For the third time, the Vienna Photobook Festival was held in June with its focus on the photobook, initiated by Anzenberger Gallery and Ostlicht.Gallery for Photography. With 80 international booksellers, lectures (e.g. by Colin Pantall, Michael Mack, Nicolo Degiorgis and Ania Nalecka) and exhibitions the event offered a quite overwhelming program. Also, 30 photographers had the chance to show their dummies and unpublished photo books at the Book Review. The ViennaPhotoBookAward’s first prize was won by Mark Duffy with his book ‘Vote No. 1′, the 2nd prize went to ‘Instant Tomorrow’ by Dmitry Lookianov. After their reviews I interviewed three photographers: in an intriguing and personal, yet very different way they tell stories about origin, identity, family and friends, hopes and dreams. Today we want to introduce to you the work of photographer Mika Sperling and her book ‘Breeda en Sestre (Brothers and Sisters)’, 2015.
For your series ‘Breeda en Sestre‘ you travelled to villages in Russia, Germany and Canada, can you tell us what the story is about?
MIKA SPERLING (MS) - My story is about Russian Mennonites who today live in German villages in Sibiria, within Germany and in Manitoba in Canada. Although they have been living apart for up to two decades, they are still connected by their faith, their traditions and their Low German dialect. I focused on the young generation and let them tell their stories through interviews.
In your images as well as in the interviews accompanying them one can sense people’s longing for a home, their connection to family and community on the one hand, and a very strong melancholy and stillness within this world on the other hand. Having experienced and documented their daily lives have you found some answers regarding your brothers and sisters?
MS - As a child my oldest sister took us to Sunday school as my parents did not raise us religious. I was thirteen when I stopped attending church services and never thought I would come back with a camera and the idea of a project about them. Working on the project has challenged me in many ways, as I have been forced to face my personal fears about being judged for being not a faithful Mennonite anymore. It was a very personal process and I am glad I met so many people who let me inside their lives and thoughts, because one way to gain trust was to open myself completely and I became quite vulnerable. Three of my sisters are members of Brethren Churches in Germany. I included them in my project because they were the first ones to trust me with my intentions. Another reason was my desire to include myself in the project through them.
Please tell us about your approach turning the series into a book.
MS - The more I photographed, the more ideas I got and soon I was overwhelmed by the amount of directions the story could go into. The photo book is a medium that can make storytelling with multiple layers. I also wanted to include a lot of text so I thought of a book dummy from the early beginning.
Talking about the Vienna Photobook Festival now: what were your review talks like, have you received any useful advice and feedback? Would you recommend other photographers to attend those events?
MS - The reviews were very informative and interesting and I felt inspired in many ways afterwards. Each one had individual thoughts and preferences but they agreed on one thing: in breaking a story down to the essence, it will make it stronger and easier to understand. One of the reviewer, Colin Pantall, took special interest in my personal background as a woman and photographer who used to be in the community. He pointed out that it might be the most interesting thing to read my thoughts I developed during the process of shooting and living with the Mennonites. I can recommend the review for anyone who is thinking about telling a story through a book and wants to get an idea of the various possibilities what it could be like, but don’t expect right or wrong answers, because there are none!
Are there any book discoveries you made at the festival you would like to share with us?
MS - Stefanie Moshammer’s ‘Vegas and She’ published by Fotohof was something I enjoyed as the magic of Vegas has always been something that fascinated me.
…
Mika Sperling was born in Norilsk, Russia. She grew up in Germany, in a family of ten. She lives and works in Darmstadt, Germany.
Common Ground is three issues in, can you tell me a little about the journal – it’s history, the team behind it etc?
KATELYN-JANE DUNN (KD) - Common Ground came to fruition in 2014, and I first started really thinking and planning for the journal a year prior to that. As an emerging artist I became frustrated with the underrepresentation of women photo-media artists and arts workers in contemporary and historical contexts, and the statistics of representation were unacceptable to me. I wanted to create an environment where women identifying and non-binary artists and arts workers could develop supportive relationships, a produce and share their work.
The journal’s team consists of myself as Founding Editor and a fantastic pool of contributing writers, and we’re growing with every issue!
Will you eventually publish Common Ground as a physical journal or is it important to have it free and downloadable on the internet?
KD - Having the journal as accessible as possible has always been a focus when it comes to distribution. For some artists though, there’s a real argument to having their work presented in a printed format, and I think having an annual or regular print edition is definitely on the cards. In the meantime, having the journal available online has been a really positive factor in Common Ground’s growth and international outreach. I’m excited for what the future holds!
Your photographic practice examines the female experience within society today, was there any connection between your findings during making work to then establishing Common Ground?
Definitely. I was spending a lot of time reflecting upon and examining ideas of inherited femininities, particularly in terms of regional Queensland and Australia’s post-colonization narratives.
When researching for either my work or consumption, I would find myself starving for women’s perspectives. I would find myself sifting through publications and exhibitions brimming with male artists and writers. The arts traditionally challenge dominant narratives but gendered disadvantage and underrepresentation is still rife in many areas. Being exposed to a wealth of women talent through Common Ground has been a really humbling and enriching experience. A common excuse for the absence of women and non-binary voices is lack of merit, and I think the journal really dismantles that excuse and showcases the diversity of voices out there.
Do you feel within the art world that there can be an unbalance between female and male artists?
KD - Without a doubt. The blog Countesses crunches the data of representation in the Australian arts community, and the June issue of ARTNews has some great articles that examine the statistics and experiences of women in the arts. There’s so much data and anecdotal evidence out there that the answer can’t be anything but in the affirmative. I think the issue is perhaps not as easy to detect on first glance than retrospectively (things are definitely better than say, 50 years ago), but the bias remains systemic and needs to be challenged.
Your images have a beautiful quietness to them but in such a way that you as the viewer feel comforted and warm. In the series ‘I think I love you’ was it important to use yourself and your partner in the images to create this?
KD - Thank you! I’ve always had an interest in intimate storytelling, so it made sense for me to look inwards for I ‘think I love you’.
At the time my relationship was torn between love and faith, and my partner was in a religion that forbids relationships with women outside of the church. The consequence of being caught in a relationship with a non-believer was to be entirely cut off from friends and family inside. For that reason we began our relationship in secret, and our love for one another was always overshadowed by the fear and risk of that immense loss.
Despite the risks and difficulties that came with documenting our relationship, it felt like the most sincere way to communicate those themes of love and loss.
Can you tell me about the performance element to your work?
KD - Performance is a part of my process where I use the camera as a means of documenting and framing the stage. It’s a mix of intuition, play and responding to sites and objects.
With gender and identity being in themselves a form of social performance, the performative side of my process has become a way by which I can unpack and make sense of the tensions and conflicts that arise in living out feminine identities.
Are there any new projects on the horizon that you can share?
KD- I’m currently working on the fourth issue of Common Ground, and starting to get back into making work after exhibiting at Photo L.A. and Photo Contemporary in Los Angeles. My work is also currently in the exhibition ‘Island - Australia’, presented by the Australian Centre for Photography and PhotoIreland, and curated by Claire Monneraye, at The Copper House Gallery in Dublin. I look forward to sharing more soon!
What projects or artists have been inspiring you at the moment?
KD - Photobooks I’m enjoying at the moment include Anne Ferran’s ‘Prison Library’, Pruedence Murphy’s ‘Detective Special’, and Maanantai Collective’s ‘Nine Nameless Mountains’. I’m also really loving the work of Zoe Croggon, Zoe Crosher and Justine Varga, and the exhibition ‘Light, Paper, Process: Reinventing Photography’ currently at the Getty Center.
Christoforos Doulgeris (CD) - Photography became part of my life in an early age. My family had just moved to Dusseldorf and while attending high school I started following, fanatically, the exhibitions of the Museum of Modern Art of the city. This habit became an action and I discovered in this particular medium of expression a personal space which could express my own interpretation of reality. Photography had thus become a space in which I could create images. It actually replaced my first love, the cinema. However, my study on cinema and cinematography helped me transfer to “my” photography an internal tension which gradually started being part of a reasoning. The evolution and the perfection of this reasoning came with time elapsed. Until today I judge my images with the same criterion: complete freedom and peace at heart!
What did actually push you to choose the photographic practice as your medium of artistic expression?
CD - The reason for which I have chosen the medium of photography is that of straightness. It is the idea of a form of art which provokes the imagination and has countless ways of seducing. I would say that it is the power of creating a small dream, as well as a magical image, that drew me to photography. I work with ideas which are quite realistic but do present a concrete, tectonic side, usually expressed through architecture or sculpture.
When did it all start? Tell us a bit about the beginning of your photographic work.
I was only thirteen when I realised that I could be making images that would have an importance, a kind of sentimental value for me. So, I started making portraits in my immediate circle, family and university mates, and eventually developed my technique. The idea always preserved in my head was that the more an image is original the more the image would have an importance to me personally. For me aesthetics and philosophy of the image have always been a priority.
Henri Cartier-Bresson declared: «Your first 10000 photographs are your worst.»How do you think your work has evolved during the time elapsed?
CD - I will have to agree and disagree at the same time. On one hand I don’t believe that maturity comes by mastering the technique or by the cultural savvy of the photographer, but rather by intuition. However, my 10000 images are my worst!
As time went by my photography started evolving on forms, and texture. After a while I started understanding the power of photography in combining different kinds of arts. I have always believed that photography is a way of poetic expression. Even though I tend to have a specific approach on my photography, mostly evolving around architecture, I do try to vary my interests. The procedure of my creation can also vary. Sometimes it can take years to create a single image and sometimes a whole series is completed in less than an hour.
I would dare to say that I am drown to the simplicity and the simple side of things, even if I have to travel for ages to come upon the right moment!
Let’s talk about your latest work. How did you get the idea?
CD - My latest work, presented in the IFA DONOPOULOS gallery in Thessaloniki, is entitled‘The School Project’. I basically travel around Greece photographing abandoned schools. The idea came to me by chance while working on another project in a region of northern Greece called Serres. While driving through a village I came across this beautiful building which used to be a school. I started asking around about it and discovered that the school had been closed due to the fact that there were no more children to attend. In the middle of the economical crisis history repeated itself and families had left this village in search of a better future elsewhere. I started my research and found out that throughout the Greek territory there are more than 1200 school buildings abandoned and closed. I consider this series my most important work in a period of difficulty and disappointment in the midst of the Greek crisis. I interpret these schools as symbols of the Greek culture forgotten and abandoned to nature. Memories of a “has been” fading in time!
What would you like to express through this series?
CD - As already mentioned the Schools are beacons of Greek culture. They are part of Modern Greek history, occupying spectacular landscapes of the country side and hiding secrets of various historical eras of modern history. Their architectural details, even architectural relics left behind fused with memories enclosed within their walls, are parts of lessons to be learned. They are parts of the past bringing to the future an aura of another era which has frozen in a specific moment in time.
How did you organise your research?
CD - My research has many levels of concentration. I examine archives of the state in local and national libraries, as well as on the internet. A number of information comes from friends and acquaintances through social platforms. However, the most important source is the human element. Locals, who know the history of the place and the region, present me with the most important details; they basically carry on through time the oral tradition of the local history, which otherwise would have been lost in time.
What are your future ideas and on what would you be interested to concentrate?
CD - I have already started working on a new series on artists of my generation. It is a portrait series and my interest derives from the work of these artists as well as their personality.
Is there any contemporary artist or photographer, even if young and emerging, that influenced you in some way?
CD - I admire the work of Wolfgang Tillmans. His research on various and very different subjects has helped him keep an open eye. I believe that his ideas reveal an extraordinary human beauty within the reality of an unconventional landscape.
Three books of photography that you recommend?
CD - 3 books that I recommend: - Nobuyoshi Araki, TASCHEN limited series. - Wolfgang Tillmans, Wako Book 2. Tokyo - Thomas Ruff, Jpegs
Is there any show you’ve seen recently that you find inspiring?
CD - ‘Flying over the abyss’is the title of the exhibition I recently saw. It is organised by the NEON Foundation and the Museum of Contemporary Art of Crete. The exhibition runs through September (Museum of Contemporary Art of Crete, Rethymnon, 2 May - 27 September 2015).
Kazantakis’s work Askitiki (Ascesis: the saviour of God) is a book regarding the path of life of the human being from birth to death. In this exhibition, NEON in collaboration with the Museum of Modern Art of Crete, have brought together pieces of internationally known artists, such as Marina Abramović, Matthew Barney, Martin Kippenberger, Doris Salcedo, Louise Bourgeois and others, based on the idea of this particular piece of literature by N. Kazantzakis.
