Background for this - my first American interview.

We in the American Pictures Collective had in March 1982 moved from our theater in Copenhagen to set up a similar theater for our slideshow "American Pictures". We had sent all the rest of the money from our Africa Foundation to Africa in the belief that we would have similar success in America. However, without start capital we all ten ended up on welfare in a tiny backyard apartment in the Mission. We did have a few low paying shows in UC Berkely, but were near starvation.
One supporter was the feminist writer Camilla (Mog) Decarnin, who started on her own to put flyers up in the Height appealing for help to set up our theater and we started getting some donations. When I found out who the extremely shy woman was, she invited me home in her own poor apartment to make an interview with me to put in various papers she was writing for. Partly with her help we managed to get our own theater five months later and gradually broke through on the college lecture circuit. Later I invited her to Denmark for 9 months to help edit my book. I have long ago lost her magazine stories, but in 2022 found this rough un-edited interview she made with me on tape. It deffinitely needs editing, but I have decided here to scan and publish all the 27 unedited pages - in the dear memory of a woman I owe everything. Camilla Decarnin - also known as Karen Duff - died in 2012 in Michigan.
Jacob Holdt

Camilla Decarnin in the middle in our theater when it later opened.
 

Interview made on April 17, 1982 by Camilla Decarnin,
512-B Cole St. San Francisco, CA 94117



Where are you from in Denmark?
I'm from the West Coast in Denmark, near Esbjerg, a very barren area of Denmark, used to be poor, most of the immigrants to America came from that area of Denmark. But that's fifty years ago, or longer.

How would you describe your family life and growing up?
Well, my father and every firstborn son of the family for the last seven generations, six generations have been a minister of the church, and has been called Jacob Holdt. So, I was supposed to be a minister too, an: I'm. the first one who broke the tradition for a long time. So, I lived in a rectory, and had to go to church every second Sunday, I rebelled when I was 12 years old I remember, against it, but basically I was brought up in the church, you know, my father was very liberal and very understanding toward a child who did not want to go to church every Sunday. But I lived a fairly careful life, I had a father who was a minister and a mother who was partly crazy, which is, all the great poets in Denmark, Romantic poets in the 18th-19th century, had a similar family relationship, I found out when I went to school, so I put my hand up and said I will probably be a great Romantic poet. But that's just my basic childhood I would say, which was fairly happy, I guess. Middle class, protected.

How about school?
Oh, school, that's another thing. I was always late throughout my school and always was at the bottom of the class in marks, and I went to high school, gymnasium ((term for Danish high school -- ed.)) and after two years I was kicked out of high scW1, they simply didn't want me there anymore. I was so lazy I didn't even bring my books home from the school and didn't do my homework, and so on, so...

Were you bored?
Yeah, I was simply bored, really. My Danish teacher, for essay writing and so on, was the only one who had some faith in me, and who was the only one who voted against me being kicked out of the school, you know, and therefore it was kind of a triumph for me to come back with the show to the school later where he invited me, you know. And where they, the students are now using my text from the book in some of their studies in English and Danish, you know. So, but since he's still a teacher in that school, he felt a little bit of a triumph.

So then you didn't go after that, two years of high school.
No, that's the last school I took and then I was in the Army for a while and they kicked me out, after half a year. I refused to shoot, and they can't use a man in the Army who don't shoot (laughs). And then I was a factory worker for some years, and fired from some jobs, as a driver and different things, you know. So that's basically what I've been doing.

They didn't try to put you in jail when you wouldn't shoot in the Army?
No no, you just get kicked out, you know. I pretended I was sick, so I was limping around for eight months pretending I had a slipped disk or so on, you know. So when I was kicked out they finally gave me two thousand dollars for suffering in the Army, you know.

That's fair.
I had not expected to get anything, I didn't even know they gave that, I just wanted to get out of the Army, but one day half a year later the mailman knocked at my door and handed me over two thousand dollars...even more than two thousand, it was three thousand, I think. Yeah, that was okay.

Political background?
Well I started getting a little, I used to be in the Conservative Party When I was in school. Most schoolchildren in those days were Conservative Youth members, and I continued being that, which means I was basically apolitical, I think, not very politically oriented, but it started changing when I was in the Army, because I was in rebellion against the Army, I just also was in rebellion against many of the things the Army told me. If they said you had to get out on the field and shoot those red bastards or something like this, I just, it started making me think. So later I got a little storefront in Copenhagen where I had a lot of American deserters from the Vietnam war staying who were underground, and they told me a lot of political stuff about why they had deserted Vietnam and so on. So I started changing myself, I had to start questioning many of the basic beliefs I had been brought up to think, of believe in. But it was never any serious commitment or anything. So I don't feel I was really very political. By the time I came to America I was not, I wouldn't consider myself a Conservative anymore. But I was nothing, really.

Where had you travelled before you got here?
Nowhere.

Just through Canada?
Yeah, only Canada, that's all. With my family around Europe when I was young. And that's basically all I'd ever travelled. No, I came to Canada simply because I met a Canadian tour-- one of the people I had staying was the daughter of a rich Canadian farmer, and she had run away from home and I brought her in touch with her family, and they were so happy, so they invited me over to work on their farm. And that was a good way for me to escape the boring life in Denmark. So I went over there. I worked there and I loved this farm work, I just really, I miss it a lot, this physical work, you know, and close to earth... But I had a little cabin up there where I read some books about Latin America, and I got interested in that, so I bought a sleeping bag and then I wanted to hitch-hike down to Latin America. I never got there, I only got to Guatemala, but on the way through the United States I just ended up liking it so much, so I stayed there.

You said that you went through San Francisco?
Yeah, I, I mean I was scared of hitch-hiking in America at the time because Canadians had told me so many things about it, so I took the, I hitch-hiked across Canada in the wintertime and then down along the West Coast which I considered was the safest probably, you know, there's not so many rednecks out here. (laughs). Well, I don't know. But then I got, I landed here in San Francisco, and the sunshine and the political mood, and I mean it seemed like people were so politically aware, and they taught me so many things. So, I started getting involved in all that. Somebody asked me if I wanted to go with him to Washington to demonstrate against the Vietnam war, so I went with him just for the trip, and then suddenly I was camping there on the mall, with thousands of Vietnam veterans, so they really turned me on to a lot of things. So that's how it all started. That was '71. And then later that year I hit most of the eastern cities and was shocked about seeing this, those incredible class differences. So, little by little I ended up travelling in those areas. Ghettos and so on. And I was 22 years old. Yeah, I was confused about coming to America, and I had...I mean America had never really existed for me before, it was just, well you all know about America and it's in, but it was just a big white boring middle class society to me, so I was never interested in this country before. But I liked it, so, I liked hitchhiking here even though I was scared the first couple of times.

Could you describe how the project started?
I never really looked at it as a project, but it did start by, I hitch-hiked a lot around without really having any goals and so on, but when you hitch-hike around you constantly meet very lonesome people, and single People and so on, who want to unload a lot of their problems on you, or simply want somebody to talk to. That was such an experience for me to meet all those open people. Americans are open in general. A lot of "I" talking, you know they talk about themselves all the time, something I have learned from Americans I think. So, I simply liked to be with them and then after a year my parents started, sent me this pocket camera and asked me to send some pictures home. And in the beginning, I was mostly photographing many of those people I stayed with to remember them and to send them home to my parents to show them. Yeah, that's how it started. Then little by little I got more socially aware and started drifting into the ghettos and started concentrating more on the black issues, but that came little by little.

You said something about your parents didn't quite believe what you told them?
No. I wrote home about my drunk drive with Ted Kennedy, and such things, you know, Ted Kennedy over in Europe is just an enormous, big person, you know, who would believe their son had met him. (laughs) So they wanted me to have a camera to take pictures of all these things, you know. And One of the first days I was here in America I was robbed you know, and nobody ever has been robbed in Denmark, hardly, and people had a hard time understanding such things, so... That was on Hayes Street in San Francisco, I came out from a party with some of Angela Davis' friends and I was stoned, and I walked down the street and suddenly there was somebody there. Three guys with knives, in front of twenty people waiting for the bus, you know, so I just couldn't believe it. And people definitely couldn't believe it in Europe. That nobody had done anything, they just stood there passive looking at it. Two yards in front of me. So, yeah, one thing led to another. I had never photographed before, so it was snapshots I took, basically, and my camera was not very good. But it was good enough for that. It's a Canon Dial half-frame. They bought a half-frame because they knew I couldn't afford to buy so many films, so... on a half-frame there’s 72 pictures on a roll of film. Yeah, that's how my family reacted and so on.

