Between Myth and Reality : James Dobson on Locust Years

 
 
 
 

“For deep time is measured in units that humble the human instant: millennia, epochs and aeons, instead of minutes, months and years. Deep time is kept by rock, ice, stalactites, seabed sediments and the drift of tectonic plates. Seen in deep time, things come alive that seemed inert. New responsibilities declare themselves. Ice breathes. Rock has tides. Mountains rise and fall. We live on a restless Earth". 


Interview by Tom Skinner

TS: Viewing the images in Locust Years, I'm reminded of the above excerpt from Robert Macfarlane's Underland, A Deep Time Journey. Particularly the images of eroded sandstone and a thatched cottage, seemingly ready to be reclaimed by the landscape. How has making this project shaped your view of our relationship with the land?  

JD: Making this work I’ve been thinking a lot about entanglements of nature and culture, the patchwork of field, wood and village that define popular notions of rural England, forming the backbone to the national myth of a green and pleasant land. At the heart of this supposed harmony between humans and nature, is the idea of ‘timelessness’, the idea that things haven’t changed since a time beyond memory; how is it that this narrative has endured considering the disaster of habitat destruction and species extinction currently unfolding across the country? So I’ve been exploring how to address this abrupt disjuncture between the myth and the reality. What would it mean to reimagine the ‘timelessness’ of rural architecture, in relation to the glacial pace involved in the construction of a wood ant nest, for example, or the geological time inhabited by sandstone, the subterranean chronologies of fungi or the latent profile of a bronze age ring fort in a crop-mark. There’s a kind of eeriness in those confluences of temporal spaces that interests me, that seems to me to chime with the silent and invisible eviction of wildlife from the countryside - a spectral but ever present feature of any interaction with these landscapes in the current moment.  

TS: Within your images, architectural forms are explored in relation to a somewhat hostile landscape, what drew you to southern England to make this work?  

JD: I live, walk and photograph the landscape here, on the edge of the South Downs. My relationship to the place changed through walking it. I began enchanted by a landscape that superficially resembled a Samuel Palmer painting, and slowly became aware of the ancestral wealth, power and private property that are central to its history. The ways in which pasts inhabit the present moment in our experience of landscape, seem to me very pronounced here, in particular the fraught histories of enclosure and ecological destruction, or the obscene amounts of accumulated wealth that funded the building of parklands, the remnants of these practices are encoded in the land but exist alongside isolated pockets of profound beauty. There’s almost a conspiracy of silence around these facts, that manifests itself in notions of a Deep England, a kind of collective delusion - it’s this unsettling facade masking the tensions between nature and culture, and a compulsion to find some visual articulation of it, that has been the driving factor behind the work. 

TS: Thatched cottages, relict machinery and churches seem a world away from the ecological crisis which is presented in mainstream media; global warming and single-use plastics for example. Can reframing our relationship with the planet in a more familiar and perhaps timeless setting provide a new way of thinking about ecological crisis?  

JD: Yes, I think so, depending on what stories we tell. The architectural forms present in this work are products/cultural symbols of a social order that has been central to the configuration of the English rural landscape, but also to the consolidation of land and power that has estranged people from their own land and deprived them of meaningful experiences with nature. Richard Mabey speaks of the ideal relation to the more than human world as having ‘a sense of neighbourliness…based on sharing a place, on the common experience of home and habitat and season’. Climate is only one half of the story here - the ecological crisis which has seen 60% of the worlds wildlife destroyed since the 1970s has been enabled in part by its own invisibility, but surely also because we just haven’t cared, or had the knowledge to identify the ongoing destruction wrought on our own doorstep by soaking the countryside in chemicals, among other destructive practices. So it is important to reimagine the dominant narratives and myths that shape our relation to the countryside, to the local - you only have to look on Google maps at the closest area of undeveloped land to where you live and you’re likely to find the shadow of an old hedgerow ripped out.  

Rustgill

Rustgill

Relict Pollard

Relict Pollard

TS: Specific species of trees, plants and fungi are photographed and identified throughout the series, do any have particular meaning to you personally, or within the context of your work?  

JD: The organisms depicted are ones that confound, obscure and beguile in some way or another, characteristics at odds with those that our countryside has traditionally favoured; predictability, order, innocence. The early spider orchid, for example, is a mimic - it deceives a particular species of bee into attempting to mate with it, in order to spread its pollen. 

TS: Do you have a prediction (or perhaps hope) for the future of the English countryside?  

JD: This work comes from a place of unease, but I hope for better access, more community ownership of land, more land managed for nature rather than profit. This would be a good place to start.


 

Nadja Ellinger’s Path of Pins

 
 
 

Nadja Ellinger is a visual artist interested in the oral tale as a way to explore new narratives offside the path. She was born in 1993 in a small medieval village in the middle of Germany. Spending most time in the forest and in books she fell in love with fairy tales, folklore and storytelling. After completing her bachelor’s degree in photography at the University of Applied Science in Munich, she studied for her MA in Photography at the Royal College of Art in London from 2018 to 2020.