The passage from life to eternity, as well as the idea of the ephemeron, which always has an expiration date, are ideas which have tormented me during this phase of my work, and I have found answers through the work exhibited of the various disciplines presented in this particular exhibition.
Tell us about your approach to photography. How it all started? What are your memories of your first shots?
RB - When I was 16, I happened to see a local exhibition by the American photographer Ansel Adams. I was blown away by his detailed and luminous depictions of the American West and the magnificent tonal transitions within his prints. Afterwards I borrowed my mother’s 35mm SLR and began shooting the only landscape I had access to: suburbia. I made a ton of images of golf course shrubbery, plants and trees on cul-de-sac islands, and my mother’s flowerbeds. I also began obsessively studying all aspects of Adams’ working process and, in short time, I built my own darkroom and switched to using large format cameras. I started practicing the Zone System and began spending my free time after school mapping the density of my negatives and fine-tuning the greys in my prints. Early on, my approach to photography was purely technical.
How did your research evolve with respect to those early days?
RB - Over time, I began to find real substance in grey. I used it in a metaphorical manner in the series ‘Exurbia’ and in other early projects when I attempted to map non-quantifiable emotions, human interactions, and other experiential aspects of my life with photography. My working methods also shifted drastically with time. I used to start with an image then work with a process to achieve a certain result. It was like using the formula 1+1=2. Over the years the formula became varied. Today, I craft processes around ideas or ideas around processes. I then seek out my subjects and start connecting the dots. The works of art that resonate with me are those that are composed of just parts, without any sort of answer. 1+1+1, if you will, with the formula at the fulcrum.
What do you think about photography in the era of digital and social networking?
RB - Although photography has become so mundane and commonplace in the digital age, technology has created complications to its long-term preservation and access. Personally, I’m disillusioned by my own abilities to catalogue, organize, and preserve my image assets in the form of digital files. My 92 year old grandmother, by comparison, can revisit her life with small BW or color prints catalogued in paper sleeves with dates. If I hit her age, I’m not so sure I’ll be able to do the same or at least access my images in a meaningful way like she can. This question comes up in some of my recent works, like ‘Marginal Compositions’ and ‘2012’s Pictures’, where I examine concepts pertaining to the yield rates of contemporary image production and preservation, and explore the products and byproducts of photography’s everyday use.
About your work now. How would you describe your personal research in general?
RB - The photographic process itself has remained central to my personal research, and I’ve become further engrossed in the inherent errors in photography, its manipulation, and its larger representational and indicative powers. The tools and techniques used to increase accuracy in the medium also have become more and more central to my investigations. My approach has been heavily influenced by my day-to-day activities working for other artists and the concentration that I’ve placed on our studio, Atelier Boba, and other professional activities. I’m less of a traditional studio artist than I was 5 or 10 years ago. I split my time between the studio, teaching, conducting research, and professional printing. This has given me the opportunity to engage with various professions that orbit around photography. I now view the medium from various diverse artistic, cultural, and professional perspectives.
Do you have any preferences in terms of cameras, techniques and format?
RB - My preference is completely variable based on the particular project and the process required to realize it. Sometimes I need a 4x5 view camera and other times I need the disconnected frame lines of a rangefinder camera to address a particular concept. I’ve used more scientific and analytical tools as well, including spectrophotometers, colorimeters, densitometers, and cameras mounted to microscopes normally used in the medical industry.
Tell us about “Atelier Boba”
RB - Atelier Boba is both a photograph conservation lab and a digital printmaking studio that works collaboratively with contemporary artists and photographers to create specialized editions and exhibition prints. It grew out of my own art practice, my longtime passion for printing (both within the darkroom and with digital machines), and my experience at the Image Permanence Institute, in Rochester, NY, where I studied the aesthetics of photographic and digital print technologies and taught their identification. At Atelier Boba we often work with contemporary digital printing processes and substrates in nonstandard ways and provide research assistance for specialized projects.
Is there any contemporary artist or photographer, even if young and emerging, who influenced you in some way?
RB - There were a number of contemporary artists that were pivotal to my understanding of art and influenced the direction of my work. Early on, I looked a lot at Jason Salavon’s work, which deals with new perspectives on the familiar via custom computer software algorithms. I began to use specific photographic processes both in the darkroom and with digital tools like Photoshop, in the vein of a computer programmer or an artist like Salavon, to arrive at seemingly scientific representations that question the medium’s capacity to depict and preserve incalculable experiences and phenomena.
My professors at school also heavily influenced me. Jeffrey Wolin and Osamu James Nakagawa, both excellent artists and superb teachers, really pushed me to reconsider my intentions as an artist and to explore the process end of my work. I also owe James M. Reilly, the director of the Image Permanence Institute, a ton of gratitude for his mentorship and his patience with me picking his brain about photographic technologies and preservation.
Three books of photography that you recommend?
H. Baines,. The Science of Photography: Fountain Press, 1967 Vik Muniz. Natura Pictrix: Edgewise Press, 2003 Martin Jurgens. The Digital Print. Los Angeles: Getty Publications, 2009
Is there any show you’ve seen recently that you find inspiring?
RB - In the Garden at George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film, Rochester, NY, USA
Having spent a good deal of time photographing suburban landscaping, this show really resonated with me. It’s a show with a simple but rich concept and the depth and breadth of the works and processes in the exhibition is impressive and spans the entire history of photography.
Projects that you are working on now and plans for the future?
RB - Recently I’ve been concentrating on my activities as a printmaker in order to jump-start things at Atelier Boba. Working with other artists to help them realize their ideas and images in the physical form also rubs off on my own work. And since my clients have such varied intentions with their work, they help me better understand facets of art and photography that I had not previously considered.
Moving forward, I’d like to concentrate on a few projects that I’ve already started. Last year I created ‘Sky Checker’, an object I began photographing in many different environments and locations. Essentially it’s a home built X-Rite Colorchecker where I’ve replaced the “Blue Sky” color patch with an inlaid mirror. I’ve started to investigate the decisions of color scientists behind the original Macbeth Colorchecker, and more specifically their choices of “natural” colors. How can the variability of natural color be quantified? Do the patches “Skin,” “Blue Sky,” “Foliage,” and “Blue-Flower” actually help us better calibrate the medium? For me, seeing a color chart within an image sparks an internal discourse on the representative nature of the medium, and offers an illusive gateway back to reality. I need to better understand the effectiveness and ramifications of such tools. This work stems from an earlier project entitled Color Rendition Charts for… where I constructed custom Colorcheckers with colors based on highly personal and emotional experiences as opposed to scientifically chosen ones.
Another project that I’m working on began in collaboration with Owen Mundy. It revolves around the concept that technology itself mediates what we see and know. We began by taking culturally significant images culled from the Internet and created computer algorithms to convert them into specialized images with very fine and precise line pairs and patterns. These newly formed images are downloaded and then printed. Depending on the type and resolution of your printer, you either see the printed image or you don’t. We’re planning to continue the research this fall and winter and hope to publish an essay on it sometime next year.
How do you see the future of photography in general evolve?
RB - I think the practice of photography, at least the way we’ve understood it throughout the 20th century, will eventually fade away. The industrial production of photographic film and paper is highly technical. I once took a private tour of the polyester base manufacturing plant at Kodak in Rochester, NY, and was blown away by the immensity of the operation and the R&D that goes into making light sensitive emulsions. If the demand for silver halide products keeps dropping, the machines will continue to shut down. Fortunately there will always be a niche group of photographers using 19th century processes because they can essentially be concocted at home. It’s great to know that we can always return to the roots of photography. It takes the edge off!
I think printmaking techniques will evolve, as we continue to move towards ink on paper and away from light sensitive materials, and viewing images on screen will continue to develop. Virtual Reality will offer a more experiential platform for the medium. Although I’m unsure of its true ramifications and question whether it will completely change our practice like the digital camera, personal computer, Photoshop, and digital printer did.
‘The first 10,000 photographs are your worst.’ If that is true, Lai Lon Hin (賴朗騫) is in his prime. In his 20s, when he was shooting his first series of work ‘excuses’, he was going through a bitter period of his life. He put all his mind on photography, taking snapshots with his vintage polaroid camera. When he woke up from his ‘stream of unconsciousness’, he had already taken tens of thousands of polaroids . Now he had had his work exhibited in several big exhibitions and snapping for his most recent series ‘Lean Against The Wall’, a more matured and self-conscious sequel of ‘excuses’, using nothing but a low tech camera phone. I am lucky enough to be invited to his studio and talked to him about his journey and his work.
Growing up, have you ever imagined being a photographic artist?
LAI LON HIN (LLH) - I have never thought of it, but I like drawing since I was young.
What is your first camera? What is your first memory with photography?
LLH - A first generation Nikon FM. It was a gift tom my tutor. My first memory is just shooting landscapes and sunsets, slowly it becomes my habit and I take my camera everyday with me.
When did you start to see photography as an art form/ a way of expression?
LLH - Frankly, I have never thought of photography as an art form, but I had spent most of my 20s obsessively shooting. Between 2005 and 2006, I did nothing except photography. I did not meet a friend, watch a movie nor read a book, I put every spendable money and time on photography. At that time when I was photographing ‘Excuses’, i would not look at the road when I ran out of film, fearing that I could not capture it when I saw it.
How did you start you career and went on to become one of the most shown artist in exhibition in Hong Kong?
LLH - I started photographing after I graduated. I broke my FM at the time. I needed a new one but no the same one, so I bought a ‘630’ polaroid camera for 40 dollars at a Salvation Army second hand store at Chai Wan. That camera was the simplest camera ever, there is not control except adjusting exposure. I spend thousands on polaroid film, in fact I spent almost every cent i earned on photography. I did not have any other form of entertainment.
I had been photographing ‘excuses’ for about 2 years. I spent all my time photographing and nobody had seen my work. I was lost. Coincidentally, I often met Ducky Tse（謝至德), a renowned documentary photographer in Hong kong whose work I adore, on the street. I invited him to a short meeting to show him my work.
He has a workshop called ‘The Photocrafters’ with Ng Sai Kit, Siman Wan, Ellis Yip, Dustin Shum and some younger photographers such as South Ho and myself who joined later. He introduced me to artist-run gallery Hulahoop. I had some of my first exhibitions there.
I lost my polaroid right about I am ending my first project, naturally I started another series ‘The Irrational Night’ exploring night scenes of fragmental greenscapes in the city. The project was exhibited in Blindspot Gallery.
Please introduce the project you are working on now.
LLH - ‘Lean Against the Wall’ is a project that I started in 2013 till now and exhibited in Blindspot Gallery in Hong Kong and Palais de Tokyo in Paris. It is a series of extremely low-res flat looking photos that lack the sense of dimensions.
With the pervalence of digital photography in this decades, some are going back to large format analog photography, claiming that analog provides the time needed to develop good work compared to the almost instant and effortless snaps of smartphones. What is your take on that?
LLH - It all depends on your perspective. Photography has become ‘too popular’. As digital camera become more accessible, people turned back to big format analog camera. But it is futile to use format as the measure of effort, ultimately it is how you organize your thought using photography as a medium. There is no direct relationship between this and your camera.
Why do you choose to shoot this series in a camera equipped low-tech cell phone?
LLH - I started this series for a while now and I uploaded them all on Facebook. At the beginning, I was about to go to Australia and I got my mobile phone. There is just no reason to not take photos, even if you are not a photographer, one will get used to snapping pictures with it. It is not something that special.
I did have doubts about the legitimacy of these phone snaps as my personal work earlier in my career, legitimacy in a sense of whether I conceive them as my art. I have moved passed that. Taken with camera or not, it is still snapshots. i find the distinction unnecessary, but many obviously has that distinction. Organization and selection are important. The act of taking picture is actually a form of selection and subsequently a reorganization. It is about what you find appropriate and what not.
This project is still ongoing, but I did not consciously choose to continue, it is just too random and easy to shoot this way.
‘Lean Against The Wall’, to me, is almost like a more matured and avant grade sequel of your first photo series ‘excuses’.
LLH - Yes, but I had dissimilar emotions when I was photography. For my first series of work, it is more personal, now I want to examine the social environment. The half year I lived in Australia, I lived in a farm, I did not go to a lot of places and I could not access the Internet. If I had to send a text message, I would need to go to a big tree for 15 minutes, trying to get a signal. I would receive people’s reply one day later. After that, I look at Hong Kong differently.