Where did you take the first pictures? Around here?
Yeah. In San Francisco. I took them, I ended up, one of the first homes I stayed in was one of Angela Davis' friends, and George Jackson's sister. That was at the time when George Jackson was killed and so on. And that was another thing, right then Angela Davis was in prison, and that was in the headlines all over the country, and here I wrote home about I was staying with her collective, so that again was something they had a difficult time believing. That was my second home, black home in America I was staying in. So it was like I was thrust into the black things immediately, of course they turned me on to a lot about black liberation and black struggle and so on. So it was very interesting for me. I felt I was right in the middle of the world events and so on (laughs). So that was about it.

When they saw the pictures, did they believe you then? I mean, you can't hold up a sign and say "I'm Angela Davis's friend" but, you know.
No. Yeah, I guess they started believing it. You know, my problem with the family all the five years I travelled was that I didn't have anything in mind with my travelling here, you know, I was not working on any project or anything, and therefore they felt I was just bumming around like I had always done, you know. And they kept asking me to go home, especially my grandmother kept writing me letters to, that now I had to go home and start in, the seminary, starting you know to become a minister. And simply to avoid that I kept travelling, you know. And took pictures simply as an excuse to keep on travelling you know. I did not want to go back to school and so I was really escaping responsibility, as they called it. So, yeah, that was my basic family problem.

How did you get people to talk to you once you got into places where they didn't trust you?
I was never there as an official news person or anything, I simply got to talk to the people who had a need to talk to me, you know, when you walk down the ghetto streets, you know, and look a bit different or whatever, behave different or have a more open attitude around you, and that's a very important thing, I was curious, I'd never seen these people before, so I was very oven to them, and they can feel that, they can pick it up immediately and they start tapping with you. So, it was very easy for me I felt. Still, I would say, it took me a couple of years to really learn to get into black homes. It was very difficult the first couple of years for me to get to stay with them. And still I was not really, since I was not aware that I was working on anything particularly black, I, it was not such a problem, but I did find it harder to get into black homes than white homes.

When did you start using a tape recorder?
Oh that bras the last year when I was aware that I was working on something, then I got a little pocket tape recorder. After I saw a multi-media show in Florida in a university, I got the idea of putting the pictures, 15,000 pictures I had almost at the end, together in such a show. And then I felt there has to be some interviews. 3ut that was four years after I started, so that was after a long time.

Did some people know you were working on a project, later on?
Yeah, later on. To the blacks I would often say that I was because, it depended on what kind of reaction I got from them, in some cases, in many cases I just hung out with them, and lived with them, and I did not want them to feel that they were objects of any sort but that they were helping me, basically, which was always the case, but, in some cases and to get in certain situations I would tell them I was working on this or that or writing for a European newspaper. My father, who helped me to get some, a little letter from the Danish Christian Science Monitor to say that I was writing for them. So I wrote one article in the five years, just to justify that. That was about the Glide Church here in San Francisco. No, two articles, one about Wounded Knee too. But that was, actually I can never remember I used that letter, you know. But I felt I had it, so I could maybe use it someday. I think maybe I used it to get into Julie Nixon's press conference. Yeah, I did.

That was right before the fifth year that you thought of the project, down in Florida?
That was after four years, saw it, yeah.

Did you ever have to, well obviously you would have had to conceal it from certain people.
Mostly not because people, no matter how crazy they are, are usually proud of what they believe in, Klan people and so on, I mean they don't feel ashamed, and they want to speak out about it you know. Where the landlord gets mad at me when he found my pictures, you know, of black people and therefore thought I was a Civil Rights worker or something, then I had the tape recorder concealed to sort of get his anger. But in most cases I didn't do that, and I didn't like to do it, because I felt total honesty everywhere was what 'protected me most and helped me most. So…..

How did you get to stay' ere so long?
I was lucky, I know that from-later European travelers, they mostly get only three months permission to stay. I managed most of the time to get six months, sometimes only one week. But then I would go up to Canada, hitch-hike up to Canada, I found out that I could also get an extension in the immigration offices around the country, in San Francisco and so on, but I usually went up to Canada because it costs ten dollars to get an extension if you do it inside the country. Up in the Consulate in Canada it's free, you know, so it was cheaper for me to hitch-hike up to Canada and simply get an extension there. Then I had the problem that you get an extension or new visa in Canada, but you have to get across the border, and that's where they're real rough on you, and that's why I later gave up on that and tried to find the money to get extensions inside the country. To cross the border is almost hopeless if you have no money and have long hair and hitchhike.

So usually, I would cross it around Detroit-Windsor, come from Toronto, where I had some of my friends up, and I would find some friends on the Canadian side and borrow a Cadillac from them and fill it up with Jesus literature and dress up nice, I had my short hair wig, and white gloves and so on and tie, and then my papers from this Christian Science Monitor, and my father had written something that I was in an exchange with the Lutheran church in America with the Danish Lutheran church and so on, you know, and equipped with all this you get into America just like that. And then I had friends on the Detroit side of the border to drive all the things back to Canada and pick up my other stuff. I did that many times and it worked every time, at the border they really have respect for religion. (laughs) I never felt I was lying, since I was contacting churches many places, sometimes to get places to stay, and also I was writing for this newspaper.

How long was it you were actually taking the pictures, that was the whole five years? When you got the camera...
Yes, four years after I got it yeah, I was travelling for five years. But I didn’t finish the story. After four years they did not want to keep me any longer in the country, you know. I managed, and I think this is one of the world records, to get extensions for four years, you know, with all kinds of excuses, that I was working on a book and so on, you know, I was never working on a book, but it was a good excuse for staying here, and therefore I find it so funny that a book came out of it afterwards, which I just never had planned. But after four years I finally had to get married -- and I got married to a black woman who wanted to help me and wanted to get out of the country, she hated the country. Both her parents had been murdered, that's the reason she was...

She was in my old show where she's talking about her experiences in Philadelphia, Mississippi, where her best friends when she was young turned out later to be in the Ku Klux Klan and were personally murdering the three civil rights workers who were killed there in Philadelphia, Mississippi. So, she was very close to all that, and after that happened, she fled to England and lived there for ten years. Then she had to come back to America because her mother was shot to death in Chicago. And then half a year later her father was shot to death in Chicago. So that's how I met her, she was home for the funeral and when I met her in New York, we got married, and moved to San Francisco. And so -- that's the time when I got involved with Popeye Jackson. So, I was pretty much finished, most of my pictures were taken, but now when I look at the show I can see, of course, that it was an important thing that I got into the politics in the end of the show, you know. Then we left the country, I just got so shook up after all that, and went to Denmark where she's now working with us, but we're not married any longer, well we're separated. She's doing the translation of most of the stuff I'm writing.

Maybe I shouldn't put that in because if you're separated, I don't know, they might….
Yeah, well, I was just thinking of how to say we are married still or whatever. We are married still, you know.

Working separately.
She doesn't want to go back to America, I want to, so...that's, we had to be separated.

You said you had some ideas, or you tried to get money to help you do it.
I tried for a long time after '74, again that was in the last year, and I tried to get money to get a better camera, I was thinking of a Nikon or something like this which is the dream of all photographers. Today I know that I would never have been able to use a Nikon, I'd probably have it ripped off very soon, but I just felt I couldn't, the wide angle was not large enough on my camera, if it were a Nikon I could maybe have had a bigger wide angle so I could really capture the narrowness of the shacks and so on. And especially I wanted money for film, I just never had film on me, you know, I mean it’s terrible when you stand there seeing, um, a murder or something and don't have any film! Oh, that's just a joke.
But…. (laughing)

It may have saved your life if you didn't have any film at that point.
No but when you see some fast action and you stand there running out of film it's just, it's just bad, you know. And that was always my problem, I just never had film, I had to go to a plasma bank twice a week. And I did that for all the five years, even the first year, you can do that twice a week, and they paid you five dollars in most cities, from, New Orleans I used to go a lot, they paid six dollars ten each time you know. And in those days you just got a cup of coffee, now I've been back in the blood banks and seen how they’ve equipped them with tv s and stereos, you can lay there and have a good time, you know. But in those days they'd come around and slap you in the face if you fell asleep, and often it was the only sleep I could get, it takes four hours you know. And you're laying there for four hours and pumping and so on, and if you fall asleep, they'll slap you on the face.

