To the post-perestroika generation, Russian youngsters born between 1986 to 1996, Hong Kong is a city of dream. That may be an overstatement even for the most optimistic Hong Kongers, but for young Russians who have lived through a rather turbulent history throughout their childhood, Hong Kong offers a taste of luxurious lifestyle that would not be otherwise possible in their home country.
Perestroika, meaning ‘restructuring’ in Russian, is a political and economic reform in Soviet Union in 1980s, which some argue, leads to the dissolution of USSR. The new generation born during this period were torn between two opposing sets of values. On one hand, they are told about the fleeting glory of the bygone world superpower and its communist value by their elders; on the other, the access to american TV drama and movies such as 91210 has introduced (or rather misinformed) to the impressionable youngsters a glamorous and rebellious lifestyle of the western world. The conflict of the two extremes has created a huge desire for teens to flee their country, go abroad to pursue a ‘better’ life. The demand for white models in Hong Kong, has given these kids exactly the playgrounds they crave.
While many asian models is getting international attention in the increasingly diverse modelling industry, pale-skinned and slender figure is still considered the embodiment of beauty, and the norm for high fashion campaigns in many asian cities like Hong Kong. Lacking local talents, many modelling agencies has no choice but to hire models from overseas. Among them, Russians and young east europeans are the most sought after, probably because of both their geographical proximity to Asia and their relatively low salary. And because local modelling agencies has few to choose from, the admission process is much easier for these models. The competition that they face is also considerably less fierce than in fashion hubs like New York, London or Milan. These has made Hong Kong an ideal location for young Russians who wish to flee their country, or just simply want to take a break from their ordinary life to try their luck in the coastal city of China. “About 70% of models who come to HK from abroad are not professional models. There are people who are just going through this stage in their lives when they know they are pretty enough to model in Asia, and they hope that this might become their ticket out of their country.” Photographer Polina Shubkina told me.
During her years pursuing MFA in SCAD Hong Kong, Polina met her schoolmates from Ural State Academy of Architecture and Arts, Kesha, who was modelling in Hong Kong. Coming from the same region and speaking the same language, the two quickly got acquainted. The male model brought her to a party at the Play Club, which organises free drinks to models and opened her to the underside of the modelling world, rarely known to laymen like us. For a year since then, she has picked up her camera and started documenting the life around her and the models, photographing anything from a night-out at a glamorous party to depressing moments at home. They are amateur models who have a successful career. They are not as ambitious as their counterparts from the west. And they are probably as confused about their jobs as does any outsiders of the industry. Through prolonged shooting, Polina was able to understand more about their choices to leave their home and work abroad as a model.
In her artist statement, she said:
«My primary focus was the outside of the club environment; I was curious what do they do when they are not at work or the party. It was rather challenging to photograph girls, a lot harder than guys. I guess every photographer who works with a documentary about any community of people is trying to take off the masks from his or her subjects. I have to tell you that with some of my subjects, the mask was a second nature that replaced everything else.
I stopped working on this project after eleven months because of the fact that most of the guys I was following around left Hong Kong. Not to mention how unhealthy it was to go out, at least, four times per week. It is still a big mystery to me how they can eat McDonalds, drink all possible liquors, have a minimal amount of sleep and remain skinny and more importantly, stay alive.
During my time with them, I heard all kinds of stories about how they came into the profession. The majority of models who come to HK from abroad are not professional models. There are people who are just going through this stage in their lives when they know they are pretty enough to model in Asia, and they hope that this might become their ticket out of their country. However, most of them have to leave after the end of six months contract.
While I was working on these series, I had an intense feeling of alienation. I could see how they only have each other, the intricate interlacement of their lives. I figured that even though, they all were physically in Hong Kong with a desire to flee Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Lithuania, they, perhaps unintentionally, built their own little “USSR” under the roof of this club.
It is a lot easier to think about this “HK Russian Speaking Models Phenomena” now. I remember being very unnecessarily judgemental back then. Now, a few years later, after reflecting on this work for a while, I relate to my subjects more than ever. We were born during “Perestroika” and were growing up in great uncertainty. We grew up watching cheap movies from the West and hear stories from parents and grandparents about the life in the country that no longer exists. It seems that the party-animal lifestyle that most newly-arrived models automatically pursue is an act of teenage rebellion.»
In the beginning of November I had this conversation with Filip Dujardin, one of Belgians most talented artists influenced by architecture and photography. We mainly talked about his art and influences and I’m ver happy to say I will exhibit together with Filip and others during February in the Brussels parliament.
Filip Dujardin: For me everything started when I studied art history at the university of Ghent. I already had an interest in architecture and so I wrote a thesis on Jan-Albert de Bondt and his technique of the Amsterdam School.
After my studies I applied for a job at a museum, to no avail, and eventually ended up studying photography in evening studies at the Academy in Ghent. In the beginning it was mostly a search for my own style. There I enjoyed a rather broad exposure but primarily I took interest in Carl de Keyzer and also the Becherschule with its business-like style; analytical, which is characteristic to them but also something that is present in my own work.
I have wandered many paths, including work as a photo reporter and as a darkroom assistant, but eventually I ended up in architectural photography. After my graduation I collaborated with colleague photographer Frederik Vercruysse, who shared my interest in architecture.
After almost ten years of architectural photography I gradually got the feeling that I wanted to manipulate my images to a greater extent and as a result I started to research the mechanics of imagery, how imagery works and how it communicates. I learned this solely by being engaged with and aware of the status of my work in the discourse of architecture, how the work was used and communicated, what the rules of architecture are and the various ways to capture architecture. The ‘clear line’ of Hergé comes to mind in which depth of focus is set to infinity.
I always make the connection between my fictitious work and my architecture, seeing as there actually isn’t much difference and you are constantly dealing with the manipulation of reality. A frame is actually very binding. You set a passe-partout around your subject, so to speak, but you can be in a thousand places to capture an image. The fact that you chase that specific place determines a lot. You can tell a story in a sequence but also in a single image.
You can exclude or include things to create a second or third layer to your image. I found this mechanism to be very interesting and wanted to reinforce this in some way. I prefer to call this style sculptural, as it did not stem directly from architecture but rather from a non-functional object.
The coast we see here was very iconic in French history. If you look at the paintings from the 19th century, you will notice that this subject frequently recurs. I arrived at this subject because ‘Deauville’ invited me to do something with the subject of romantic coastlines and so I got to work with the typical Normandy truss-style which you can recognise by the graphic use of wood and the regular recurrence of black and white planks. I cite this image now, as it is on its own, a controversy. Most likely the beach is not a building site or at least it shouldn’t be. What we see here is the desire to be near to water. Something we see repeatedly along the Belgian coast for example. They are also not designer buildings, though they might look somewhat futuristic at times, there is always something archaic about them, which I find interesting. At a glance they look to be technologically advanced buildings but up close you can see that they are clearly low-tech.
This image was taken at the Esplanade square in Brussels. A number of windows were broken. I then used this as a foundation to further enhance the aesthetics of the broken façade by additional manipulation of the image. The manner in which the building degrades and the whole aesthetic of it has a somewhat Messianic quality.
But not all of my images are a critique. Most just offer commentary on certain aspects of architecture. Sometimes they are a mild comment and sometimes they are quite resolute about the way architecture is composed like a sculpture or object in space by emphasising certain archetypes. I then take another picture of this, so it actually becomes a reproduction from which an image is created that can stand on its own. In this way the structures all but disappear and all that remains is the image. So what then is the status of that image?
My initial goal of a work is always to build something that will continue to exist. In that sense you can describe me as photographer or a visual artist. Given that being a visual artist is actually quite comprehensive, this sometimes stirs up some confusion, however the approach I take is really quite unique. Though most people know me as a photographer, it’s interesting that these days people more often see me building. I take a preparation or a plan as a starting point and then it’s basically an execution. There may be a lot of work involved for just one picture.
For a while I owned a gallery in San Francisco but it no longer exists, in the sense that it is no longer a space as such. However in that time a number of interesting contacts were made, including the San Francisco and New York MoMa, who both bought an image, as well as the Metropolitan. That last image was taken up in the permanent collection after being used in an exposition concerning digital photographic manipulation. The interesting thing about that last sale was that it was purchased not solely by the photography department but by the architectural department as well, which I thought was great, seeing as the image was being appreciated not only for the architecture but also for its photographic qualities. In principle it is believed that because it involves the depiction of a building, it must fall under the category of architecture. In my eyes however, it’s more than that. It’s a photographic image that represents architecture or sculptural work.
In the end I think I want to make the point that though my work may not necessarily be accessible, I long to go beyond the purely photographical constraints. If you have a powerful concept, photography can sometimes become a burden and the finishing a problem. An image must be perfect down to the smallest details. You must be patient to minimise mistakes so as not to fall through, and sometimes that means a lot of hard work.
