An otherwise forgettable photo featuring of a number of white plates and bowls scattered around each other is going viral because no one can decide whether they are right-side up or upside down. The first photo originally appeared on social media with the caption: "Look at the plates in the picture. All of them are turned over. However, there are a few that are not upside down, and the moment you identify those, all the plates will be turned over!"
Take a look. Do the plates and bowls flip from one side to the other? Do you sell them all right-side up or upside down? Do you see a mix? If you can only see the plates one way, try taking a look at this photo. Here' you'll probably see one half one way and one half the other.
So what's the truth? Are the plates right-side up or upside down? Or is there a mix of some up, some down? The photo was popular on Reddit's optical illusions page where one user believes they are all right-side up.
"Pretty sure it just has to do with how your brain makes assumptions based on lighting, the shadows can be interpreted as indents or raised sections and in an image with no points of reference you can't figure out the depth of something any other way," Reddit user MCXI wrote.
"The flip is probably because we are told they are upside down but things are usually right side up so once the brain is convinced that they are it sticks too it," they continued. "This is just a guess though."
However, user fluffy_dogs was seriously confused. "If you flip your image upside down you might be able to see them flipped upside down," they wrote. "Until you find the plate that doesn't look upside down. IT KEEPS CHANGING THINGS AREN'T RIGHT."
The good news is that the person who first posted the image on social media has divulged the correct answer. They've also used their optical illusion to make a point about believing everything we see.
"When I originally took this picture and posted it with the incorrect caption that all the plates were upside down, I was surprised at the massive amount of attention it gained," the poster wrote.
"The fact that thousands of comments on reposts showed that most people actually believed that all the plates were upside down shows how easily people can be fooled into seeing a non-existent illusion based on mere suggestion," the poster continued. "Keep this in mind before being quick to believe anything you see in social media."
So the correct answer is: The are all right-side up.
There are some days when you’re just looking for a nice, positive laugh. A lot of comedy films out there that are biting, snarky, and mean-spirited. That’s not bad on its own. Such comedy allows people to laugh at the angry parts of life. But those comedies don't always fit the mood you want when you’ve had a harsh day or a day filled with rage-baity news. On the opposite end, you probably aren’t in the mood for anything that’s too corny, preachy, or have that “we’ve all learned something today” motif that makes you roll your eyes.
Fortunately, there are some movies out there that have positive feel-goodness but don’t sacrifice quality laughs to keep up with the light vibe. Here are a few movies that are able to keep the balance between genuinely funny and genuinely lighthearted.
The Princess Bride
While the film can fall under romance, fantasy, adventure, and other categories, a primary bent throughout The Princess Bride is its ability to be all of those genres and a comedy, too. While the film is a fairytale love story with swashbuckling it’s peppered with several lighthearted and, more importantly, funny jokes and gags that keep it balanced from being too saccharine. As film critic Roger Ebert said in his review, “While younger viewers will sit spellbound at the thrilling events on the screen, adults, I think, will be laughing a lot.”
This Wes Anderson movie about a young refugee’s rags to riches story as life as a bellboy at a luxurious hotel provides some cozy moments and quirkiness that have become Wes Anderson’s trademark. However, there are plenty of madcap jokes and scenes that bring about legit laughter during an otherwise sweet story set during darker times. As the New York Times puts it, “This movie makes a marvelous mockery of history, turning its horrors into a series of graceful jokes and mischievous gestures.”
Hunt for the Wilderpeople is directed by Taika Waititi, known for What We Do in the Shadows and Thor: Ragnarok among other loud and fun comedies, but what sets this movie apart is that it sounds outright cheesy on paper. The film is ultimately about a foster child and his guardian that are total opposites finally bonding together while surviving nature and avoiding the authorities. Yet the father-figure/surrogate son connection feels genuine and not sickeningly sweet due to some of the crasser-yet-not-mean-spirited laughs, making it an “off-kilter charmer” according to The Guardian.
Some of the older folks reading this article already are having the song “It Had to Be You” running through their heads as soon as they saw the title. This 80s romantic comedy questioning whether or not men and women can be “just friends” goes beyond the premise to deliver some quality jokes, great quips, and that one scene that is so well known that it was turned into a mayonnaise commercial for the 2025 Super Bowl. While When Harry Met Sally... is a love story, it stands above the pack of most rom-coms due to its grounded nature and ability to show the ugly, struggling parts of a relationship. It’s a film that believes in love wholeheartedly without being lovesick. As put in a retrospective review on Film Magazine, “For a film steeped in the authenticity of real modern life, it had a total fairy tale ending, yet it worked so bloody well.”