Why do they care?
Well because then you don't pump (demonstrates making a fist and releasing it). But in the blood banks I met many of the destitute people I got to stay with and so on. So that was enough, I never had any jobs in America, I was not allowed to and never felt I had time to. So that's how I got all my money.

Were there some people or organizations that you asked for money?
Yeah, I asked, well I wrote applications, I wrote to the Vanguard Foundation, I don't think I ever got it mailed for some reason, and I wrote to the Pillsbury Foundation and some other, I wrote to Jane Fonda and all kinds of people I thought had money and so on. In most cases I never got the letters mailed, because I couldn't find the addresses and so on, I was just very, not very organized, in that respect. So I just never got money, you know, It's funny, I went to the Pabst family to go to get money, I didn't get any money there either. (laughs)

I went to a lot of rich people to try to get money. So I never got... But I did get, one old woman picked me up one time, and asked me to drive her car from Philadelphia to Florida, and she gave me $70. And that was the first time I had some money. And those money I put into making prints from some of the slides, and from then on I had something to show people. Again, that was after four years. And from then on people would give me, when I showed the people from the road, the drivers and so on, they would give me, often five dollars when I left the car, or invite me home, you know, and one guy even gave me $20. The highest I ever got was a very rich Jewish woman in Boston who gave me $30. And I felt so happy. But that's all I got. And it was not much, I still had to sell my blood.

How did-you think it would change if you had more money, just more pictures?
Basically, what I really wanted to be able to do was to take a lot of pictures. Now, I had to sit and wait for days, and let's say something like this you know (the photograph on the poster of the woman by the playpen). I would sit there with her, I stayed with her for three days, I'd sit there, and she couldn't communicate, she was just totally destroyed, really. And I took a lot of pictures of her. But what I wanted to do in such situations was to be able to take pictures all the time, you know, and not just sit there and wait for some special photographic mood to come which reflected her deep psychological unhappiness or whatever. It’s so frustrating for a photographer who has to sit and wait until the right picture comes.

Most photographers they'll just shoot, (sound effect of fast camera) like this you know, and then they'll select the best picture. I couldn't do it that way. And probably, I can see today if I had done it the other way, I would have been much more superficial about it, had thousands and thousands of pictures and really felt that I was exploiting people instead of communicating with them. Because when you sit there talking to them, and take pictures at the right moment, you know, first of all you lose a lot of right moments, because you're in the middle of a conversation, but it does force you to really get close to those people, in situations where for instance with her I couldn't really communicate very well with her, in the matter of the three days I lived with her, I did learn how to communicate with her. And that's the advantage of not having film enough. (laughs)

Now I'm saying it as if that was my primary thing, I felt the first four years that my primary thing was vagabonding, because I did not have in mind to make this show. And with vagabonding, I mean, to really be with people, and give myself to them totally. When they asked me to be with them in whatever situation they were in, I would always follow them. And I felt it was so beautiful, you know, to be totally a victim of people, and be with them. From the moment, the last year when I started photographing them too much, it did not take long before I felt that now the photography was the primary thing, and then I started feeling I was exploiting them. But for the first four years when there was a natural balance, where I felt more that I was photographing them to remember them, or to keep them with me in my travels or so on or whatever you would say, I felt that was a natural balance.

So probably if I'd had more equipment and economic support and so on, I would have invaded their lives in a negative way, you know, I think, and felt guilty about it and so on, just thereby... It's the same with a documentary film, you come with a camera and equipment and crew and so on you know, aid thereby you change the whole subject immediately. I felt that I didn’t do that really. Of course, you always, any person who walks into another person's home does change that person to some degree, but when you stay with them for a while, live with them and the daily activities, then you get into a very nice normal relationship with them, and I think that's the closest you can get to not changing their reality.

You never tried any Danish financial projects?
No. In the end I felt American, and I did not really want to go back to Denmark, so...

How did you develop the film, you said you developed it in slides.
As soon as the film was exposed, would send it to a mail order company in New Jersey, they made automatic framing of them, and they would send it to one of my friends, or a couple of my friends, wherever I had them, who stored them for me.

And that must have been a problem too for money.
Yeah. But one roll of film cost $5 including exposure, I think it was, or $7 or so. So just selling blood once a week, I would have one roll of film, you know. Or twice a week I would get two rolls. For a long time I stored them with a woman in Washington, but I was often curious to see how the pictures had come out, and so I'd hitch-hike up there once or twice a month from the South. And I also stored them in New York, so I'd hitch-hike up there all the time. Which became a nice way for me to keep my head cool, you know, if you live too long in the South you get too conditioned by the southern thinking. So going up there once a month I would keep my head clean, you know, or be brainwashed with a different type of ideas. I went up and down constantly, from Mississippi, Alabama you can hitch-hike to New York, that was before the speed limits, in 24 hours. Later it took, after '72 or '75 when they changed the speed limits it would take a little longer. But I loved to sit in cars, that's the greatest thing I know about America, that's to hitch-hike and sit in cars for hours and conversing with different people, it's so relaxing.

Were you wearing your short-hair wig?
No, that was only the first year when people in the North had told me all kinds of scary things about people in the South. It brought me into some homes, but usually I would ….. in the homes, for instance one of the plantation homes in Mississippi, during the dinner one day I would suddenly take off my wig, and all my hair fell out, and they just laughed, you know. That was at the point where they felt that they would accept it.

You said that you lost some film when you were arrested at Wounded Knee?
No, that was where my camera was destroyed. For half a year I couldn't get it fixed. No, it was just, it had nothing really to do with the FBI, that it was smashed, I was fleeing the FBI, and as I was fleeing out of Wounded Knee, I knocked it at night into a stone, so it changed the exposure, so in the future all my films, and I didn't know it, most of the film from Wounded Knee was overexposed. And then it took me half a year where I couldn't photograph, and I felt so frustrated, I was walking around in New York, and around you know, and I didn't have the money to get the camera fixed. Finally my parents sent me some money. But it took me half a year where I didn't take any pictures at all.

Did you ever lose any film?
Yeah. Some of them, at the time when I started making prints from some of the slides, I took of the best slides, and I sent them through the mail and they were lost. Yeah, I felt really...whew. Many of these situations just, for instance standing there taking a picture of a moon rocket getting off, now that you can take next time a moon rocket goes up, but with a man sitting there in front of his shack and a moon rocket goes up over his house, you know that you don't get into such a situation again. Now in this case I got the picture, but you are really nervous when you have such a picture. And there's a lot of situations which can never be captured again. I was so happy when I took that moon picture, the same day I hitch-hiked up to New York where I had a girlfriend at that time who would always make me a big steak, you know, and when you've been starving there for weeks it was so nice to come home and, I would often hitch-hike up to the North just to get a good meal, and then the next day I would go down to the South again. But see, the point of that was also that when you hitch-hike you meet people all the time who bring you into other situations. So that is one reason I have ended up hitch-hiking 102,000 miles in America, which is one tenth of the entire road network in America, or four times around the globe.

You didn't start working to put the project together until you went back to Denmark?
No.

What did you do?
Well, I sailed back to Denmark, I was so afraid that, I heard that they ripped off stuff in the airports (laughs), so I was sitting on the trunk with pictures all the way back to Denmark. And in the ship where I was very seasick, I was sitting ordering the slides after groups, you know, homosexuals, criminals, shacks, and so on. And when I got home, I just piled them up in my old bedroom in my father's house on shelves. And then I just took the piles and reordered them and made a story after what type of piles I had. So that's why, there are so many things in the show that are missing and so on, but it’s just because there were no piles for these subjects. So that's how the show was built up basically. Basically, I had it all built up in my head, so...

And you started writing...
I wrote the manuscript in just a week and a half. And I’ve never felt more at ease at it. I didn’t think about it at all, it was like it just flowed out of me. Usually when I'm writing I have to sit and think sentences over and over, but this here just, poof, I've never been so much at ease. I had it all inside myself, you know. Then somebody taught me to, I bought some slide projectors from a guy, who taught me about signals and so on. There's an interesting thing about that, the photographer whom I bought the equipment of, and who is a very famous, no not famous but a very clever commercial photographer, he has been very helpful to me all the time. But later, as a result of this enormous success we have had with the show in Denmark, where all the schools have seen the show, you know, all children sort of have to see it in part of their upbringing and so on.