If you create an image, what is it that you show, in what context and how does this relate to your doctrine? For me it’s important to question the medium. What does photography come down to? I show pictures but I see them more as constructed images, composed images or a collage so to speak, which, according to definition, is not photography. It is not my intention to dissect this academically because it is a very intuitive process based on trial and error. It is the layers of perspective I find interesting. That at first glance confusion ensues but that upon closer inspection this is nullified and something else takes its place, some sort of experience.
This article was made with the collaboration of Sebastiaan Franco, Sophia Marmelstein and Heleen De Boever
The large complex of buildings making up the rice-husking factory – constructed in 1898 in San Sabba on the outskirts of Trieste – was first used by the German forces of occupation as a temporary prison camp for the detention of Italian servicemen captured after 8th September 1943. It was designated Stalag 339. In late October it was converted into a Polizeihaftlager (Police internment camp) to be used for the transit of deportees bound for Germany and Poland, for the storage of confiscated property and for the internment and execution of hostages, partisans, political prisoners and Jews. In the underground entry passage the first room on the left was known as the ”death cell”. In it were kept internees transported from prisons or captured in round-ups and earmarked for execution and cremation within a few hours. According to eye-witness accounts new arrivals in the cell often found themselves in the company of bodies awaiting cremation.
On the left side of the ground floor of the three-storey building housing the dressmaking and shoe-making shops where prisoners worked and quarters for the SS officers and other ranks, were 17 mini-cells used for the detention of up to six inmates each. These were set aside mainly for partisans, political prisoners and Jews scheduled for execution in the space of a few days, or sometimes weeks. The first two cells were used for torture or the collection of property confiscated from the prisoners. The articles found there included thousands of identity papers taken from prisoners, deportees and individuals sent for forced labour. (All the papers, collected by the Yugoslav troops who were the first to enter the Risiera after the Germans fled, were tranferred to Ljubljana, where they are at present kept in the Archive of the Slovenian Republic). The doors and walls of these ante-chambers of death were covered with graffiti. The occupation of the site by Allied troops, its subsequent conversion into a camp for Italian and non-Italian refugees, damp, dust and – above all – human neglect led to the disappearance of most of the graffiti. The diaries of the scholar and collector, Diego de Henriquez (which are now conserved in the Civic Museum of War and Peace that bears his name) provide evidence of this and contain an accurate transcription. Several pages of this diary are reproduced in the historical exhibition.
Graffiti on the cell of the Risiera.
The next building, four storeys high, was made up of large rooms used for the detention of Jews, other civilian prisoners and prisoners-of-war destined for the most part to be deported to Germany – men and women of all ages, children and babies of just a few months. From here they were transported to Dachau, Auschwitz and Mauthausen. Only a few were able to avoid the tragic fate that awaited them. The Bishop of Trieste, Monsignor Santin, attempted to intercede with the German authorities on behalf of certain individuals imprisoned in the Risiera – particularly Jews who were married to Catholics. In some cases he was successful (Giani Stuparich and his family were released), in others (Pia Rimini) he was not. In the inner courtyard, opposite the cells, on the site now marked by a metal plate, was the building housing the oven in which bodies were cremated – its outline is still visible on the main building. The oven, built below ground level, was reached by means of a stair. An underground passage, now also marked by the metal plate, joined the oven to the chimney stack. The base of the chimney is now the metal base of a symbolic Pietà composed of three metal sheets representing the smoke spiralling out of the stack.
After using the existing rice-drying facility from January to March 1944 the Germans converted it into a crematorium capable of incinerating a larger number of bodies. The plan was drawn up by the ”expert” Erwin Lambert, who had already designed a number of ovens for concentration camps in Poland. It was tested out on 4th April 1944 with the cremation of the bodies of seventy hostages, shot the day before at the Opicina shooting range. On the night of 29th April 1945 the building housing the crematorium and the chimney stack connected to it were dynamited by the fleeing Germans to remove the evidence of their crimes, as was their practice. Human bones and ashes were found among the rubble in three paper sacks of the sort used for cement. The club was also found amid the rubble and a replica of this object, made and donated by Giuseppe Novelli in 2000, is now on display in the Museum (the original was stolen in 1981).
A group of SS soldiers in Poland, among them several staff members from the Sobibor extermination camp. Erwin Lambert (on the left).
There are several theories about the methods of execution used, and all of them are probably right: gassing in specially-equipped vehicles, a blow with a club at the base of the skull, shooting. A single blow from a club was not always fatal, so some of the people swallowed by the oven must have been alive. The revving of engines, the baying of deliberately-excited dogs and the playing of music served to smother the screams and the noises of the executions. The central building, six storeys high, was used as a barracks: on the upper floors were quarters for German, Austrian, Ukrainian and Italian SS troops (the Italians were employed as guards), while the lower floor, now the Museum, housed the kitchens and mess. The building which is now a chapel for all religions was used as a garage for the SS vehicles stationed there. It also contained the black vans, with exhausts connected to the inside, probably used for gassing some of the inmates. The small building outside the complex on the left was the guardhouse and Commandant’s quarters. On the right, in what is now a green area, was a three-storey building with offices, NCOs’ quarters and accommodation for the Ukrainian women. How many people were done to death in the Risiera? Estimates based on eye-witness accounts range from three to five thousand. But a much greater number of prisoners or people taken in roundups passed through there for transportation to other concentration camps or forced labour camps. Triestini, Friulani, Istrians, Slovenes, Croats, servicemen, Jews – some of the finest cadres of the Resistance and the anti-Fascist movement burned in the Risiera.
The Litorale Adriatico
After 8th September 1943, when the Italian king disavowed his country’s alliance with Germany and an armistice was proclaimed, the Region of Venezia Giulia was no longer part of the Italian State. With the constitution of the operational zone called ”Adriatisches Küstenland” (Adriatic Coastal Area – Litorale Adriatico) it came under the direct administration of the Reich. The institution of the ”Litorale Adriatico”, comprising the provinces of Udine, Trieste, Gorizia, Pola (now Pula), Fiume (Rijeka) and Lubiana (Ljubljana), thus marked the de facto annexation to Germany of a broad area straddling the Upper Adriatic and the Sava basin. Hitler entrusted the government of the ”Litorale” to Gauleiter of Carinthia Friedrich Rainer, an Austrian Nazi with an intense dislike for Italy. His ethnic assessment of Friuli and Venezia Giulia was that these two Regions were largely alien to the Italian race, which constituted an additional justification for their separation from the rest of Italy. On 1st October 1943 High Commissioner Rainer took office with full political and administrative powers. He quickly established the nerve centres of his almost unlimited sovereignty by subjecting prefects and local authorities to the supervision of German ”advisers” and laying down rules for the employment of militias composed of local collaborators – Italian, Slovene and Croat – which, for various purposes and under various names, were placed in the service of the occupying power.
The units of the Fascist Militia thus came under the aegis of the SS. They did not, as was the case in the newly-constituted Republic of Salò, become the National Republican Guard, but took the name Territorial Defence Militia. The various branches of the police, all of which were used in searches and round-ups, also came under the SS. One of these was the Special Inspectorate of the Venezia Giulia State Police, headed by Inspector General Giuseppe Gueli, whose headquarters were in a house known as ”Villa Triste” (Sad Villa) on via Bellosguardo. This body was founded in April 1942 with the specific task of repressing partisan operations and controlling workers in large factories. The Inspectorate – whose operational section became notorious as the “Collotti Band” (after its head, Commissioner Gaetano Collotti) – continued service after 8th September, giving invaluable collaboration to the Germans in operations against anti-Fascists and in rounding up Jews.
Mussolini speech in Piazza dell'Unità at Trieste, 1938
In the late 1930s there were about 5,000 Jews in Trieste. In 1938, when the Fascists introduced race legislation and one of the notorious ”Centres for the Study of the Jewish Question” was opened in Trieste (there were four in Italy), many Jews decided to leave the country. Nonetheless, the Nazis managed to deport more than 700 Trieste Jews to extermination camps. No more than twenty returned. The Risiera was also used for the detention, pending deportation, of many more Jews captured in Veneto, Friuli, Fiume and Dalmatia. Policing, political and racist repression and anti-partisan operations were under the general control of the SS, commanded by Trieste-born Odilo Lotario Globocnik. An associate of Heinrich Himmler, Globocnik had been involved in organising ”Aktion Reinhard”, the massacre of two and a half million Jews in Poland. With him he brought to Trieste a large number of experienced killers who had distinguished records from various extermination operations in Germany, the Soviet Union and the German death camps in occupied Poland at Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka. They included the 92 specialists of Einsatzkommando Reinhard, many of whom were Ukrainian SS troops, male and female. Einsatzgruppen or Einsatzkommandos were special units created for the purpose of ”dealing with elements hostile to the Reich behind the front-line troops” and carrying out particularly ”demanding” tasks in the implementation of the policies of occupation, repression and extermination practised by the Third Reich in the territories it had conquered. These units were under the authority of the Central State Security Office (Reichssicherheitshauptamt – RSHA) which in turn was controlled by the Ministry of the Interior, headed by Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler.
