Jessica Lange and Sam Shepard came to New Orleans earlier this month for a show of Jessica’s photographs at The Gallery for Fine Photography, where she also signed her book, 50 Photographs by Jessica Lange. She was a great sport – she gave a wonderful talk at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art and took in a Saints game before she and Sam (and their dog) headed back to New York by car. I called her when she got home to talk about her work.  —Julia Reed

JULIA: Hi, this is Julia Reed for wowOwow.com and I’m here with Jessica Lange today to talk about her new book, 50 Photographs by Jessica Lange, and a show that she has in New Orleans, where I am speaking from. 

Jessica, I had a great time seeing you and your amazing photographs in New Orleans at the opening of your show here at A Gallery for Fine Photography. It coincided with the publication of your book 50 Photographs by Jessica Lange. Like a lot of people, I was well aware of your brilliance on the other side of the camera, but I didn’t really know that you had such a serious photography career. So it was a wonderful surprise. While you were here you gave an interview in which you said that until a few years ago you didn’t show your photos to hardly anyone. So I guess my first question is, why not? And then, why now?

Click here to see some of the photographs from 50 Photographs by Jessica Lange.

JESSICA: Yes, that’s a good question. Why not? Because I wasn’t pursuing with an end; you know, with some kind of plan in mind. I mean, it wasn’t as though I wanted to have a book published, or have a photography show. I did it because it was just kind of a great release for me. As an actor you’re so dependent on other people, and you’re so dependent on everything kind of coming together. It’s such a collective effort. And I found that with the photography it was something I could do very privately. It was a real solitary endeavor, and for a long time I just did it because I loved it. I loved the process of taking photos and discovering what I was drawn to; and getting in the dark room, working and printing and learning all the technical stuff. So for a long time it was just really because it gave me a lot of comfort. And then people kept saying, "You should show your photographs." And so little by little it came out of the family sphere, because that’s basically who saw it for the first ten years. You know, my children or Sam or … 

JULIA: And it was Sam Shepard, your partner, who gave you your first Leica, right?

JESSICA: Yes, it was. It was. And that kind of kicked it up a notch, in a way, because I felt like, "OK, now I’ve got this amazing instrument so …"

JULIA: You had a great quote when you were here. You said, "Somebody gives you a Cadillac, you decide to drive it."

JESSICA: Yes, and that’s basically what it was because you’re not going to sit around with a Leica in your closet and not use it. So I just started kind of little by little showing them to people, and when we moved back to New York, because I no longer had a dark room, I had a really great printer …

JULIA: The print quality in these photographs is just amazing.