I have exhibited my latest series ‘Lean Against the Wall’ at Palais de Tokyo last decemeber. At the time, I chose to present my work in a Facebook layout, I show them along with some personal things and news during The Umbrella Movement I shared on Facebook. I was going to exhibit the same work this year at K11 (an ‘art mall’ in Hong Kong funded my property developer)during Art Basel Hong Kong. I have a twenty-minute video footage of my Facebook post and snapshots, which about one-third of the video is related to the movement. I guess the property developer does not want to have anything to do with it, so My work is pulled off. I believe it is crucial to intentionally decide what to express at a specific period of time.
How is your research process?
LLH - I continue to produced numerous work between the two photo series. I am not a photographer who had a detailed plan before shooting. I need to photograph nonstop. Between every exhibited series, I take thousands of photographs, much more than what I shown in galleries to reach a point where I want to dig deeper into a more specific motif. I did not think too much at that time, but now I am getting a pattern.
I have never received any education in fine art photography nor contemporary art, I spent a lot of time to develop my approach and understand my pattern when I am working on a project. I know when I can create something create and at what moment I should end a project.
LLH - I liked documentary photographers when I was younger, such as James Nachtwey and Steve McCurry. Araki is my ultimate favourite. I love his photo book about his wife ‘Yoko’.
How does Hong Kong inspire you artistically? Living in a city with such dense visual elements, does it influence your aesthetic and artistic thinking?
LLH - Definitely, because that is what you see. It is also about how you see though. Michael Wolf photographed a lot about Hong Kong. He sees the city from a foreign perspective and sees it more clearly than anyone. He took what Hong Kongers took for granted and photographed elements that we did not pay attention to. I think photographers need to stand back to get the whole picture. Looking is detachment. Looking is comparison and looking is the essence of photography. How you look is important; through what method do you see and how you understand it are important.
Hiroshi Sugimoto do not live in Japan but his concepts are from Japan, the same is to Lee Kit (a Hong Kong contemporary artist). By distancing yourself from your city, you get a better picture and understanding of your origin.
LLH - For photo exhibition, Sugimoto’s latest exhibition in Taipei is a good one. Sugimoto has a very unique idea about time in his photographic work. Personally, I do not like his presentation method because it is too clean for me. There is hardly any photographers of his generation that can ever deconstruct a concept as deep and thorough as he did. He uses still image to illustrate to concept of time, for example his photographs of blank screens in ‘Theatres’.
Tell us about your approach to photography. How did it all start? What are your memories of your first shots?
Dries Segers (DS) - It started because I was jealous of a friend who had a camera. It felt as if he was copying my dream, which wasn’t my dream at that time, so I copied his. I think I don’t want to talk about my first shots, it had something to do with chicken. (laughs) Before I started to photograph, I don’t remember anything else than that I was creating images the whole time. So not much has changed.
2. How did your research evolve with respect to those early days?
DS - From early on I started to work for magazines, newspapers as a portrait photographer. I was in search for emotions, not just the façade, I always wanted to make something visible of the sitters’ energy. That might sounds spiritual but it’s not. Photography is not able to give you answers so you need to give clues, possibilities. There is no truth in photography.
The work I make now has more to do with what people leave behind. What they create without knowing it. I’m more interested in their traces than in their faces.
Installation view ‘Seeing a rainbow (through a window that isn’t there)’
Concerning your work now: How would you describe your personal research in general?
DS - The Belgian phychiatrist ‘Dirk de Wachter’ put it this way: «The big problem of our time is that we are in search of fantastic, unusual, special, exotic and extreme impulses and experiences. That’s exactly what kills the love. Everything we own becomes worthless, without value. The art of love lies in the beauty of the ordinary.»
And let this be exactly what I’m doing, I’m in search of the extraordinary in the basal world. Let us all be more surprised about what’s just in front of us. That’s why I use the public space as my atelier, to be close to what’s available for anyone.
My work is not a visual diary, the pictures aren’t anecdotes. They are carefully chosen places, context, color, content and materials. I don’t want to see them as memories. They are photographs who pretend to be images. It’s how they relate to reality, to history and art itself.
In the project ‘Undecided Photographs’ I took it even one step further. ‘Undecided Photographs’ are images without any consciousness on the creation of the photograph. I question myself are these even photographs? By accidents and clumsiness these images came on my color negative through the back of the camera without any control or decision. Yet they are build up by the three key elements of photography: light, space and time. The construction of an location influences the images without any light getting through the lens. The proportion of daylight and artificial light (if even present) influences the result as well as the period of time the camera went open.
In other projects I mostly concentrate on concepts of wastage, details of the capitalistic landscape,… with a topping of aesthetics. Aesthetics as word means actually nothing more as the science of perception.
It’s about guilt and hope. Hope for structure in a visual-polluted landscape. Does that make me an idealist? … I hope so.
We don’t see things as they are, we see things as we are. Anaïs Nin
Tell us more about your latest project: ‘Seeing a rainbow through a window that isn’t there’
DS - The last two years I’ve been working on this project. It will be published as my first artist-book, it works around an elementary wonderment on color and object. ‘Illogical judgements leads to new experience.’ (Baldessari sings Lewitt) Onlogics are the foundations of the work.
I use a rainbow as metaphor for a phenomena which is build up with two basic elements: water and the breaking of light. What is so striking is that so many people experience this as absolute beauty. The extra-ordinary in the normal, a rainbow is nothing more than that.
The entry of a standardised life, urbanisation, everything looks the same, yet if you look closer it doesn’t. The street is able to create its own images, I’m there to find these. I’m not in search of a narrative or stories in this project. I’m in search in a way of looking at things, relations between concept and color or between texture and media.
The artist book will be released this year in May.
Do you feel there is a correlation between your work and the work of Jan De Cock. How do you feel about his approach in relation to yours?
DS - Jan De Cock is an esthete. I’m an esthete aswell. But like I just said, aesthetics, strictly speaking, means the science of the sensory, of perception. I think Jan and I both are artists that believe we can learn people how to look at images (created or non-created), how to experience them, how to put it in its framework. We do it in a different manner but the core is the same, we make beautiful things by using materials which are so common, materials which became part of boredom. Standards of which the viewer is not used to look at anymore.
I think his ‘Denkmal’ is a strong vision. Denkmal is actually the German word for the pedestal where a statue sits on. Denkmal is a monument. But in Dutch, or as you want, in flemish it means ‘dense space to think’. Everywhere he sets up an artwork with the name ‘Denkmal’ he adds the housenumber to it. I got to exhibit in the permanent Denkmal 37 in Brussels together with Ash Bowland and artworks out of the collection of Dennis Van Mol. The show was titled: ‘Dear Image, why are you so jaded?’
Do you have any preferences in terms of cameras, equipment and format?
DS - I used to have preferences when I was twenty, now I grab whatever camera is around or with me. It’s more about the camera lens then the camera itself. I even found out my cell phone works best in some situations to take an image.
What are three books of photography that you recommend?
Stephan Keppel’s ‘Entre Entrée’ by FW: books.
I found this book last year at RIOT, a new bookshop in Ghent with mainly contemporary photobooks. It immediately struck me that this research was laying quiet close to mine. Stephan Keppel collects and arranges images and objects in order to engage them in a long-term relationship. ‘Entre Entree’ is a project about the Parisian suburbs and the city’s ring road, the Boulevard Périphérique, wherein Keppel conceives a fragmented and claustrophobic urban landscape, manifested through numerous black-and-white images of concrete facades, vegetation and the textures, shapes and materials that together form the entity of the city.
Ria Pacquée - Desert of Fragments, M HKA
This Antwerp-based artist plays with the role of humans in society, their patterns, characters, rules, admirations and failures. In early work she makes herself into a construction of an archetype woman called ‘madame’. As a performance with madam she visits the entry of the Belgian queen in a theme park, she sells souvenirs of the men she loved, and so on. She’s putting herself in this role-play with humanity and offers us a hilarious mirror. Through the book she also works with carefully selected words that make bridges between all the chosen projects.
Geert Goiris - Prolifération, Roma
Geert Goiris was my promoter during my master studies. This book is his latest work and is a deferred catalogue published by Roma (the publishing house of artist Mark Manders and graphic designer Roger Willems).
The work was made for an exhibition on a dam in Val de Bagnes, Switzerland. Geert is playing with the landscape in romantic and realistic traditions. He creates a fiction where you get confronted with uncanny realism. Yes, that’s a duality but this makes it so compelling. In the book he plays with two different papers, also two different functions of the paper. First it makes you feel physically in contact with the object of the book, secondly he cuts out smaller parts of pictures to show these details on a mat paper. It gives a sense of the enormous impact of the site. Something Geert is able to do where I’m afraid of is making a narrative by also including humans in his pictures, which makes the reading of the work strongly ambiguous.
Where did you do your master and tell more about your promoter Geert Goiris?
DS - I did my masters at Sint-Lukas Brussels. Geert was teacher there until he moved to the academy of Antwerp in 2012. So he was my promoter for just a year. I had a bad love affair with photography at that time. In fact, I didn’t want anything to do with it anymore. So I started an exhibition space and showed the work of other artists. When I was at school to talk about my work that I done, I had nothing to show because I didn’t produce anything at that time. So the things Geert and I did were eating, talking and drinking coffee. The fact that he didn’t want to push me in starting to get to work was really valuable for me because I learned a lot about my own work by showing and talking about the work of others. I still do.
Is there any show you’ve seen recently that you find inspiring?
DS - The show that impressed me the most last year was a solo of Wilfredo Pierto in SMAK (Ghent). He deals with dissipation and absurd inventions of humans. He makes minimalistic objects with daily materials. The main piece of the show consisted of two trucks with a big electric generator and a huge water tank that lit up and watered a small potted plant. Electric cables and watercables were in the whole museum, so you first had the idea they were renovating the buildings. Then you came to a little plant, a lamp and a watertab next to it. When I realised the lamp got light because of the enormous generatortruck outside I laughed so audibly. Pierto’s work always gives winks to the consumption based society and capitalism, I love it when an artist uses poetry and simple imagery to create answers and extra questions. I hope I will develop the same talent he has.
Tell us more about projects that you are working on now and plans for the future?
DS - I’m working on several new projects. Something with plastics that destroys light and color, and also a second book, as well as a project on my initiative with a painter and a scientist.
You studied Transmediale Kunst at the University of Applied Arts and Scenography at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, and graduated in 2014. Have you always been working with photography? What are your main interests/topics in photography?
Christiane Peschek (CP) - No, not at all. I was doing site-specific installations and performances for some years as well as interdisciplinary projects. I was always interested in the interaction with the space and the dialogue between image and observer. With the years it turned more and more into photography as the medium to present my work. But still I wouldn’t consider myself as a photographer. I am more interested in visual processes then in the production of photographic images. I am trying to explore different ways of using the medium photography, expand the borders of seeing, producing and reflecting images. In my artistic practice I am asking for the additional values of photography, like in my book ‘Invisibles’, where I used photographs as a commemoration system.
Another important aspect in my work is the visualization of imagination and absence. As photography doesn’t necessarily reflect reality I am playing with the gap between reality and imagination.
You recently had a solo exhibition showing your series ‘13 Children’ in Hamburg, Germany as part of the Triennale Hamburg. Also, this particular work is currently presented at The Copper House Gallery in Dublin, part of this year’s PhotoIreland. Children are dressed up in fanciful costumes portrayed in front of colored cloths, some of them have their faces hidden behind masks or have their heads turned to the camera only slightly. Something dreamy, mythic and melancholic lies within these images. Can you tell us what the story is about here?
CP - In the past I did some works about the relation between mother and child and the roles of both. While dealing with the theme of absence I did a research on how children orientate themselves when they don’t have a role model like the mother or father to rely on, when they live beside a family structure. I was curious if their imagination of a self was more open or different. That’s how I got in contact with different orphanages in Vienna and started to work with orphans on their imaginary ego. I asked them how they see themselves or how they want to be seen. For several months I discovered with them a way of expressing themselves. Showing portraits of children beside clear family structures, as those children are part of the society that is quite invisible, I was interested in the imaginary processes and the way to transform the children’s visions into something visible. To give them the opportunity to present themselves as they want to be seen was a more honest way of using the sujet of portrait photography, also questioning the practice of portraits from the pure capture of humans to a more “inner-reflecting” process. I can imagine that this could be a possible aspect of rethinking photography.
The body of work with the title ‘10 HOMES’ seems to be linked to your ‘13 CHILDREN’ thematically, which shows stills of colorful objects made from different material, hardly to identify what they might represent. How did you evolve this project?