A few days after 8th September 1943 Christian Wirth arrived in Trieste. With him were some of the men who had taken part in ”Aktion Tiergarten 4” – the liquidation, started in 1939, of Germans suffering from ”incurable diseases” and, subsequently, of concentration camp inmates designated as ”incurable” on bogus certificates made out by camp doctors. Einsatzkommando Reinhard was divided into three geographical areas, the headquarters for each of which was officially denoted with a variation of the letter R – R1 for Trieste, R2 for Udine and R3 for Fiume. This letter was embossed on papers found in the Risiera and was stamped on the cells there. Christian Wirth was in charge of the first Einsatzkommando in Trieste. After his death in a partisan ambush at Erpelle on 26th May 1944 he was replaced by August Dietrich Allers. Allers’ righthand man and Commandant of the Risiera was Joseph Oberhauser. The presence in the Litorale Adriatico of a staff so highly specialised in the direction and organisation of extermination policies in Europe is explained by the vital importance of the area for the Third Reich.
The Litorale was the last territory in Europe to be conquered by Nazi imperialism. Friuli, Trieste and Istria were to be an economic and political platform for German expansion in southern Europe and the Mediterranean area. At the same time they constituted an essential strategic fulcrum between the Balkans, convulsed by the partisan war and threatened by the advance of the Red Army, the Italian front and southern Germany. The course of the war in Europe and the heroic fight put up by the peoples living side by side in the area finally forced the machine of Nazi repression to abandon its last territorial conquest.
The Trial
In Trieste in April 1976, thirty years after the events outlined above, the trial was completed of those responsible for the crimes committed at the Risiera di San Sabba under the German occupation. Among the accused were two Nazis – Joseph Oberhauser, a brewer from Munich, and August Dietrich Allers, a lawyer from Hamburg. The former was Commandant of the Risiera, the latter his immediate superior during the period of “Aktion Tiergarten 4”, the ”euthanasia” operation carried out on mentally and physically handicapped people in Germany and Austria. By the time this operation was suspended following the courageous protests raised by German churchmen, approximately 100,000 ”unproductive mouths” had been liquidated in the name of ”racial hygiene” (these figures were cited at the Nuremburg War Crimes Trials). The Tiergarten 4 staff was subsequently transferred to Poland, where it organised the extermination camps at Treblinka, Sobibor and Belzec as part of the ”final solution” to the Jewish question.
Tiergartenstraße 4 Berlin. T4 was the codename for the villa at Tiergartenstr. 4 where the murder programmes were planned and organized from 1940 onwards.
Official Polish estimates – and they are the most conservative – put the number of Jews killed in these camps at about two and half million and the number of gypsies at 52,000 (of which about a third were children). When their work in Poland was completed these men were sent to Italy and stationed in Trieste. Among them was Franz Stangl, the ”Hangman of Treblinka”, held responsible by a German court for the death of 900,000 people, and Erwin Lambert, the specialist in crematorium design.
None of the defendants was present at the trial held to establish responsibility for the crimes perpetrated at the Risiera di San Sabba. Several had been executed by partisans, others had died of natural causes. August Dietrich Allers died in March 1975; Joseph Oberhauser continued to sell beer in Munich. The Italian authorities did not request his extradition since the Italo-German extradition treaty does not cover crimes committed before 1948. The trial ended with Joseph Oberhauser being sentenced to life imprisonment for his crimes. He died on 22nd November 1979 at the age of 65.
The Nazi war criminal Josef Oberhauser on trial. Photographed in Munich (Muenchen) in January 1965.
A pointless trial? Aside from the original framework of the proceedings, based on a preposterous distinction between ”innocent victims” and ”non-innocent victims”, aside from a formalism designed to dissociate the crimes from their historical and political roots and aside from a sentence which was never served, there remains the breach that was finally made in the cloak of silence that had covered the concentration camp of San Sabba for over thirty years.
Simon Wiesenthal, a Jew who has devoted his life to exposing Nazi crimes and hunting down their perpetrators, said of the trial, ”There is not only a need for justice, it is also a question of education. Everybody should know that crimes like these do not disappear from memory, they are not statute-barred. Anybody thinking of starting up a new Nazi or Fascist movement should know that in the end justice will always win. Even though the wheels of justice turn slowly”.
Tell us about your approach to photography. How would you describe your personal research in general?
Tine Guns (TG): My personal research in general has a lot to do with creating art that has variable interpretations. I see my images as fragments with which I create stories or make associations. They are organic like a growing plant, or interchangeable like jigsaw pieces. I usually work towards exhibitions, this allows me to follow my current mood and let chance interfere. The combination of the images is as important to me as their relation to the exhibition space.
It’s kind of funny, but before I created art through photography, people used to ask me what my work was about and not what my approach was towards the medium I used. Even if it mainly consisted of video and film, which also ‘steals’ fragments of reality through a lens. What I’m trying to say is that I have a feeling that photography still needs to prove itself as an art form. But it simply is, isn’t it? Photography is a form of art, like any other medium. And I like to use different mediums to tell my story.
When I was in Art school this was the most normal thing to do. We had projects where painters worked together with graphic designers, photographers, video artists, and sculptors. We’re the generation of “in-between” artists. We create art in between mediums, in between techniques. Maybe that also corresponds with my approach to life and to art: being in the middle of things. For me life is too complex to capture in one single way. Or perhaps I’m just too easily distracted and like to view things from different perspectives. Although, I have to admit, I’m jealous of people who can commit themselves to one specific thing and true craftsmanship.
How did your research evolve in time? Starting from your first shots to your current work?
TG: Initially I started photographing because at a certain point photo cameras were the best to shoot videos. This had an influence on a lot of things. Many filmmakers started taking pictures and photographers started making videos. This was a very interesting period, actually. It reminds me of cinema’s early days, during which the interference of these two mediums led to beautiful things.
Secondly, curator/photographer Peter Waterschoot asked me to join a photography group exhibition he organised. I really had some nice talks with him. Moreover, it triggered me to search for a means by which I could create a fluid type of art with still images.
Tell us about your latest project ‘Amoureux Solitaire’
TG: I always loved artist books, so when I was searching for ways to edit photography, I started working with photo books. ‘Amoureux Solitaire’ inspired me to investigate the link between photography and cinema in a photography book. Now I’m currently doing research into diverse sequencing methods for future works.
At the moment, I’m working on my next exhibition in Netwerk Aalst about the use of masks and carnival strategies in protest culture. It deals with rituals and history. More specifically, it’s about repeating images, and hiding parts of them as well as changing their interpretation. The show will open in January. It will consist of a video installation and photographic work. Hopefully by the time of the finissage, I can show the avant-première of my film ‘To Each His Own Mask’.
Is there any contemporary artist or photographer, even if young and emerging, who influenced you in some way?
TG: I always loved the films of David Lynch, Andrei Tarkovsky, Derek Jarman, Harmony Korine, and Jean-Luc Godard. I also find paintings very inspiring. Carravagio, Goya, and the Flemish Primitives are among my favourites. I like to look at them with an open mind. Intentionally, I want to forget the art history classes that discussed their symbolism. Rather, I make up new stories, as if they were pieces of a puzzle.
The first time I had an experience that came close to the ‘Stendhal syndrome’, was when I entered the Goya room at the Prado museum. I was really overwhelmed by the incredible intense and insane power of this room. I really needed a break after seeing Goya’s black paintings. Too much going on inside my head. Bosch had too wait a little. I bought a biography of Goya in an attempt to understand, or grasp, the moment which led the artist to making these crazy mural paintings.
My friend, Matthieu Ronsse, is the most interesting contemporary painter in my opinion. Another young photographer worth mentioning is my other friend and Tiff colleague, Thomas Vandenberghe. They both are very true to themselves and I like this kind of honesty. For me this is more inspiring than a plausible story or a strategy that works.
Also, at the Book Case Study in Den Haag, I had a chat with Nadine Stijns. I like the way she uses the exhibition space. Actually, I’ve seen a lot of refreshing work in this gallery.
Three books of photography that you recommend?
TG: I chose these 3 books because I think they’re edited interestingly. 1. ‘Voyeur’ by Hans Peter Feldmann. 2. Number 2 actually contains two books, but since they’re from the same publisher Akina Books, they are both my number 2: ‘Linger’ by Daisuke Yokota and ‘Italia O Italia’ by Frederico Clavarino.