While on the surface it appears as a run-of-the-mill children’s film starring a CGI character, Paddington 2 is somehow very earnest, sweet, and honest while also providing quality laughter and witty jokes that even make the most cynical adult giggle. Seeing Hugh Grant as a scene-chewing actor turned thief makes the movie a riot alone. A film doesn’t get a 99% Fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes for just being a quality movie made for kids.
On the western edge of the Monte Albo mountains in Sardinia, Italy stands the comune, the municipality, of Lula. Twice a year, on May 1 and October 4, groups of people make the pilgrimage to Lula on foot from Nuoro, some 40 miles away for the Feast of San Francesco. Upon their arrival, they’re rewarded with a recipe some 300 years old: Su filindeu, or tears of god, a pasta so difficult to make there are now only a handful of people in the world who can do it.
The pasta is served in a lamb broth made with generous portions of pecorino primo sale, a cheese made of sheep’s milk. While the recipe has traditionally been passed down matrilineally, masters of the delicacy like Paola Abraini--who lives in Nuoro, where the sacred recipe is also from--have started to instruct others. According to Atlas Obscura, “Abraini, who is currently in her mid-sixties, made a conscious decision to teach people outside of her family to make it, in large part because not everyone had a daughter to inherit the knowledge.”
One of those people, the site shares, is the chef Rob Gentile, who went to Sardinia to learn from Paola herself: “There are a number of people in Italy saying, ‘You know what? Anyone can learn how to make it. Why would we let this go extinct?’,” Gentile told them. Su filindeu now appears on the menu at Gentile’s Los Angeles restaurant Stella and on the menu of chef Lee Yum Hwa’s Singapore restaurant Ben Fatto 45. Another restaurant in Nuoro, Il Rifugio, also serves the pasta.
What makes su filindeu so difficult is partly the process of making the pasta itself–one thick rope of semolina pasta dough is turned and pulled eight times to produce 256 thin, almost fringe-like strands. The strands are then placed on a large disc in three layers–but the pasta can never get too dry or the layers won’t stick to each other. This large disc of pasta is then dried in the sun–in the fall, it can take up to three days. The disc is then broken into delicate shards and added to the homemade lamb broth with cheese. The other difficulty is in making the dough. Semolina can both absorb and release a lot of water, so the amounts have to be just right and account for local heat and humidity. The dough has to be extremely soft and elastic, and the only way to tell if it’s ready is really with enough experience of making it. Many have tried and failed–famously among them is lauded British chef Jaime Oliver. Similarly, Barilla pasta hoped to make a machine that could handle the process, and they too could not succeed.
Because masters like Abraini continue to pass on the recipe to others, there becomes a hope that su filindeu as a recipe will survive. While some have come through and found it too difficult, others carry on. Food archive The Ark of Taste, created by the Slow Food Foundation for Biodiversity, currently lists su filindeu as an endangered recipe. Recipes like su filindeu are important because they teach us about a location’s heritage and history. As Saveur wrote when covering the dish, “What we don't eat vanishes.”So many recipes like this have been lost already, but if there’s the opportunity to preserve it–again, why not? Not everything should be fast food, especially when slow food carries so much culture and history withit. Paola and people like her end up preserving not just a dish, but a legacy.
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People share tips for remembering that you've locked the door.
Without fail, every time I leave my house for a weekend (or longer) trip, I immediately get that old-fashioned wave of anxiety: "Did I lock the front door? Did I somehow leave the refrigerator door open? Did I accidentally turn on the oven, despite having not used it in three days?"
On many occasions, 10 minutes into my drive, I’ve had to head back home and double-check—even if it’s simply jiggling the door handle—just to ease my mind. It’s a genuine problem. And it turns out I’m not alone—after looking around the Internet, I realized that lots of people suffer from this same form of self-doubt. Luckily, some clever folks have suggestions for how to soften this creeping unease.
On the Subreddit r/LifeProTips, one user started this discussion with the prompt, "To remember if you locked the door, turned the oven off etc., say the name of a film when you do it." Interesting idea! It’s definitely easier to remember yourself saying the words "The Exorcist" or "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" than it is to visualize the task you may or may not have forgotten.