The American embassy in Copenhagen really hates that, constantly they are being called out to present the other side of the story. And of course, pictures are more convincing than a straight ambassador standing there with a tie on, you know. (laughs). And the embassy's just really fed up with it. So they got the American Ministry of Cultural Affairs or whatever you call it, Cultural Ministry or something, I don't know what it's called, to pay a Danish photographer a lot of money to make an alternative show presenting the other side of America. But they didn't know that the photographer they gave the job to, was the one who helped me to make my show. And who had earlier written about it in Danish photographic magazines, about me and so on. So okay, he got the job to come over here, hotels and everything paid for him all over the country, and the government had set it up so he could stay with Ansel Adams and all kinds of famous people, you know. So, he was photographing here last summer, and now he's taking his show around in Denmark.

How do they like it?
Oh I mean everybody knows who has financed it and so on, you know. (tape runs out)

You were saying that people in Denmark all know what America is like.
Of course everybody's brought up with all those Hollywood movies and constant documentaries from CBS and so on, they do, um, and plus that a great deal of people has relatives over here and travel over here all the time. So people know the middle class side of America, there's no way you have to present that for them. Their shock comes because they don't know the other side, they don't know the poverty side of America, they've heard about it in school and so on, but they don't see, visually for them, you know.
So, I just consider it a total waste of their money, that he's doing such a thing, but on the other hand I find it okay because it doesn't hurt to present the nice side of America. I love the nice sides in America myself you know, and I would myself love to make such a show one day, but I just find it in vain since it would only confirm what people already feel about America.

How did you start showing it in Denmark?
I started showing it in my father's church. And then it spread from there. Then a local teacher came and said if we could do it in his school, and then a bigger school invited me to show it in their school, and then suddenly it spread like fire, the rumor was just all over Denmark in no time. Later, less than a month, one of the biggest newspapers in Denmark, took it up, an intellectual newspaper, took it up and made a four-page issue about it, you know. Or a special edition. Then they organized a 0tour for me around the country. As a result of those four pages in the newspaper there was thousands of people lined up to see it. In one town, in Arhus, there was three thousand people standing in line to get in and see it, in a place that would only hold 500, 600 people. So it was just a tremendous success, really. And for me to come out of the lonesome road as a vagabond, I had just been standing out there on the highway for all those years where you're just really lonesome often, and suddenly to stand on a stage for a thousand people sometimes, the most we've shown it for is 1,400 people, as you can see there (photograph inside Oslo Concert house) that was just, that just blew my mind as the hippies would say. (laughs)

And the first year I loved it, it was fun for me to be out with the show, and travel around with it. Then I started inviting my friends over, Tony there was the first one to come over, black friends from America, taught them to run the show and bought new sets of equipment. After a while we had five rolling cars and shows, travelling in 13 countries. It took a little time of course to have it translated, we have now translated it to seven languages, even Polish. Danish, Swedish, English, German, Dutch, French, Polish. Is that all? I think that's all.

Did you say Spanish?
No, there was also one who started on a Portuguese version at one time, but he never got it finished. It has been volunteers who has done all this work, you know. Immediately, even before it became a success, the first year my publisher, for there happened to be the publishing division of this newspaper, asked me to do a book out of it. And I was just very reluctant, I wanted to get out and travel again and hitch-hike, but they convinced me to sit down, and they took me to the book fair in Frankfurt where they sold the book to several countries before I had even written it, you know, so I felt just really strange about that. At the book fair, it is just a train trip down there, I really felt exploited. So, anyway I wrote the book, I mainly used the main text from the show, but the newspaper, when it was first published in this special edition, they had included some of my personal letters to American friends at the time, and they were the ones that really got people to come to see the show, so therefore the publisher asked me to include many of my personal letters in the book, and we now have eleven of them plus a preface and the continuous text of the show. And I'm pretty sure that it's the personal letters that really has made it such a best-seller.

The book is a best-seller now?
Oh yeah, it has sold more copies in Denmark than Roots has sold in America, per capita. And in Germany it was number two on the best-selling list for half a year. Number one was a book about Hitler. Which has never happened in German history to a foreign book before. So it was just a tremendous success. Before it was published my publisher said a lot of money could come in on it, a million kroner which makes you a millionaire, you know. In dollars it’s only something like two hundred thousand. So I rushed down the same day I heard that, before I had written the book, to a lawyer and asked him to set up a foundation so that all the money could be sent to Africa, because there was no way I could conceive of being a millionaire on this. So he set up this foundation which has since been working and through that we have since been able to build schools and all kind of things.

When did you start the storefront in Copenhagen?
That came the next year, the same year the book was published, in '77. The first summer, a theater in Copenhagen gave me their theater for free, with all the income every night, you know, it's run by the State, there's a lot of good things the State organizes in Denmark. And it was sold out every night, it could only hold 200 people, but every night for two months, yeah. And they had just never seen a success like this, they had never thought that it would make so much money, they probably would not have given me all the money (laughs).

So for that I could invest in a theater, I felt why not buy your own theater. And the funny thing was that I looked up in the advertisement also because I needed a place, I was living in a loft with no toilet or kitchen or anything. Well, all that summer I was living in the theater, I simply rolled down the curtain afterwards and slept in it every night. So that was, well I was just saying the first advertisement I looked at in the newspaper under apartments and commercial space was the one I went down to and which I got and which was just a fantastic place you know because we could have inside the apartment a theater and a foyer and room for all my friends from America so we could all live together and make a collective or commune of whatever you would call it.

And there we’ve been living and working the last five years and had a fantastic time. A lot of people who came to our house, they found the experience of visiting the collective was just as great as the show itself. Because they had never, in Denmark at least, seen a totally integrated collective, with just as many blacks as whites and foreigners, plus people from all over the world staying there constantly. After the show was over every night, we would clear all the chairs out so people could sleep there, and... still every summer, especially, people from all over the world are staying with us. It says in the preface of my book, you know, if you come to Denmark and you don't have a place to stay you can come and stay with me. A lot of, especially the Germans --

Maybe you shouldn't say that in the American version! You could be overrun.
No, I think, I believe in being open, because Americans were open to me, so, they should have a chance if they come to Denmark.

There’s so many of them though.
Okay, but you know, there comes a natural breaking point, if there's no more sleeping space on the floor, then they will probably go out in the street and find some other place, so I don't think it’s a problem. But it is a problem when you live, a family of ten people together for five years and it looks like this all the time. The five years I was travelling I never had private room, I was always living with people, sharing beds with them, and shelter, whatever they would give me. And then I came home to that situation in Denmark. So I have not had my own place for twelve years. And I just have to say, this week, somebody gave me an apartment for three weeks (here in San Francisco), you know, and it’s the first time I've been alone for 12 years. And it has been a really strange experience. No, that's a lie, last summer I was up working in a lab in Stockholm on the film, and somebody gave me an apartment for one week. And I got so alienated staying there, after just two days I was walking around and around and around, I felt so lonesome, you know, that after two days I left the apartment and went out to a bar and found some people to stay with. I just couldn’t stand being alone. But right now, I do find it interesting to stay alone. (laughs)

But that's what show business is like, you know (laughs). Plus the fact that when we travel around with the show-in the different countries we stay private all the time. We, as you can see in the program, we encourage people to give us all the support they can, they feed us for instance, we have all ten of us been living there for five years, as I said, but our total income together has been $2,000 a year. I want to get it correct... (takes out tiny flat pocket calculator) 150,000 Dkr divided by eight is $18,900 a year, $19,000 a year. Divided on ten people, you know. And that’s because the people who travel are constantly being fed by the people, teachers and so on who put them up in schools and... so we just never have very much money to spend, you know. Plus, in a collective you can eat together and therefore it's cheaper. It's also a whole part of my philosophy of saving energy. I think we're depleting the world resources which has a tragical thing about it, and that’s the oil. Even though we find more oil now in different locations it’s going to be very expensive oil which the third world cannot afford, you know, which means we can never industrialize the third world, because industrialization in all parts of the world has been dependent on cheap energy. And future forms of energy, solar energy and so on, for the most part would probably be too expensive for the third world. So, I think it's very important for everyone to save energy, and move in together like this, and thereby save energy for the third world.