CP - I met Krzysztof Candrowicz last year in Dublin and he was interested in showing the project ‘13 Children’ at the Triennale of Photography in Hamburg. So he invited me to come to Hamburg to continue my work with orphans. Soon I figured out, that, through a law that prohibits to show orphans on photographs, that it was very hard to find orphanages in Hamburg that allowed me to take pictures from their children, so I needed to change the project into something more abstract. I was searching for way to portrait the children without physically showing them. Like this I came to the question: how they imagine their perfect home, if they would have one. The images of ‘10 Homes’ show the orphans idea of living, safety and desire. I like the idea of using the psychotherapeutic practice of seeing the house as a reflexion of the personality. In that case, the models that orphans created changed my idea of thinking a house or a home. I was surprised about the openness and the imaginative potential these children had, even though they are very abstract and leave a lot of space for interpretation.
In your recently published book ‘Invisibles’ (EINER Books) you are recalling and visualizing memories of yours, told in multiple layers like images of different series and text. Please tell us about the story and your approach turning it into a book.
CP - I normally work in smaller series that are not obviously connected to each other, so I was searching for a way to combine them to a bigger topic or story. ‘Invisibles’ now collects 4 of my works that all deal with absence and imagination on different layers: Formal absence, emotional and physical absence until the total absence of the photographic image and the shift to the imagined picture or memories. Through reading Lacan I was trying to explore his theories in a visual way, playing with the framing of reality and the ambivalence of hiding and projecting space, reality and fantasies. Another work of the book shows interior rooms, pictures I took with my mobile, so called “leftover scenes”, rooms, after something happened like stories and scenes related to my everyday life. In a second layer I entered these photos like entering a crime scene, collecting all the leftovers, memories and traces by highlighting them with different colourmarks. In that way the images relates directly to memory, communicates on different layers, asks for the viewers imagination to recreate scenes that deal with human absence.
The book also collects 5 texts on transparent pages. In these texts I transformed images of my memory where there is no photograph existing. The text as a substitute of the absent picture is for me a method to recall memories. Even though memory is constantly changing, in fact can only be remembered once before it changes, the text will remain the same, like a photograph, a frozen moment in the own biography.
When looking through the book, obviously another focus within your work lies on landscape. Where did you take these landscape images and what role do they play in your book in specific?
CP - In the last years I’ve been doing some artist in residency programs in Iceland and found a deep connection to the Icelandic landscape that slowly entered my work. It’s not landscape in general, that interests me, it’s more the relation that it has to reality. Since 2011 I return to Iceland every year to continue my idea of rethinking, recreating, reenacting landscape. So in fact, the landscapes in ‘Invisibles’ was the first work I did in Iceland and about landscape in general. It is linked to the process of memory, the moment, when memory is fading and the construction of remembrance relates to imagination. But this process also works on a formal layer. By covering parts of the image, we have to recreate, imagine, construct possible realities. Also thinking the image a bit further, as a sequence of reality, that deletes all it’s surrounding.
After an exciting first half of the year with lots of things going on with your work - are there any future projects on your schedule already?
CP - Actually yes. I am currently working on a few things. My new project is a discourse into more abstract fields of love. I try to create an collection of formal examination to this emotional topic. Also I’m writing on my first novel that I want to finish by the end of the year. It will be about the construction of relationships and of course absence will play a big role in it as well. Beside this I entered my photographic archive and started playing with the fading of connection to personal images. It’s a big work in progress where I explore different ways of deleting images, physically and mentally as well as digitally. So that process of remembrance and absence will stay with me for the next months. I’m very excited where all this leads me to.
The next show of my work will be in September at the Encontros da Imagem in Braga, where I will do an installation around ‘Invisibles’ combining texts, images, sound and smell, like a multi-layered memory room.
Thanks for the interview and lots of success for your future projects, Christiane!
Christiane Peschek is an Austrian artist, currently living and working in Vienna. Her exhibition ‚13 Children’ in Dublin is still on display until 31/07/2015 at Photo Ireland. Her book ‘Invisibles’ is also available as a portfolio edition of 50 by VOIES OFF Galerie, Arles.
How did “The Cool Couple” started? What was the inspiration for the name?
THE COOL COUPLE (TCC) - When we decided to start working as a couple we were sure of the fact that it went far beyond a simple collaboration between two artists. It was fall 2012 and we met after a period working as assistant in two artist studios. We knew each other since 2011 when we attended a MA in Photography and Visual Design at FORMA foundation in Milan. We always worked in team, even studying. The idea of cooperating with other people attracted us, so we decided to start the duo deleting our names and creating a third entity. The Cool Couple is a name that reflects our main interests, the idea of a collective imagery, the connections between everyday life and the most important contradictions of contemporaneity. It is coherent under the point of view of our practice, which often privileges irony.
Can you tell us something about your educational background and how it has influenced your creative evolution?
TCC - The way we work is based on collaboration in order to build a network that often counts many people more than us. Each step in the planning of a work is curated by both of us. We share everything, even things that might sound quite intimate, like taking a picture. When we split tasks, it happens when we have just to supervise a process which has been already verified.
Could you cite any artists that have been a source of inspiration or that you admire?
TCC - Jim Jarmusch, Thomas Mailaender, Evidence by Larry Sultan e Mike Mandel, recently Cartongesso, a novel by Francesco Maino. Finally, the astrologist Paolo Fox, whom we’ll substitute with a slice of calf’s ear we received in Arles as gift. It is said that the ear brings you luck for ten years.
In art we find interesting examples of artists who work as a couple. In your case how do you deal with the creative process and in its representation?
TCC- Let’s take a look around: photography is everywhere, from cctv to the most common communication devices; it has been definitely legitimized in the art world as testifies the fact that the photographic research itself has adopted practices considered alien until a few years ago. The price to “pay” for such freedom is the dissolution of those categories we have always adopted to understand photography. Let’s accept its hybridization and the fact that, today, it is no more than an option (we’re quoting Domenico Quaranta) among many available devices.
In our opinion, the choice of a form of expression is a consequence. When we start a work firstly comes the concept and a long period dedicated to research. As it’s verified and everything works, than we face the translation of the contents choosing a specific language. Even if we come from a photographic background we don’t feel conditioned by it. Today, photography itself is so casual that it works as a great artists’ tool and, at the same time, it has become a collective behavior. Everyone practices it as an instinct.
Many of your works focus on the land, from a geographical point of view but also historical and political. Your intent does not seem to be documentary, and rather pursue an investigation into what you call “cultural landscape”. What do you mean by this definition? Can you give us some examples?
TCC - Cultural landscape is a common expression today, even if we should update its meaning. Nevertheless, it is useful to underline the problems you face approaching a new environment. Imagery and the idea of a cultural horizon are deeply connected with anthropic landscape. Documentary approach is today a utopia, as witnessed not only by the last decades of photographic history, but also by the crisis of classical social sciences and the need for interdisciplinary researches.
The paradox with cultural landscape is that you can always return a reductive vision of it. However, it is the result of the increased possibilities offered by technology to access to an idea. We can see everything, we are told to be able to access information. The processes of sharing and customization of such information become part of our lives and, as behavior, they affect landscape.
There’s nothing unknown, photography made it possible to represent what’s outside our world and inside us. We have scanned everything. However, as an analytic tool, it has completely failed its mission. It shows, but it has a weak critical power. We usually start a project from a specific event or theme, linking it with different subjects. The result is a rhizome the public can explore.
Can you tell us about the projects “You are hear” and “Approximation to the West”?
TCC - ‘You are here’ is a work we made together with Alessandro Sambini when we were selected for ‘Urban Symphonies’, a residency program organized by EXPOSED project and Fabbrica del Vapore, in Milan. The theme of the laboratory was the interaction between visual and sound artists in order to produce a series of analysis of urban spaces. We decided to focus on the interaction between the language of video art in relationship to sound art asking ourselves how a horizontal collaboration could be possible without giving a predominant role to image or sound. Another thing that initially interested us was the arbitrary choices that led to radical changes in a city’s structure.
We were fascinated by the deja-vu effect created by toponymy, so we decided to choose a number of economical activities in Milan according to their name. We chose only those shops, bars, pubs and so on… with a proper name of a place. Then we recorded a soundscape for each location and, thanks to 3D modeling softwares, we got a model of such soundscapes. For each of them we created a topographic map, available for free during the exhibitions. The maps create a disorienting effect because they remind existing places but they don’t correspond in any portion to the actual topographic map. We are the only owners of those places, existed in a determined place during a specific time interval.
‘Approximation to the West’ poses some question about research: we focused on Carnia, an area of Friuli Venezia Giulia, in north-eastern Italy. In particular, we were interested in the historical events that took place there at the end of WWII. The region became the first republic in Italy and then the promised land of about 30.000 cossacks escaped from the Soviet Union to collaborate with the Nazis. Conflict is connected to national dreams and the maintenance of geopolitical balance. Historical facts are rarely verifiable, so the story becomes a legend that looks like a Cossack Western movie. The output of the project is a corpus of pictures, documents, infographics and other materials arranged in installations. The aim is to provide a series of keys to read recent history and look in a critical way at the problems we are facing today.
The relationship between text and image assumes a certain significance in your work. Why?
TCC - Generally speaking, text is one among the many tools we can choose to improve a work. We don’t see it as a fundamental element. It’s as important as in everyday life. We write chat messages, send emoticons and pictures. It is more a problem of communication than one of text. We see a work of art as a mean to communicate. The connection between text and image is complex. At the same time, it has been the object of decades of artistic and philosophic research. Once you are aware of the inner problems that this relationship generates, you can conceive text and image as instruments.
The past year was full of events and awards. The Fotomuseum Winterthur, the Francesco Fabbri award, the participation in the Young Artists Collective of the Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa. Now “Discovery Award” at Les Rencontres des Arles. What will you expose in Arles?
In Arles we presented a new body of work titled ‘A kind of display’, which is a reflection about beard. We think it can be seen as a sensor to underline some inner contradictions characterizing the global society in which we live. The project was nominated by Italian curator Francesco Zanot for Discovery Award; we started it about a year and a half ago when we found an article about beard transplants in Turkey. There mustaches exhibition is a sign of virility and under a certain point of view you are not a man if you don’t wear a beard. So, we were interested in this strict relationship between aesthetic surgery and cultural values. Then, following the Western trend of beard, transplants have been required in New York and London too, opening a new market and changing radically the meaning of this action.
We started a research about this theme and the result is an exhibition which deconstructs a barbershop elements presenting them in a neutral room at the center of which a barber offers free shaves to the public, making collective an intimate and dangerous act like shaving, otherwise the experience of a blade on your neck. In other terms, we all have recently experienced this vision in a viral way through ISIS videos, with the role of the beard that reminded us the fear for the terrorist that led to the disappearing of beards immediately after 9/11. The installation is highly influenced by the fact that beard is a social elements od personal displaying, so it is deeply connected with those practices of creation, sharing and consumption of collective representation. The artworks are produced following these criteria, starting from the framing of the pictures on the barber capes. The 3D printed busts and the statue are downloaded form the internet or realized thanks to the historical technique of photogrammetry (thanks to which we made Alec Soth’s bust), which makes you able to create a 3D model starting from a series of pictures of a certain subject (this is the way ancient sculptor created copies and the way in which 3D softwares work on smartphones). Everything reminds photography but it is no longer photography.
TCC - We recently presented ‘Indians’, an investigation of Veneto region developed with Alberto Sinigaglia, at ‘F4 Un’idea di fotografia festival’, curated by Carlo Sala. We are all fascinated by the influences of the american way of life on the population of our region, so we wander to find signs to prove our thesis and, unfortunately, they are a lot. It is a high ironic approach to the eastern part of Padania region which reflects on the loss of memory due to economic wealth. At the beginning of August we’ll be in Slovenia at Fotopub festival together with great emerging artists from all Europe; in September we’ll make our first workshop as teachers, in Udine: it will focus on the development of an artistic research in a peculiar cultural landscape, exploring different approaches. Then, Unseen Photography Fair in Amsterdam with Metronom gallery and, in December, the group exhibition at Bevilacqua La Masa foundation. In the meanwhile, we’re currently working on ‘Approximation to the West’ photobook. In other words, we’re having a lot of fun ;)
ELISE SCHOUMAN - (ES) As long as I can remember I have been working on different things. I made paintings, bags from recycled material, poems and things like tables and closets. Somewhere around my tenth birthday I started to make photographs. An analog camera was my birthday present and that was the start for me to see everything with a different view, to frame the world and focus on little things such as differences in light and shadow. I never thought that I would become an artist or photographer. I always wanted to be somebody who can change the world; I wanted to do something good for the world. So I started to study social work. After two years and lots of frustration I made the choice to change my study. I think it is the best choice of my life to have studied at the art academy.
Tell us about your educational path. What are your best memories of your studies? What was your relationship with photography at that time?