‘Linger’ by Daisuke Yokota, published by Akina Books. LINGER is part of the TEIKAI trilogy. About the trilogy: the kanji writing of TEIKAI has many meanings. One of the them is “to linger”, to stay a bit longer. Another meaning is: to wander at midnight. When taken out of context there’s no way to tell which is the intended meaning, starting from this ambiguity of language and word Daisuke Yokota’s started working on the TEIKAI trilogy, currently a work in progress. There’s no way to know where this midnight wandering will lead. [Source Akina Books]
3. ‘Painting Photography Film’ by László Moholy-Nagy.
Bauhaus artist László Moholy-Nagy wrote Painting Photography Film in 1925 as a polemic to supplant painting, an individualistic art form, with the creative use of new visual media—such as photography and film—that corresponded to the globally networked and mechanically powered modern world. Moholy’s book was reprinted in English in 1969, at a time when his terrific optimism had given way to widespread suspicion regarding public uses of media technology. Nevertheless, his address of painting through photography and film was revived in the Conceptual era to a remarkable degree, as the works in this section of the exhibition demonstrate with references that stretch from René Magritte and Piet Mondrian to Lorenzo Lotto and Paolo Uccello. Such works—even those made on canvas—did not extend or replace painting so much as they created analogies for painting in a new, post-medium domain. In Giulio Paolini’s Young Man Watching Lorenzo Lotto, a photographic reproduction of Lotto’s portrait of a youth is to the original as Paolini is to the Renaissance master: a distanced and reflective observer. Other works that follow demonstrate similar relationships with the media of cinema—"This is not a film,“ Marcel Broodthaers declared of his multimedia installation The Crow and the Fox, paraphrasing Magritte—and photography. [Source Art Institute of Chicago]
Can I add some bonus books?
‘4x4′ by Richard Prince. This book is the first artist book I bought and inspired me a lot.
And finally, these 4 books because I recently ordered them in one package. When I opened the parcel, I loved the way their covers matched. And beside that, they’re just 4 amazing books. ‘Prophet’ by Geert Goiris, ‘The Bungalow’ by Anouk Kruithof, ‘Will They Sing Like Raindrops Or Leave Me Thirsty’ by Max Pinckers, ‘Palimpsest’ by Sébastien Capouet.
Is there any show you’ve seen recently that you find inspiring?
TG: One of the best shows I saw recently, was ‘Of Spirits and Empty Space’ by Joachim Koester. I think he is an amazing artist. And also Pierre Huyghe’s exhibition in Centre Pompidou.
How do you see the future of photography evolve in general? And where do you place yourself in this future?
Tell me how did you get into photography? What are your memories of your first shots?
Oded Balilty (OD): I started photographing in high school when I studied art and the history of art, as well as the basics of photography. I remember the first shot that I ever took was of the corridor in my school. I was very surprised that everyone in the class took the same photo but each one was different. I then realized that you could have many different looks from the same place. That’s what keeps me photographing today. Sometimes I like to surprise others, but mainly I like to surprise myself.
How has your experience as a photojournalist evolved? What are the moments in your career that you feel are most important?
OB: As a photojournalist, every day I meet different scenes, different people, different stories and different photographers. I’m always in a process of learning and photojournalism is a world that is always developing. Both technically and aesthetically, as well as the mode of storytelling and the way you find those stories. It’s constantly changing. I always feel like I am gambling. In photojournalism, there are many times that I find myself with other photographers at events. I don’t like being where everyone else is because I like to show a different angle. The moments that I feel are very important to me are the ones that, at the end of the day, I felt that I had made the right decision. For me, photography is made up of many decisions, especially in photojournalism when you are not allowed to touch, stage, or manipulate in any way. You need to follow the photojournalism ethics and all that is left for you to do is make decisions.
The list of awards you have achieved in recent years is truly remarkable. The Pulitzer Prize is certainly an important recognition. Tell us about that photograph?
OB: The evacuation of the Amona outpost was in January 2006 after the disengagement from Gaza and Northern Samaria in the summer of 2005. The settlers felt that they didn’t resist enough during the previous disengagements so thousands came to the evacuation of Amona to try to block the police and army from evacuating the outpost, which was only 9 houses next to the settlement of Amona. It was very violent, which it hadn’t been during the previous summer.
We were 3 AP photographers there and we worked as a team. We separated into 3 different posts in the outpost so that we wouldn’t have similar photos and so, as a team, we could cover the story with a wider range. And there was one moment when the center of the event was happening and all the photographers ran to that spot and myself as well. I saw another AP photographer there so I decided that it was not smart to have two photographers for the same agency at the same spot because we might miss a moment in another area. So I left that spot even though it was the most interesting scene at that moment and went to the other side of the outpost. There, I saw a lot of riot police marching in lines into the outpost from the other side. And I saw, from the other side, one very anxious girl. Suddenly she started to run toward the police and she ran straight into their shields. And that was when I took the photo.
In recent years there has been a lot of talk about the truth of photojournalism. Manipulated and faked images have been the focus of criticism and debate. What do you think about it?
OB: When I started photojournalism, the first thing that I learned is not to manipulate, stage, or change the natural scene. For me, these things are like the bible and the biggest challenge in photojournalism is just to take yourself somewhere and tell the story with your eyes. As I always say, my favorite movies and books are those based on true stories because I don’t think that there is anything more creative than reality. Our job is to tell the story, not create it.
The constant technological development and the explosion of images through the Internet are two issues that affect the panorama of photography. What is your personal impression on the future prospects of this medium, especially for those willing to devote their time to tell stories about what is happening in the world.
OB: I find it interesting that more people are taking pictures today. It doesn’t matter with which format. Once there are more people who are taking pictures, there are also more photography consumers. Cameras and technology are just a tool that each one of us can use to show our perspective of society and the environment around us. I believe that there will always be a difference between professional and amateur photography. I don’t think the amount of people taking pictures will change photography.
In some of your works you make specific use of the portrait. As in ‘The Forgotten Jewish Veterans’, or ‘The Stone Throwers’. Both of these series are effective in focusing the attention of the viewer on a precise question. What led you to favor this more staged looking and setting, very different from classic photographic reportage?
OB: When I shoot portraits, it’s more about the person. But through the person, I am telling their stories. I don’t see it as staged photography or that I changed the reality. I wanted to tell the general story through the individuals. These two stories have been told in many different ways so I tried to show something different because the stories are very important. My job is to keep the eyes of the viewers with stories that have been told so many times in many different ways so I did it in a different way.
Needless to say, when it comes to Israel to prevail in public opinion is often the rough and approximate imagery transmitted by the international media. As an Israeli and a photographer what it meant for you, in your daily work.
OB: From the outside, people only see this place as a conflict zone but there is normal life here as well. And I wish that the top stories in our newspapers were that the fire department helped a cat get of a tree like in some other countries. But that is not our reality. Many times I try to show the daily lives and stories here that are not related to the conflict to put some balance.
How do you combine your work as a photojournalist with your personal research? What kind of dialogue exists between these forms of experience?
OB: Many times I feel like I am two different photographers. My personal photography is like therapy. And the big difference for me is when I shoot personal stories, I am telling my story through many different objects. In photojournalism, I am telling other people’s stories. I don’t think I could choose only one kind of photography. I think they influence each other and one cannot exist without the other.
OB: In this project, I connected, literally, to my roots and the roots of my photography. I was looking back to why I started photographing, which is because I love to travel around, to show the beauty of the simplicity in the things that are right in front of us and which we often forget. It has also connected me to my roots as an Israeli. I’ve been working for AP, which is an international news outlet, for almost 15 years and I am always looking at what is outside. Every time that there was a war, conflict or any major disaster, my instinct was to run over there and I tended to forget about myself here. Through this project I began to look right outside my backyard and not investigate but rather work around one very specific object. That has connected me to myself and myself as a photographer.
It also talks about how Israelis have forgotten about the real sabra and their roots and behavior. As a child, I always saw Israelis as unique for this reason. In the last 10 years, or maybe since growing up and understanding life here as I mature, I see that there is more of an Americanization and we have forgotten the sabra. It’s a very personal project but I think it can speak to every Israeli that was born here and is a real sabra. It is also for the next generations, those who don’t really know the sabra. They know the plants and the fruits but they don’t know the real, deep meaning of it. They know that sabras mean someone that was born in Israel. But the sabras I know were the generation before me, the people who actually built this country. Without them, we wouldn’t be here.
David Campany (born 8 October 1967) is a British writer, curator, artist and teacher, working mainly with photography. Campany has written and edited books; contributed essays and reviews to other books, journals, magazines and websites; curated photography exhibitions; given public lectures, talks and conference papers; had exhibitions of his own work; been a jury member for photography awards; and teaches photographic theory and practice at the University of Westminster, London. Campany’s books have won the Kraszna-Krausz Foundation Book Award, Infinity Award from the International Center of Photography, Silver Award from Deutscher Fotobuchpreis and the J Dudley Johnston Award from the Royal Photographic Society. Campany is co-founder and co-editor of PA magazine which has been published since 2008.
