cc  >> Norman Gilliland:  Welcome to University Place.  I'm Norman Gilliland,  Wisconsin Public Broadcasting,  with Lewis Koch, who  uses photography, and sculpture,  and text, and video, and  assemblage to create or capture  images that we might otherwise  overlook in our everyday lives.  And while, in the past 30 years,  his work has been displayed  on kiosks, and billboards,  and in garages,  you'll also find it displayed  in museums or galleries,  various venues around the world  in major cities,  London, Brussels, Toronto,  Seoul.  And it's also part of permanent  collections in New York's  Metropolitan Museum of Art,  and San Francisco's Museum  of Modern Art,  and Chicago's Museum  of Contemporary Art.  It was in Copenhagen when  he was Artist-in-Residence  for the Fotografisk Center  that he began the web project,  "Touchless Automatic Wonder,"  which became the prototype  for this book, published in 2009  by Borderland Books, and  distributed by the  University of Wisconsin Press.  Lewis, welcome  to University Place.  >> Lewis Koch:  Thanks very much.  >> Gilliland: Pleasure  having you here.  >> Koch: Thank you.  >> Gilliland: "Touchless  Automatic Wonder."  That word wonder,  It's, of course, in the title  of your book, and it's also  in your introduction. 

 Does your interest in  photography, the passion for it,  start with that sense of wonder  that a child would have, say?  >> Koch: Well, actually, yes,  because I began photography,  and a fairly serious  interest in it,  when I was a child, nine or 10.  I really came upon photography  through my father, and  started making pictures then  as a way of expressing my sense  of curiosity about the world,  my sense of wonder.  And some time when I was  in high school, a friend of mine  gave me a really formative book  by Rachel Carson,  the great naturalist,  called "The Sense of Wonder."  And she was writing the book for  her children and grandchildren  to try and instill that sense  of wonder about the world.  >> Gilliland: She was a great  writer of children's books.  >> Koch: Wonderful  and very fundamental  as a naturalist, as well.  >> Gilliland: Now, text.  We mentioned text a moment ago  as being part of your interest,  or part of your technique  with photography.  Why the interest in text?  What does text mean to you?  >> Koch: Well, I love words.  And reading has always been  a passion for me, as well.  And, I guess,  as I look around the world,  it's very easy to see in what  I call the human landscape,  all of these eccentric voices. 

 It's almost like a silent babble  that is out there.  It's fairly inescapable  in terms of any place  that humans have had an imprint  on the world.  You'll see words.  They're rather ubiquitous  and inescapable.  So this interest in reading  and looking  translates within the frame,  within making photographs,  to a lot of photographs  over the course of time  that seemed to have text  within them.  I didn't really set out  with this as a specific series,  this project  as a thematic series.  I just realized over the course  of my photographing  for many years, that a lot  of the photographs I made  had text within them.  >> Gilliland: One of them is not  text, in the sense of words, but  you have this wonderful image  of long division in the book.  >> Koch: Yeah, why don't we go  back to that one.  >> Gilliland: We'll see  if we can bring that one up. 

 That's something I've never seen  in all of my dining experience.  What does it say to you?  >> Koch: Well, hardly.  Well, actually we were talking  a little bit before the program  that I'm a firm believer  in "there's an exception  to every rule."  Although, in this instance,  the text is,  the mathematical symbols  are in fact a kind of text.  They can be decoded just in the  same way that an alphabet can.  And so I do think of them  as a sort of text.  But they are, within the realm  of the sequence in the book,  the only one that doesn't have  a specific alphabet,  whether it be Roman alphabet,  or Sanskrit, or whatever.  In this instance,  the picture itself was made  in a Tibetan temple  in north India.  My family and I were living  there, volunteering in the  Tibetan community in Dharamsala.  And what became the picture  just appeared to me  rather dimly  at a time in the morning when  I'm not usually up and about  and making pictures.  It was very early, just prior  to a puja, a prayer ritual,  in the temple. 