But for some of us—and I count myself as a member of this group—it’s easy to complicate that plan. As someone notes in the thread: "Brain 5 minutes later, 'Are you sure you said Bend It Like Beckham or did you just think it?'" Another user replied, "What if you mix up yesterday's film for today's, after uttering so many films?" Ugh, at least let me try this one before crushing my spirit!
Another suggestion that I particularly enjoy is to eliminate all quirkiness and get straight to the heart of the matter: "I do the same, except I say it out loud the action that I just did: 'I HAVE LOCKED MY CAR.'" One Redditor agreed with this approach, which they use at work while closing up a retail shop. "When I'm leaving, I always have employees with me, but I lock the door, jiggle the handle, and say out loud, 'THE DOOR IS LOCKED,'" they wrote. "Because before I did that, i would lie awake at night worrying I had forgotten. My rationalizing brain also feels like it helps deter thieves if they're nearby while I say that, but that's probably crazy lol."
Others use technology to their benefit, taking pictures or videos of whatever might later worry them—doors, stoves, and the like—as documentation for their future selves. "I do this, especially when I leave my house for longer periods," someone wrote. "I film a video going through all the rooms so I know kitchen appliances and lights etc are off, and lastly film myself locking the door. Never get anxiety during my absence anymore now that I have the evidence."
A more unorthodox approach is to utilize an oddly specific behavior—something that would be very difficult to forget. "My version is I give one of my ass cheeks a quick grab and squeeze," someone said. "If I'm worried it's becoming a reflex and I'll forget doing that I just do a longer one or squeeze both cheeks. No idea why, but it works for me. Just needed something weird to trigger the acknowledgement." Hey, no judgment! Whatever gets the job done.
As Newsweek reports, a 2024 study at Houston’s Rice University (and later published in the journal Neurobiology of Learning and Memory) explored why people are more likely to remember certain details of an experience over others. Researchers conducted a memory test, showing pictures to 38 participants, with some of the images repeated and others new. They discovered that the most memorable images are the easiest to recall. However, the effect was reportedly lost after one day.
One of the researchers, assistant professor Stephanie Leal, said in a statement, "Our brains can’t possibly remember everything we experience, and so we have to do a bit of selective forgetting for information that isn’t as important."
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Street Scene with Darcelle XV Female Impersonators Sign - … | Flickr
The premise of a legacy drag venue anywhere, let alone in the United States, isn’t something we can take for granted. That Darcelle XV Showplace opened in Portland, Oregon in 1967 under its eponymous owner, the legendary Portland drag queen Darcelle XV, née Walter Cole, and remains open to this day is just short of a miracle. Darcelle XV Showplace, known as Darcelle’s, was the first LGBTQ+ history site in Oregon added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2020. According to the National Parks Service, “as a nightclub and drag venue, the aesthetic of Darcelle XV Showplace reflects the improvised, low-budget, and self-reliant illusion of glamour that resulted from its development during the late 1960s and early 1970s when drag was celebrated mostly behind closed doors due to gay discrimination and the threat of harassment.”
When Darcelle passed in 2023, at one point named the World’s Oldest Drag Queen in the Guinness Book of World Records, the venue faced some uncertainty. This was despite, as the National Parks Service shared, its status in 2020 as “one of only two known drag clubs open prior to 1970 in the United States with an owner who performed (and is still performing!) as part of the company.” After Darcelle’s passing, however, business at the club had become slow and attendance had waned; could it stay open? As of last week, however, its future remains much brighter: under new ownership, the club shares, its life will continue.
It had been Darcelle’s wish that the club’s life would continue after her passing. The new owner of Darcelle’s is Jeremy Corvus-Peck, himself a drag artist of over 30 years, an Air Force veteran, and an Oregonian business-owner, who purchased the club from Darcelle’s children. “His goal to honor the history of the club while moving us forward with innovation and creativity is highly anticipated by the current cast and crew,” the club shared on Instagram. “His desire to honor the legacy of Darcelle XV stems from their longtime friendship.” As of now, the club remains “the longest-running drag cabaret on the West Coast.”
Darcelle’s is a long beloved Portland institution and a foundation of drag history in the U.S. It’s fitting, too, then, that a new plaza is being built in the city honoring the legacy of both Darcelle herself and the club. A groundbreaking was held last July, and “early drawings show the new park will have a stage, a public art space and ‘wall of fame’ for notable LGBTQ Portlanders,” Oregon Public Broadcasting reported last year. According to updates from the Portland Parks & Recreation department, as of January 2025, underground work is scheduled to be completed on time and sidewalks will begin pouring thereafter.