Path of Pins is a visual re-telling of Little Red Riding Hood, revolving around adolescence and the fluidity of female representation in folklore.

In one of the earliest spoken versions of the fairytale, which later inspired Charles Perrault to write his ‘Petit Chaperon Rouge’, the wolf asks the unnamed heroine: “Which path will you take?”, to which she responds by choosing the path of pins, the careless and fleeting one – as opposed to the path of needles, the irreversible way of the wolf.

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This decision of the pins reflect two interesting aspects: On a personal level, by refusing to follow the prescribed path, the heroine decides to stay a child and favours the state innumerable possibilities. Exploring what lies beyond, she leads us deep into the forest.

On an abstract level, this metaphor of pins and needles relates to how fairy tales are being treated: Like a butterfly collector, Perrault kills the living, ever-evolving oral tale, to present it to the reader in a pose he artificially forced upon it: He coerces the heroine into the corset of his ideologies. Compared to the early variants of the narrative, where the heroine tricks the wolf, Perrault reduces her to a naive girl guilty of her own violation.


The fairy tale questions authorship: Every form of retelling or reenactment embeds former versions of it, repeats it, alters it, so it will never be original – no authorship can be claimed over it. The fairy tale gives birth to itself.


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Therefore I work with my friends, my family, my own body. It is a dreamlike state, where logic does not apply anymore and time works differently. The preconscious mind draws connections, develops a narrative I wasn’t aware of and finds analogies between this universe and reality, stitching these worlds together.

The tale develops, slowly, growing with each iteration, like a living creature.


Nadja’s work was exhibited and published in the UK, US, Italy, Germany, and France. She worked on commissions by clients such as Vogue USA and NR Magazine and held her first solo show with her project “But a Mermaid has not Tears'' in Munich, Germany. In 2020 she was one of the finalists for Camera Work in Ravenna, Italy, and exhibited at Voies-Off in Arles, the Ginnel Foto Festival, and the ‘Other Identity’ Biennal in Genova, among others.

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Website

 

Simon Martin on the Uncertainty of Gravesend’s Marshland

 
 
 

Simon is a Kent based landscape and portrait photographer focusing primarily on British culture such as the pastimes of Royal Marine Cadets and Competitive Mini Golf players in his first self published photo book Minigolf. His second major body of work Cadets looks at the social interactions of 13-18 year olds as they attend after school activities influenced by the ethos of the Royal Marines, the work has been exhibited internationally and most recently at the ICP in New York, Martin hopes to release the series as his second book in coming years.

His latest series Fortress focuses on our relationship with the land that surrounds us, more specifically Milton Marshland which runs parallel to the Thames in the North of Kent.


“Gravesend’s heyday as a tourist destination for Londoners has been left behind, follow the waters edge East and you will find yourself on Milton Marshland. Home to a harras of horses, dirt bikes, hunters and exhibitionists, this land has become an escape during lockdown for many. An escape from familiarity, it gives a feeling of wilderness and uncertainty in a time of repetition. The work is an ongoing exploration of the marshland and its uses as I settle into my new home of Gravesend. The work will be showing in its early stages in March of this year”.


Interview by Phoebe Somerfield

PS: Your photographs of gravesend emulate its past and present. Moving away from its legacy as a seaside destination for Londoners, in what direction do you think gravesend is heading? Do you think it’s in a transitional period at the moment?

SM: You can sometimes get a feeling for what is happening to a town, a lot of the seaside towns have been changing rapidly along the kent coast and you can gather a feeling from the peoples energy and the shop front as to what's happening. With Gravesend I'm really not sure where its heading, it has such a mixture of influences in its direction, the development of the waters edge seems to be a greatly anticipated addition along with the new crossing into Essex. I'm looking forward to seeing the Town grow and thrive hopefully in the benefit of its residence rather than its developers.

PS: The Thames estuary has been a great source of inspiration for many practitioners, it is a particularly magic place. Is there anything especially brilliant about the area for you?

SM: The almost wild feeling you get from walking along the Thames this far down is fantastic. I’ve met fisherman, dirt bikers, friends drinking, horse riders, a hunter, people having sex. When land is left ungated like this it takes on whatever purpose a person can find for it.

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PS: Have you found your relationship to Gravesend has changed during periods of lockdown?

SM: I’d hope everyone has felt this way during lockdown, ironically the closeness the community has gained from all of this is fantastic, we all just want to be part of humanity again and a friendly hello in the morning or a random conversation about a dog has new worth at the moment. Gravesend has a bad reputation as does a lot of Medway, for good reason most of the time, but besides all the comments its been a great place to live and I do feel at home here.