 And a young monk had been  practicing his math  with this material, which is  a bread dough-like material.  >> Gilliland: Did you check  to see if he got the answer  right?  >> Koch: Well, I have checked  since then.  And, yes, it was correct.  >> Gilliland:  Well, that's a good sign.  The text, as you're implying,  then, doesn't have to be  comprehensible  to most beholders,  witnessed here, for example.  >> Koch: Exactly.  The text here on a temple wall,  a Hindu temple wall  in north India,  is Sanskrit, as far as I know.  I cannot read it.  But it provides a framework  for the larger picture, which is  obviously much more complex  than just the text.  And that's true in general  with my photographs, which  are not so much about text,  but the text is incidental  within the image,  and it becomes part of  the whole array of information. 

 >> Gilliland: Do you have  a sense of, say, what a painter  would have, or perhaps other  photographers, of composition  in terms of, you want the eye  to be drawn immediately  to some point in that image?  >> Koch: Well, actually,  it's become a rather  intuitive process for me,  making photographs.  But when I teach photography,  I talk about the frame that  the photograph is enclosed by.  Generally, photographs  are rectangular or square.  Not always, but in general.  And that frame is like  the four walls of a room.  And to create order  within that room,  there has to be  some harmonic balance.  It's not about compositional  rules, which I don't really  believe in, or think about,  but it's a way of making  an image that has some balance  and fullness to it,  and a sense of mystery.  And that's what I'm trying  to convey in all of this.  >> Gilliland: There's plenty  of mystery in the book.  If we look at this  backward "yes," for example. 

 It's such a simple mystery  in this image.  But there are so many different  ways to interpret it.  There are 26 ways of looking  at a blackbird in a sense,  your interpretation,  my interpretation.  >> Koch: That's a favorite poem  of mine, "Thirteen Ways of  Looking at a Blackbird,"  in fact, referring to  the Wallace Stevens' poem.  And it's really lovely.  I highly recommend it for  anybody interested in poetry.  >> Gilliland: So if you  flip an image like this,  you see the word "yes" backward,  is that just making any  kind of a statement, or is it  just saying that the word  in a sense is not to be taken  too literally?  >> Koch: I guess it's not  so much creating a specific  statement, as it is suggesting  that things aren't always  what they appear.  And in fact one of the--  I love to quote others  who often speak more eloquently  than I can about whatever topic.  And Andre Malraux is a great  literary and cultural figure  from France, who I quote  at the beginning of the book.  What he said, in effect, is:  "It wasn't necessarily true,  but what I experienced."  In this sense, the "yes" doesn't  have to be taken literally. 

 It's not so much about  an affirmation or a negative,  it's just suggesting  that things aren't always  exactly what they appear to be.  >> Gilliland: Is this an example  of that process of bringing  things together,  kind of an amalgamation that  we mentioned at the beginning,  with this sense  of it's another aspect  of your medium?  >> Koch: It certainly is.  This particular image is,  I think, really indicative  of my process, because  I'm really interested  in noticing and bringing forward  this sense of layering  of aspects of reality,  that reality is not just  one-dimensional, of course.  It's three-dimensional.  But it's maybe even  more dimensional than that,  because there's so many  different layers  within those three dimensions.  And in this particular image,  the idea of collage,  which has very much influenced  my work all along.  Early practitioners of collage  like Kurt Schwitters,  Robert Rauschenberg,  and Joseph Cornell have been  great influences on me,  as have bits of detritus  on the street.  >> Gilliland: Well, okay.  Speaking of detritus, Lewis,  are these photographs  a matter of finding things  and capturing them, or  are they in any way manipulated  either in terms of arranging  the items to be photographed,  or what might be called  post-production?  What are we looking at?  >> Koch: Yeah, well, actually  there's very little  post-production  that takes place in my work.  I try to edit in-camera  to create,  to frame the scene  in the way that I'm seeing it. 

