, right? And who are so talented a lot of the time. So they also have an opinion, which is okay. And then you figure out how do we kind of — how do we dance together to do something that we're both proud of?

23:54
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
You have photographed some of my favorite people to interview: Bryan Cranston, Willem Dafoe, Brie Larson, Kate Winslet, and Amy Adams, for instance. Are they also good to photograph? And what makes someone a good subject to photograph? I assume that actors know how to act in front of the camera, too.

24:16
Marc Hom
But I also think it depends, right? It depends when you photograph somebody, what time in their career. It's such a human thing. Timing is a lot, right? Brian Cranston was amazing because he was just like, I've done this for a while. I don't give a shit. Let's just do this. What do you want to do? I'm like, I want to do this. Great.

24:34
Marc Hom
And I have pictures of him standing in his underwear, ironing his shirt. And I was lucky, we were shooting in this beautiful house, a Neutra house that my friend David Netto owns. And we went up there, and it was so great. And we're standing there trying to figure out what we're going to do for the cover, and I'm standing in the kitchen, and he says, is there a rabbit here?

24:57
Marc Hom
I said, I don't know. Yes, there's a rabbit here. I'm sure there's a rabbit. I'm like, all right, let's go. So he went into my friend's daughter's room and right enough, there was a rabbit. He said, why don't we do a picture with a rabbit? I said, okay, we do a picture with a rabbit. That's a lot to comprehend. That doesn't happen all the time. Certain people like to be photographed, right? Some don't.

25:15
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Did you become close friends with any of your subjects, so to speak? Or is it very professional?

25:20
Marc Hom
No, of course, of course, the stories before and after are always also interesting. Of course you become friends with people. You end up also working with people over and over again, right? So sometimes, yeah, you become friends. Absolutely.

25:36
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
And let's go back in time a little bit. You were born in Copenhagen. Your father Jesper was also a photographer. Do you remember the first time you held a camera in your hand and how it made you feel?

25:52
Marc Hom
It's so funny because I used to, I think probably from when I was 15, that's really what I wanted to do. I used to print a lot with him in the dark room, obviously. Being with him on assignments sometimes. But he was also a very different kind of photographer. You know, I always say that, for me, he's the Scandinavian Cartier-Bresson, you know?

26:13
Marc Hom
'Cause he was very much about catching the moment. It's all about standing and being much more of a voyeur than me in terms of not arranging things, but just snapping at the right time and framing at the right time. And he was much more of a reportage kind of guy, right?

26:30
Marc Hom
But I think, of course, he's been a huge influence in my life. Then he moved to Paris. First of all, my mother and father opened the first art cinema in Copenhagen in 1978, called Delta Bio. My father had the movie theater and my mother had a restaurant downstairs, which was the first creperie pancake place in Scandinavia at that time.

26:51
Marc Hom
And it was fantastic to be around that. And it was funny. He would go to Cannes every year and buy rights for Scandinavia and show movies. But he was very much into, it was mostly Fellini, Fassbinder, blah, blah, blah. So you also understood that his business sense was not so good. After the 250 intellectual people in Copenhagen had been to the cinema, it was kind of empty.

27:18
Marc Hom
So they actually got a divorce. He moved to Paris, so I was visiting him a lot. He came to visit me a lot and we were really good friends. He was a big— how should I say, I think he was quite proud of my achievement in many ways.

27:33
Marc Hom
He also loved New York. He lived there from eighty— I think '86 to '89, more or less. Yes, he was also a big, big fan of New York, and so of course that's also, I'm sure, that's where my interest came from, also about moving to New York, right?

27:51
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
I spoke to Adrian Brody recently, and his mother is a photographer, and he told me how he was his mother's favorite subject as a child. Was that the case with you too? Do you have a lot of portraits of yourself as a child too?

28:07
Marc Hom
Yeah, he did a beautiful book. It was called Børnenes Billedbog, the children's picture book. And it's really, really great. It was sold at Irma at the supermarket for 9.95 kroner. It was the same price of 10 cigarettes. And it's all pictures of us.

28:25
Marc Hom
It's a beautiful concept. It's just pictures, pictures, pictures, pictures in different chapters. And for sure, for sure, for sure. I think he liked photographing his family. I don't like photographing people that I know too well sometimes. I don't find it as exciting.

28:42
Marc Hom
What should I say? It's almost like going on a journey and exploring people and how they are and how they react to certain things. And you know the reaction from people that are too close to you. So actually I like to photograph people that I don't know too well.

28:56
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Do you feel comfortable in front of the camera too?

29:01
Marc Hom
Not so much. I think it's much more fun to be behind the camera.

29:06
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
You received a degree from the Danish Art Academy. What kind of foundation did that give you before you went out into the big world?

29:14
Marc Hom
It was what it was at that time. It was an education that was really interesting, because you worked with a photographer for a year and then you spent a year in school, and you went back to the photographer and you spent a year again. It was a great education because you knew what the business was of running a studio, being part of a bigger company.

29:32
Marc Hom
It was also a little bit, how should I say, a little bit old-school, in a way. It was a little bit, the schooling part of it was a little bit not really how the world looked outside the walls of the school. But it was great. I had a wonderful time. I got my own apartment, I was 16. I moved out of the house. I was working. I started early. I was 16 1/2 when I started school.