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PS: You mention that you’ll be exhibiting the work soon, I’m really excited to see the work physically! What are your thoughts for the location/curation of the show?

SM: The plan is to show the work along the sea defence wall in a public area next to the land I’ve been frequenting, I’m still in two minds if its a stupid idea to show the work in the exact location its made but I want to create a conversation with people and the camera that the majority have in their pocket and share their experiences with the land around us through social media. I plan to show the work at the beginning of April and will be updating its dates and location via my instagram.

www.simon-martin.org
@simonmartin.ph

 

Emily Ryalls Reframes the History of Women’s Health

 
 
 

Emily Ryalls, currently based in Wakefield, is a photographer concerned with using the camera as a means of visual storytelling. She received a BA from Nottingham Trent University and has exhibited across Europe in recent years. Award nominations include BJP's Ones to Watch (2019) and she has recently released a publication with Tide Press; Something Different Starts to Happen. Emily's work is focused on issues surrounding representation and gender disparity. Photographically, her work blurs the lines between a divided photographer/subject relationship, this is developed through an intersection of performance, photography and research informed collaborative image making.


“These Ties That Continue to Bind focuses on a community of women, myself included, who are interlinked by our chronic health conditions and more importantly, years of misdiagnosis and mental health treatment. Though we all face different barriers as individuals, what connects us is the onset of our health problems as a reaction to a widely distributed vaccination and subjection to archaic claims of hysteria as women”.

“This project is an ongoing exploration of lived experience and very much about reclaiming our narrative, using the camera as an instrument for personal expression and representation. The project juggles healthcare stigmas, alongside the ‘hysterical woman’ ideology, which continues to haunt women’s healthcare today. Having grown to encompass more and more layers, it is hard to define this body of work as anything other than a visual diary. Bringing together a collection of photography, performance and documentation, visualising a geographically disjointed and often misrepresented group of females.

“The series has been ongoing since January 2019 and continues to span across different countries / cities, making connections with different young women. It began in Denmark, meeting and connecting with girls and their families in Copenhagen. Before progressing into England and Wales, the work took on a new purpose - what began as a visual exploration of my own disjointed community, soon became a cathartic release and means of expression for us all. I began to work with self-portraiture, experimenting with how the self-portrait can change the dynamic of photographer / subject relationship. The girls were never seen as my subjects, more as collaborators and we began to make photographs together. 

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“Alone, I began by exploring my own experiences and how this linked to my cultural roots and locality of Yorkshire - in particular, the influence of Bronte's writings and my personal connection to their literature. My experiences in the medical system, where my mum and I had grown to be seen as one entity (like two warping and twisted trees – feeding each other’s hysterics), led me to begin collaborating with her. Performances such as The Yorkshire Moors have my mum’s presence, not physically pictured within the frame, but in concept and spirit. Together we drove up to the moors, hung the washing line and sifted through years of medical notes where she is only ever named as ‘The Mother’ – capital ‘T’, and I’m taunted with spoon theories and jars of marbles. 

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“The photographs were born out of previously exploitive and voyeuristic exposure to photography. Now, they strive to far remove our narrative from any sensationalised ‘anti-vax’ connotations in relation to the HPV vaccine. It’s purely an honest exploration of lived experience and community. When I step into frame alongside the girls and women, I feel their muscles relax, I feel their breathing slow and I know this is how we should be working to represent ourselves. To be truly seen, away from a political spotlight, this visualisation needs to come from within.

@emryalls
www.emilyryalls.com


 

Evan Perkins on the Evangelical American Experience

 
 
 

Evan Perkins is a Boston-based artist. His photographs delve into acute explorations of the relationships between man-made structures and the altered natural world. He is highly influenced by the history of his upbringing along with matters of natural history, including botany, meteorology, and astronomy.


“The images in Grab Your Bibles, There’s a Storm Comin’, create a fictitious community, full of contradiction and paradox; used to invite a dissection of the white, evangelical, America that our systems of influence have continually granted an imbalance of power. It is an exploration of the ways in which groups conform to a prescribed set of moral beliefs and rituals in search for certainty in a world where the comforts of conviction seem forever out of reach”.


Interview by Tom Skinner

TS: This series is ongoing and has been created against the backdrop of Trump’s presidency. He is now the only president to have been impeached twice. Has your view of the project changed at all over the last few months? 

EP: The issues that have come to the forefront of our societal consciousness through this presidency over the last four years have continually shifted the way I approach my work. If there was any benefit to his presidency, it was that the injustices that are too often glossed over have been brought to the forefront. It was the catalyst that America needed to take a deep look at not only at where we find ourselves now but also the generations of injustice that led to this point. For a majority of Americans, this restructuring of how we view our country’s history is deeply rooted in the privilege that not everyone bears the weight of injustice equally. While far too many have been aware of these issues for decades, I believe that there has been a wave of reflection that can hopefully set the tone for how we move forward as a country. 