You don't get any money from the movie in the collective as income? It's like people have their own income?
No, well some of those who were living there were on welfare. I myself had a steady income because my job was so diversified. But that's a part of those $19,000. I had 26,000 kroner one year, 30,000 kroner another year, which is $4,000 a year or something like that, $5,000. But what is it I was saying... No, the blacks also, who are travelling with the show, they had to be paid, they had of course to have some pocket money. So, they got money according to how many shows they were running usually, which meant that in the wintertime they would have two shows a day, each of them. Last winter for instance we had such a demand in Denmark we had to pull two of the people who were travelling outside Denmark home to Denmark to run the shows in addition to the one who's usually running the shows in Denmark. Which meant that we had six shows a day in Danish schools and institutions. You can do that in Denmark because the distances are so small. You could also do it in Holland for instance.

That was extremely hard for those people who were running it, they had to get up at four or five o’clock in the morning, maybe there was two hours’ drive to the show, or they would be out staying with people somewhere in the country, and it takes an hour to set up the show. Usually we start at eight or nine o’clock in a high school or elementary school, it would be over by two o’clock, it would take an hour to break it down, then a couple of hours to drive to the next place, they would set it up again at five o’clock and the show would start at six o’clock and you would be finished at two o’clock at night and then you would have three hours of sleep. But usually what happens, when you are staying with people, who have just seen the show, they want to talk about it! (laughs) Afterwards, you know, so they were just really in problems you know. But that way we managed all last year to show it for approximately two thousand Danes a day. Two thousand.

That's the other side of the problem, how do the Americans get allowed to stay in Denmark so long?
They have permission. We are a foundation, and the Danish government is doing all kinds of things to help us, because we're giving all the money to Africa. I have to say that it's not only tax exempt, usually we would have to pay corporate tax in Denmark, 40% of your profits, you know. In this case we’re totally tax exempt, because we pay 100% of our profits to Africa. So, anybody I want to give a job to work with American Pictures in Denmark, the Danish government will immediately give them permission. So that's no problem. But they are only allowed to work with American Pictures, not outside. It's very hard unless you are from the Common Market. (EU)

There's a statement in the show that you made about Russia, after the Jewish woman said she wanted to go back. When did you put it in and why?
It happened in fact after the film came out here in October in Denmark. And for the first time I had two not so positive reviews. It’s funny, all our reviews so far in Europe have been extremely positive. But here, it's, maybe it’s because now it has been running for five years in Denmark, so now people are, have gotten over the immediate success of it and are starting to look more critical at it and so on, so two of the conservative papers, who maybe also have worked a little bit together with the American embassy, you know (laughs) were just trying to discredit it, certain aspects of it. So they brought it up and said the thing about how I talk about the Jewish woman who wants to go back to Russia, that here I'm showing that Russia is a model for America and this or that, which is just totally absurd. And then we talked about it in the Foundation, now we have to start in Reagan's America, and we thought maybe over here there would come similar reactions. So therefore, I just decided to throw in this sentence to make people absolutely aware that -- because if you are a little bit anti-Communist or conservative, you can easily misunderstand such a sentence. Which is part of the brainwashing in our society, that they'll understand it in such a way that I am advocating Russian style communism.

Of course, Russia has been tremendously interested in the film you know, but I just refused to sell it to them. After the Cannes festival they wrote enormous, I can show it to you, whole page articles, for instance in Izvestia and Literaturnaya Gazeta which is even more read by more than 100 million people. And people were writing letters in from all over Russia saying, Why don't we import such a film instead of all those stupid French gangster films we import all the time. (laughs) Here we could get a meaningful film. Or why don't we invite it to the Moscow film festival and so on. Which we also said no to. But I feel my job is to educate the West that it's our responsibility to clean up our own nest first you know, I can't really see what the Russians could do with the film except use it against America. Well, that is, I felt tempted to, because, when you see the film inside a society like Russia, you will, of course see it is a tremendous indictment against America and the whole thing. But at the same time, they will sit and ask, How did he get permission to do all this, you know. And so, they will get an enormous sense of the freedom there is in America, the freedom of mobility and so on. And that might be just as strong a story for them, they might -- oh, another reason I would like it is, that it would help the homosexuals in their country. Since I have so much of an emphasis on homosexuals and so on.

So there’re many reasons for showing it all over the world and probably eventually it should be shown all over the world, because Russia definitely has many of the same problems, it has a very racist population, I think. I was just there in Russia a couple of weeks ago and I was just shocked seeing how impolite they are, I had to fly via Russia to go to Mozambique. It's such a different population compared to Americans who are so polite and so open and nice you know, in Russia they just bite you all the time, and I'm talking about normal people, not the officials, normal people on the street, they're just not very nice. And that's very strange, when you're so used to travelling in America, to see that.

Why do you think that was, was it the way you looked?
Everybody says that this is the Russian national character, so... Maybe you shouldn't write about all this Russian shit, you know, because it's, I don't know it's, see, I -- (turns off tape recorder)

(Tape number 9) What happened to you that didn't go into the movie that was especially intense?
Oh, yes, no, that's, all the things that are in the letters in the book are in a more literary sense, they don't have pictures and you can't' fit them into a show which has to be educational and so on. I mean I can mention tons of incidents. Just the fact for instance, that I mention in the show, the drunk driving thing with Ted Kennedy, I only have one picture of him, but not from that episode, but it shows the limitations of, there's just a lot of things you can't photograph. I can mention for instance when I managed to get inside Nixon's headquarters in Miami during the Republican Convention and stayed there for two days, inside his headquarters. I managed to get invited by a Republican delegate to sleep in her room, but later I was arrested by the Secret Service and, that's a long story behind that, that would be too long to write about. I can't really think of others right now. You can pick them up if you read some of the stories.

Did you get homesick?
No, the first year I still felt close to Denmark in my thinking. And it constantly irritated me in America that when you're picked up you have to be Danish, you know. I couldn't say that I was American because it played so positive for me all the time to be Danish, an outsider. Then people were much more open and helpful to me. So I sort of had to tell stories about Denmark all the time, and I didn’t t know anything about Denmark after five years. But I never really felt I wanted to go back to Denmark, it just didn't interest me. The first year, yeah, maybe, but not at all. I don't know. I'm basically at home everywhere, I've just been in Africa, and I didn't feel like leaving Africa either, I mean it was just...
Okay...no I didn't have any Danish friends here, although I did meet four Danish travelers while I travelled who all came later to see the show in Denmark, they remembered me. I did get invited one time to stay with a Danish tailor in Chicago, but by and large most of the Danish people I met in America I didn't like because they were very conservative and racist, you know. Most of them were first generation Danes who left Denmark to avoid the high taxes in Denmark and this and that and had to justify leaving. So, they try to become super-American in no time, which means that they leave all social responsibility, I feel. I met Danes who were socialist in Denmark, but over here in no time were reactionary, Republicans you know. So, they constantly disappointed me, I tried to stay away from Danes as much as I could.

The Jews were probably the population group I got closest to in many ways, partly because I was hitch-hiking with my sign saying "From Denmark". So they constantly picked me up to tell me how Denmark saved Jews in the second World War before I was born. And also because they were the ones who responded best to what I was doing, my pictures and so on, they understood it best, they had been victims of racism in Europe, as you know, and therefore have a little bit more understanding, a little bit more, I think, than average people of the forces in society that makes special people persecuted. And traditionally they have been allies of the blacks in the Civil Rights movement.

So you didn't feel any culture shock?
The culture shock here? Well, if I had not had the culture shock I would probably not have been staying, I mean I was in a constant culture shock. Which is why I was curious all the time, if I was not curious, I would have been assimilated into society or whatever. But of course, after a while I did get more conditioned to, toward the violence for instance, so much that when I as I said before for instance came back to Detroit, now I felt it was the most peaceful town in the world, but when I was there the first time, I just was terrified. And I think most people from Europe who come over here and experience many of the, especially the ghetto situations, they will be terrified.

But a lot of people when they feel that they just want to get away.
Yeah, most of them, they flee into the white neighborhoods and identify with whites, which I find is a big mistake they do, as you know. And whites in America always tell tourists don't go into this area and don't do this and don't do that. I always went where they told me not to go, because I had the best time there. You have to... well, whatever.