Tell us about your approach to photography. How it all started?
David Campany (DC): The start? Around the age of ten I got interested in other people’s family albums and in cinema. Family albums were fascinating because of how ingrained photography is into our understanding of ourselves, I guess. Cinema was my gateway to ideas, to other aesthetic realms. Put those two together and you have the familiar made strange and the strange made familiar. That’s a rich mix.
I expected photography to be a quick passion that burned out, but I’m still interested. I think this is because photography is not really, or not only, a specialism. Yes, it’s a ‘medium’ of a kind but to be interested in photography is to be interested in all of its possible uses and subject matter. At least, that’s how it is for me. Photography is a passport to so many things: art, design, politics, history, fashion, architecture, anthropology, sociology, medicine, conflict and so forth.
How did you first get into curating exhibitions?
DC: It was only a few years ago. In 2010 I got three offers to curate, or co-curate, exhibitions. The British artist Hannah Collins invited me to organize a big show of her work that toured Spain. The Jerwood Space in London gave me carte blanche. I made an exhibition about the different ways photography can express or respond to locations. That show was titled ‘This Must be the Place’, with work by nine contemporary artists. And Diane Dufour asked me to work with her on the inaugural show at Le Bal in Paris. Together we made ‘Anonymes: L'amérique sans nom: photographie et cinema’. In each of these three show there was still photography, single images, sequences of images, books, magazines and projected films. I like to use the space of exhibition to bring together work made for different platforms – wall, page, screen.
Being a curator, you must meet lots of interesting photographers and become involved in lots of exciting projects! What has been the highlight of your career as a curator so far?
DC: Recently Le Bal asked me for my ‘dream show’. Well, you shouldn’t really do your dream show (that would be like discussing your dreams in public). But for a long while I had been thinking about one photograph, ‘Élevage de poussière’, made in 1920 by Man Ray and Marcel Duchamp. I came to feel it was a sort of secret key to the last century. A very risky idea, I know, but I thought it might make for an original show, and one that comes close to my own thinking about images, which tends to be a mix of the analytical and the intuitive. Le Bal likes risky ideas so they let me go ahead. Titled ‘Dust’, the show takes in many things: military aerial photography, forensics, postcards and press photos of dust storms in American, the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, conceptual art, abstract paintings, and many more things. In the weeks before it opened I was quite worried about how the show would be perceived. I didn’t want it to feel like an indulgence, or a vanity project. But in general the public and the press have been extremely positive. The catalogue has nearly sold out and I get emails almost every day – everyone from school children and Phd students to artists and art historians – telling me they got something from it. Some speak about the show in very emotional terms (the melancholic poetry of it), others offer me their own very sophisticated readings. So that’s been a real highlight for me.
When you curate an exhibition, how do you select the images to include?
DC: It’s a very slow process. Often there are key images. For example with ‘Anonymes’ they were Jeff Wall’s 2002 image ‘Men Waiting’ and Walker Evans’s 1946 Fortune magazine piece ‘Labor Anonymous’. I wanted to have those two works in the same exhibition space, in close proximity. A huge tableau photograph made for the gallery and an old magazine spread, both dealing with exactly the same subject matter (the daily work of anonymous citizens). Other images followed from that. Works are chosen with the exhibition space in mind. An exhibition is not a catalogue. An exhibition needs to work as an embodied experience. I think that very often curators of photography exhibitions forget this, and shows end up feeling like catalogues on the wall. I think also that many contemporary shows of photography are too big. I like to work with just two or three rooms. Photographs demand a lot from us: they have a profound effect on our nervous systems, even if we’re only looking at them for a few seconds. Despite that fact that we might live our lives surrounded by photographs, we cannot look at many and keep our concentration.
Have all these years of being involved in photography, on so many levels, changed your way of seeing the world?
DC: I like the appearance of the world and I always have. Light falling on things, or on places. Gestures. Chance configurations. Perspectives. Points of view. I’m happiest sitting on a street looking, looking, looking. I’m sure photography has had some effect on how I look at things that but I would like to think it was the other way around, that enjoying the appearances of the world somehow predisposed me towards photography.
When do you think it’s important to tell the story of a photograph: the context in which it was made, the photographer’s relationship to the subject and his or her perspective? Is it always important?
DC: That has to be taken on a case-by-case basis. Context is interesting because photography exists in so many contexts and its meaning can be shaped so much by its context. Recently I curated a show of Walker Evans’ magazine work, which is touring at the moment. Evans understood context so carefully. None of his images for magazines mean much if you take them off the pages for which they were intended – his editing, his layouts, the texts he wrote to go with them.
Intentions? In general I’d say I’m never that interested in knowing photographers’ intentions. I rarely trust photographers’ accounts of their own work and I am never interested in relating to a photograph through guessing intentions. And I’m enough of a ‘post-structuralist’ to be interested in the idea that meaning lies more in the destination of the image (you and me) than in its origin (the photographer).
Is there any contemporary artist, photographer or writer, even if young and emerging, who influenced you in some way?
I am sure there are plenty but I can’t name names. If influences really are influences, we often don’t know what effect they are having on us, and those effects might be quite delayed. I am suspicious when people talk confidently about their recent influences. I suspect those are mere infatuations.
Three books of photography that you recommend?
DC: Recently I reread Max Kozloff’s ‘Photography and Fascination’. It was published in 1979. Kozloff’s writing is intelligent and elegant. That’s a rare combination. Someone should re-issue that book. Victor Burgin’s ‘The Remembered Film’ is more rewarding each time I read it. I found Sally Mann’s recent memoir ‘Hold Still’ very compelling, even though I am not such a fan of her photographs.
Is there any show you’ve seen recently that you find inspiring?
DC: Late last year Pace/MacGill in New York paired Lee Friedlander’s photographs of tangled trees with drawings by Pierre Bonnard: a small, humble but very rewarding exhibition.
DC: A book about the exhibiting of photography. A philosophical history of photography told through one hundred photographs. And I’m touring a show inspired by my book ‘Road Trips: Voyages photographiques à travers l’Amérique’.
How do you see photography evolving in the next decade, particularly in the light of new digital developments and the Internet?
Editors “An End Has a Start”, 2007 Kitchenware Records
After the successful debut of ‘The Black Room’, the Liverpool band’s sequel came with the expected ‘An End Has a Start’. Personally not one of my favorite bands, with too predictable sounds often modeled on the radio rock sound of bands like Coldplay, Snow Patrol, U2, Interpol and the other numerous heirs of the English new wave, influenced mainly by Joy Division and by Echo And The Bunnymen. An album without special flashes or brilliant insights, however well-played, well-produced and capable of alternating catchy rock songs with slow and melancholic ballads.
The cover image, a gasholder recomposed by digitally superimposing other layers of the same image in sequence, is by the hand of Idris Khan, a British artist of Pakistani origin. Khan obtained an MA at the Royal College of Art in London in 2004; Despite his young age - Khan was born in Birmingham in 1978 - the author has exposed among others at Taidehalli and the Kunsthalle in Helsinki, at the Musée de l'Elysée in Switzerland, the Victoria Miro and the Saatchi gallery in London, the K20 in Dusseldorf, the Gothenburg Konsthall in Sweden and at the MoMA in San Francisco.
Idris Khan makes his works by overlaying images representing the same object in a path where the original object’s aura and his artistic intervention compare semantically and echo each other constantly. In this citationist game, expertly balanced between past and present, the author’s cultural awareness becomes apparent as it slowly reveals the influence of the new German objectivity: Karl Blossfeldt, August Sander and Albert Renger-Patzsch, and Bernd and Hilla Becher.
Starting from the inventories of anonymous architectures and the conceptual serialism of the types well-known to the Germans spouses, Khan, through digital reworking, changes opacity and transparency of the various layers of the image. He uses photography as a citational medium, in which the citations are part of a larger, intellectual and cognitive process. As a result,the final overall image appears more and more mysterious. Khan’s images work on an axis from the rigor of a teutonic visual grammar to the recomposition of floating and moving images.
‘Until Proven Otherwise/ On the Evidence of the First Photos’ is an exhibition of a research that has allowed you to interact with archives, curators and institutions. How did the idea occur to you to do a project on “First Photos”?