The images in Grab Your Bibles, There’s a Storm Comin’, create a fictitious community, full of contradiction and paradox; used to invite a dissection of the white, evangelical, America that our systems of influence have continually granted an imbalance of power. It is an exploration of the ways in which groups conform to a prescribed set of moral beliefs and rituals in search for certainty in a world where the comforts of conviction seem forever out of reach. One reason I’m drawn to continue making this work is that it’s able to constantly shift with the world that we’re living in. While the landscape created in the images isn’t held to a geographic specificity, it’s still inspired by the conflicts we have to wrestle with in America. I’m not interested in providing answers through the work but rather having it function as a way to continually ask questions that encourage a reconsideration of the biases and programming we’ve received as Americans, specifically through the context of white, evangelical America.

TS: Joe Biden tells Americans to not just keep the faith, but spread the faith. In relation to belief-based power dynamics, do you see the new presidency as being vastly different to the last? 

EP: There’s a balance to the way we need to view this transition of power. On one hand, we’re able to rid ourselves of this parasitic entity that has continually and ruthlessly aimed to divide us with no regard for anyone’s wellbeing beyond his own. We also can’t become complacent and slowly shift into believing that all our problems as a nation are solved now that 45 is out of office. We should be skeptical of any leader or belief system that suggests that they are the only solution to their constituents’ problems. 

That being said, the new tone set by the current administration is crucially important to the way in which we proceed as a country. They are by no means beyond criticism, but having new leadership that is proactively seeking to address the most important issues we face through the lens of providing relief for a country of people who are struggling is a step in the right direction. Now we have to keep them accountable to ensure that they not only fight for the promises they ran on but also encourage them to take bolder steps that reflect the ever deepening needs we have as a country. 

TS: Photography lends itself well to examining memory and subconscious influence. Grab Your Bibles is based on a fictitious community, not dissimilar to the one you grew up in. What did you learn about yourself while making and editing the project? 

EP: It took a while to put this together, but I slowly began to realize how intertwined our personal experiences are with seemingly disparate portions of our lives. For the last decade or so I had been reexamining the beliefs and programming that were handed down from the community I was raised, over time seeing that there was a dissonance between what I was told and what I had been experiencing in my own life and throughout the world adjacent to me. I saw this as something separate from my artistic practice and didn’t think it would be something I would incorporate into my work. But as I continued to photograph, I consistently found these themes resurfacing in the images I was making and the landscape I was drawn towards. 

I was photographing scenes in flux that perpetually contradicted themselves. I was interested in the dissonance of facade and perception and the ways in which we often ignore the messiness of our own experiences while presenting a more polished version of ourselves to the world. This led to a further exploration of our cultural obsession with certainty and how both American and evangelical values deeply rely on maintaining the status quos they’ve erected. I began to include text and iconography I was familiar with growing up in an evangelical rural/suburban community in America and began to pair it with a frenetic and anxious energy that I was discovering and photographing in the landscapes, people, and animals that  reveal themselves in these images. 

TS: There are four images of animals in the series; two of birds, one of a dog and a rabbit. The images are full of unease, the animals appear to be trying to escape. What role do they play in the project? 

EP: To not run the risk of being illustrative, I wanted to include images in the work that were heavily connected to ideas of myth and metaphor. I’m fascinated by the ways in which animals have an almost paranormal characteristic of being able to predict oncoming storms and other natural phenomena, and I used this energy to create a sense of tension in the work. For me, the title Grab Your Bibles, There’s a Storm Comin’, ties the various aspects of the work together, referencing the epic Biblical stories that I was raised with and the rich metaphors they contain. It focuses on how we crave certainty and turn to predetermined and comfort-based thinking in the face of confrontation as well as repurposing the ways where in the Bible, storms were used to metaphorically represent divine reckoning and cultural turning points. 

TS: What are your hopes for America's future? 

EP: I’m finding it hard to provide an answer that doesn’t seem contrived or cheesy as hell haha! But I’ll give it a try. American culture doesn’t often lend itself to subtlety and nuance. We’re drawn to tradition, excess, and certainty. I hope that we can become more willing to adopt non dual thinking, allowing space to consider upbringings and experiences different from our own as valid in order to empathetically live with those around us. If we were able to have more honest conversations and not allow those in power to reductively blame, scapegoat, and divide us, we give ourselves the opportunity to see the humanity in each other, and I believe that would dramatically change the way we function as a country. 

www.evanperkins.com
@perklax

 

Navigating the Subconscious, in Conversation with Foam Talent Simon Lehner

 
 
 

Simon Lehner (b.1996) is a lens-based artist and photographer currently working and living in Vienna. He graduated from the University of Applied Arts Vienna in 2020 and has been involved in several competitions such as Paris-Photo Carte Blanche award (2018) and Red Hook Labs New Artists (2019). Despite being a student at the time he has already given his first lecture at Bauhaus University. Simon Lehner was recently selected as a Foam Talent 2021 along with 20 others published in the latest edition. He will have a solo show at the Fotohof Salzburg this year. In his work Simon discusses notions of masculinity. How Far is a Lightyear deals with notions of trauma, memory and identity formed through family.