Your show hasn't been in America very long, about a month?
Yeah, this time.

So, have any black audiences seen it, largely black?
Well, I was back in '78 for a short time taking it around to all my old friends and people in the show and presented it for them. But that was a special audience since they were sort of in it and therefore more interested in it. Since then, we have had more blacks in the audiences, but not really a special all-black audience so far. So, most of the blacks have responded very favorable. But there're exceptions especially from the better-off blacks. Who constitute a, I mean in many cases they have left the ghetto situations and it's too hard for them to confront it again in any way. In many cases they are simply just like, by getting' into the mainstream America they adopt all the mainstream ideas and values and consciousness and social thinking and so on...I mean it would be racist to think that they should feel more responsible towards the ghetto than anybody else, you know. And some of those will not like this film, because they, and this is a" danger of it, they feel it stereotypes the whole black race and so on, you know. I do find that a valid criticism, but I think it's wrong. If there's just one person suffering in the white race, in any race, you have the right to tell his story, even at the risk of making whole humanity a joke, you know, whatever, the risk of stereotyping other people. You must be concerned with suffering, and I do feel that rhetoric about stereotyping the whole black race is just another way of blaming the victim again or leaving them there. You have to be concerned with them or they will die or starve or whatever.

Did you take it into the South and try to show it to the people that you met there?
Yeah. Especially in the South, I would have to say. I would say we just -- oh, by the way, we have run it for an all-black audience in Greensboro recently, in January. And in a room in which the heat was gone off, you know, and people were sitting there with coats for five hours. I was not present, Tony was running it, it was in his hometown, and he said, there was a hundred people or so, it was just a tremendous success, he said. Blacks in his house just really identified with it. So...

That was in a theater?
I'm not clear, it was a place where they had no heat, you know, other than that it was, they had rented a room somewhere. But about the people in the show of course it’s important for me to stay in close contact with them, and whenever I am around, I try, I'm visiting or getting them involved if it's possible, so that's... Many of them have died since then you know. Nineteen of my friends have been killed now. (Pause for a repair)

Where all has it shown so far in the U.S.? Is it too long a list...?
No, it's not that long. I was back in '78 invited by Louis and Clark College in Portland, Oregon, and ran it in a couple of other colleges there. At that time, I also had a couple of shows in San Francisco and Los Angeles, one in Jane Fonda's house, and then around to all the people who are in the show, not all of them of course, but... Later, then we've shown it in the film festival in San Francisco, and then it has been shown for a month in Chicago. And then in Greensboro as I mentioned, and one night in Atlanta for Dr. Charles King's Suburban Crisis Center, a couple of times for Dr. King. And here and L.A., but only one night in L.A. in the film festival, so that’s all.

In the South has it been advertised? Or does it sort of keep a low profile?
No, only -- In Greensboro it was advertised in the black press, we have not -- I ran it in a prison in Greensboro also one time in '78 for black and white prisoners and the whites responded very well to it. But they were sitting in a black audience so they probably -- (laughs). I don't know how they would like it in the South, I think at colleges, many students. probably would find it interesting. We might end up having hit and run shows in the South, I don't know.

Armored cars. I don't know.
I don't think the southern people are so bad.
I don't know, I would just be afraid of some of the people.
Yeah but, the people you would have to be afraid of wouldn't go in and see it. Maybe if it's running for a long time in a town, then the Klan might show up or whatever, but for the most part, they won't even get together with those people who go to see such a show, so I'm not really that afraid of it.

How many copies are there altogether?
We have nine sets of the pictures but only five shows so far. Each show costs, uh... damn, I can't remember, 50,000 kroners, $9,000, something like that? Plus the pictures. No, six thousand, six thousand dollars approximately. For the equipment, not including the van. Plus the slides which wear down after a year. We have, the originals are in a bank vault in Denmark, so we can make more copies, but it's fairly expensive, five sets last time cost, 10 times 12, is. ..one set cost $2,000, yeah.

Is there an archival copy?
Not of the slides, no. Yeah, because in a way I think also that people might (?) be more favorable to this in fifty years than they would be today. It would be more interesting for everybody to see it in 50 years.

That includes the cost of the sound?
What do you mean, the tape or what?

The tape recorder to play it, and...
Oh yeah, all of that, yeah.

How much does it cost to show it once?
No, that, I mean, we take as much money as we can, and we make it often for free. Here we are right now trying to get into the prisons, and we will have to do a lot of free shows there because their budget is very little, you know.

But for you to set it up...
Oh, that really doesn't cost anything, but we have our daily expenses, we have one car here in America and we have to live on something, so... And San Francisco is extremely expensive to live in. Yeah. An apartment, everything, it's just ridiculous.

How much does it cost you all to survive for a week in order to do this show?
Here? No, I can only say that right now we are trying to get a permanent theater, a storefront or something, and most of them cost $1,600 a month. But we think we can find something maybe for 800, but then it's in a different location where we're away from the mainstream, so... And then, I don't know how many of us should stay here, now we're too many of us working on it right now, but probably two of us should stay here. They must have a normal apartment like anybody else, as long as this is the headquarters, so that will make up to $1,500, even more, $500 in advertising a month, maybe, and then something to eat. So, I think it's going to be more difficult in America to make a profit which can be used for anything good here, than in Europe.

How many of you are here with the show?
Nine, right now. But some of us are just friends, and some are, I'm only here in the Bay Area for a while until it's set up, and then I'll go to New York and set up another show there. I was here for the film festival in Los Angeles and so on, so there’re some of us who just are not going to be here. But most of them are already on welfare. (laughs) They're on welfare and food stamps and... now. The thing is, the money from the Foundation in Europe must be spent in Africa, we cannot transfer it to America. So, we came here with no money at all, and it's incredible, the - expenses are so high that everything we make seems to run out in expenses so far. I don't know how we're going to solve that, because I’d hate to see it just sustaining itself, it should make some money which can be used for something. I definitely feel some --

It's just getting started here, it hasn't had that kind of publicity in the city...
No.

Can you describe the different European countries' reactions?
It's going best down in Scandinavia and especially in Denmark because it is very Scandinavian in its thinking. Also, the Scandinavians tend to get depressed about everything in the world, you know, so the mood of this is definitely very Scandinavian. The further south you go in Europe the less of a success it is. People just don't see things the same way. But I have mentioned sometimes during the show that people are so depressed about it that for instance in Sweden there was two incidents of people trying to commit suicide, right after, one walked right out from the show and jumped through a glass window. So 'I think that shows the Scandinavian way of making everything inward.

The Germans seem to react a bit different, they are more aggressive, they're extremely aggressive. Some of the blacks in the Foundation don't want to travel in Germany, because they find the German audiences very rude and impolite, I mean if you're just five minutes late there the whole audience will sit and stomp on the floor, if there's something they disagree with they'll shout, you know the thing about Rockefeller where I say that I can't hate Rockefeller, half of the audience will shout and walk out in protest, and the other half will shout against those who walk out because they disagree with them. So there's often a lot of chaos in Germany when we're running it, and always the leftists sit and criticize it for not being leftist enough, and so on. In Holland, people didn't show up. Yeah, it is strange because we felt that Holland was the one that was closest to Denmark in thinking, but it never had any success in Holland. We didn't have so good a narration but still. In France we have not really got started, we pulled out because of personal differences with the people who should show it, and well ……..there's a long story behind that which is in itself very interesting but I can't really say it.

You said you had to be guarded with machine guns.
Yeah, that was, on those two nights we were running it, there were two policemen standing in front of us with submachine guns all night, we gave them a bottle of whiskey, they got so drunk. That was very interesting. But it was strange. We had our babies with us and we felt very strange about having babies in the building which had been bombed so often, machine-gun sprayed, and stuff like that.

What building was it?
It was a group, I can't remember what they're called in France, but Committee Against Racism or something like that, some anti-racists had (word unintelligible) ...disagreements with.

Have you expected anything like that here?
No, not at all. I hope we won't. I don't know, I think Americans generally, there's more individual terror in America, not so much group terror. From the crazy individuals, you know. By and large Americans have been fairly open to such things, I feel. By and large. I don't know. I said that going further south in Europe makes it less of a success, and the further north you go in Scandinavia makes it more of a success, that's incredible when you go north of Stockholm and up in northern Sweden, Norway and the Faroe Islands, people are totally devastated when they see the show. I mean they are in a state of shock for days after, we find out every time. Especially the Faroe Islands where they have just recently gotten tv, so they are not even used to visual things. People in the urban centers who are so used to culture and visual stuff, they can easier handle the show, but people up there, plus in Africa …… (tape runs out).