 I don't hesitate to crop  slightly here or there,  or bring up tonally one element  of the image or the other  when I'm working  in the dark room.  Of course, I don't work  in the dark room anymore.  But all of these pictures  were made in the dark room.  They're all film-based  photography.  However, that isn't to say  that there's some manipulation  in the sense  of how a scene is framed.  You're not seeing anything  outside of the right edge,  the left edge, the top edge,  whatever.  And who knows what's going on  there that's not included.  So it's my reality.  It's not necessarily,  it's not saying  that this is real.  It's saying this is real to me. 

 >> Gilliland: That's the  artist's prerogative always,  isn't it?  >> Koch: I suppose so.  >> Gilliland: I liked this one,  because it sort of reminded me  almost of something cubistic,  where you're getting  part of the image here,  and you're getting part of it  over there.  But in this case, it's  a very simple reason for it,  and that's the reflection  in the windshield.  You see part of the billboard,  which is a little bit  mysterious.  Who is this woman talking to?  Then, if you look  in the windshield, you see.  >> Koch: There he is.  Yeah, it was a strange  conjunction of elements.  And of course,  it being a night photograph--  Every photograph is predicated  by where the photographer  stands.  But in this instance,  the camera was on a tripod.  And had the camera been slightly  lower or slightly higher,  the reflection  wouldn't be in the same place  on the windshield. 

 So it was very intentional  on my part to include  that figure in the windshield,  almost as if there's some  ghostly presence  in conversation  with the billboard.  >> Gilliland: It's a device  that you used,  I think, just twice in the book,  but in different ways.  >> Koch: Well, reflection  is one of these other layers  that I was speaking of.  And this idea of layering  reality is very key to my work.  And reflection creates an  altered sense of whatever the  scene, whatever's taking place  within the scene, because  it's looking back behind you.  A photograph that I made  a number of years ago, in fact,  looks like it's a montage  or a collage.  But in fact, there's a shadow  on a board behind a window.  And then above that board,  there's a reflection  of the street scene.  So it really looks like  a couple of different images  that have been pasted together,  but in fact it's all reality.  >> Gilliland: And I would guess,  Lewis, that a lot of us  every day, or virtually  every day see things like that,  but either note them  and forget them quickly,  or don't even notice them. 

 That kind of a fact of,  kind of multiple images coming.  >> Koch: Well, photography  is all about noticing.  And as I said earlier,  it's really a way of extending  my sense of curiosity  about the world.  Just what is reality?  And the great author Nabokov  said once, that reality  is one of the few words  that is best understood  with quotes around it.  And I have my sense of reality.  You have your sense of reality.  Reality is somewhat  of a personal construct.  The table is real.  But what does the table  mean to you or to me?  And it could mean different  things in different instances,  depending what culture  you're from, or so on.  So in that sense, my curiosity  about the world is a way of my  trying to figure out who I am,  what my place in the world is,  what it all means. 

 Pictures are, in a sense, like,  for me, pictures,  photographs that I make  are like pieces  of a jigsaw puzzle in a way.  And it's my attempt  to try and fit them together  to make a whole of it all.  >> Gilliland: Much like  "Pale Fire" by Nabokov,  for example.  If you can get through that,  you'll definitely know  who you are.  (both laugh)  A much harder read  than "Lolita," for example.  This is, I'm tempted to say,  one of the simplest images  in the book,  the most straightforward.  This child with the slide.  >> Koch: Well, the child  happens to be my son.  And of course, as a father and  a photographer, I couldn't help  but make a lot of pictures  of him as he was growing up.  >> Gilliland: Well, he's very  photogenic. 

 >> Koch: And here, he was,  obviously, just a toddler.  And he was almost trying  to read these slide steps,  which have the word "Everwear"  on them.  Almost as if by braille.  And a child's sense of curiosity  and the way  they approach the world,  there's such an innocence  about it.  >> Gilliland:  An open-mindedness.  >> Koch: Yeah, very open  to new experiences.  And I don't think he had  any notion of what words were  as constructs of an alphabet,  and that sort of thing.  But here he is,  just touching the slide step.  Well, "What is this?"  And I was very taken  by that action.  >> Gilliland: Do you give titles  to your photographs?  >> Koch: Generally, no. 

