“The Faithful” Interview Archives: Ralph Burns
Ralph Burns, a Western North Carolina-based photographer originally from South Louisiana, is widely recognized for his black-and-white documentary-style photographs, taken mostly in the classic 35 mm style, and then printed by his own hand. Burns has photographed extensively across the American South, as well as in Armenia, Mexico, Cuba, Israel, India, and Thailand. Throughout his career Burns has displayed a continuous and persistent interest in the deeper underpinnings of culture and religion, attempting to explore the deeper human motivations for cultural adherence and religious allegiance, while maintaining a compassionate and mainly non-judgmental intimacy with his subjects and their beliefs. Burns’ work is recognized both nationally and internationally, his photographs having been exhibited in museums worldwide.
We first met at Graceland one Elvis Week. Ralph has been photographing Elvis memorials since the very first in 1977. Years later, we visited him in his studio in North Carolina to see his archive and record his story. Over the many years, Ralph became a good friend, mentor, and source of inspiration. We could have easily made an entire film about him. Someone else has since done so. It’s called In Love’s Shadow and is worth watching. Here are some excerpts from our interview together.
— Annie Berman
Annie: Tell me again the story of your first trip to Graceland
Ralph: It was 1978 and I was working in my darkroom. And at that time in Asheville, we only had an AM station, so you could only get news. So I heard it on the ABC hourly news that Elvis fans were gathering at Graceland for the first anniversary of his death. And this wasn’t a planned thing, people were just spontaneously gathering. I kept on working and an hour later I heard the same newscast, and it was as clear to me as anything I had ever heard in my life that I needed to get in my car and drive to Graceland and see what this was and start photographing it. And it blended in with what I was already doing as a photographer; I was already photographing worship and religion, love and loss, in the attempt to connect to the other. Now, I didn’t realize it was actually going to actually trump all my other bodies of work. At the time I thought I would go one time and photograph that and the images would fit into another collection, and as it turned out I’ve been there I don’t know how many times — 20, 25? I don’t know. Eighteen? I really don’t know.
Annie: And how would you describe what you found the first year?
Ralph: Surreal. I wasn’t particularly prepared for it in the sense that I thought I was going to see one thing and I saw something else. It took me like forever to drive there, and I finally arrived at Graceland at three in the morning and it had the feel of a gathering of mystics. People were talking very quietly. It was a very different place then, there was much more grass people were allowed up into the grounds, and there was this tone of mysticism and reverence, almost as if the people there expected Elvis to appear not in person, but in spirit, and they were all waiting, and I was really moved by that. I didn’t connect to it personally, but I was really moved by the fact that it didn’t have an outlandish, kitschy sort of feel to it; what it had was people who were trying to get in touch with a loved one who was no longer alive.
Annie: You started out as an outsider to this contained world, but ended up becoming part of it in a way, didn’t you?
Ralph: There was a difficulty at first, but there was a seminal moment for me. The moment I’ll remember more than anything that made me understand that it was going to be okay, it was about the fifth time I had gone, and I went down to Tupelo, Mississippi, which is Elvis’ birthplace. And it was in August and it was a particularly brutal day and I was photographing and I was working alone and I felt somewhat alone doing this, and I was standing in this field right next to Elvis’ birth-house and I felt a tap on my shoulder. And it was this little boy who could barely reach my shoulder. He had tapped me on my shoulder and he was holding a Coke. And he handed the coke to me and he pointed, and he said it’s from my dad. And he pointed and over in the shade there was this couple with a sort of, quintessential Elvis fans, they had their camper there, and they waved to me and gave me the thumbs up. They had seen me enough times and they had understood. Or they understood that I was trying to do something respectful and that I was going to have some chronology involved, and it was a welcome.
Annie: Why do you keep going back? Are you getting closer to an answer?
Ralph: I don’t know if there is an answer. I go back probably because there isn’t an answer. And I keep going back to find an answer, or there is some definitive image to sum this up. And there really isn’t. There’s never one photograph that’s going to capture this. Because it’s not about the obvious; it’s about the subtle, the mysterious, the mystical.
As I have been involved in this project, I also have deepened appreciation for Elvis Presley in all kinds of ways. I mean, he’s really easy to make fun of and to belittle but in reality, he’s a significant cultural avatar, he really did something, when you look at the history and understand the history, he’s a significant being and I have a greater appreciation of that now than when I started the project. And I also have a greater appreciation for the fans. They’re very open, they’re very self-knowledgeable, there’s little self-delusion going on there, they’re very loyal, they’re very true, and once they accept you they’ll do anything in the world for you. It’s a real family…who come year after year for reasons which are still mysterious to most of us, because of a deep abiding now lost love for another human being.
Annie: I know you have developed a close relationship with these people, but I imagine some viewers might misinterpret your photographs?
Ralph: There is a default assumption when people start looking at my photographs that I must be about ridicule. I must be trying to make fun, that I must be trying to point out the flaws and stupidities of other humans, and that is not at all what this work is about. This isn’t American kitsch to me, this isn’t about people who are lacking a life of their own need to parade around appearing like somebody else.
Annie: What would you say you are looking for when you’re there, what catches your eye?
Ralph: It’s really hard to know what I’m looking for when I go. When I’m driving or flying to Memphis I’ve tried to picture the images in my brain and say these are the pictures I want, but that never works. But I go there looking for things which for me reveal something about all of us. And specifically about this process, but something about all of us and how we interrelate with the beyond. But in truth, I think long ago I got all of the fresh images I was going to get. Whereas early on I was going for images, now I’m going pretty straight on just to record and document.
Annie: What similarities are there between this and some of the other things you’ve been documenting?