Was it shown in Africa?
No, I've shown it to Africans, in Europe, and shown the book to people in Africa, and just the book, that's interesting because they get so moved just looking at the book and the pictures, which is not the normal reaction in America, where people don't usually like the book too much, not just the visual thing, it has to be combined with the text. But, Africans, they usually get very devastated by the show. In the Cannes Film Festival there were some French buyers, from French Africa, who sat watching the whole thing although they didn't understand any English, and yet they come out being so moved. Yeah, it's strange, we have shown it often to people in different countries where they did not understand the language of the show. Sometimes I ran it in English for a group of people in Germany who didn't understand any English, and yet they would stay for five hours and see it. It has a very magnetic effect on people.

I keep thinking of it as a film, even though it's still pictures, it moves.
Well somebody who saw the film just came up to me in the intermission and said that he thought the film was better because it's faster-moving, the cuts are faster in the film and more smooth. But that's because I have two pictures in the slideshow all the time, that means that all of them are staying a bit longer on the screen.

You have a 16 mm film?
No, 35 mm. Which has wiped us out financially almost, that was so expensive to make, we made it at home in my bedroom, built up the equipment ourselves. And yet, it's better quality. The guy who just won the Academy Award for best documentary this year called me up the other day and said he came to study the technique of our film in Los Angeles, and he was so impressed, it was better than his own technique. The film is technically very good, I feel.

How much does it cost to make another print?
$9,000 for each print. Eight -- no what am I saying, no -- $6,000, closer to six thousand.

What specific results would you like to see from your project?
Well the immediate effect of it is consciousness raising, to let people realize the amount of poverty there is in the society they live in. Then the secondary thing is hopefully that it will make them do something about that poverty. I think it's basically a class thing, although people tend to see it also as a race thing, but the class-race thing is tied together, basically it's a class thing. But it's not, people can't do something individually, a basic change in the economy which will benefit the poor has to come about from above, through government agencies. So, it has to move people to move their governments.

If you make money in America, do you have any ideas of what you want to do with it?
Not too clear ideas, I have to say that. I'm sure we'll run into some poverty projects which we'll find worthwhile supporting, but right now I just don't know, really. Constructive projects, not just dump the money somewhere. But I don't think we'll make really that big money, so it's not going to be a problem. It has success in America, but I can't see it having the success that it has in Denmark where such a big percentage of the population has seen it. It's too controversial.

I can't see it going into the schools, I think...
That's the thing, if we don't hit the school system. In Denmark they pay $500 for a show in all the high schools, and $400 in the elementary schools, so that's where most of our income came from. If that doesn't happen in America, we won't have a success simply because just ordinary shows where you set it up in a new location each night ....and people pay admission and so on, it all goes up in expenses, basically, transportation, and advertising especially.

From what I see of American schools I think they would find it too real and too shocking.
Yeah, I hope not, I mean I really would like to show it there, but it will probably take some time, maybe when it's more established. And it's not realistic unless they have some money involved in it because we can't run around and do it for free. That’s the problem with the prisons, as I said, we would love to show it in prisons, but we can only do it for so long if they don't pay for it.

What could be done on a small scale?
I hope that people will join some of the existing organizations that are already working on these problems, it would be ridiculous if I should start setting up a new one. But what we can do is to help people who have just realized from seeing the show that there is something wrong, that we can channel them into working on something. But only a small part of them will do that, so basically it will just be another drop in the ocean of consciousness raising activities. But that's important itself of course. All of us who make such films and write all those ridiculous books you can never get time to read, all of us are helping to shape other people, or each other, with this, and constantly move the society in a more democratic direction.

Was there any place that stood out as the worst to you?
You know I have such a hard time finding worst experiences and worst places because I always, what I consider worst or what other people consider worst I usually learned a lot from. So, I can't really... and basically, I look at my five years travelling as a very rosy experience. I had a good time all the time, I was down some of the time, or often, but I was so much up all the time right after, so basically it looks like a very nice time. I mean in the show I describe a lot of worst places, Immokalee, Florida, which was a bad place, yet, I mean, I saw people shooting each other around me all the time, but I met some nice people. So, if you look at it in a personal way it often was very opposite. Some of the worst, most brutal places I found was Detroit and South Chicago and so on, but I met the warmest people there, so I just really felt at home there. One worst place was passing through New Jersey, as a hitchhiker, on the turnpike, that way from New York to Philadelphia, that's a horrible place to hitch-hike but I managed to get through it all the time, and the New York throughway I hated to hitch-hike on. Because you are not allowed to stand on the highway itself which makes it difficult for a hitchhiker. On the Interstate in Virginia, they consequently jailed everybody, even foreigners. I got so many tickets and warnings all the time.

When you were actually doing the work, did you notice any changes going on in the problems and attitudes facing blacks?
Yeah, I definitely felt so, I could see it personally because, see I came to America when there was a strong political awareness still, the youth movement in '71, and '72 still, where, for instance I went to demonstrations in New York, and in Washington with one million people, and that just indicated a tremendous movement was going on. And I found many of those active people they inspired me to think also about racism in society, this was mostly about the war, but they brought so many other issues into it, so a lot of people were talking about racism in society, and that helped my mind of course. Then I started taking those pictures, and I came back often, sometimes four years later to my old friends who had now moved into a different phase of their lives, and when I showed them the pictures, they would say, “Oh, that's old stuff, that's what we did in the sixties”, you know. The problems were the same but that's the way they would see it. So, Americans are very faddish I think, and the Watergate years and what came after was a more conservative trend in society. Black issues were just not in anymore. So, they looked at me as a nut running around still taking those pictures, what was the purpose of it and so on, I didn't even know that myself. So, I did feel, with some of my close friends even, I felt a bit alienated. They looked at me as this weird Dane who had this strange hobby, photographing blacks. But what I tried to really bring out in the pictures didn’t really come through. And I think that might have been one reason why I hesitated so long to come back to America, that I just felt that they wouldn't be of any use anyway, or nobody would see them or whatever.

It makes a difference having the text.
Yeah, it does. Things have to be made entertaining for Americans you know.

But also, you see the picture and you don't know what's going on exactly, you don't have a personal connection. Then you explain, "This is somebody I stayed with, and then this happened." It makes a connection.
Mm-hm. I think the personal way it is described in the show is important for Americans especially. Although it will anger others who don't like it so personal. For instance, one of the Hollywood reporters who said that this was the biggest ego-trip he had ever seen on film, or something like that, not exactly what I'm saying but……. Some people can't deal with the things presented in a personal way.

How about since then?
Well now, the government has gotten even worse I feel, for the poor, the blacks. That's also one reason we decided now is the time to come back, to help prevent it from deteriorating much farther. But I do feel that now there is a need to really speak up for the poor, to defend them. And as a result of this sliding, this deterioration in the public attitudes toward the poor, I also feel that a great minority now is starting to react against it, and they are probably using the show for their benefit. Or to help raise these issues. I'm very slow in my thinking right now.
You look very tired. What do you think is the reason for the latest changes? Do you have any specific things you want to mention?
No, I can only see it in a more world scale. After '73, the energy prices jumped. America is an artificial land in many ways, no other country in the world has been able to build such a luxury standard of living as here, where so many people are having their own houses, you know in Europe we have apartment buildings and only a few live in their own houses, mostly in the countryside. And that's simply because energy has always been expensive in Europe. Although it was cheaper, we also had the big increase. In America it was artificially cheap, they even kept the prices low for various reasons, well I remember when I was living here, PG&E or whatever it's called was advertising to get people to use more energy. This is just the opposite of what people are doing in Europe, you know. And people in Europe are so offended at Americans-who consume more than twice as much energy as we do in Europe but produce only the same amount of goods. It's such a waste in America. For instance, you'll never see a gas stove in Europe with a burning light on all the time, you have to light it yourself, because that consumes half of all the gas.