That the club’s life will continue and that the plaza will honor Darcelle’s life and contributions is a huge win for LGBTQ+ history in Portland and in the U.S., especially when drag faces direct opposition from the standing current presidential administration. Because of venues like Darcelle’s and owners like Cole and now Corvus-Peck, drag and drag history have become cemented as part of American life–it’s not going anywhere.
As I often say in my own drag history work, “drag history is American history.” This phenomenon is alive and well on the Gerber/Hart Library & Archive’s Instagram. Here, once a week, the renowned Midwest LGBTQ+ library and archive celebrates “Tillie Tuesday” in honor of famed Chicago drag queen Miss Tillie, “The Dirty Old Lady of Chicago.” Tillie worked as a drag artist for some 50 years, between the 1940s and the 1990s. Drag has faced pushback throughout history and in our current moment, with lives both underground and aboveground, so this was a rare feat then and remains one now.
As Gerber/Hart shares on their podcast Unboxing Queer History, what became the Miss Tillie archive was dropped off by a friend of the drag artist after her passing. There was a wealth of photos and memorabilia in this woman’s trunk–professional images, snapshots, flyers, and more–all highlighting the five decades of Tillie’s career, a majority of which were spent in the Chicago area.
While few biographical details are known about Tillie herself, historian Owen Keehnan and the archive were able to put together some of them. She had a 9-5 job at a uniform company, for example, and lived a very separate life in drag–at the popular drag bar Club Chesterfield, for example she worked two nights a week, making $9 a night plus tips in the 1960s. She also loved to deck herself out in jewelry, and many of her photographs chronicle a treasure trove of wigs, gowns, feather boas, and fishnets. And the nickname? It comes from the younger men she kept around, who often lined up to buy her drinks after her shows. Tillie’s archive remains a favorite of the Gerber/Hart staff.
To have such photographs chronicling Tillie’s life in these eras is practically unheard of, the podcast shares. This was a time when, if people were found out to be queer, let alone in drag, they could lose everything. Raids of gay bars were frequent and frightening, “with patrons being arrested, jailed overnight, and typically having their names printed in the newspapers,” the archive writes. “Even if the charges were later dropped, this caused many individuals (especially individuals who were teachers or worked for the government) to lose their jobs. Some even committed suicide.”
If you appeared to violate what were then Chicago’s laws against cross-dressing, you were often singled out early on. So the fact that so many photos of Tillie’s exist situates her and drag in the context of not just drag history, but American history and the queer community’s ongoing fight for equality. “When we see these joyful photos of Tillie and her friends, it’s important to remember that these gatherings were critical acts of resistance at a time of hostile legal oppression of LGBTQ+ people,” the archive writes.
The Gerber/Hart Library & Archives first opened in 1981 and is named after the early 20th century queer activists Henry Gerber and Pearl S. Hart. Based in Chicago, it specifically chronicles LGBTQ+ life from the Midwest. Among their main missions is to “collect, preserve, and make accessible [this] history… in order to advance the larger goal of achieving justice and equality.” They also have a lending library, exhibits, and public programming that offer insight into LGBTQ+ Chicagoan and Midwestern life. Archives like Gerber/Hart are essential at a cultural moment like this and serve as a reminder of the queer community’s neverending contributions to history.
To learn more about LGBTQ+ history from this region, check out their Instagram and their website, and stay tuned for more “Tillie Tuesdays” in the future.
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People online debated the "dumbest" unwritten rules that shouldn't exist
I’m a visual learner, and I feel uncomfortable when I’m socially adrift, so I’ve never been a big fan of unwritten rules. In my estimation, if something is important enough to qualify as a rule, it’s probably best to write it down somewhere—in bold, in large font, in a document everyone can absorb. That said, we do live in a world dominated by subtle customs and niceties, and we probably couldn’t even agree on what rules should make the cut.
Which brings us to the fine strangers of the Internet, who recently engaged in a productive debate: "What’s the dumbest 'unwritten rule' that should be done away with?'" It’s a funny conversation but also a deep one—and the responses touched on everything from finances to family.