ES - My best memories are of the moments when we talked about photography, about the image itself. And it was great to make lots of work, often in a short period of time. The students around me made me focus on photography only. The important thing is that you have enough ideas and the spirit to improve yourself and to try to find the best in yourself.
Recently I’ve been thinking a lot about going to school again, following a new course and learning new things to get better at what I do and get more responses from other people, more critical opinions, more of everything.
Is there any teacher or fellow artist that has allowed you to better understand your work?
ES - Artist and teacher Petra Stavast was a very important person for me during my time at the academy, she made me look at my work in a critical way. Another teacher and also a great artist, Jan Adriaans, helped me to learn to create chaos and to explore my own limits. From that chaos I found a new starting point, a blank slate for me as an artist. This has brought me to many discoveries.
How would you describe your work in general? What kind of photographer are you?
ES - I am a maker, a creator. It always starts with little things, for example a shadow, a frown on somebody’s face. Words that I read in books or just see on the way back home. This can all trigger a story, or a thought to make something with. The story starts with a reaction and slowly I will build the walls and frames of a new work. I am an observer. I’m trying to understand the things around me. I’m trying to confuse the things around me. My photographs are poetic. The last few years I’ve been dealing with questions on finiteness and infinity. I really like the transience of things. Things will get ruined; white paper will get yellow in the sun after a while. And there is also an attraction to nature in my photographs; the overwhelming power of nature is something that affects me.
When I look at your work a quick summary of what I see would be: humans relating to nature. Is it your aim to make the viewer think about this relationship?
ES - The relationship between men and nature is exiting for me; there is something dishonest to it. Humans think they are smarter than everything else on earth, but I think this isn’t true. This thought is present in my work, but I wouldn’t want to impose this on the viewer.
Lately I was thinking; what if the universe decided that men destroys and poisons their planet. Then the universe reacts with natural disasters to show men their rightful place within the universe. I feel very connected to nature. It gives me a very magical and safe feeling. A tree will be never the same; the air is the energy that gives me most ideas.
Your work has always been poetic. In recent years you have also started to write poems and combine words with images. Can you tell us about this development and how it works for you?
ES - By writing I get the feeling that I can give my thoughts a home. Since I was young I have been writing in diaries and writing little poems. For a long time I did all this writing only for myself, which is what you do with a diary; it was just a way to order my thoughts. At the moment it takes up more space in my work as an artist. I combine image with text and investigate their relation with each other.
On the sky terrace calls the cuckoo Distant streams rustle without interruption
On the edges, pious berries go astray They will always find water
High, along the ravine, white wolves are running Where they live, you’ll never come
They find their way through the pure land In the meters tall trees, the wind sighs.
In your poems and texts you often suggest what we see is not real, an imagined reality. Would you prefer the viewer to see your work as truth or as fiction?
ES - I think there is no real truth, which also means that everything is the truth, or could be. The same goes for my photography; it is not the truth but it could be the truth. For me it is often the truth, and perhaps some people who read the poems may find the truth there.
I always try to get a better grip on what I actually write. Something that began with just a couple of words, with a very small idea or only just one image, grows to something bigger. By gathering information, texts and images, you create a fertile soil where beautiful things can sprout.
You have made a body of work during a residency in Borsec, Romania. Can you tell us about the residency and your work there?
ES - A place, a beautiful place deep in the forests nestled between the mountains of Romania, that provides space for artists and writers to work. I spent two weeks there, walking through the woods, climbing the mountains. I had an encounter there. An encounter with myself, with nature and with the people who were not there, but who’s absence was visibly present. This encounter I photographed. The beginning of the unknown.
Can you give us an insight in your day-to-day working life? Do you spend most of your time in your studio or out photographing or doing other things? Do you have any rituals that help you to be creative and productive?
Every week I have three days to work on my photography, writing and so on. These days I like to start early, first with everything that has to be done on the computer, like writing, contacts and photo editing. In the course of the day I go out and I walk often, or I take the bike and I let the wind order all my thoughts, until everything has a place. Then I come back and usually write. Ideas often come through movement, by looking, by forgetting that you want to think of something; that brings out the best ideas.
In your opinion, what is the hardest part about being a photographer? And what is the best part?
The best thing is that you get the possibility to develop your creative mind. From there you can create whatever you want. It is important to make time to empty your mind in order to create. This, for me, is freedom. The hardest thing is that what you create is really personal. To show the depths of your inner being can be quite scary, like being naked on a stage. But I think when you show your work to the world and people have an opinion about it, it also learns you to grow as an artist.
Can you recommend a book, movie or exhibition that has been a source of inspiration to you?
The movie ‘De Zee die Denkt’ (The Sea that Thinks), is one of the best movies I have seen. The film revolves around the question ‘who are you?’; a really interesting question with more depth than it seems at first. Also the narrow bridge between what is real and what is illusion makes you look at the world slight differently. Poems by Fernando Pessoa are a great inspiration for me. Artists Wolfgang Tillmans and Gerard Richter are artists who made a great impression on me. I recently saw their work in an exhibition in Weserburg, a museum for modern art in Bremen. The title of the exhibition was ‘Land in sicht’, it was a really good combination of different artists. It was all about landscape, in a realistic way and also in a really abstract way. It was a great inspiration for me because of the tension between nature and the artist, between nature and the way you look at nature.
What projects are you currently working on and what are your plans for the future? At the moment I am starting a project tilted ‘A Dream’. The dream is a window through which you can take a look into another world that in the normal waking consciousness is not accessible. In the future I want to write even more, to try to get better at it. Maybe someday I will write a book. I am always busy with little projects, such as a self-built camera, which sometimes grow into bigger projects. That’s what I like to do best.
Tell us about your approach to photography. How it all started? What are your memories of your first shots?
Alireza Malekian (AM) - After finishing high school I bought a compact camera to make short film. But I ended up liking photography more than cinema.
How did your research evolve with respect to those early days?
AM - It’s very unconscious. When I think about why I like to make an image like I do and why I’m interested in places more than people, I don’t have an answer. I believe It’s related to my experiences during the process of growing up and dealing with the world that surrounded me.
Tell us about your educational path. B.A in Visual Communication at Ferdows University of Mashhad. What are your best memories of your studies? What was your relationship with photography at that time?
AM - Everybody in my class knew that I’m in love with this media. Before I was accepted in Ferdows University, I was already very active. Studying there was coincided with studying more about photography’s Techniques and history. One or two classes helped me in this way. My best memory is to see myself to be more than an art student and becoming an artist who has something to offer.
What were the courses that you were passionate about and which have remained meaningful for you?
Photography courses of course. I started my carrier as an author when I wrote two articles about two of Iranian photographers for my class. I don’t like those articles anymore but since then I always enjoyed writing about photography.
Any professor or teacher that has allowed you to better understand your work?
AM - No. I never showed my projects to any of my teachers. They may have seen them in social medias but I never asked for their opinion.
What do you think about teaching methodology in the era of digital and social networking?
AM - It’s impossible to understand contemporary situation photography without having a knowledge of history and methodology of it.
About your work now. How would you describe your personal research in general?
AM - I always ask myself: what is photography and how can I use it to describe what I think about being a human in my culture, geographical location and environment. I try to make my art with a non-narrative and Aesthetic language that has a visible theoretical background. In a way, each series shows my recent thoughts about the questions that I mentioned earlier.
Do you have any preferences in terms of cameras and format?
AM - I’m happy with my 60D and 15-85 lens. However, In prefect world, I would like to photograph my projects with a large format. And a rangefinder would be nice for second camera.
Is there any contemporary artist or photographer, even if young and emerging, that influenced you in some way?
AM - Abbas Kiarostami; Takeshi Kitano; David Hockney; Bernd and Hilla Becher; Lee Friedlander; Gary Winogrand; Lewis Baltz; Joel Meyerowitz and Nicholas Nixon mostly because of his photographs of Boston. And Stephen Shore.
Three books of photography that you recommend?
‘Photography: A Critical Introduction’ by Liz Wells and others; ‘The Body and the Archive’ by Allan Sekula. Also I find Routledge’s ‘Encyclopedia of Twentieth-Century Photography’ very interesting.
Is there any show you’ve seen recently that you find inspiring?
AM - A video about the process of making ‘Me, Body, Motherland’ project by Shahrzad Changalvaee, presented at Aban Art Gallery in Mashhad, Iran. I was familiar with her work and this specific series, but I enjoyed the this video as an individual artwork about Iranian culture.
Projects that you are working on now and plans for the future?
AM - Beside working on number of academic papers; I’m planing on photographing a new series and also a web base cooperative project. It’s soon to talking about any of them because there is a lot to figuring out. I just hope to make them work.
Your work is made mainly from your travels to foreign countries – what is it about these areas that you enjoy compared to perhaps shooting in more familiar territory such as Australia?
Kate Molenkamp (KM) - I produce my best work when I am placed outside of my comfort zone. Anxiety doesn’t get the better of me in the same way it does when I’m shooting locally and allows me to really focus on what I’m doing.
I’ve been avidly interested in Asian society and culture over the past few years and photography has been a way of familiarizing myself with the region.
I have indeed shot projects on home soil and there are other subjects and concepts that do interest me; I am particularly keen on exploring North-Western Australia. I just feel that it’s something I will come back to at a later time.
‘Outlander’ the publication sold out its first run and now there is a limited second edition (congrats!), what is it about print that you love? Do you prefer it to the framed image or do they both have their qualities that you enjoy?
KM - Thank you! I think that the digital platform, print media and the mounted print each serve a separate purpose. I love both – When they’re carefully considered they work beautifully together. I believe each platform emits different viewing pleasures for the audience.
Printed media has more permanency than digital media – You’re observing a large, beautifully mounted print or you’re holding a book in your hand – It’s powerful.
Your previous projects from Europe depict a quieter landscape whereas your Korean photographs show the vibrancy of the country with its colours and people. Is this something you are conscious of, photographing the country you visit in a way that is true to itself?
KM - I just simply capture landscapes for what they are. I guess it’s something I’m conscious of to a degree – But at the same time I can’t claim to understand Korea or Greenland because I shot there for a finite amount of time – It’s a matter of honesty and respect of the landscape and very importantly, the culture; which I like to think is evident in the work. This is why I believe long term projects to me important, because they’re an important time for personal growth.
What was behind the decision to show the ‘Outlander’ series as a solo exhibition after the publication being released?
KM - I had a few reasons for selecting the ‘Outlander’ series. It was quite well received, having sold out quite quickly and I felt confident as a result. It was one less challenge. My main reasoning relates to our earlier discussion about print media: I wanted to create a viewing experience separate from the book (and web series). The ‘Outlander’ book is somewhat conservative in terms of the design and presentation, to help the flow. In the exhibition I would curate just 11.
I wanted to exhibit a finite number of strong photographs large, gaining the most out of the medium format film. When printing my work to a small scale (previously only printing as large as A3+) I felt that many details important to each composition were missed and did the photograph very little justice.
One example of this was ‘Women in Hanboks’ (with the framed print sitting at 1.2m wide). Consisting of a bird’s eye view of a crowd of people during a Busan spring festival; many members of the crowd are female’s dressed in the Korean Hanbok. Every woman in the photograph is important; I wanted to give the audience the opportunity to carefully observe everything happening in the scene.
Do you have any projects in the works for the future?
KM - I had been visiting the Nordic region for a few years, shooting settlements in Greenland, Iceland and the Faroe Islands. I’ve considered the idea of collaborating and producing a book with other photographers who have also documented the region, but I’m unsure of the direction I’m taking it in, so for now I’m sitting on it. It’s also a very expensive part of the world to get to, (Greenland particularly), so it’s kind of hard to continue the work right now.
I’ll be in Asia at the end of the year, a visit to South Korea included. I started shooting work last year on Jeju Island, among other Korean islands. These areas are comparatively rural to urban life in cities like Seoul, Busan or Daegu (to name a few). I want to take these work(s) into other directions, where I not only document stories of the social landscape, like in Outlander. I want to document the lives and stories of the people. I was particularly interested in Jeju’s Haenyeo (Female Divers) last time I was there. It’s one of many humble, traditional ways of life that are slowly disappearing through generational and cultural change. To me these cultures are an insight into Korea’s not-so-distant past.
I am hoping to go back to school in a few years to study social and cultural anthropology, focusing on the Asia region – For the moment I think these projects are really good baby steps for me.
Any favourite publications (local or international) that you can recommend?
KM - For one, I’m pretty upset I missed out on a copy of ‘Wasteland’ (Voorde/Hladky/Broadhurst) recently. Generally as a rule of thumb; anything by Trent Parke is great.