Now the energy prices suddenly jumped up also in America, and suddenly Americans could not afford this luxury style of living, and when they're squeezed then they start voting for their own money. And then you have to cut back on the social welfare, or that's what you want to cut back first, the help for the fellow man who can't make it, in order to justify staying out there in your suburbia type house which you really can't afford to heat anymore, you know. But if you were realistic with the energy prices today, America would build apartment buildings, just like we do in Europe, but they're still not realistic, now they are so used to a way of living having their own house and so on, plus big cars, that they continue that lifestyle. And they continue it at the expense of the poor and the government agencies, and they want all kinds of tax breaks to afford to continue.

That's just a simple explanation but I think it is the basic reason for the conservative trend, I can't really see any other reason for it. And when such a trend starts, when people start thinking in more selfish terms, then all the attitudes are just changing in society. So indirectly it's the OPEC countries that have created a crisis (laughs) again putting the blame on the victims because they were the victims before and they have a right to raise the prices to a realistic level. So. If you write all this you will really have to cut it down to a few sentences, I am just mumbling.

How has this project changed you?
If you ask my old friends, they'll say I'm still the old shithead. First there was the change of the five years on the road, that does change somebody pretty much, you know. I think I was basically the same, my friends in Denmark could not see any big difference with me, but the problem is if you really want to examine change objectively, then all people from their 22 to their 27 go through a tremendous change. And - therefore it is so much tied together with that change. And many people have a personal crisis when they're around 30, when suddenly they realize that, until you're 30 you think that one day, you're going to make it and then after 30 you know that you are in that boat for the rest of your life.

I was lucky that that crisis for me came at the same time as the publication of my book, so I had a tremendous change in my life at that time, where I suddenly felt I was making it - or whatever - after those personal measurements people have, that I got over that crisis very easily. But then came the crisis afterwards where I suddenly felt I can't deal with all this famousness, now in Europe I can't. Especially in Denmark, of course everybody knows me when I walk down the street. And last summer, I hitch-hiked around in Turkey and Greece and Italy and throughout the south with my baby, you know, and I was constantly stopped on the street everywhere, by Germans, Swedish tourists, who just recognized me from the book. The thing is, a lot of travelers travel around with my book, it has become a traveler’s Bible, you know, that's not so much the social description but again the personal letters and what I write in them. So constantly, I mean, people I met in Turkey would just, wow... show me the book they had brought with them. Incredible.

The book has also started a lot of young people from Scandinavia to travel to America, to examine the things. Some of them are getting hurt. I mean if they walk into the same neighborhoods. Because not all people have the same ability to deal with losers in society. So, after the publication, especially after the German book when Der Spiegel - the big news magazine in Germany - carried it as a series for weeks, I just got into a personal identity crisis, I didn’t know who I was, I couldn't handle all this fame, I went to my publisher and tried to cancel the contract. I didn't want the book to come out in more countries. And then I had lawyers fighting my publisher to stop the book from being published in more countries, and that cost a lot of money, and finally we reached some settlement where they couldn't sell it to more countries, but I got all the rights to America at least, they could not sell it to America, that's the reason the book has not come out yet because they wanted to sell it to America in '77 already.

So, I just couldn't deal with all this, fame, whatever. Well, that's not true, I could deal with it, and I liked many aspects of it because I like meeting people all the time and in Europe it’s hard to meet people compared to America where people are more open, so it's nice of course when they come up and say "I read your book" and so on. But at that time, I just couldn't see how far it would go, and it scared me, it frightened me. I felt wow, suddenly there might be no country in the world I can travel in any more without being known. Especially the fact that suddenly you can't get away anywhere maybe, to be alone, which is, I realize today is not true at all, but I had no idea at that time how far this would carry. Even in Denmark I can walk many places without being recognized, out in the small villages and so on. Where they don't read books. So basically, I like it but there's many aspects of it I don't like so much, the superficiality, you know, you're constantly meeting people and, who ask you questions, and you just can't deal with more than so many people a day without being very superficial. The fact that I at the same time lived with all those people, so I could never draw into myself and just reflect a little bit on it, made it even more difficult.

But okay, I got over that crisis too, started living with more, as a very normal person. Fame is just something, you get used to it and then it’s just nothing, you realize. Until you have written a book it’s a big thing to write a book, afterwards you think how ridiculous you were, you know. But the problem with my book compared to many other authors is that my picture is in the book. I'm very easy to recognize. And I don't want to get rid of my identity since I’m so sentimental about my beard because it helped me in so many situations in America as a vagabond. So, therefore... for instance I came to Poland long before the book was published in Poland, and I picked hitchhikers up all over Poland, which is a fantastic country for hitchhiking, a lot of them who, the minute they came into the cars they recognized me. Turned out the Polish tv had carried the series from Der Spiegel and so they knew a lot about it.

They put a magazine story on tv?
Yeah, they were talking about it, I don't know how they presented it, but with pictures of me. So even in Poland I couldn't hide away. I loved travelling in Poland, it's a beautiful country.

I can see how it would be frightening when you've lived that way so long.
Yeah... I just, it's funny still when I walk around in San Francisco, I meet even more. I have been running the show now for maybe a thousand people in San Francisco, I don’t know how many have seen it, no no no, the film was seen by thirteen hundred in Castro, so maybe a couple of thousand people have seen it here. But still when I walk around the streets here, I'm constantly confronted by German and Scandinavian tourists who come up to me, "Oh, I know, you're Jacob Holdt" and so on. That's interesting I feel. It has had a lot of impact over there. But again, it has also caused many of those Germans to travel over here, so one reason many of them are here is because they read the book.

I've seen so many more Europeans in the Haight in the last year.
I wouldn't attribute it just to that! (laughs) The other night when one of the guys in the cinema, that was the night when you saw the show, had taken the car, I couldn't get home. So, I was standing out there in the street, the others had taken off, you know, I was left, because I thought the car was still here. Then I was standing out in the street at one o’clock in the morning and there were very few people, and two Germans come walking down and they say, "Aren't you Jacob Holdt" and so on, and I say yeah, I need a lift (laughing), can you drive me, and they drove me right home. So, they helped me a lot.

Do you think it's had any effect on some of the people that photographed, and you talked to? And if so what?
The show?

Yeah, the fact that it exists, that the book exists.
No, not yet. Not yet. That's hard to say, there are some of them who I've invited to the shows for instance here in the Bay Area, the woman who was throwing flowers into the ocean in the end of the show, I showed it to her family already in '78 when I came through, and now she saw it again. And again, this time she came up and hugged me and said that this had given the loss of her child a meaning. She's throwing (the ashes of) her child in the ocean at that point, you know, and now she understood why her child had died, or something, so this here could be created, or something like this, I can't exactly remember the words. So that's one example I've seen.

You have some pictures of people looking at the book.
Yeah, they have seen the book, and some of them saw the show. Most of those in the south I don't really know how they react, but they were pleased to see something had come out of this, they had never any idea that I was working on something like this. So, it was mostly a surprise to find themself in a book you know, then I asked them if they thought it was all right to spend the money from the book in Africa, at the time. That was in '78, and all of them gave me permission, you know, there was a few of them who did suggest that I should try to spend it on them, in a more selfish way, but most of them just immediately understood that this would be impossible with so many families to support any of them here. But I felt it was very important for me to get their permission or accept to spend the money in Africa.

The people who are showing it now in Europe, is that basically how you met them, you met some of the people here, are there some Europeans too working on the film?
The people who present it are all black Americans, I find it very important that when they stand out there in the schools that they can answer the questions from a black perspective and black experience. So that's one reason that the guy who, you asked about France, the guy who was going to run it there was a black from Guadeloupe, that he had many similar experiences with racism in France. But we came into conflict with him because we realized he did not know enough about America. And the American blacks are so different, that he just couldn't answer the questions in a satisfying way. So, we had to get him out of it, and that caused a lot of conflict, because he had already been working with us for a year. Or at least we couldn't really use him in France. So that's why we had to stop there for a while.

Aside from getting the money, have there been other results in Europe, more people in organizations...?
That's, it's very hard to measure, really. We certainly have not seen a landslide to the left in European politics (laughs), right now I can't really think of anything. If I thought it over better, I could probably come with some examples. I do remember when I was running it in Portland, Oregon in '78, that the local committee against racism or whatever it was called, Portland Citizens Against Racism, had doubled their membership after I had been running the show in town. And that really pleased me to see, because this was America, and this is where I want it. It’s a little bit more difficult for Europeans to directly translate it into change…..

(the interview continued, but I could only find these pages from Camilla Decarnin).