The boy in Simon’s series is similar to Hunter, the main character of Wim Wenders Paris, Texas (1984) who was the subject of a troubling childhood. Hunter was separated from his parents when he turned two. They both disappeared and so he grew up with his aunt and uncle. Together they formed a picture-perfect family in the Los Angeles suburbs. Some five years later the father returns from the Mojave Desert. At first Hunter is not willing to accept the long-lost father as his parent. He can only really accept Travis as his father once they watch an old Super8 film recorded when Hunter was 2 years old, depicting Hunter, his mother and Travis on holiday. When Hunter and Travis go on a quest to find the mother in Houston, Hunter explains to Travis how the universe once was whole. At some point it all exploded and all of the universe’s components scattered all over the place, colliding, forming new planets and suns. Hunter’s childhood was obstructed when his parents left. Later on, he describes how if a man puts a baby down, travelled at the speed of light for only one hour and returned, the baby would have turned into an old man. Hunter’s words sound innocent, yet they carry the heavy burden of being abandoned; his parents disappearance left a gap in his life so huge it felt unimaginable to ever close it. He describes the memories of his mother as a movie character in a galaxy far far away. Yet, he also always knew that his father was walking and talking somewhere out there in the vast universe. Hunter has hope of reunification. He is obsessed with space crafts and is determined to close the gap, to find his mother, to travel to Houston at light speed in merely 3 seconds.  

The little boy in Simon’s work is an autobiographical character that has some similarities with Hunter; both have an affinity for expressing their heavy burdens through metaphors in terminology surrounding space travel. 

‘How far is a lightyear’? is the first question the little boy asked his father when they first met. Unlike Hunter, he has no hope, he cannot reunify with the absent father. He is left with a wound too big for any child’s imagination to close. Drawings, renderings of found photos and sketches outline atrocities, trauma and most of all absence. Simon’s photographs are joyful memorabilia from his childhood. They are soaked in nostalgia. Yet, despite their playfulness, they document a boy at the verge of chaos, in the firing line of a love story gone wrong. The playing cards, depicting a queen on top and a king lying flat in the shadow, are balanced for this moment in time, but something will happen. Soon the boy will twitch his eye muscle and both father and mother will fall into an abyss, dragging him down with them and all that remains for us viewers is to repeat a silent mantra: so far so good, so far so good. The tiniest movement will make the Jenga tower collapse, burying the boy beneath it.  He is trying to appear strong, ants crawling up his back, no sting too painful to give up. Nothing can shatter him but the tiniest amount of wind blowing through his hair, leaving him devastated in his bed, unable to move.

Simon uses the medium of photography with purpose. In no other medium could he create the same paranoia of an impending imbalance; the little boy manoeuvres through his childhood in joy and play, always balancing, yet also always at the verge of losing control. Through sketches, renderings, archival imagery and photography Simon manages to outline the ineffable. 


Writing and interview by Frederik Marks (translated from conversation in German).

FM: Congratulations on your nomination as a Foam Talent 2021! How does it feel to be nominated? I remember that especially at the beginning of my studies the likes of David de Beyter and Daniel Shea were huge inspirations. They were the photographers I really looked up to. Do you share the same kind of admiration for the previous Foam Talents?  

SL: The first time I encountered Foam was probably around 5 years ago. At that time Thomas Albdorf was an assistant in my course at the University of Applied Arts Vienna. He introduced us to all of the previous Foam talents. That definitely opened my eyes to new ways of photographing. Contemporary approaches to photography were not really taught at my university at the time. I realized that I definitely want to be involved with Foam at some point in my career. I was a runner up last year and now this year I finally made it into the Foam Talent shortlist. It is true, many of the photographers previously nominated for Foam were huge inspirations for me as well 5 years ago, I imagined what my life would be like if I ever became one. It is still strange for me because I really looked up to these people, and suddenly you get the message you are a Foam Talent, but it still feels very unreal to me to be part of a group of people that were my role models.  

FM: How did you experience your time at university as a whole?  

SL: I was studying for the last five years. I think that most of my time at university was about personal development and not always about learning new photographic and other lens-based skills that are essential to my practice now. For example, everything relating 3d modelling and rendering is self-taught. Yet, nonetheless I believe that this personal development and also the people I met at university were crucial in my development as a photographer also.

FM: I can very much relate that university did not necessarily teach me skills that blur photography with other media like painting and 3D modelling / rendering. How if not through Uni did you come in contact with mixing photography with lens-based art done with the likes of Blendr?  