Over the past few years I’ve been viewed many publications originating in the Asia region (especially China). Xhang Xiao is an all-time favourite. The ‘Outlander’ book design was somewhat inspired by Coastline’s simplicity. ‘The Yellow River’ (Kechun); ‘How Loneliness Goes’ (Nguan). There are lots.
In June 2015, the Belgian section of Urbanautica, led by Dieter Debruyne with Nicolette Klerk, organized a portfolio review in collaboration with Zebrastraat in Gent. Together with the contributor editors Peter Waterschoot (Belgium), Klaus Fruchtnis (France) and the curator of Zebrastraat Isolde De Buck (Belgium) we have reviewed the works by a selected group of artist and photographers based in Belgium. I was delighted by the quality of the works presented, and happy to meet and talk with some artists whose research was not new to me. Here are some impressions about the projects that I reviewed.
This is certainly not the space suitable to introduce the work of Lieven Lefere. Dieter Debruyne has done this in the past months (read the interview from here). Here I briefly draw some interesting points of research on the Belgian artist and photographer. The first aspect is that his work translates some fundamental assumptions of postmodernist theorists. The concept of the simulation in Baudrillard’s words is well evident. Lieven Lefere not only reveals the process but reconstructs it to make it physically accessible in a public viewing machine. His installations have made me think about certain scientific and educational experiences in museums where you are shown how you get to a result. Therefore, since we talk about pictures, we can say that he practices the representation of the representation of reality.
In the works 'I Never Promised You a Horizon’ and 'A More Elevated Scene (Looking West)’ he plays with the given definition of landscape and the horizon by framing only a thin vertical line. Lieven Lefere, as he wrote us before, is «questioning the truth about perception, the ability to remember and the status of an image in relation to what we call reality», in a word our addiction to simulacra. His new work on the Mausoleum of Ho-Chi-Minh in Hanoi represents a decisive step in this direction. He simulates (reconstruct) an entire inner space of the building through the memory (evidence) of a group of Western tourists.
Speaking of scenery, the work 'Damme - Hoeke’ by Benedict de Backere is absolutely impeccable. From a philosophical point of view I find it a valuable photographic work. According to Plato taught, there is no landscape, but the idea that each individual has of the landscape. And this comes from our own experience, and therefore the use of the senses. In the series of photographs taken from 2006 to 2008 Benedict de Backere snaps obsessively on the same landscape, on the same stretch of landscape. A repetitive look but necessary to highlight the distinction between idea and reality. A formidable performance.
Jasper Léonard introduced us well to the path that led him to develop a very personal attitude to photography. His work calls into question the future directions of photography. He does it by physically altering the perspective and the possibilities of use of the medium. The alteration of the lenses allow Jasper Léonard to build his own imagery, which ironically resembles a digital manipulation though led by a reconsideration of the analogical horizon. Therefore it’s the process rather than the aesthetic result which is more relevant in his work. The use of multiple exposure is a reminder of a need to disassociate from the post-production.
Jasper Léonard seems a craftsman rather than a artist. A photographer more interested in finding out the operation of the instrument to expand its possibilities, rather than in the application of a variety of “ready made” finishings available through an electronic computing. Most of all, he is building his tools to create his own language. And that’s a rare thing… (read interview by Dieter Debruyne with Jasper Léonard from here).
The work 'Contemplative Landscapes’ presented by Isabel Devos worth a praise. The series pushes the viewer on the border between human and nature. Isabelle is able to see and to frame details and traces of the action of the water on the shores that lead the eye to imagine landscapes. An operation of abstraction that is not new. Still the results of Isabel are impressive and of rare beauty.
Through photography Isabel gives us a pictorial view of the world, with an open and therefore contemplative mind. This is not just meant to re-discover the universe in a microcosm; in this act of recognition of the beauty of nature there is something redeeming. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder people say. And maybe it is, and there is no artifice, bank, wall, or anything that can truly contain it. Her landscapes retain an expressionist attitude, with a reminder of the essential color field research by Mark Rothko.
Together, however, there is a strong roughness and porosity, and the colors are dull and somewhat dramatic. All this brings me back to the late landscapes painting by William Congdom.
In the series of images presented byNele Van Canneyt I found some images really well made. They look like frames cut from a movie that drive you intentionally in a specific atmosphere. Her way of photographing, to measure out the lights, to work with the colors easily guides to a cinematographic imagery.
Nele Van Canneyt is very skilled at portraying people in a suggestive way, as if they were actors ready to tell a story. The reference to American painting of Edward Hopper is almost immediate from this point of view.
With a thoughtful operation Luc Rabaey builds through three images an archetype of peri-urban American skyline. The 'Liquors, Tattoos, Reptiles and Big Blue Sky’ reveals a symbolic use of the photographic medium to summarize the complexity of a cultural landscape. A sough and meditated composition that gives to each element a precise place. An immediate and quite effective reading.
This way of structuring the photographic vision, and therefore to break up the vision to foster a more continuous view (or ensemble) takes me back to the theoretical basis of the research of David Hockney and to the work of Paul Graham.
Appreciable in this sense is the premise of Fred Van Hoof to work on the definition of a moment. He essentially practice an expansion of time through a repetition of family scenes which favors a cinematic vision that increases the feeling of being present in the moment.
The work of Stijn Van Der Linden is a critical navigation, aware and curious about urban space. The series 'The future lies with the city’ depicts a search on the alphabet of the city: angles, lines, plans, constructs. An aesthetic and topographical vision. Stijn Van Der Linden plays with shapes, geometries and color tones while creating a series of pictorial palettes, sometimes minimal and abstract and in other cases more choreographic and vernacular.
The other two works are more conceptual and address a reflection on the possibility of street photography. Inspired by the functional blurring of people in google street view, in ‘人’ (the japanese symbol that describes the word ‘people’), the author voluntarily alter his images to distort the perception of the viewer. This is to cause a reflection on the duality (private-public) through which is usually observed the individual privacy on the streets and on the internet.
In the series ‘Not there’ he again translates into images the discomfort in portraying people in the streets. «… rather than focusing on the image of the real person, I try to capture only the imprint that they leave on the cityscape, even if only for a moment, by playing with shadows, light, reflections, … the people are still there, but they are at the same time absent, not fully there or even there at all.»
The work presented by Aleksei Kazantsev, photographer of Belarusian origin based in Antwerp, is the record of a performance action or as defined by the author «amorphous self-portraits in twilight landscapes of urban forests». The photographer becomes the subject of his own image. He stages a dialogue with nature. His presence, however, is not descriptive, and seems to draw a mood, rather dark. White or black spots catch the eye, almost hovering clouds that appear alien to the contest. Some of these images are really very successful in translating the author’s intention. There seems to be something elusive in nature, and perhaps in our very nature.
Instinctive, intuitive, emotional and confused as adolescence. The photograph of Sari Cansu defies labels. A diary of hazy memories, captured moments, and unspecified feelings. The viewer is lost in a puzzle of situations difficult to be reconciled. Like a journey without an apparent destination. The journey itself is the goal.
The young photographer Sanne Delcroix, who recently graduated at the KASK in Ghent, showed us a series of portraits of young people shot between Belgium and Scandinavia. Her intentions are well summarized in the statement that she wrote on this series 'Sessions’ «That’s why I like to photograph people, especially people I don’t really know. In the beginning there is a tension; but mostly, after photographing for a while, the disquiet shifts into concentration. This is the moment I want to capture. It’s brief and silent, but often very intimate.»
People are all portrayed in their homes, to make them feel more at ease and to obtain an intimate and relaxed atmosphere. They are all clearly posed, and this creates silence. Everything lies in a quiet background. The figures portrayed are delicate, touched by a gentle light. Even males have feminine traits. The attitude of Sanne Delcroix recalls the freshness and delicacy of the Venetian Renaissance that has influenced the history of painting and in particular the study of portrait. The echo of the romanticism, the delicate faces of Francisco Goya or Francesco Hayes as many others, the debt to these great masters is inevitable. To photography goes the merit of reminding us of this.
‘On a Horse with No Name’ the recent work by Matthieu Litt shows a documentary work still in the process of being edited. A rich archive of images alternating broad visions that guide us in the wildest side of Central Asia territories with portraits, signs, anecdotes that return the spirit of the journey and of its memory. A work made with appropriate means and with the time required to be not only a spectator. People appear to belong to the landscape (not vice versa), to mountains, wild lands, and horses. Many horses. In the midst of this there is still room for human gestures that appear like a mirage. And it is in this mirage that the message of the author is forged.
Undoubtedly these are images that intrigue and evoke. This is due to the ambiguous and contradictory aspects of this region in transition and to its exotic nature. Matthieu Litt portrays places that for their beauty and vastness easily move the imagination. However, what is remarkable about this young photographer is his willing to draw up and affirm his own poetic narrative. A sensible work on the remote region of the Faristan that with a careful editing could become a nice book to read.
Finally I would like to point out some works of photojournalism. The series 'Onbestemdheid’ by Wim De Block of which I have mostly admired the photographs of empty rooms. I found them more radical, poetic and cold than the other distressing views taken along the way near Moscow and other places in Russia.
The work of Wim De Block highlights the different speed of development in this country, and the inevitable social and environmental rips that depend on it. The urban landscape portrait by Wim De Block has something decadent. Gray, bleak, lonely. There is a sense of abandonment, of deprivation. The emptiness and loneliness, well expressed in the empty rooms, is before a vacuum or rather a cultural renunciation. I hear the stern admonition of Leo Tolstoy in the views of the neglected countryside, the broken landscape and forgotten roots.
The work of Geert van der Eede was a pleasant discovery. Or perhaps a rediscovery. His way of photographing faithfully evokes the tradition of photojournalism and retrieves a necessary humanity of the look. With great skill and consciousness he is able to capture precious moments of ordinary life, finding poetry in little things, suggest aspects of social and cultural anthropology. Most of all he is good to recognize those moments photographically significant and return them in his own way, through clever compositional skills.
Collaborative projects are rapidly increasing and constantly evolving in our society, but what makes them unique is the complementary teamwork behind. Emilie Hallard and Pablo Porlan are the founders of a Maria Books, a publishing house, and Maria Inc., a Production Agency. An interesting collaboration that is changing the way we look at photography – and a bright way to democratize photography, not only as an art for people but also as a means to preserve the quality of photobooks despite the digital era.
Emilie Hallard is a French photographer who explores life, people and other topics related to emotional states of mind. She portrays experiences and tells stories in a particular way through her series of images. Pablo Porlan is a Spanish photographer who captures the world the way he sees it questioning his interaction with human beings. He defines himself as an image puzzle-maker rather than an image storyteller.
Tell us about your approach to photography. How it all started? What are your memories of your first shots?
Emilie Hallard (EH): My work focuses on human beings. I’ve explored for many years themes as darkness, love, passion and its consequences. I try to create a universal body of work. I am now working on naked portraits, to celebrate the diversity of people and bodies and to denunciate the beauty standards imposed by the fashion industry. I’m a self-taught photographer, so before reaching real consciousness in my practice and to start working with concepts, I started as many people: by travelling! So my first memories are really quiet: I was shooting in the Sahara, before the night, looking around, playing with lights, landscapes, camels…
Pablo Porlan (PP): The first time I took a picture consciously I was 14 years old. We had to take some pictures of monuments for a school project and I tried to photograph my peers with the last pictures of the roll. Frankly, I tried to almost throw myself onto them trying to grasp what I thought it was their real face. Happily for me I wasn’t able to capture the image I have of my friends on those pictures as I had no idea on how a picture was taken neither on the technical nor on the psychological side. The fact that it didn’t work out encouraged me to grow my interest on photography until now.
I come from a Fine Arts Photography background; I did a bachelor degree on photography in Barcelona with a specialization in Portraiture. However, nowadays I’m more focused on storytelling and my features are closer to photojournalism and documentary photography than to fine arts. Recently, I have been working on social issues like obesity or the New Rural.
As photographers, how would you describe your personal research in general? How did your research evolve with respect to those early days?
EH: After shooting landscapes during my trips, I quickly moved my camera towards to people. Photobooks, especially those by Moriyama deeply influenced my photography. I was very lucky to be surrounded by great photographers who taught me a lot as well. My personal research is highly linked to experiencing. My first work, ‘Animal Triste’, is a diary-based story. Creating this body of work meant to have to fully live some moments, to experiment feelings, to meet and confront people and situations. Today, with my second series ‘Incorruptible Bodies’, much quieter and brighter in the final result, is still intense in the practice as I spend a lot of time talking to the models that share a great intimacy with me. I feel very grateful.