Francesca Seravalle (FS): Everything started with a simple question that occurred to me while I was looking up pictures for different researches on Google image: “What was the first photo uploaded on the internet?”. Hence I started my research of First Photos (from 1820 up until today) focusing on 4 trails: photographic inventions, scientific and technological discoveries, historic happenings and first sights of nature. I was excited by the unveiling of a lot of unknown photography that has been ignored by books on the history of photography. Their esthetic amazed me: I imagined what kind of effect they must have had on the people who saw them for the first time. Since then I have found a lot of First Photos. I noticed that research on the internet has its limits and that it is not entirely reliable. I therefore sought to compare the sources and their authors by expanding my research to books in order to prove their authenticity. Nonetheless, I’ve also been able to identify mistakes in traditional manuals of the history of photography. These are a result of historians basing their research on that of others and thus not being able to personally verify the sources. For example, there is still an inaccurate attribution of the invention of the word photography: it isn’t the Englishman Herschel but Hercules Florence, a Frenchman who was settled in Brazil.
‘Until Proven Otherwise’, are images that immediately have a true process of “authenticity”. Could you talk about the stages and the dynamics of acquiring proof?
FS: I started by means of constructing a list of the technological photographic processes. Moreover, I tried to contact all the inventors available who could give me proof of authenticity to ask information on the picture in question (the first Photoshop, the first PNG, the first screenshot, etc…). This is how I learned that a lot of information found for example on Wikipedia and in the papers is wrong, such as the first photo to emerge on the Web.
On the other hand I have contacted curators, museums and institutes spread across the continents (the Senior Curator of the V&A, the National Media Museum, the Institute Lumière, the Societé Française de la Photographie, the Talbot Museum, the Getty Institute, the George Eastman Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Archive of Modern Conflict, the Franklin Institute, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, etc…) to acquire proof and to ask for help in regard to certain researches. Whenever possible I have done research in their private archives to accumulate unpublished material and to discover new First Photos.
I’ve started to gather and verify the stories behind every First Photo which revealed to me that even the most famous ones have reliable and proven stories which haven’t been told in the books on the history of photography. Like the mosaic of Ravenna being the source of inspiration for the pixel. Or “Boulevard du Temple” of Daguerre, one of the historically most famous photographs of the first photographed person: It was part of a triptych donated to the prince of Munich from Bavaria which was relocated during the Second World War as a security measure to a “location protected from potential bombardments”. This, however, did not prove to be a suitable atmosphere. The triptych turned black and the restorer who attempted to intervene only caused more damage. Luckily, Getty preserves an analogue daguerreotype copy, since Newhall had asked one for the publication of his book on the history of photography. This case proves to be only one of many (There is also that one of the view of the rooftops by Niépce for example) where the copy becomes important and a unicum replaces the original.
Boulevard du Temple, Paris, 3rd arrondissement, Daguerreotype. Believed to be the earliest photograph showing a living person. It is a view of a busy street, but because the exposure time was at least ten minutes the moving traffic left no trace. Only the two men near the bottom left corner, one apparently having his boots polished by the other, stayed in one place long enough to be visible. Note that, as with most daguerreotypes, the image is a mirror image.
This is a project of great importance, also from a historic point of view. According to you, how come many of these images have not been mentioned in books on the history of photography up until now?
FS: When I showed my research to a lot of curators and museum directors, it came to my attention that only a few knew the images, in the same respect that the history of photography (same as the history of art) is the history of the authors, not the technicians or inventors. We all live in a digital world and see pixels daily on our cell phones, on our camera and on our computer. No one knows, however, that Pixel stands for “Picture element”. Nor do they know its inventor, Russel Kirsch, or why he chose to give that particular structure to the pixel and why it was invented in 1957. Even though I’ve had an education in the history of art, the history of technology provokes an immense intellectual and esthetic fascination in me. Probably because I chose Ando Gilardi as professor, whose assistant I was for a short period.
I noticed how the history of the process of technology engages with a wider audience than photography enthusiasts and professionals: anyone is interested in seeing the first photograph made with a cell phone, the first photograph of Earth, the first photograph published in a paper, the first one with pixels, the first Polaroid or the first photograph made of Italy.
My aim is to liberate photographs such as those of Niépce and Daguerre of an existence as pictures in books on history of photography that are smothered under the weight of the text. No one lingers on these images while they still have a lot to say.
That’s why I’ve decided to take them to the streets and show them to non-experts. Next to the fact that the correlation between the high use of images in our society in regard to the ignorance of the history of photography is astonishing to me. Most people use a self-taught language without knowing its history. While anyone knows the name of Michelangelo and Raffaello or Picasso, few would be capable to give a name of a photographer, whichever one.
Could you explain how the first photos are always representatives of their time? What link is there between the photographer and its subject? Could one, in addition, find an esthetic connection between all those photographs, other than the fact that they are “First Photos”?
FS: During the preparation of the exhibition’s layout for the FORMAT International Photography Festival (UK), where I won the first price, the Paul Hill Award, and while I was designing the rendering of the walls, the showcases and the study tables, I realized how there could be esthetic connections between all those first photographs. I’ve developed esthetic theories in semantic groups and worked on texts that could clarify the comprehension while being minimally graphical and strongly conceptual.
I was reading an article in an American magazine Aperture where they had compared two first photos (Niépce and the one on the Web), which stated that the first photos did not have a subject nor an esthetic interest. I have consulted the archive of images that I’ve gathered up until now and started to theorize on the esthetic connections between them. This is how I discovered that there are in fact connections between the photographed subject and the inventor. A test shot of a photographic device focuses generally on something that the inventor has an intimate relationship with. It demonstrates a documentation of everyday life: the subjects consist of wives, children and the interior or views from their house or studio, if it even wasn’t themselves or their hand. They have an authentic relationship with their time. Like our family photo albums, they lack a “glamour” filter. However, in case of an invention regarding a new development in technique of color, the subjects often are landscapes or leaves, seeing that these provide a more visible display of color.
I noticed that some photographs that documented historical moments for the first time are either very raw, such as the first photographs of a concentration camp that surfaced clandestinely showing the horror of whom had taken them, or very difficult to read; the first photograph of the earth taken by a satellite: unrecognizable! At any rate, the first photos have first and foremost the revelational ability of being unique and of recording a first experience in history.
You have decided to introduce your project at an exhibition by the end of September in Bari, near Planar, in the open air around the city. Could you talk to us about the transition from the research to the exposition? How did the idea of the exhibition evolve?
FS: When in Bari the Planar association invited me to do the exhibition, I thought about doing it on the territory. I proposed shutters that could interact with the urban pattern of Bari. There is an assembly of architectural photographers, such as Antonio Ottomanelli who is the founder of Planar, and also of landscape photographers connected to Planar. Linking this knowledge to Bari being a city with a marvelous urban structure and architecture, I envisioned the exhibition as an adjustment to the streets of Bari by means of a proper Urban Intervention and by creating itineraries of an open-air museum. This does not entail the mere enlargement of a photo glued at the side of the street but I tried to create a trompe-l'oeil of continuity between photography and architecture, images and city landscapes.
With this operation the project has obtained a particular value because never before has my intent of bringing images of public domain to the general public been materialized.
The desired interaction with the city and its inhabitants has undeniably been an interesting element. Was the choice for Bari characterized by motives based on the city planning, the architecture or the landscape?
FS: Initially I “lived on Google maps” for a while, searching for streets and buildings that inspired me and which could be suited for this kind of operation. The people of Planar (Antonio Ottomanelli, Anna Vasta, Francesco Stelitano e LetiziaTrulli) proposed a neighborhood where their “quartiere Libertà” is located. The area is very interesting because it’s an abandoned Old town where all the stores are now closed considering that the concentration of activities moved to the big commercial centers outside town life. I was interested in creating an operation in an area that has directly been affected by gentrification, bringing “the history of photography” to the streets and exhibiting it in a lively and well-known neighborhood. I was also a little tired of the usual photography circles (the Milanese, those from London and from Paris, in the end they remain “circles”) and personal projects. I was intrigued by the search for a different audience. Also because as a curator I always think of how the “people” perceive the work, if it’s enjoyable etc… I tried to operate in a way that didn’t use a lot of ideas but clear and big ones. Simplicity, the effectiveness and the dialogue with the outside environment - eliminating every redundant aspect - were the foundations of my work. With the triptychs and diptychs that animate the itinerary through the streets, I sought to reflect the effect that many images had had on me.
Have you had any peculiar reactions to the billposting of certain images around the city? Could you reveal some to us?
FS: I have curated exhibitions at Foam, at The Photographers Gallery, at MART and at other museums where the photos are protected from the judgment and reactions from people. I have noticed, however, that the streets are an interesting and fertile scene where the public truly reacts without any inhibitions.
During the operation of the posting, the immediate connection with people was very compelling: little old men who explained to me how to better apply the glue, a little girl who gave me flowers, a man who offered me his ladder, storekeepers who asked me to include their shutters, people who thanked me. It was truly a beautiful human experience. Also, something I have never seen in my life: a photograph (one of Jesus Christ) has received in ex voto two paintings of Madonna. I had never expected that much interaction with people on the streets. Furthermore, the poster of Muybridge depicting the first kiss photographed in sequence has been torn up twice: the first time at the hour of the inauguration, for which we had done a pasting performance during the tour, and the second time the day after that, probably because it portrays two naked women kissing. Nevertheless, that act of tearing up has been an important social reaction for me and it has shown me a demonstration of how strong that image and the context still is.