SL: I first got interested in renderings when I learned that ad campaigns by Mercedes are now almost entirely rendered. I really like the idea that at this moment in time our perception of what is photography is expanded subconsciously. I really like to play at the border of what is perceived as photography and what is perceived as render.

FM: When I had a look at your early photographic work it appears like classical German/ Austrian documentary photography. In Men Don’t Play it is the first time that you start to mix classical documentary work with 3D renderings. I think it is fascinating to see your work expand and include more work that is non photographic. It feels as though you can increasingly bring lens-based renderings and photography to the same visual language, which I think is really hard to achieve. Especially with archive material in contemporary photography this same visual language seems to be absent and some archival images seem like gimmicks that support the message of the photographs without really communicating within the same visual language. Coming back to ‘How far is a light year’: I feel as if you use the medium of photography in this series for a precise reason: to show balance at the verge of collapse. I’ve read in a previous interview that the image with the boy balancing two playing cards has an autobiographic background. Therefore, I’d like to ask how you came up with that specific image. 

SL: Most of the time my work is autobiographic. The balance of queen and king therefore represents my parents but simultaneously universal power struggles. The boy is me as a ten-year-old. I am trying to balance my way through life. The photographs are set in a domestic situation that allows for room of interpretation. All images in themselves represent accidental and every-day childhood memories. That way they are joyous and innocent and only in the context of the series, they could hold hints of power struggles, trauma and impending imbalance. I did not really know my father and I am trying to make him tangible in archive images and renderings. 

FM: It seems as if the images show that the child is handling a stress test which will determine his future. Is this also the link to the photographs of the Jenga tower?  

SL: Yes precisely. As children we are so fragile and every way in which we encounter the world and the way we are influenced by people in it can tip the development of a child in either or direction. The same idea applies for the photograph of stem cells: If stem cells are influenced in the stadium that I photographed them you could influence them in a way that will determine what they eventually grow into.. 

FM: Are the photographs of the stem cells archive material?   

SL: No, I actually managed to take a picture with an electron microscope at the lab for stem cell research in Vienna.  

FM: When did you realize that you wanted to release this project to the public, that you are not just creating it for yourself, but to make it accessible to a greater audience? 

SL: Subconsciously I have always worked in the fields of masculine domains. At first, I was photographing MMA fighters and boxers, then I did a series on hunters and similarly in my project Men don’t play, which was about soldiers. I think that throughout the years I have continuously questioned why I am seeking out those kinds of subjects. I came to the realization that I am actually dealing with the issues discussed in How far is a lightyear?. It is likely that all of my previous projects were circling around my relationship with my father or lack there off. I was hesitant to make this series public and at first, I started it with the intention to keep it private, but I have realised that the longing for an absent person in your life is such a universal experience. I thought that my series might at least start a visual dialogue. I only really noticed that it worked when I exhibited the series as part of Paris Photo. Some people came up to me and explained that they know this kind of tension that I tried to capture. Without actually discussing the individual trauma it created a bond in empathy which was really moving. 

FM: I have realised for myself that there is an overarching theme in my work as well. As soon as I realised what it was, I was first excited that I’d have broken the cycle, yet every time I start a new series, I end up coming back to the same issues in an abstracted form. Have you experienced a similar abstraction after working on How Far is a Lightyear?  

SL: Yes absolutely, when I started the video work for my new series The mind is a voice, the voice is blind I thought I was creating work that was unrelated to my previous work, yet once again it is connected. I actually think it is a beautiful thing. Especially when you can see the progression of the same idea over and over again in another photographer’s work.

FM: When I saw the image of the boy that has ants crawling around his body, I first saw bees.  Why did you choose the ants and what do they represent?  

SL: The ants are another childhood reference. Because my father was absent, I always felt inclined to present myself as a strong man. I did not miss out any dares in order to receive recognition. The ants are a kind of dare and the boy poses to prove courage. The ants have a sensory, bodily response on the viewer. It feels like an uncomfortable electricity. The same kind of uncomfortable tingle that I felt whenever I was in the presence of my father. Therefore, the boy tries to show a masculine facade admits this rush of uneasiness. 

FM: Shortly after presenting your series at Paris you were commissioned to shoot an editorial for Vogue. How did that happen, and do you enjoy doing commissioned work just as much as personal work?  

SL: When I showed ‘How far is a lightyear’ in New York in 2019, the US Vogue approached me and asked whether I think I could adapt my visual language to a fashion editorial. They were specifically looking at the pose of the boy with ants on his back. I was completely paralised at first because I had not really work in fashion before. As long as I can carry over a personal concept into the commission, I really enjoy doing it. If it is only about the surface where concept and story is irrelevant, I don’t really like it as much. As long as I can bring a concept into it, whether acknowledged by the client or not, I really enjoy doing commissions. For example, when I did a series for a champagne brand, I was able to work completely freely and was able to bring in personal concepts that made the whole project exciting for me. 