Ralph: I became struck by the fact that I was looking at things being done and said that I had seen in churches or in other religious settings. And I became very interested in that — I mean, what is it about humans? Is it that we at an early age are taught a ritualistic base to our lives, or is there something within us, is there something that comes in the DNA that makes certain activities an attempt to connect or to honor the divine? I maintain that if we change the iconography within the image, that if we took Elvis out and put the Virgin [Mary] or Jesus or something that we were comfortable with, that it would appear totally normal. Some people see that as a misappropriation of religious form and ritual; I don’t see it that way. I just see that it's religious form and ritual finding a way to work itself out in.
I think one of the things that’s going on here is this need to have this connection, and the form, the lighting of candles, the prayers, the gestures — there’s this very ritualized process that takes place on the eve of Elvis’ death. You can see the exact same thing in Jerusalem, you can see the exact same thing at many religious shrines. I stood in Israel and watched people light bonfires and carry candles on Lag B’Omer, and I was struck by the similarities in this. I think that one of the things that I’m most interested in or have been most interested in addition to the chronology, is what is this? Is this misplaced or is this innate? Is this coded in us? Are we coded to worship? And if we are coded to worship, then I would maintain that if it doesn’t harm anyone else, anything we worship is fine.
Annie: Can you define Elvis week for someone who doesn’t know what it is?
Ralph: It’s a gathering of fans who were moved, touched, motivated, or felt loved by Elvis, who still grieve his passing and still miss him, who feel a need to come together in Memphis in particularly at Graceland, and share in their memories of Elvis and probably even share in their sorrow of Elvis’ passing. But it’s not dark only…it’s about people who come year after year. I have a lot of Elvis fans who have told me that they share more with their Elvis fans than with their family, more personal stuff. On Elvis’ birthday, which is different from the Elvis week, in January, fans, and often the same fans, come and it’s a little more celebratory, it has more of a fun, play, sock hop, dance…the music tends to be not quite as sad and as heart-breaking as the music you hear at Elvis week, it tends to be the fun…they have birthday cakes and the cutting of ribbons and things to celebrate Elvis’ birth. So there are these two times in the year when Elvis’ fans get to come back to Graceland to honor Elvis’ life. This is the time of the year they set aside to remind them, one could argue, of their own humanity through grieving for Elvis.
Annie: How do the trinkets and all that relate to the inner journey?
Ralph: I have, somewhere in this process — and this thing is probably the best thing that could have ever happened to me in my life — I understood that I wasn’t qualified to judge these people, and that I’m really not that qualified to judge many other people at all. Life is complex and layered and it has many things coming at you, and you know, if buying Elvis buttons and t-shirts and mugs brings someone comfort and helps them to have an identity which they are comfortable with, I think it’s great. That’s one of the things I’ve noticed about the Elvis fans: They can laugh at themselves, they can chide themselves, they know the view of the other and they’re aware of what the press does with them and to them and there’s some anger about that. But they’re pretty self-satisfied people. And if they need buttons, buy buttons.
Of course, there are people who take advantage of this. A lot of people like to pick on Elvis Presley Enterprises, but I think they do a great job at what they do. They’ve kept this thing going; they shouldn’t be held to any higher standard than any other corporation, and from what I can tell they do have a high standard in what they do. They’re about making money and that’s what every corporation does. I see them trying to make an attempt to accommodate, to assimilate the fans and the thing which some people. And some people might expect that this (points to his pictures) might make them a bit uncomfortable. They do a good job of integrating this in what they do. And if they make money selling things to Elvis fans to make money, I mean, it’s no different than for poor Elvis when he was alive. Everybody was making money off of him, and no one was screaming about it then. It’s how we have our culture set up, and until we change the relationship to ourselves and money, and whether that’s something that could be done or should be done I don’t know, but until we do that, people will be selling things to people forever.
Annie: I understand the money making aspect, but I still feel owning someone’s image is detrimental to our culture and to the fans who love them…
Ralph: What I think this brings up is the whole question of intellectual property and copyright, where does that begin and end, what are the ingredients of a vibrant creative culture, and who owns the images. Like the Dr. Martin Luther King speech, the ‘I Have a Dream’ speech — I find it startling that that speech is not in the public domain, but I also understand the fact the family’s desire, need, and belief in the right to own that. I would be a happier person if, once a person transcends the normal mundane and becomes a universal, like the Pope or like Lady Di or like Elvis, that [their] image belongs to us all. But it’s easy for me to say that because I have no financial benefit or loss by saying that. I mean, hey, am I willing to put my photographs out on the Internet with a little note saying ‘Hey everybody, you can print these out and you can have my photographs’? I don’t think I am.
Annie: Any favorite moments from over the years?
Ralph: I remember on the third anniversary of Elvis death, I was staying in downtown Memphis in a hotel, and it happened that the entire floor was filled with Elvis fans, and I was out late that evening, and it was about three in the morning, and I’m going back to my room, and I’m walking down the hallway, and it’s this long dimly lighted hallway, and I suddenly stopped and I realized that out of every door, underneath every door, I could hear Elvis music, and it was different music. Every room almost — of course not every room, but in my fantasy recollection of the moment, my embellishment of reality, it was every room, and it was just this most magical moment for me. It was both surreal and touchingly real, I think it was one of the things that would help me understand, some would say the mythology, but I would say the sincerity and the depth of this. People were there listening to Elvis at 3 in the morning. And I remember thinking how wonderful it would be to put that in a film, but also how impossible it would be. But there are times like that when I sort of get something. And for me, that has always been the most significant thing about the project for me.
Visit our website to stream “The Faithful” at your leisure, or join us Thursday, April 8 for a live screening and Q&A with Annie Berman and Ralph Burns hosted by the USC School of Cinematic Arts. Click here for more info.