 I like the reader,  the viewer, to be able to  create their own impression  from the pictures,  so that rather than title them  and say what they are,  I'll often just say  where they are.  And there is, within the book,  there's a list of illustrations,  a list of the photographs  at the back.  And they're mostly keyed  to just place names  and the page number.  However, in some instances  like the math photograph  that we started with,  I have said a little bit  about what it is,  just because it's so curious.  However, I must say  that in general, I really love  the mystery of photographs.  And I want to convey that  to the viewer, and let she or he  create their own mystery.  Whether it's a solution or not,  that's almost irrelevant.  >> Gilliland: I'm looking  for text in this one.  Is there some that I'm missing?  Or is this an image purely?  >> Koch: There is  a slight amount of text.  If you look  on the lower right and left,  it's a World War I monument. 

 And there is an inscription  carved there.  But it's not anything  that's really legible.  It's just pieces of words  deliberately framed that way  to have the focus  on the soldiers, primarily.  However, the idea of text,  as I mentioned earlier,  being very incidental  within many of the photographs.  This is a clear example  where the picture  is not really about text,  but text is there.  And what I've very intentionally  done within the sequencing  of the photographs in the book  is to create something  of what I call a prose poem.  I'm very interested in poetry  in general,  and the idea that it can be  very concise and specific.  >> Gilliland: So cryptic  sometimes, too.  >> Koch: And cryptic, as well,  yeah.  Rather oblique. 

 It can be precise and oblique  at the same time.  Precise in the way  that words are uttered,  but oblique in the way  it's all put together.  And I think of this image  in a similar way.  >> Gilliland: Was this a bit  of serendipity here?  Did you actually find this  out in the cornfield?  >> Koch: Everything  is serendipity, for me.  I'm a firm believer  in serendipity.  I don't really go out looking  for anything in particular.  I'm out and about  looking at wherever I might be.  And if the light is right,  if the conjunction  of objects in place is curious,  or some mystery to me  that I want to create  as a photograph, then that's  where the serendipity lies.  In this instance,  this was a cornfield  not far east of Madison.  I live here in Madison. 

 And while I've photographed  in many different places  around the world,  I've photographed a great deal  within Wisconsin itself,  and in fact, sometimes  just down the street  from where I live.  I don't subscribe  to the Grand Canyon theory  of photography, that you've  got to go to some place exotic  and beautiful.  >> Gilliland: Sell it  to the "National Geographic."  >> Koch: To make interesting  photographs.  I think you can go out to a  cornfield 20 miles east of town,  and who knows  what you'll find there.  In this instance, I found  this tattered piece of paper,  which perhaps  flew out of a yellow school bus.  >> Gilliland: I wonder if some  poor student didn't have to  make an excuse to the teacher.  >> Koch: It looks to me  like a second- or third-grade  worksheet, that on a nice  spring day like today,  probably flew out  of a yellow school bus.  >> Gilliland: This one  says a lot, too.  Again, there are many  interpretations you can put  upon it, but there's a certain  kind of loneliness implied,  and also this kind of  utilitarianism juxtaposed  with a memorial effect.  >> Koch: Yeah, it is something  of a melancholy sort of image,  and again one from Wisconsin. 

 You can see the cornfield  back behind the tombstone.  The tombstone simply says Bill.  In this instance, though,  as I understand it,  it was a family name.  >> Gilliland: How interesting.  >> Koch: And not simply  an individual name.  >> Gilliland: Which would have  a different spin, wouldn't it?  >> Koch: But, of course,  the irony is that "Bill" is  generally someone's first name.  And on such an imposing stone,  it seems a little...  >> Gilliland: With the  informality of the name.  >> Koch: Exactly, it is.  But, again, that's where the  mystery of images comes about. 