FM: Thank you so much for taking the time to have a chat with me. As a last question I’d like to ask where you see yourself in ten years?  

SL: No problem at all. I really enjoy doing interviews. Hopefully I’ll have gallery representation by that point. My absolute dream however is a solo show in America or Germany or generally a big solo show. For my future I hope to still have the freedom to work in photography. That privilege, to be able to work creatively, keeps me going. I am excited to see all of the new technologies that will emerge within ten years – the ever-blurring line between lens-based and computer images and how I can push photography into new realms in the hopes to find a completely unfamiliar visual language. 

Simon Lehner juxtaposes How far is a lightyear with his new series The Mind is a Voice, the Voice is Blind for the new Foam Talent issue.

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Foam Talent

 

Sketching the Lay of the Land with Eva Louisa Jonas

 

Eva Louisa Jonas is a visual artist, facilitator and co-founder of art platform UnderExposed. She lives and works in Brighton, UK.

Her practice involves “building photographic narrative through construction and material; forms at rest or manipulated, influenced by our habitual and gestural environments”.

Let’s Sketch the Lay of the Land is available to purchase in the Unveil’d shop.


Interview by Tom Skinner

TS: Throughout your photographic works, there is a sense that connections between landscape, personhood and materiality are explored in a sublime and slightly ethereal way. Do you feel that Let’s Sketch the Lay of the Land continues to explore these themes, or does it depart from them in any way? 

ELJ: Let’s Sketch most definitely continues to explore these themes – in early conversations with September Books it was clear the images in the book were going to be taken from numerous bodies of work (and my image archive) and what formed was a kind of visual research and exchange between gesture, material and form.

It was so exciting to be able to use the book’s format to explore this, working outside of individual ‘projects’ and into something that mediated my approach to image making - the exploration of simple materials and the collected words and phrases that resonated along the way.   

TS: Within the book, there appears to be a series of fractures; a tree which has been felled, folded paper, an interaction with a creased tarpaulin. There are also parts of the body which have been ‘fractured’ by the camera, abstracted and cut out of frame. What draws you to abstract the subjects and make these connections?  

ELJ: Initially I thought that the work was about coming to some conclusion, some understanding, an end - as if something was going to reveal itself to me about picture making, the landscapes, materials and creative intuition as a whole, but for me the very nature of the work and process means this wasn’t the case.

In a way these fractures don’t exist on their own but in relation to one another, as an eventual whole, and the abstraction is part of this. By including images that emphasise the handling of objects, of gestures and movement in landscapes, for me contributed to this building of something whole.

This could be quite taken literally too with the way the photographs converse with each other on a spread and the connections and associations that are formed. A lot of the book’s overall sequencing was considered around this.  

TS: This is your first book published by September Books, before this came a dummy titled That Thing Over There and a beautiful handmade book Fulgurite, which used Japanese stab-binding. What is your relationship with photobooks and print making?

ELJ: Working off screen and with physical prints is definitely the first part of my process, this could be Silver Gelatin prints or quick cartridge paper prints from my home printer, this is why I’ve gravitated towards photobooks, you have to engage with something on a material level and its often far more accessible than an exhibition, in price and locality – they are portable.  

I’ve always been interested in different paper stocks, scales and finishes and how this can change the direction of the work – Fulgurite in a way was as much about the Awagami Paper, its deckled edge and size and stab bind as it was the actual images. I completed a Book Arts module in Uni and have made my own paper in the past so it’s been something I always consider early on in my process – it’s fun and I can engage more in the ‘making’.

I definitely brought this approach to Let’s Sketch the Lay of the Land, early conversations with September Books were around paper stock and its colour - before sequencing or edit. We decided on a 90gsm Munken Cream Paper which allowed for the show through of images, this was really important as it created an exchange between partially visible photographs.  

 
 

TS: The book ends with a series of disjointed phrases, which allude to the possible meanings of the images while also stepping away from them; ‘not thinking, just feeling’. How does writing and text inform your working process?  

ELJ: In Let’s Sketch I knew I wanted to include some text in the book but a formal, paragraphed text felt like a bit of a betrayal of the book, what related more to the body of work was what came to be the text collages. This was the fragmentary text on the final page, as for me it behaved more like images, in the way they are in placed and moved, and related to one another. They were taken from a few years of saved phrases and words that always came up in my practice, I found myself always being reminded of them, either through reading or looking through old notebooks.

I’d initially used text in this way for my title page in ‘That Thing Over There that surrounds and sustains us’, I did this really intuitively and just felt it resonated with the way you read the title out loud.  I suppose the same can be said for the way I use text in my overall practice, naturally gathering words and phrases that resonate with the images I am making, their meaning and significance only fully realized when read aloud or placed all together.  

