BY NICOLETTE KLERK
© Elspeth Diederix, ‘Straw’, 2014
Tell us about your approach to photography, how it started. What are your memories of your first shots?
Elspeth Diederix (ED) - When I was at high school and still living at home I had a darkroom in the garden shed. It was only light proof after dark. When the sun went down and the house was quiet I would walk through the garden to my darkroom. It was exciting and magical as everyone who has seen an image slowly appear on a white piece of paper knows well. The nighttime and the walk through a pitch-dark garden, which I also found a bit spooky, made it all so much more mysterious and memorable.
How did your research evolve with respect to those early days?
ED - My first passion definitely was photography though I found discouraging the technical aspect of it, it made me insecure. At the art academy painting came easy so I chose that direction. At the Rietveld academy, the painting department was actually a place where all art forms were welcome and maybe even stimulated. I tried it all: sculpture, installations, mixed media with embroidered charcoal drawings for example. I was inventive, experimental as you should be at an art academy. I would stamp poetry on trees, cut out airplanes from the leaves of the rhododendron shrubs. Things came together when I started photographing these installations I made in the park and when one of my teachers asked me why it was that I painted and I didn’t have the answer.
© Elspeth Diederix, ‘Yellowgem’, 2013 and ‘Orange Still Life’, 2014
I discovered there was so much more I could do with photography; it was not only about making portraits, it gave me such freedom and I didn’t need to be able to make the perfect black and white photograph with skillful shades of grey. Photography was playful and adventurous. I could make installations that in reality could not last very long but they would endure in a photograph. I could steer the viewers eye to see the ‘installation’ the way I would wish them to see it, with the right composition and the perfect background. I could work wherever I wished and use every and any material, objects and landscapes I liked. This was central in my rediscovered love for photography. All I needed was my camera and I could travel the world to make my work. Which is what I did.
Could you describe your personal research? Please tell us about your latest project and plans and needs for the future.
ED - There are a few different projects that I continuously work on. My still lifes; I have a huge fascination for the objects that surround us constantly, specifically those moments when everyday objects suddenly lose their veil of familiarity and become abstract. When the usual meaning that you give these objects is altered and for a split second you are able to see them in a different light. I used this moment in time as a starting point for my images.
© Elspeth Diederix, ‘Still Life Shell’, 2014
My blog: The Studio Garden, which I have been working on now for 5 years. It started when I moved into a new studio, which had a garden. Around that same time the second of my three daughters was born and the traveling and life of working as I knew it was not possible anymore. The garden became a place I could travel in. It was constantly transforming due to the seasons, the different plants and flowers I would grow. It was an ever changing landscape. It was a wonderful place to get lost in. There was no need for far away places because the garden was a world on its own.
The work I make in my garden is an experiment. I don’t have many preconceived plans; it is a playground. The blog is an online sketchbook of my photographs of the garden. The work is changing, evolving. When I started I would make little plant and flower sculptures. It is now becoming more photographic in the sense that I don’t always feel compelled to change things about what I am photographing. I also make portraits of the garden as it is. This would not have occurred to me years ago.
© Elspeth Diederix, ‘Ursinum & Canasta’, 2015
The third project that has my heart is my underwater work. The underwater world is a fascinating and mysterious world; an unknown place where we don’t actually belong. Every time I am able to dive and breathe underwater is a miraculously inexplicable and special experience for me. This work is connected to the other two projects. It is akin to the still lifes in the sense that I work with the familiar suddenly becoming unfamiliar. Underwater it is the other way around. You enter an atmosphere that is not related to anything you know. It is a world of shapes and textures, a world of colour. You are literally submerged in abstraction. The relation with the work I make in ‘The Studio Garden’ is of course more obvious: they are both personal portrayals of the natural world.
I have been using a digital camera since 2009 and this has slowly changed the way I work. I am able to avoid the technical aspect that has always daunted me with working with an analogue camera. I can immediately see what happens to the light on my camera display screen and adjust it straight away. I feel more in control. The digital camera has really opened up the world of photography for me. It fits very well into my way of working and I don’t have to worry if I use the light meter in the correct way or if the x rays at the airport destroyed my film or not. When there is space, I feel less apprehension.
© Elspeth Diederix, on going Underwater works, 2015
My work now is leaning towards a crossover between painting and photography whereas before it sometimes seemed more of a blending between sculpture and photography. Instead of interfering with the actual landscape my work focuses more on light, colour and composition, especially with the underwater work where colour plays such an important role. Underwater the representation of colour is still somewhat undefined as it can go in any direction without it seeming unnatural. I love working on the photographs postproduction where it feels like I can paint the image.
My needs for the future are the time to be able to fully concentrate on my work without the distractions and obligations of daily life. Traveling comes closest to satisfy this wish.
Is there any contemporary artist or photographer, even if young and emerging, who influenced you in a way?
ED - During my early days of exploration of photography I was very drawn to the work of Cecil Beaton. I can still relate to his work today. His photographs are not always technically perfect but they are so energetic. In his works with the decors and backgrounds it was as if sculpture, painting and photography came together.
I don’t look at photography that much now. I gravitate towards painting. At the moment I am very much inspired by the work of Odilon Redon, especially his pastels. His use of colour is magnificent. It is so vivid and the combinations are incredible, almost like seeing new colours that you never imagined before.
Also the work of the 17th century painter Adriaen Coorte is important to me; beautiful small still life paintings of shells and fruit that seem to emanate light, very delicate and beautiful compositions.
© Adriaen Coorte, ‘Gooseberries on a Table’, 1701
Do you create preferably an effusive, artificial reality shown as meticulous attention to detail?
ED - I need you to believe in the image I create and it is not important if it was constructed or not. It needs to feel true.
You seem intuitive to be able to do a quick first scan of images which ends up in a firm selection: ‘a work’ or ’ a ‘very pretty picture’. Are you in retrospect, ever been too strict, too selective? How is that expressed?
ED - Sometimes I look back at my unselected works hoping to find a little pearl that I overlooked. It hardly ever happens. I still feel the same about the images. I have a love for very exact compositions and the image needs to have a little extra magic that draws you in.
What about making an installation of images under commission in a space of 600m3? What are your considerations, choices.
ED - With my own work? In the past I have created a wallpaper made up of all my sketch photographs as a backdrop for the final work. It was quite full but the amount of images gave an idea of the energy behind the works. I would need to know more about the space to be able to say anything about my choices.
© Elspeth Diederix, on going Underwater works, 2015
Today you showed me new work that blew me away and criticized my way of abstract thinking. Besides creating new work as an artist, you are capturing our Dutch ‘underwater heritage’ and retouching it with precision which leads to new Dutch mastery. How does this new work refer to the work you made ten years ago, ‘Selvatica Plastica’, a site specific work in the tunnel under the Central Station in Apeldoorn and to ‘The Studio Garden’, your blog?
ED - In my new work, I am trying to show the beauty and magic of what I see around me like I did ten years ago, but I am less inclined to add things to an image. Now I feel I can show it by using composition, light and working with the post production.
I hope soon we will be able to see these great new works.