 And I'm also very interested in  creating pictures as metaphor,  rather than documenting  a specific scene or location.  I come out of  the documentary tradition.  My work  is in the documentary style.  >> Gilliland: I would say.  >> Koch: But, in fact, I'm  really trying to create images  which have less of a location  and a specific time and place,  than they do an idea  and a metaphor.  >> Gilliland: That's more  endearing.  >> Koch: Yeah, I hope so.  >> Gilliland: These two pages  in the book are facing  each other, so they kind of  make a joint statement,  art and modesty.  >> Koch: Which is a good example  of the irony that I'm intending  in a lot of my work.  Because actually in reality,  art and modesty have  nothing to do with one another. 

 And quite often--  The artist is quite often,  maybe not always,  but like a performer,  someone who wants to share  his or her vision,  or talent, with an audience.  >> Gilliland: And has to get  attention to do it.  >> Koch: Yeah, exactly.  >> Gilliland: Which is counter  to our concept of modesty.  >> Koch: Exactly.  And so, I just thought  that they created  an interesting dichotomy,  and something of a  tongue-in-cheek irony, as well.  And in this particular pairing,  that replicates exactly  how they look on the book page.  And I might just interject here  that in seeing these pictures  on the screen, you'll notice  that sometimes they're  a little bit off to the right.  >> Gilliland: Oh, yes.  >> Koch: Or a little bit  off to the left. 

 And that replicates,  in some measure, how they appear  on the book page,  because, as I said earlier,  I'm trying to create this idea  of a prose poem.  Within concrete poetry,  you have words  in very specific places  on the page,  very intentionally placed there  by the author.  And such was the case  with the design of the book,  which I worked on  very specifically to create  a certain kind of pacing  within this visual prose poem.  >> Gilliland: I suppose, again,  we could all have  kind of our back story  that we could supply for this,  as some of the pictures  in the book do,  it implies hard times.  >> Koch: Well, this actually  is more like  a documentary photograph,  perhaps, than some others,  because--  Of course we're familiar with  a lot of documentary photographs  from the Great Depression,  mostly all in black and white,  although, in fact,  some of them were made in color.  But the ones that are real icons  of photographic history  are generally the ones  we think of in black and white,  Russell Lee, Arthur Rothstein,  Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange,  all these really great talents  that showed the world  a very specific time and place  during the Great Depression.  >> Gilliland: And a kind of  mood, too.  >> Koch: And a mood.  This picture replicates that  to some extent.  Although it was a made at a time  when I was very interested  in photographing at night. 

 And so, some of that mood  is conveyed by the fact  that it is quite dark  and it's at night.  But specifically, I was really  taken by the fact that the sign,  or one of the signs,  very plainly says, "Open. Ice."  If you kind of slur that idea,  it could be  "open eyes," as well.  >> Gilliland: Ah.  >> Koch: And so I thought  it was interesting to see.  >> Gilliland: It sounds like the  beginning of a Fitzgerald book.  The opening of "Great Gatsby,"  or something.  >> Koch: Actually,  I was thinking a little bit more  of Raymond Carver,  or someone like that  when I look at this picture.  >> Gilliland: Now we're  back to text,  but with a crack through it.  And that, too,  seems to say something,  that fractured quality.  >> Koch: This is within  a certain sequence in the book  that suggests--  Well, there's something  of an anti-war stance  within a good bit of my work. 

 I don't consider myself  a political artist,  but as an artist, I think  it's important to deal with  political issues and ideas that  are essential and of the day.  And coming up as I did  during the Vietnam era,  I was a conscientious objector  and an anti-war activist then,  and still am.  And so some of the images  within the book, operating  within the realm of metaphor,  are suggestive of this stance.  The earlier photograph  that we saw of the soldiers,  the memorial to World War I.  >> Gilliland: The statues, yes.  >> Koch: And this photograph,  and several others  within this particular stanza  of the sequence,  refer to this particular  orientation to the world.  "Air Brushes," at the time  when I made this picture,  we were actually involved  in Desert Storm, Gulf War I.  And "Air Brushes," although  it refers to, on the one hand,  to an artistic tool...  >> Gilliland: That you would use  to make something more  idealized and clean it up.  >> Koch: Yes. 