One of the top arguments on the thread, posted in r/AskReddit, is scrapping the idea that "you have to defend your friends, even when they’re wrong." Someone replied, "If they did something shitty, it’s not my job to lie to others and cover it up for them. The most I can do is stay out of it and let them deal with it themselves." And another Redditor extended that argument to family: "People that value loyalty above all else are that way because they do awful shit and don’t want repercussions."
Elsewhere, Redditors debated an eternally triggering topic. "Tipping," one user wrote. "Not because they don’t deserve it but because it’s bullshit to pass the anxiety to the consumer instead of just paying your fucking employees correctly." One person wrote that they only tip in certain contexts—a mom and pop diner would be different than a Starbucks. And someone else noted that the entire act of tipping, even on an interpersonal level, is just uncomfortable: "Tipping puts stress on me," they wrote. "I want to see a price and pay that price. I’m an awkward person and don’t like the interaction of tipping. I’d much rather that you charge me a price you think is fair, even if that means raising your prices 20%."
Then there’s the idea that we "can’t talk to coworkers about salary." The exchanges are fascinating: One person argued that "talking to anyone about salary has been engrained as a faux pas forever," working out to be "in the employer’s favor." Someone else noted that they’re open about their earnings, ensuring that they aren’t being exploited at the workplace: "I used to work in a creative industry, and we always discussed salaries so we knew we were being compensated fairly. We were not!"
On that note: While it might feel weird (for multiple reasons) to talk salary with a coworker, it’s important to know about the National Labor Relations Act. "Under [the Act], employees have the right to communicate with their coworkers about their wages, as well as with labor organizations, worker centers, the media, and the public," reads a description on the NLRA site. "Wages are a vital term and condition of employment, and discussions of wages are often preliminary to organizing or other actions for mutual aid or protection. If you are an employee covered by the Act, you may discuss wages in face-to-face conversations, over the phone, and in written messages. Policies that specifically prohibit the discussion of wages are unlawful as are policies that chill employees from discussing their wages."
When we think of heavy metal, images of macho lyrics, aggressive artwork, long hair, headbanging, dark clothes, and electric guitars often come to mind. For a long time, women were a rare presence in the metal scene, a genre historically dominated by bands like Iron Maiden, Led Zeppelin, and Black Sabbath. But times are changing, with artists like Evanescence introducing a Gothic heroine to the metal stage. Yet, even today, the bias against "women in metal" persists. In December 2020, when Zaria Zoyner—known as @zariasmusic on TikTok—posted videos wearing a Metallica shirt, trolls bombarded her with mocking comments. Her response video hit back perfectly.
Representative Image Source: A guest wearing a black Metallica t-shirt, olive bomber jacket, and black backpack outside Stylein during the Stockholm Fashion Week Spring/Summer 2017 on August 29, 2016. (Photo by Christian Vierig/Getty Images)
The video has since garnered 730,000 views and 164,000 likes. Zaria, a North Carolina-based musician and singer, responded to a comment by @paytonnsmith, who questioned her Metallica fandom after she posted videos wearing a "Ride the Lightning" T-shirt. The commenter demanded she "Name 3 Metallica songs," while others accused her of just showing off without knowing the band.
According to Bored Panda, her initial reaction to the comments was frustration. However, she soon realized that she had a really funny response to silence those critics. She posted a response video saying, “So my response to you guys is, like really? Only three? Only three songs? How ’bout I play ’em on guitar for you?” She then rocked three Metallica songs on her guitar - “Master of Puppets,” “Enter Sandman,” and the guitar lead in “One.”
Representative Image Source: Pexels | Olly
Following the video, she told the Daily Dot, “I decided to respond to that comment because I’ve been a Metallica fan for such a long time but I’d never shown that side of me on TikTok,” and added, “I’ve been a self-taught guitarist since 15 and Metallica was the band that influenced me to pick it up and inspired my journey with music.”
Representative Image Source: Pexels | Yank Rukov
Zaria listened to a lot of Metallica throughout her life, she told Bored Panda. “The first time I heard Metallica, I was sitting in my 5th-grade classroom when my teacher played Enter Sandman. I was like ‘This is the best song I’ve ever heard’ and I asked her who the band was. She told me it was Metallica and a few years later when I got my first guitar, the first riff I learned was Enter Sandman.”