The most interesting aspect is that with this urban operation a photograph “comes back to life” after 150 years. It is given meaning again because in the streets it acquires a different value. The context of the streets is a context in motion where all the contemporary debates merge. When a work enters a museum, it loses its “scuff marks” of contemporaneity. It arrives in an atemporal seal. Besides, in Italy, the street is still unmistakably a meeting place and a place of exchange, reflecting the contrasts of today’s society. The photo wouldn’t have had the same effect in a museum. The street is a sensitive, living and fertile environment.
‘Until Proven Otherwise / On the Evidence of the First Photos’ is an ongoing project. How will it evolve?
FS: At the moment, the project is undergoing a digression into a new project called ‘Everything has its first time’ where the obsession with the First engages other media and inventions. For example, now, I’m focusing on the first times in cinema. From that experience emerged the video ‘Secret Communication’ that has been selected by Photo50 “Feminine Masculine”, the exhibition curated by Federica Chiocchetti for the London Art Fair. With ‘Secret Communication’ I pay homage to Hedy Lemarr, an actress (who has performed the first female orgasm in the history of cinema) and the inventor of the “Secret Communication System” (the prototype of wifi that was created to interfere with the launch of Nazi torpedoes). I also pay homage to the non verbal communication between men and women, to the aggravation created by the film ‘Ecstasy’ where the video is a clip from, to the auditory interference of the first attempts to record sound (1850-1857) which have only been recently deciphered. For the first time I didn’t stop at operating graphically but I was also involved in the synchronizing of Matchy’s cinematic work with the audio of Edouard-Léon Scott de Martinville (the first guitar chord, the first recorded voice etc..). Those recordings prior to those of Edison have only recently been discovered by the First Sound Organization. The problem is that those first seven years of recording attempts only resulted in interferences. The messages were unintelligible. Thus, the recordings were not officially recognized. I wanted to insert them into the video of Matchy, because the recognition of their interference would confirm their existence (Disturbo Ergo Sum), even if their message isn’t apprehensible. This is my homage to the beauty of failure and the imperfection of first attempts, to the uniqueness and their necessity in the process of research.
The project can be viewed on its website. Could you imagine your performance in book form?
FS: There is still a lot of work in terms of creating a book. There are over 150 images and the majority are public domain by law or are World Heritage, such as the images of scientific discoveries. The real problem, however, is to find the time to write and to provide documentary evidence for the 150 images while continuing the investigations with the inventors. More than one publishing house would be interested in the book but I still have to continue the research. I would certainly like to free the photographs from the weight of history and text. Seeing that I have always been agonized by the didactic relationship of the images with the texts provided in books on the history of photography, I would give them an esthetic independence. In the meantime I continue to post articles on the blog.
In the world of art today, the roles and boundaries between the artist and the curator, before well established, are becoming more obscure. How do you see yourself in regard to your project?
FS: I always consider myself a curator and researcher first. It isn’t my intention to define myself as an artist. Also because, in reference to an artistic research, one is more indulgent and can be more personal than with a historical research.
However, I don’t believe that conflicts exist between the researcher, the curator and the artist, especially not with my work method as a curator or, more precisely, as artist development. In my work process I’m interested in discovering new talent and in working together towards a realization of projects by means of a process of maieutics and self-awareness of one’s stylistic identity. In this process I participate by stimulating the artist to do research and experiments or by establishing artistic parallels and reflections. I curate the project for about two to three years, from the beginning to the end of the production and promotion of the book and the exhibitions. Naturally, I do this only for projects I’m “committed to intellectually and artistically”, such as was the case with Dalston Anatomy by Lorenzo Vitturi (SpBH) and Alex & Me by James Pfaff (now on print by Montanari).
Lorenzo Vitturi on Dalston Anatomy, an exhibition at The Photographers’ Gallery
With ‘Until Proven Otherwise’ I managed to merge the different professional personas that I have developed during the last ten years into one unique figure: archivist, researcher, curator, writer and producer. This work in progress is an experiment that, for the first time, has allowed me to produce and realize a project that has been mine from start to finish. Whereas before I have always collaborated with other artists.
I worked with a shortage of the original and made its limits work to my advantage. I can assure that seeing large posters of portraits originated by the daguerreotype, instead of small and precious originals, helps the public to relate to it with more ease. Furthermore, I’ve noticed that, by eliminating the corporeality of the original, you can guide the interest towards the composition and the graphics of the image. Ultimately, after the research, I used the photographs as graphic elements to support my esthetic theories.
Tell us about your approach to photography. How it all started? What are your memories of your first shots? / How did your interest in photography come about?
Eva Vermandel (EV): You could say I was born with a camera, because my father had a great interest in photography and since I was often his subject, photography was part of my life from the very start. Later on when I was old enough to hold a camera, my father would occasionally let me use his camera to take one single frame. Back in those days everything was on film and it was expensive, you couldn’t just shoot away as you do now with a digital camera.
When I was a bit older, in my early teens, he’d let me borrow his camera to shoot a whole roll of film. One of the first shoots that I remember doing was a black and white one and there are quite a few shots in there that completely fit with the work I’m doing now. Obviously they are not as sophisticated but they have the same atmosphere about them.
Despite this early introduction to photography, I didn’t study it. I went to art college doing graphic design instead. This was because I’d already done a four-year evening course in graphic design at the part time art college of my hometown Sint-Niklaas. How I fell into doing that evening course is quite a significant story: as a teenager my parents and teachers all pushed me into doing a sciences/mathematics degree course at secondary school, because I was ‘clever’, disregarding the fact that my main passion and the subject I excelled at was art. Doing this course made me feel desperately unhappy. I needed art and there was nil art in the schedule. To compensate for this lack in art subjects at day school, my parents recommended me to do the evening course in graphic design and that’s how I ended up doing that for four years, very enthusiastically. Regardless of that, I still switched from the science/mathematics degree course to human sciences/art within a week of starting secondary school, because I was going slightly mad doing it. It was an intense period that first week at school, it made me realise how essential art is for me. Without it I can barely function.
Once I left secondary school, it made sense to continue with graphic design in higher education, I didn’t give it that much thought. While doing that course, I soon realised that photography was really my vocation. I spent the final year of my graphic design course mostly in the photography department where one of the tutors generously taught me how to do C-type prints (colour dark room prints).
After you graduated at the Royal Academy of Arts in Ghent (KASK), you set out and moved to London. In the years that followed, you received international recognition for portraying celebrities such as Elton John, PJ Harvey, Tom Waits, Nick Cave, Ian McKellen, Matt Damon, Ewan McGregor, … and the list goes on. Is this an exciting experience as a photographer?
EV: Well, I really hate the word celebrity. A ‘celebrity’ to me is someone who is solely famous for the sake of being famous. I’m a portrait photographer and a lot of the people I shoot may be famous but they are famous for a good reason: they’re talented actors, writers, musicians, artists, and they’re definitely not in it for the fame. I’m not interested in people who are desperate to be famous. It’s exciting to meet people whose work I admire, like Joanna Newsom, Polly Harvey, Ian McKellen, David Byrne or Sylvie Guillem, but it’s also nice to meet people I’ve never heard of and have a peek into their lives, it’s all very enriching. I love the psychology behind portrait photography: the way I can dive into someone’s head when I’m photographing them. I also like the fact that I shoot at all kinds of locations. I usually have no control over where I’ll be photographing someone and enjoy improvising on the spot. Sometimes it is in people’s homes, other times in a hotel room during a press junket (which are days of back-to-back interviews and photo sessions to promote a film or new album). The latter can be rather challenging: people tend to be jet lagged and exhausted and I enjoy trying to find ways to shake them out of their zombie-state.
At what point in life did you feel the need to focus on a more personal kind of photography? How did you approach this?
EV: By 2003 I had a good enough grip on portrait photography to feel comfortable whenever I went into a shoot and needed new challenges, because I don’t want to get too comfortable, it kills creativity. I also struggled with being thrown about a lot, having little control over my life as a freelancer: you can go from being very busy to having nothing to do. Getting a phone call in the morning saying you’re off to New York that evening is as destabilizing, as it is exciting, but it means you’ve got little control over your life. Alongside that, I felt that within portrait photography the focus was always on the person you were photographing, while there were certain things I needed to express about myself and the intense change the world was going through with the onset of globalisation and digitalisation. The latter caused a lot of fragmentation in life and changed our ways of thinking.