 But it occurred to me  that it's also a military term  when you have...  >> Gilliland: A flyover.  >> Koch: Yeah, a flyover.  And, in fact, there's some  model planes at the very bottom  of this picture in the window,  and those  are for military planes.  (Gilliland laughs)  Well, this is one of  the more humorous ones.  (Gilliland laughs)  >> Gilliland: Pleasantly  out of context,  whatever exactly it is.  >> Koch: Well, I just  love this image.  In fact, I used it  in the fly-leaf, the end papers  at both the beginning  and end of the book, as well,  because there's something--  I referred to the idea  of this kind of silent babble  in the landscape,  and these teeth out there  on the street  just kind of chattering away  at the passers-by.  >> Gilliland: Only half a set,  it looks like.  >> Koch: And used as a sign  for a dentist shop  in Oaxaca, Mexico. 

 And there's something just so  charming about it as an icon,  Obviously, again, the words,  top and bottom,  are not nearly--  The text is not nearly  so important  as the whole construction  of the image.  And in many instances,  words within the photographs  are creating a patterning,  there's a visual element  to them.  They're not simply...  >> Gilliland: Text.  >> Koch: They're not simply  text.  They're not simply letters.  They're not something simply  to be read straightforwardly,  but there's a patterning  and a visual quality to them.  >> Gilliland: This, I find  one of the most meaningful,  immediately meaningful images  in the book.  There's a kind of a poignancy  to this image  of these names fading away.  >> Koch: Yeah. 

 It can be read  in several different ways.  Oftentimes without knowing  the back story.  And I do mention what it is  in the list of illustrations  at the back of the book.  But quite often, people see this  and they think,  "Oh, that's rather sad,"  it's some office park that's  gone to hell, or whatever.  But in fact, it's even sadder  than that, and more poignant,  because what it is, or what  it was when I came upon it,  was a memorial board  for soldiers  who had served in Vietnam.  It was in a small town park,  and had been behind  a sheet of plexiglass.  You can see the scratches  on the glass.  And sitting in the sun, it  had become rather deteriorated.  And there's something  particularly poignant  in the way  that I feel that we have treated  both our memory of that time,  cast it aside, neglected it,  and certainly that's true  for many of the returning  veterans, as well.  And so this also,  this photograph also comes  within that sequence  within the larger  realm of images  that deals metaphorically  with the idea of war and peace. 

 >> Gilliland: And how we forget.  >> Koch: And how we forget, yes.  >> Gilliland: This, on the  other hand, certainly has  a comic effect.  But in a sense in the same vein.  >> Koch: In a way.  As we've been talking about,  there is a sense of irony  within a lot of the images.  And it's not intended  to point a finger.  It's more a way of noticing  how something that can be  considered quite serious  might have a very humorous side  to it as well.  In this instance,  this is a singing flag.  It was made  in a small town parade. 

 It was one of the floats in  a small town Labor Day parade.  >> Gilliland: It says  something about small towns  and patriotism,  and what people do when they  come together to celebrate.  >> Koch: Yeah.  >> Gilliland: A couple of things  fascinated me  about this picture.  One is, that the tread marks  seem to go right through the  wall in a couple of instances.  I don't see any evidence that  they actually come to a stop.  And the other, of course,  sort of the irony of that word  "promise," right in the middle  of all this, which is looking  a little on the, again,  neglected side.  >> Koch: Yeah, and  you're wondering  just what that promise is.  In this instance,  when you say the wall,  it was "The Wall"  with capital T capital W,  in fact the Berlin Wall.  And for those of us old enough  to remember it,  it was a very signal event  within the history  of our lives. 