The account of this trolling person was observed to be deleted after this video, but Zaria didn’t stop. Later on, she posted yet another TikTok of herself practicing Metallica’s “Unforgiven,” and continued with more. In one of the clips she posted on her Instagram page, Metallica commented from their official account. Others chimed in to support her. "Great response,I can bet most of these misogynists can't play one Metallica song.Keep on playing and rock on!" wrote one person. "Haters trying hate and look how what happened, Metallica now knows who Zaria is, and thanks to social media and my metalhead senses, I discovered the page. Happy for you, this is what happens when you stereotype a girl who actually knows her sh*t," another added.
Zaria was ecstatic. She posted the screenshots of comments in another post, writing, “It was simply one of the most special moments of my life. It meant the world to me and I didn’t care if anyone else realized the magnitude of what had happened,” and further added, “Not only did they leave a very nice comment on my last post, but they followed me back on Instagram, which was surreal and incredibly overwhelming in the best way possible.” The moral is, “Don’t take criticism from someone who is not in the arena.”
Bright blue glasses rest on Wim Wenders’ face when I greet him at the Howard Greenberg Gallery in New York. He wears suspenders, one strap white and one black, with polka dots, that hold up chic, oversized trousers. Wenders, who’s most often known as the director of cinematic masterpieces–like 1984’s Paris, Texas, 1987’s Wings of Desire, and 1999’s Buena Vista Social Club, among many others–is also an accomplished photographer. His latest art exhibition, “Written Once,” which features images the director made in the 1970s and 1980s, opened at the Howard Greenberg Gallery on January 28 and runs until March 15.
“Written Once” features images from two series previously published in Wenders’ books Once and Written in the West, some of which have never before been made into prints. From Once, elegantly grainy, soulful black and white images tell stories of Wenders’ time in the U.S.–in one image, Martin Scorsese repairs a flat tire in the middle of the desert; in another, the actor and musician John Lurie plants a powerful kiss on a companion. Written in the West sets the landscape of the American West alive in vibrant color, turning its grocery stores and gas stations into painterly landscapes.
Wenders and I sit in a room filled with images by master photographer Walker Evans, one of Wenders’ greatest inspirations. He jokes that he keeps getting distracted, but if he does I don't notice. For GOOD, we spoke about truth, place, storytelling, history, and self-reflection.
How did the show come together and how did you decide to put these series in conversation with each other? [Gallerist] Howard [Greenberg] is strangely responsible. He came to my office, he went through all my drawers and got quite excited about some of the pictures. He chose the lesser-known pictures along with some exposed previously. He found some lost treasures and liked them, and just happened to be from these two series. He liked the idea that they're both books, that some of them were unknown, that I never printed them. I liked his eye and his choices. I was happy these pictures were reanimated and that I finally was able to print them. I'm more interested in the act of taking the picture than printing it. I've been taking photographs since I was a little boy but for 40 years of my life, I didn't print anything. I was happy I had the contact sheets. It was almost always more important for me that I took pictures, not that I did something with them afterwards. That changed with Written in the West, the first exhibition I had. Howard looked at my contact sheets and at my test prints [from that series], and said, “Oh, why didn't you use that one?” If somebody looks at my stuff from 40 years ago, I'm amazed by what they see in it and I say, “Oh yeah, you're right, not so bad. Why didn't I ever print it?”
Why were you more interested in the act of taking the picture than printing it? Taking photographs for me is a very intense way of being and of looking. Photographs and my camera helped and guided me to travel, made me look more closely. My main profession is maybe traveler. In many ways, my camera feels like a recording instrument. It cannot just record a picture, but it also helps me understand a place and the story it tells me. It helps me to be somewhere and understand the light and the colors and see details, the history of a place, the history of the people [who] came through there, everything that we did to that place. For me, taking photographs is a way to be, to exist more in the moment and more intensely. Printing is not exactly in the moment. Printing is like going back and looking at something you experienced. I've always been interested in moving forward. Printing is almost like a nostalgic process. I'm not a nostalgic person, so I have to force myself, and I need somebody to tell me, “Wim, this picture, you better print it.”
What is it like to reflect on the work now decades later? Photography is a medium where you're very intensely living in the now. I'm a photographer of places, much more than of people, even if there are people sometimes. It's really interesting to see who I was then, and who I was that saw these things, wanted to keep these moments and press the shutter. Today, if I was in the same place, I might take a very different picture. In a strange way, when I came into the gallery this morning, I encountered somebody I used to be, a young man very fascinated with America who lived and worked here in the 70s and 80s. I pretty clearly remember who that was, but I also realized I moved on. America has changed a lot. I realized that some of the places that interested me so much at the time have been either photographed to death, have disappeared, or were destroyed. The term “Americana” didn't exist when I made these pictures. It is now such a common word to describe a certain nostalgic feeling about America, but at the time I didn't feel it was a nostalgic journey. At the time it was truly sort of an exploration into the history of America. These places I show, especially in color, are historic places they talk about when they talk about American history. The West is an important part of American history. It's a country full of dreams, broken dreams, illusions and lost illusions. So to revisit them 40 years later, again, is another lost illusion [laughs]. Photographs are pretty solid in representing history. I love photography for the fact that it's so solid.