So I started shooting my own projects, focusing on counteracting this sense of fragmentation by finding a sense of rooting, the diametric opposite of the disposability that comes hand in hand with the hyper-capitalist consumer culture we live in. I travelled across the world to visit the friends I’d made over the years, spending time with them and documenting this with my camera. This body of work is called ‘The Inner Room’ and was shot with a Fuji 6x9. On the back of that, I got the commission from the Douglas Hyde Gallery to shoot ‘Alabama Chrome’ (2006), which also dealt with the hyper capitalist society and the impact of the Celtic Tiger when it was at its peak. That same year I started working on ‘Splinter’, one of the key series of photographs I’ve produced. That’s when I started my search for the linear way of processing thoughts and ideas, in opposition to the modular way information is being processed now. I continued working on ‘Splinter’ for another six years until 2012 and in 2013 I published the book on this series with Hatje Cantz.
In ‘Splinter’, portraiture quietly intertwines with unanimated still life and landscape. How would you describe the relationship between objects as part of an environment and the people living in it?
EV: There’s no portraiture in ‘Splinter’. Everything you ‘see’ in Splinter is secondary to the thoughts behind the work. Whether it is people, objects or landscapes, they are all just vessels to transfer the ideas behind the work that I’m bringing across. It’s about the emotional impact of the photograph, not what’s actually on display.
In capturing those serene moments in between everyday preoccupations, your images often evoke a kind of deep stillness and serenity that is mostly associated with painting. In what way do you feel a resemblance to this medium?
EV: I’m much more influenced by painting than photography. I’m not a big fan of photography to be honest, I find it often too focused on the surface – surface as in: ‘what is perceived by the eye’. I’m not interested in a body of work that you can explain in one simple sentence, for instance, ‘teenage girls in their bedrooms’ or ‘rundown seaside towns’. It can be a strong body of work, I don’t want to be disparaging about it, but it’s not what I want to see in an exhibition. If I go to a gallery I want to be challenged and I want to see work that is multi-layered, so I can take my time peeling off the different layers and along the way immerse myself into the work and through it gain insights into my life and the world around me.
I think all art should be a reflection of its time and the era we live in is turbulent to say the least. The extreme shift in thinking that came with the onset of digitalisation is at the core of what I explore in my work. Doing this through photography can be challenging: it’s quite an inflexible medium. A medium like painting gives you more freedom to express the emotional core of what you perceive with your eyes. Cutting through this ‘what is there to see’ and focusing on ‘what is there to feel and think’ lies at the heart of my work. I often feel like a painter disguised as a photographer.
Are there contemporary artists or photographers that have influenced you in some way?
EV: Yes, there are loads. There is Michaël Borremans, whose influence is visible quite clearly in my work, but I also love Neo Rauch, Miroslaw Balka, Lindsay Seers, Alice Neel and Peter Doig, though I’m not overly keen on the work the latter has produced since he moved to Trinidad. When talking about contemporary photographers, I find the work of Wolfgang Tillmans incredibly strong and inspiring. Whenever I go to one of his shows I come out and see the world afresh again.
In terms of the classics, I’m influenced by the work of Bronzino, which you can see in my portraits. I love the Flemish Primitives and the German and Italian early renaissance (Cranach, Paolo Uccello), and 19th century European painters like Ingres, the Danish painter Christen Købke and Courbet. I love Munch as well, Picasso in his blue and rose period, Matisse, Balthus … there are so many. I also like Corneille de Lyon, a Dutch Renaissance painter who did these beautiful small portraits. Stunning work, it’s just endless. In photography, I love Julia Margaret Cameron, Imogen Cunningham and Francesca Woodman, not so coincidentally all women. I think photography as a medium works very well for women because as a woman you’re a lot less intimidating when you walk around with a camera than as a man. I think it is a huge advantage being a female photographer.
What are some of the techniques you use to improve the aesthetic quality of a photograph? How big a role does altering images with Photoshop software play in the process of creation and how does this relate to the aesthetics of your work?
EV: In terms of the overall colour palette it is all very subtle, I don’t do major things: the key lies in the way I use film and how I expose it. I don’t like digital cameras so I don’t use them as a primary source to shoot the work with. That said, I’m not at all averse to digital as a medium for printing; I scan negatives and output them as inkjet prints, treating them as ink-on-paper, more akin to etching than photographic printing. I keep firm control over the whole printing process as I’ve always done all my own printing, either in the dark room or as scans from negative. And if you work with scans from negative, you get an even greater control on dodging and burning and colour correcting than in the dark room. I also have no problem whatsoever with cloning bits out of a photograph that shouldn’t be there. I’m absolutely no purist in that way – I’m not a documentary photographer.
For ‘Splinter’, and for most of my other work within my art practice, I use inkjet as a medium for printing. With its similarity to classic printmaking it suits my work more than C-types. The printing for ‘Splinter’ was rather complicated because the work is dark and the inkjet technique was still in its early stages when I started producing the prints. Translating an image from screen to paper is not straightforward: you go from a lightbox with endless colour options to a limited colour palette as ink on opaque paper - building the right colour profiles was key to this. Also, I often print on Photo Rag paper and any kind of scratch on it ruins the print. But once safe behind glass they look wonderful and provide the perfect colour palette and texture for my work (for the ‘Splinter’ series anyway, I use other papers for other bodies of work).
What do you think about photography in the era of digital and social networking? How do you see the future of photography evolve?
EV: On the one hand, I really like it that people have the possibility now to display their work freely, that you don’t need a gallery anymore. Everyone can build their own website and promote their work online. The internet is a great research tool (if used critically). On the other hand I very much distrust social media and digital corporations like Google. These companies offer ‘free’ services so they can gather our personal information and with this information turn us into ‘consumer groups’, commodities, as interchangeable and disposable as the products they try to flog us.
People tend to say that with the overload of images it is hard to see the wood through the trees but I disagree with that. We’ve been overloaded with images for years, even before the onset of digitalisation, and I think it is actually much easier now to spot good work, because as soon as you see something good it just jumps out through the fog of crap.
I don’t know how the future of photography will evolve long term. The thing I hope is that Kodak keeps producing film and Portra 800 in particular, because that is the one I use. If they don’t, I might even pack up completely, because film is absolutely vital for me.
But for now, I think we’re pretty safe and film will continue to be produced, because there has been a massive resurge in film recently. People are starting to realise more and more that digital is just shit, especially in most daylight situations. Even if you are using a Phase One or a Hasselblad digital camera, the top end cameras, the result is still nowhere near the quality you get with film. In some situations, like studio photography, it can work fine because you’ve got good control over the lights, but as soon as you are using daylight, problems like chromatic aberration arise, and you also get horrid artificial reds, greens and blues that are impossible to tone down in post-production. In ten, twenty years time we will be looking back on digital photography produced now and we’ll wonder how on earth we accepted that level of quality. So until there are better quality digital cameras, I’m firmly sticking to film.
What are the projects that you are working on now and do you have any plans for the future?
EV: I just finished a major project for the Sydney festival, which went up in January this year. They got in touch with me last year (2015) to ask if I could do 40 portraits of people who collaborated with the festival over its 40-year history. They gave me a wishlist of 120 potential subjects to choose from. Half of them were people based in Australia and that part of the project was going to be organised by the festival team. The other half was based in other parts of the world and I did all the production (making initial contact, organising a place and time for the shoot if they said yes and booking my travel) as well as the photography. I had four months for the whole project, including post-production (handprinting in the colour dark room, overviewing the reprographics and checking proofs), from June till October. Everything went swimmingly and we got access to high profile artists like Robert Wilson, Sylvie Guillem, David Byrne and Joanna Newsom.
When the Sydney Festival director first approached me about this project, I was very interested in doing it, but also quite vocal about my reservations of showing portraits of famous people in an exhibition context, due to my dislike of the ‘Madame Tussauds’- style famous people voyeurism. To counteract that they came up with the idea of showing the portraits on billboard posters, which I loved right away. It fits completely in my way of thinking: alongside the democracy of showing work this way, keeping it firmly down to earth, it also created a striking contrast between my portraits, stripped back from all artifice, and the ads for high end perfumes etc. that normally grace these sites.
I’ve also been shooting new work continuously. I’ve got two major bodies of work that are virtually ready to go up but I’m waiting for the right situation to show the work in. One of these projects is shot on a 35mm point and shoot camera and is much more classically ‘photographic’ than anything I’ve done before. It doesn’t have the painterly quality that defines my other work. In that project I’m doing things I shouldn’t be doing technically, like using a flash in situations where you shouldn’t. It’s not on my website yet, because it’s a project that I want to show installed in an exhibition. The other new body of work I’ve produced is on display on my website and is more in line with ‘Splinter’. It’s called ‘Water’ which is short for ‘We stood with the light with water on our faces’, a line taken from the novel ‘The White Peacock’ by D.H. Lawrence, who has been a strong influence on my work. I can’t stop reading and rereading his work. What he expresses through literature is exactly what I want to express through my art.