 One that seemed rather  both impermeable and permanent.  >> Gilliland: And fatal for many  who tried to cross it.  >> Koch: When it was up,  it was difficult to imagine  that it would ever come down,  although it seemed like  such a scar on the landscape.  And in this instance,  the tracks that lead  directly to the wall,  and, in fact, under the wall,  it's as if the curtain,  what was referred to as  the Iron Curtain for many years,  had just dropped  on those tracks.  Those tracks being  right in the center of  one of the busiest intersections  in Berlin, and here  this wall came down upon it.  There's a lot of graffiti  on the western side of the wall,  no one on the east  could get anywhere near it,  or they'd be shot.  But on the western side  of the wall,  there was a lot of graffiti,  someone wrote "The Promise."  At the time, obviously,  the wall was still up.  Three years later,  the wall came down.  And the promise, to me  and the rest of our country  at that time was that there  would be a "peace dividend"  with the collapse  of the Soviet union.  >> Gilliland: Wouldn't have to  spend all that money on arms. 

 >> Koch: We didn't need  the arms race anymore, and  there would be a peace dividend.  I'm wondering what ever happened  to the peace dividend.  >> Gilliland: This one,  talk about being  at a loss for words.  This literally, seems  to be what's happened here.  >> Koch: Well, this particular  picture is like so many  of the others, rather oblique.  It's not saying any one thing  in particular,  but it's suggesting  that the mystery is out there.  It will, perhaps,  always be out there.  And it's pointing to something,  who knows what.  I've been very influenced  by music, as well as poetry  and literature of all kinds.  And there's a wonderful song. 

 The songwriter Iris DeMent  wrote a song,  "Let the Mystery Be."  And in a way, this is a visual  representation of that idea,  I suppose.  >> Gilliland: Hard to get  much more simple and mysterious  than that.  >> Koch: Well, of course,  the question mark, yes.  Well, my thought here  is that questions are what  the photographs are all about  in a sense.  I've become, over the course of  many years, much more interested  in seeing photography  as an exploration,  as a way of raising questions,  as a way  of organizing questions.  And I've become less interested  in what any particular answer  might be, because I realized  how subjective answers can be.  >> Gilliland: And limiting.  >> Koch: And limiting.  But in fact, questions  are what really interest me.  And then presenting those  questions so that other people  can puzzle over some of these  same things, as well. 

 >> Gilliland: That would be  a fairly common artistic stance,  wouldn't it?  Well, we can't leave without  looking at the title image.  >> Koch: Again, another  Wisconsin picture.  And, in fact, you selected  from the full sequence of  the book, about 20 photographs.  All together,  within the full sequence  in the book, there are  approximately 80 images.  So today, we've seen  about a quarter of the images.  And it's interesting  that some of the ones  that you most identified with  and were most curious about  happened to be  from Wisconsin, in fact.  Not all of them, obviously.  One was from India.  The soldier's monument  from Brussels.  The Berlin Wall, and so on. 

 But this, again,  is one of the pictures  that's from Wisconsin.  It's from northern Wisconsin.  And, again, this idea  of layering of reality,  because the pointing hand was  in fact a roadside beer sign  in front of a tavern.  Across the street  was the car wash.  And the car wash  was called Automatic Wonder.  Touchless Automatic Wonder.  And so, I thought that  as an idea, as a phrase,  correlated so directly with  what I was trying to suggest  with the sequence of pictures.  >> Gilliland: Well,  it's a great title,  and it's a very touchable book.  "Touchless Automatic Wonder."  It's definitely a fun thing  to look through.  And of course, you'll never  get to the answer  behind all of those questions. 

 >> Koch: I hope not.  >> Gilliland: That Lewis Koch  has asked in the book.  I'm Norman Gilliland.  Thanks for being with us, Lewis.  >> Koch: Thank you, very much.  It's been a pleasure.