PP: My main goal while I am photographing is to be the best witness of what is happening in front of me and being able to make an interesting story out of it. I used to think that we could freeze reality and keep it on an image as if in a some sort of snow globe, nowadays on the contrary I prefer to believe that photography is not about freezing but about living the moment surrounding us. Since the beginning I always tried to interact, being part of the action, as I did with my schoolmates. I reckon all I got out of it was that I almost scared my friends to death. It took me a long way to realize that all I needed to do to grasp reality was just being there and letting the moment come into my lens. That is the kind of learning that for a documentary photographer is the key.
EH-PP: We met during some encounters of collectives of photographers in Spain many years ago. We’ve always been working in groups. And, we both love learning by doing! After moving to Paris, and based on those two things, Pablo invited me to create the Paris Photobook Club. And here starts the story! We both share the same objective, which is to open the photo book to other publics, to make them becoming actors and not just an audience. All our events, and our global project, MARIA INC., are aiming this target. Based on that, each of us has special talents; we are pretty complementary. And for the talents we don’t have, either we learn by doing it, either we collaborate with other people!
What do you think about photo books in the era of digital and social networking?
EH-PP: Photobooks may be one of the best examples on how our digital era has changed society. On one hand there has never been so easy to create things by yourself, say clothes, houses or photobooks, thanks to all the digital processes. On the other hand, almost everybody everywhere can get access to your work but almost no one get to see it in real. Photobooks are just some kind of good frame for us, native digitals, to materialize the dreams and ideas we put together through our computers and the Internet.
Tell us about your project the Paris Photo Book Club, and the PhotobookFest.
EH-PP: As stated before, our goal is to open the photobook scene to other audiences and to encourage good practices sharing. We support the values of DIY, self-publishing and micropublishing. Our both events are based on these goals and values. Le Paris Photobook Club is a monthly event held at a public library the Bibliothèque Château d’Eau, in Paris. We invite participants to bring books about a specific topic and to share their point of view. We also invited many experts to share about their activity: book binding, printing, design, self-publishing, etc. We want our participants to learn more about books, from a deeper reading to practical aspects. Le PhotobookFest is a festival that runs once a year, during the Paris Photo week. The festival supports the young photo book-publishing scene with a focus on independent publishing houses as well as self-published and DIY books. Le PhotobookFest is an inclusive, open event where you can meet like-minded people, share ideas and know-how, and broaden the horizons of the photobook as we know it.
Is there any contemporary artist or photographer, even if young and emerging, who influenced you in some way?
EH: Daido Moriyama was my master. Nowadays I try not to be influenced in my research. But I have to mention I totally do love Jocelyn Lee’s portraits.
PP: There are two young photographers and bookmakers that inspired me to produce my first fanzines and dummies: Lea Habourdin and Lena Kholkina.
Is there any show you’ve seen recently that you find inspiring?
EH: I was really moved by the Act series by Denis Darzac, at la MEP (Maison Européene de la Photographie), about disabled people. I was totally stuck by a picture of a boy, teardrop moment. The body language and the photographer approach were extremely moving.
EH: 1. ‘Farewell Photography’ by Moriyama (but the binding is terrible: the book is falling apart) 2. ‘The Epilogue’ by Laia Abril, one of the most coherent books I’ve ever seen 3. ‘Rasen Kaigan’ by Lieko Shiga.
PP : I’d also want to say The Epilogue but I will give three other options. 1. ‘A Criminal Investigation’ by Watabe Yukichi 2. ‘At Home’ by Bruce Wrighton 3. And any book produced by Phree a Spanish indie publishing house.
Projects that you are working on now and plans for the future?
EH-PP: Maria Inc. is a publishing house and a think tank. Some weeks ago we have presented to the public our first book, ‘Anecdotal’ by David Fathi. We will be in Arles for the professional week and at the Impressions Festival, at the Monte-en-l’Air Library where we organize a participative small workshop and a photobook jockey session!
At the moment we are already working on our next photobook exhibition and workshop during Les Rencontres Photographiques du 10e photo festival and on our own festival Le PhotobookFest 2015. All of that is happening next fall. We’re also preparing for 2016 our new Zine collection!
How do you see the future of photo books in general evolve?
EH-PP: The market is nearly saturated and may collapse; there are too many books for a reduced number of collectors. Either everybody decides to open up and share their love for photobooks with their neighbors, friends, parents, etc. or we dig our grave. We’ve never seen so many beautiful books. It would be a pity to stop this vital impulse, but we need to open up and stop behaving in a very closed group/community.
Group exhibition of emerging Russian photographers become a part of IX International Festival of Photography “PHOTOPARADE IN UGLICH” organized with participation of FotoDepartament.
Russian Federation, UglichPlaces: Palace of Culture / The House of Friendship / Art school (Detskaya khudozhestvennaya shkola)Petr Antonov. A Model for a City 06.08.2015 - 30.08.2015
Anastasia Bogomolova ‘Lookbook’, Arthur Bondar ‘Where my Childhood Died’, Julia Borissova ‘D.O.M’, Alexander Gorbunov ‘Practice’, Yury Gudkov ‘Keep an Eye on What You See’, Mikhail Domozhilov ‘Ultras’, Irina Emets ‘Five Steps Away’, Irina Zadorozhnaia ‘The Drill Charted a Point and Bore a Hole. Input /output. Where is the Creature: Inside or Outside?’, Vik Laschenov ‘Exs’, Dmitry Lookianov ‘Instant Tomorrow’, Jana Romanova ‘Immerse’, Igor Samolet ‘Be Happy!’, Anastasia Tailakova ‘Not Applicable’, Danila Tkachenko ‘Escape’, Elena Kholkina ‘Pink’, Victor Yuliev ‘All the Ways Go to Water’, Irina Yulieva ‘Broken Knees’. Curators: photographer Jana Romanova and Nadya Sheremetova, FotoDepartament
Photography is attractive due to the simplicity of the mechanism: to get a certain result, you push a button. It is attractive because photographers are doing what numerous manuals require us to do to attain happiness – they’re doing exactly what interests them. If you’re thinking about becoming a photographer, entering the system, you’ll find a rich variety of schools, courses and workshops. All of them are parts of the mechanisms of principles and methods’ translation that must be used to achieve the ultimate goal – creating a “product”, which has a material and nonmaterial value. But if we’re trying to figure out what it is transmitted through photography education, a paradox emerges: a diligent student who’s absorbing the language of one photographer is risking finding himself in industry’s back seat, producing copies uninteresting to anyone. And repeating, “sharpening your skills” often is inapplicable to photography. The photographer’s method if it stands out, is incommunicable and unique.
Can the project’s process be broken down into understandable components? Prescribe all the steps and sub-options of the steps, analyze the favorite or not favorite, but successful with the audience, projects? Clearly imagine what are the mechanics of success? What this construction ‘photo-project’ consists of? It’s possible to try. And even lay variables: you take left, you go into private context. You take right, it’s politics. The only thing that any scheme doesn’t take into account is author’s individuality, his questions to all life processes and his doubts.
It turns out that the method of each author is not so much in the prescribed passages and preparatory stages, but in the individual impulses, intentions, the ability and the willingness to speak out loud – not with words, but with a capacious and passionate image, that extends and focuses the ability to look openly at the world and the surrounding situation. Ability, the only important thing to the author.
The author’s position happens somewhere between defined points of work, somewhere in the decision-making process, slips as a constant shortage, dissatisfaction with results. Everything which is already learned by others, assimilated and understood – all of this is not enough as a medium. Not enough to catch the viewer. But development is impossible also without of what is learned.
In front of us a tangle of knowledge, rules and steps beyond the rules. As if photography is in constant search for new forces, with which it’s able to respond to modernity and talk about it. Because regardless of art or journalism and documentary “confessions” affiliation, photography like any expression is “the need for interrelation between art and the era of its creation and the need to push forward the demand for each individual work of art to this era” – says art critic and art theorist Terry Smith. Based on this setting, an ever-changing method is formed for working on a project, in which stable photography loses its functions. The author ceases to stick to clear definitions and considers and creates an infinite number of strategies.
As curators, working on the programmes for “Photoparade in Uglich” festival, artificially separated with art and documentary photography borders, we decided to try in form of an exhibition to «separate» a photographic space expression of young Russian authors. Create a general map and follow it with two different routes. For us, this exhibition is more like a research into the ability of art and documentary photography to speak different languages. Because we see the border between them transparent, almost nonexistent. And the general movement, more like a collaborative, bustling and vibrant flow of mutual interest and the inability to change without each other.
We look at all gathered projects from a distance and in short comments try to determine the components of the author’s method. The same as the key factor, step that led to expression of the final form of the taken image, the items from working with borrowed material or an archive, displacements, interaction with people or technology, installations.
We write «blind folded», artificially restricting ourselves with rules of so called art and documentary approaches, and only in the end we see if two positions coincide or not. We put ourselves in defining method conditions, as an opportunity to ask the author: how are you doing this? And how do you understand that you have to make the next step? How do you know that this is the right step? What happens in your head? How does it happen?
I remember (the taciturn face), remember (her delicate hands), remember (clearly her voice).
Day after day, we look without seeing, we hear without hearing, we play without feeling and rare are our attempts to rescue the enchantment from the habit. On the other hand, we are so concerned with memory, should we also worry about forgetting?
In ‘Casa Doze’, a book by Alexandre Furcolin, the essential is where it is missing: in the feeling of a blurry mind, in the tilted mirror that drags us to the ground, in the window that reveals a passage, one inside and one outside, one at the front and one at the background which are left exchanging between possibilities. On a moving body, on a movement that unfolds, on a combination of shapes and gestures, on being taken between things that have a past and a future.
The images both translate as betray, they are as accessible as incomprehensible. Each image is also quiet and there are voices in the empty spaces. Voices that carry echoes of other times and suck us like in the vortex of an abyss. Shall we condense the maximum of the felt in a minimum? Shall we strip down to be an empty vessel? In the house there are traces of all the other houses, and leave it behind does not silence its voice but suggests that the noise stopped just because you can no longer hear.
They are four photographers Valérie Callewaert, Anne-Sophie Costenoble, Marina Piérard and Marguerite Lagage. They have a blog here. Their upcoming exhibition “Poudre aux Yeux", will open on the 15th of September 2015 in the laundry located at rue du Bailli, 94 at Brussels. There will be a guest photographer exposing with along them: Cilou de Bruyn.
How did your collaboration start? Where did you meet and how the whole idea came to you as a group?
WASSERETTE (WA): The group was formed rather spontaneously. We are friends with the same field of interest which is primarily photography and more generally art. We were in the same class of photography some years ago. We aren’t really a collective but rather present a collective project; it is a plus on our individual and independent photographic activities apart the group work.
Why did you choose a public space (like the laundries) for exhibiting your work? How do you feel about art available to everyone? Actually, why the laundries in particular? What about other public spaces such as hospitals, bus stops, metro, walls of buildings?
WA: We chose a semi-public space were the walls are not used or “occupied”. Quite often people spend a certain amount of time waiting in these spaces and their visual horizon is rather restricted. The laundry spaces are frequented by a variety of people, part of who are not art-oriented. The people who attend laundries are often not in the same state of mind as people who attend gallery openings and visit museums. It is a space where we can expose our work to these different kinds of eyes/looks.
What do you feel that the audience of these particular spaces expect from an art exhibition? How do they respond to your initiative? Is your choice a political move? A comment on social ranking and the place art should have in modern society?
WA: We don’t take under consideration “art politics”; we are just conscious that we can’t produce our pieces without sharing them. We are happy if someone sees this particular state of spirit or personal point of view of this world which is expressed through our works. The laundries are frequented in a quite regular way every week. The people who use these spaces can look again and again at our images; thus, the images become part of a diverse social landscape, they are not part of a particular cultural institution. Through them, the images, we can enter the social laundries and communicate with people who are trying to find their own voice, or who are just trying to feel better. Our projects/series are chosen around a theme that can provoke a feeling, a reflexion, or even a discussion.
WA: No, only the titles of our exhibition have a reference to the places and their use. It is rather a game that amuses us for the moment; we will eventually change it in order to keep our options open.
You seem to treat one theme each time and present different perspectives. Give us some insight on your personal approaches.
WA: Each of us adopts a poetic and sensitive look on things. Our styles are evidently different but also complementary. This experience allows us to find and deploy our own most sincere way. We try to open the group to a new photographer during the exhibition so we will not stay “self-centered” without any fresh point of view.