30:02
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Do you think you see the world differently when you're behind a camera? And I asked you before how it makes you feel to be behind the camera.

30:13
Marc Hom
I think of course you isolate yourself, right? You have a camera in front of your head, so you only see what the one eye sees, so you're kind of closing everything out. You're almost in a bubble, in a way, 'cause you're just within that one vision. For sure, for sure. It's also a shield in a way.

30:29
Marc Hom
You're definitely— you're so concentrated in the moment of what you're doing when you look through the camera and taking a picture, so of course you forget everything else around you.

30:40
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
What is the secret behind your success? What would you say to young people who would love to walk in your footsteps? What advice would you give?

30:58
Marc Hom
I think first of all, you have to treat people the way you want to be treated. I think it's a very important thing. And it's very important also, the social aspect of it, in terms of having an interest in people and having an interest in what you do and getting to know things.

31:04
Marc Hom
I love being around people. I really feed off the energy of being in a group of people. I love being on set with ten, 20 people, and you all create. You have your spice, each of you, to create something that becomes good or interesting.

31:19
Marc Hom
But I also think you really have to be driven. You'd really have to want to be and do this, what your profession is. But I also feel totally, without sounding like a 57-year old, but I also feel totally privileged, that this career has taken me all around the world, and met so many amazing people. And I really have not done my best picture yet, which is for sure.

31:42
Marc Hom
Also, I think what has happened with me is that it's my life, right? It's not like you just go to work from nine to five and you come home and something else. It's all one big — mess, I wouldn't say — but it's one big vision. And it's sometimes hard to differentiate between what's work and what's not work.

32:05
Marc Hom
'Cause it's all kind of, you get inspired by so many people around you that makes you do certain things. And also believing in yourself. It's hard. You just have to keep going and keep creating something that you're proud of, I think. 'Cause there's nothing worse than creating something and putting a lot of energy into it and you're not proud of it in the end.

32:26
Marc Hom
But it also takes 110%. I think a lot of people can do certain things very well, but it's the last 5% that makes a huge difference, whatever that is. But it is in the end, I think it really is about commitment.

32:39
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Maybe it's not fair to ask you, but what is the worst job you ever did?

32:46
Marc Hom
Oh, what's the worst job I ever did? I don't know. That's a good question. We might have to come back to that one.

32:55
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
You don't have any, I think—

32:58
Marc Hom
I don't really—

32:58
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
You would have remembered it. It would come up immediately, like, damn, there was that time when—

33:02
Marc Hom
Yeah. No, I know. I know. I don't remember right now.

33:08
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Then you didn't do a really bad job.

33:11
Marc Hom
I didn't have a really bad one. I had certain things that got canceled midway or people walking out from a shoot because they got pissed or something, but you know—

33:19
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
That happens, that people just leave?

33:22
Marc Hom
Yeah. People can say, Oh, I don't like this. And that walk, and it's like, all right, great, I guess we got what we got. But you know, not very often. Thank God.

33:31
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
So my final question to you, what do you still want to achieve in your career? What are the goals that you've set for yourself now at this stage of your career?

33:42
Marc Hom
I think I'll keep doing what I'm doing, in a way, because I just don't feel that I'm done at all. I think there's just so many beautiful things and interesting people to work with and photograph.

33:54
Marc Hom
I am trying a little bit in terms of getting into more of the moving imagery and stuff, but for me, it still is the frozen moment that really inspires me the most, and not so much a narrative of telling a longer story, but combining two or three or four pictures that tells the story. So I think, I still keep doing what I'm doing. Yeah, I think so.

34:12
Marc Hom
And the funny thing is, if I wasn't doing this, I probably would have been an architect or something. But yeah, I think, keep doing what I'm doing, of course. You also have to understand that technology is evolving and all these different things and you have to, wouldn't say greet it with open arms, but you have to make a stand of these things that come towards you, right?

34:43
Marc Hom
You're going to have to be able to use AI to do certain things. Yeah. But the honest picture is really still what kind of inspires me, I have to say. We're also in a very strange moment right now, where you have this very futuristic AI universe, and then all my assistants and ex-assistants are all shooting film again, they all go to the dark room, which is wonderful, I think.

35:08
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Does AI worry you?

35:11
Marc Hom
Does it worry me? Not really. Because I think you can adapt to use it to a certain point, extending backgrounds or doing certain things that will help you.

35:19
Marc Hom
Of course, I think that's a little bit touching on what we talked about earlier in terms of having all these school kids come to my exhibition and not quite understanding that I actually was in front of these people. So the perspective of that worries me a little bit. But other than that, I think not not so much yet. So, you know.

35:41
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Well, thank you so much, Marc, for being part of Danish Originals. We really appreciate you being with us today.

35:49
Marc Hom
Of course. Thank you for having me. It's been really fun talking to you.

35:53
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Fun talking to you, too.

35:59
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
For today's episode, Marc Hom chose Paul Høm's Stuen, or The Sitting Room from 1938 from the collection of the National Gallery of Denmark.