How do those ideas and your images live together? These are all prints that are completely unmanipulated. What you see is what you get. What you see is what I saw. It's sort of an old fashioned idea of photography. Now the photo is no longer a witness of something that really happened, but a creation of something done with the help of a camera. There's Photoshop and all sorts of techniques. Looking at Walker Evans’s photographs, that's what he saw. My photos are from that tradition, like [photographer] Joel Meyerowitz, on the wall there. I love that man, so I'm in a strange way surrounded here by old friends. Walker Evans was my great hero when I was a young man growing up, maybe 15-16 years old and trying to do something with my camera. I realized you can do something so much more beautiful with it, not just photograph what's around you, your friends, family, and journeys–you could make photographs that were a statement. I'm completely overwhelmed that we're sitting here in a room with 15 Walker Evans photographs. For me, those are an expression of truthfulness, because it's more an attitude than a result. The result “truth” is always questionable, but the attitude producing something truthful is not questionable.
What does making a photograph teach you about how you want to make a film and vice versa? My photography and my filmmaking have one thing in common: an extreme interest in place, in finding out its story, what part of history is reflected in it, what stories reverberate, and what I can read in it. My filmmaking is all place-driven. If I reach that state where I know that story--Berlin in Wings of Desire, the West in Paris, Texas–could not possibly have happened anywhere else, then I feel I've done justice to place and story, and I've told a story rooted in truth because the place and the story are linked in a necessary way. I need that.
For me, the truth of a story is very much linked to its place, and the characters need to be linked to a place. I like films that specifically take place somewhere else, where there is a history, a particular language, a tradition, habits–films that are linked to a certain region or countryside or to that city. I hate, and I often walk out of, movies when I realize they don't take place anywhere. A lot of movies take place nowhere and then you find out this is possibly Pittsburgh, but you know Pittsburgh and this is not Pittsburgh. A lot of movies are made not in the place where they're supposed to take place, but they're just where it pays off to shoot them because there's a tax rebate or something. I see “tax rebate” written big over many movies, and I can't stand realizing a place is phony. I don't want to watch a lookalike. I want to see the real thing. Why should I see a movie that takes place nowhere? Why should I believe the story of all these characters, that character sees something I know he can never, ever in his life, see there? I can't take it. I'm old fashioned. I need to believe that this is happening.
When you look at your work now, do you ever feel critical of yourself? You cannot criticize the picture. You can criticize the attitude. I don't like all of these pictures there. Some are done sort of hastily, especially some of the black and white work. I didn't always think of myself as a photographer. I became one in the pictures I shot in America and the American West in preparation for Paris, Texas. I make a lot of journeys, only to take pictures, but not to make a movie, and then I make a lot of movies and I don't take a picture at the same time. It's two different attitudes. I can criticize an attitude, but I don't want to criticize the result. Some of my pictures are a little bit half-hearted I think now, but others are right on, and I'm happy I made them. I realized how much the attitude and being in the now creates the photo. I think the attitude of the photographer is visible in the shot, and that you can sometimes criticize. Sometimes it's a little bit superficial, sometimes it's just en passant. Some photographs are careless, others are profound.
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Representative Image Source: A guest wearing a black Metallica t-shirt, olive bomber jacket, and black backpack outside Stylein during the Stockholm Fashion Week Spring/Summer 2017 on August 29, 2016. (Photo by Christian Vierig/Getty Images)
Representative Image Source: Pexels | Olly
Representative Image Source: Pexels | Yank Rukov
Lounge Painting II, 1983, Gila Bend© Wim Wenders/ Wenders Images and Howard Greenberg Gallery
When Martin Scorsese had a flat tire II, 1977© Wim Wenders/ Wenders Images and Howard Greenberg Gallery
John Lurie, 1986, Montreal© Wim Wenders/ Wenders Images and Howard Greenberg Gallery