You are working as a collective and you have a guest on each exhibition. What are the criteria for choosing an “outside” collaborator? Why choose an outsider
WA: There aren’t really any special criteria, we function based on personal taste; we need to feel the desire of the person to participate, because we need to be really motivated to participate in spaces which aren’t so appropriate for receiving activities as ours. The photographer, who will expose with us this September in the “Poudre aux yeux” show at the Bailli laundry, simply told us that she always dreamt of doing an exhibition in such conditions. We loved a series, quite sensitive, she did while self-taught in the city of Charleroi and we immediately knew she could be part of the group.
From a technical point of view: do you work on film or digital? Is there a particular reason you have chosen the one or the other?
WA: We never had a problem choosing. In either way the resulting image needs to be digitised and then printed on high quality colour photocopy paper in order to be glued on the walls of the laundry.
What kind of support do you use for presenting your images? Do you leave the images behind or do you recollect them?
WA: As mentioned before we print on high quality colour photocopy paper. Once exposed, the images, may be destroyed, tagged, taken, we applaud every reaction. Our basic approach is that we won’t take them back ever.
Finally, how do you feel about art in the internet era?
WA: Even though we have a small blog, we only use it for informing the public on our agenda. We rarely publish our images online, besides they are made to be seen in an environment which allows the physical contact between people. Internet is an extraordinary instrument for global exposure for an artist, but we choose to show our work in a small restraint space, which represents a micro cosmos of the urban world in which we evolve. Next to our images there are people standing! The element of 3D is not a fiction, it is merely a reality.
Tell us about your approach to photography. How it all started? What are your memories of your first shots?
LAURENT KRONENTAL (LK): My passion for the image goes back to my childhood, but I only started photography at the age of 22, while traveling for six months in China. I was then living in Beijing and was using a small compact digital camera to capture my Asian experience. Fascinated by large cities, I was very excited to be part of one of them and be able to visit the country that had intrigued me for so long. From mega-cities to rural areas, everything in this country is overwhelming. I was quite impressed by the speed at which China was evolving, and the singular contrasts between modernity and tradition. I’d never experienced such urban density. Then, Hong Kong was determinant. I was literally absorbed by its atmosphere: the palpable tension of an ultra-futuristic city mixing thousands of neon signs and skyscrapers with apartment buildings; an overcrowded labyrinth of streets, markets and small shops down below and millionaires’ residences and luxury; an outstanding, extremely tight verticality over an overwhelming jungle. Hong Kong, city of excesses, city of extremes, certainly unconsciously contributed to stimulate a research into the juxtaposition of different periods and an attraction for the ways in which man tamed space and architecture.
How did your research evolve with respect to those early days?
LK: I am a self-taught photographer. So after returning from Asia, I purchased a full format digital camera and practiced, strolling around the district of La Défense, which I found quite photogenic; it allowed me to develop my critical sense while learning from my mistakes. With time, I came to wonder about what I really wanted to show. It was important for me to give meaning to my photographs. I then discovered in the neighboring city of Courbevoie a tiny little street where time seemed suspended for years – countryside at the foot of office buildings. The place was surreal. I befriended a couple of old people and started to photograph them. Their traditional garden offered a stark contrast with the surrounding skyline of towers in La Défense, bringing together two different eras, two different living styles.
I subsequently developed a strong interest for the architecture of large housing projects that moved me in a particular way: torn between attraction and rejection, I was amazed by these giants, almost Pharaonic structures of concrete, wondering how, why and in what contexts they had been built. Two neighborhoods near my home became central to my research: the “Damiers” and the Aillaud Towers (Pablo Picasso project) (Hauts-de-Seine, 92). The more I photographed them, the more I was amazed. There was a very troubling paradox between a feeling of near-apocalyptic abandonment, and a very strong presence of life, apparently much more intense than in other neighborhoods I’d visited. The buildings seemed timeless, as if their reason for being oscillated between past and present. As I observed these two worlds – that of aging concrete, and that of the life occupying it – it became clear that I ought to capture the fate of these buildings and of the aging people that lived in them before they all vanished.
What do you think about photography in the era of digital and social networking?
LK: Social networks are the medium for rich and fast exchange. For me, they are an invaluable help for artists; they can create an instant dialogue with other Internet users by sharing their intentions and collecting their feelings.
About your work now. How would you describe your personal research in general?
LK: My work is guided by several points of interest: - First, architecture and the life that it accommodates. To me, it means highlighting through photography the links of cohesion or fracture between the architecture and the social harmony to which it is supposed to lead. Architecture is also an expression of beauty, of the useful and rare, and I would like to render these values in my images. - Then, the city, its living and working areas, its industrial and peripheral districts, as well as its organization within the existing nature. - I’m also passionate about life stories and human nature. I am attracted to faces that express personal experiences. I am naturally interested in marginal people, with atypical background. - I am also fascinated by the impact that fiction has on reality and by the vision of futuristic modernity in view of past expectations.
Do you have any preferences in terms of cameras, techniques and format?
LK: I prefer to use a 4x5 large format camera, especially for my artistic work. It’s an extraordinary tool that I would not be able to do without now, as this was such a rewarding discovery. I realized my series ‘Souvenir d'un Futur’ with such a camera. The large format camera provides incomparable definition, with softness, depth and modeling. The result is truly stunning: in terms of the dynamics, the contours and the perspectives it offers, with a much stronger impact than with digital cameras. Through the complexity of its settings and the cost of materials, this camera forces the photographer to give it an extra thought, a further appreciation of the subject, more reflection about the message to be conveyed, and therefore creates a different relation with time in the process of artistic creation. It is an ideal tool for mastering composition.
Moreover, the large format camera offers an opportunity to master the geometry of the image through tilt and shift options. Finally, the amount of details on film (4x5 negatives) allows for powerful high-quality prints. What a delight!
Tell us about your project ‘Souvenir d'un Futur’. What’s the message behind?
LK: ‘Souvenir d'un Futur’ questions the raison d’être of the “great housing projects” more than half a century after their construction. Through photographs of Parisian suburban areas, the series captures the quotidian of older people living in these buildings that were born out of Post-War architects’ ambition of greatness.
The photographs bring us back to a modernist past where the new city blossomed out of boldness and the promise of a better living. Furthermore, the series confronts us with our own ageing process, our family, our society, and the way in which we have allowed the erosion of social and generational ties. The photographs offer a reflection about the need to give back to the elders the social dimension that these big housing projects failed to bring them.
As today’s town planners have been assigned the task of obliterating the scars of the discarded Babel-like architecture, its original population is also nearing the endgame, as if doomed to share the fate of the walls that have circumscribed their lives.
These elders express particular strength: they are the only ones to fill up the space in this series from which youth has purposely been obliterated. By settling down in these futuristic buildings then, they have re-conquered a space, one that was not originally intended for them and which is now considered abandoned.
I wanted to exchange with this generation in order to understand their lives and debunk a certain pejorative image of old age. I have led this project with a will to document, so that in the future, our society and its architects, their structures and services will give back a social role to the elderly, and the legitimacy and respect that is due to them.
Is there any contemporary artist or photographer, even if young and emerging, who influenced you in some way?
LK: Some of the photographers that inspired me the most are Nadav Kander, Alec Soth and Pieter Hugo. Others have also been a source of inspiration such as Simon Norfolk, Michael Wolf, Naoya Hatakeyama, Todd Hido, Jeff Wall or Alexander Gronsky.
Three books of photography that you recommend?
LK: ‘Yangtze the Long River’, by Nadav Kander ‘Sleeping by the Mississippi’, by Alec Soth ‘Nollywood’, by Pieter Hugo
Is there any show you’ve seen recently that you find inspiring?
LK: This year, Paris Photo was very inspiring, with several galleries and loads of very talented artists. I loved ‘Industry’ by Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre at Polka Gallery. More recently at the Arles festival, I also loved ‘Tourisme de la Desolation’ by Ambroise Tezenas or North Korea by Alice Wielinga.
Projects that you are working on now and plans for the future?
LK: I will complete my project ‘Souvenir d’un Futur’ in the next few months in order to perhaps make a book out of it. I have also been working on a second series in the last two years, again related to big housing projects; I hope to be able to present it soon. And I am planning on starting a new project from 2016.
Try Hard Magazine is an independent, online publication focused on Australian and New Zealand photography. It is dedicated to showcasing the work of Australian photographers, New Zealand photographers and international photographers who may be living or working in either country. Try Hard Magazine also aims to encourage writers and academics to contribute original written content in the form of essays, interviews and book reviews that act to further the dialogue centered around the medium. Benjamin Chadbond and Patrick Mason are the editors.
You guys are eight issues in, can you tell me about your beginnings? How Try hard came about?
Patrick Mason (PM): Eight issues, that still surprises me; it’s gone quickly. Well firstly Ben and I are both from Newcastle but we didn’t actually meet until we were in Sydney. We both ended up working at the same bookshop and quickly bonded over our shared hometown and interest in photography. Working in a bookshop is an environment that is often conducive to long conversations and we regularly found ourselves talking at length about photography. Ben, bright spark that he is, had the idea to divert the energy of those conversations into something more productive and Try Hard Magazine is the result of that.
Screenshot interview with Trent Parke
Is there a story behind the name?
Benjamin Chadbond (BC): Not really. The name came at about the same time that we were first considering ideas of how the magazine would function and operate. It was the first name we had and came almost instinctively, it just happened to stick. The term try hard has a duel meaning that we both like. Commonly, the term is used as a self-deprecation or insult. That connotation seemed to sum-up the prevalence of Tall Poppy Syndrome in the Australian character. Taken literally it also seemed represent what we were about, our plight so-to-speak. For us, try hard was both a mantra and a put-down, that suited us.
Try Hard issues from #1 to #8
What I really like about Try Hard is that each issue is really well thought out and curated with a diverse range of content. Is this something you work on together or do you each take an issue? What are your processes when planning an issue e,g theme, what writers to ask, artists etc? Do you work on a submission basis etc
PM: Each issue is often a mix of intent, timing and goodwill. We usually have a kind of ‘wish list’ of contributors for an issue but it’s not based on anything as concrete as a theme; it’s more about who we think would compliment each other and who’s work we find interesting. However, the reality of things is that sometimes the timing of an issue doesn’t work for someone we had in mind and then we have to go back to the drawing board and start thinking of who else might work. We do take submissions and we have found some great writers and artists that way but to date the majority of our content has come from people we have contacted.
Do you have any plans to release Try Hard in a hard copy format or are you committed to keeping it as accessible as possible?
BC: We are asked this question a lot and that’s exactly our answer. We’re committed to keeping it as accessible as possible. Our current resources or lack thereof mean that the best place for us to continue to do that is online. There are a lot of cons for moving Try Hard Magazine into print. That’s not to say we’re not passionate about print. We are about to embark on a new venture under the title Try Hard Editions. There’s not a lot that we can tell you about that yet. But what I can say is that we will be publishing small run artist photobooks with Australian and New Zealand photographers. We hope to release the first edition in a couple of months.
You have done a few interviews outside of the magazine format but as Try Hard, do you have any more plans in the future for other Try Hard projects?
PM: One of the main reasons for starting Try Hard was to fill what we saw as a gap in the online representation of and discussion around Australian and New Zealand photographers, especially those who were in the early stages of their careers, and that’s what the focus of the magazine will continue to be. Saying that we are always interested in other opportunities that come from Try Hard and we have been lucky enough to have had the chance to work with a few international photographers we admire: Jason Fulford, Gregory Halpen, Ahndraya Parlato, Shane Lavalette and Esther Teichmann. Also as Ben mentioned we are currently starting a new publishing venture and have a few other projects in the works, without trying to sound too mysterious.
In your ideal world, where would you like to see Try Hard go?
BC: Already the project has far succeeded our expectations. We would be totally fulfilled if we were able to continue to work on these and new projects motivated by the initial aims of Try Hard. To be able contribute to a sense of community within the Australian photo world was one of our initial aspirations and aims when beginning the magazine. This is still very important to us and remains one of our driving forces.
If Try Hard had a soundtrack of at least 5 songs what would they be?
Can you tell me a little bit about your individual photographic practices or other solo projects?
BC: Currently I am working toward an exhibition of new work in Sydney with artist and good pal Kate Beckingham. The show is titled ‘New Ceremony’ and will open at First Draft Gallery in October. There are also a couple of shows in the works for early 2015. Perhaps I’ll post those on my website when I finally get my act together.
PM: My photographic practice has always been haphazard to say the least. At the moment I am in the process of building my own website, which involves taking seven years worth of said haphazard practice and trying to find a form for it that will offer a semblance of cohesion.
What is currently inspiring you both, whether that be photography, books, film or music?
BC&PM: We both take inspiration from the people around us and that we’re working with. Photography, books, film and music are really important to our daily lives and routine but there’s nothing like good conversation and collaboration.