TS: The final piece of text is ‘Being lined up just right, five children describe feeling centred from Awareness Activities for Children, 1975’. What was this study about? It reminds me of similar child studies of the seventies which explored play and the negative effects of toys. The idea was that learning and imagination were improved if children didn’t have toys and instead were encouraged to build their own. There is a sense of this playfulness and collaboration throughout your book and I wonder whether this connects with you at all?  

ELJ: The focus wasn’t so much on the study and what it entailed in a literal sense, rather earlier ideas around the images and my making revealing something to me as I came to end of the book.

Children describing what feeling centred feels like as ‘Being lined up just right’ to me vocalises a simple and playful way to be in the world – something as adults we need to connect with more, perhaps? I do, anyway.  

Playfulness and collaboration definitely connect with me, throughout the book images of materials and human interaction with them appear - they acted as playful points of rest and reflection, a nod to my participation in the image making and as a reminder to carry on in such a way!

www.evalouisajonas.com
@evalouisaj
septemberbooks.org

 

Hayleigh Longman on Something Lost, Something Familiar

 
 
 

Hayleigh Longman is a photographic artist who uses her practice to open up dialogues and collect stories tied to people and place. Working with portraiture, performance and play, her work explores the duality of human strength and fragility.

Something Lost, Something Familiar is the first volume of an ongoing project, in which Hayleigh Longman traces the edges of her relationship with her mother. The ebbs and flows of their relationship are connected with the tree in the back garden, which Longman’s mother routinely cuts back to stop it from blocking the sunlight. Longman relates this intervention with nature to a feeling of only being able to get so far with her mother, before getting lost again. With the garden as their stage, mother and daughter are enmeshed in acts of mirroring and concealment, working through the maintenance of roots and growing distance that pulls together, and apart, their bond.


Interview by Phoebe Somerfield

PS: This piece of work is the first volume for 'Something Lost, Something Familiar'. Looking to the future, do you have thoughts about the next stage of the work following the relationship with your mother? 

HL: Through the process of making this work, it’s come to my attention that for me this project is always on-going, I struggle to vision its end as it’s centred around the existing relationship I have with my mum. Despite us both knowing one another well, I view relationship’s as transient connections, forever developing. 

When I try to sequence the work together it looks different because our relationship has changed since the last time I was making work with her. I started making the work two years ago so I feel like each year is a different stage, with the ends and beginnings sometimes blurring together. The first volume is where I felt I had enough work to edit something together and since that point. I am in the process of editing the next stage and thinking of ways to involve my mum in ways I haven’t done before, using small exchanges of asking her to take the pictures so the conversation about the work is shifting. 

PS: I love the tree in your back garden as a metaphor for the relationship you have with your mother, the cutting back to keep the sunlight from being blocked. How did you come to feel as if the tree symbolised the relationship you had with her?

HL: After finishing my degree, I moved back in with my mum which is where the tree and our relationship became my focus. Coming home and facing some personal hurdles with the shift in my family life after my parents separating made me view my individual relationships with my parents differently. My mum had moved as a result of this and in her new back garden was this huge tree, which the whole estate is built around. We are the only people who have a tree in our back garden and it bothers my mum a lot as it grows so big and blocks all the light. 

Every year or two my mother invests in getting the tree cut-back to allow sunlight into our space, it’s quite a big job and  I relate this intervention with nature to a feeling of only being able to get so far with my mother, before getting lost again. The tree is forever growing but then gets chopped back again.

With the garden as our stage, the majority of the work is made within the presence of the tree. It creates strong casts of shadows which flood the garden that are recognisable in a lot of the portraits. Acts of mirroring and concealment, working through the maintenance of roots and growing. Distance that pulls together, and apart. 

 
 
Hayleigh_longman_something_familiar_something_lost_phoebe_somerfield
 
 

PS: Has the relationship with your mother changed during the lockdown periods? 

HL: I believe it has, yes. I moved back in with her during lockdown last year so that again shifted our relationship and made me begin to make new work with her. This time around we were blessed with time, so it’s been interesting to see how that has reflected in my work. I feel some of the newer work has been more of a collaboration with her which has been interesting to see. Also making images indoors with her for the first time, seeing how that feels without the garden as the main focus but I am unsure of where that’s going. It can often feel as if we’re on top of one another as we’ve never really spent this much time together so it’s been interesting to see how we have adapted to coexisting to one another. 

PS: Much of your work exists around thinking about your relationships and connections, is photography a way of processing and moving through these relationships or would you say it's more about documentation?

HL: It’s most definitely a way of processing and moving through the relationship. The ebbs and flows of the connection between a mother and a daughter I think is interesting. It will continue to develop as we both go through different changes in our independent lives and together in our relationship. 

www.hayleighlongman.com
@hayleighlongman

 

Chanel Irvine Captures the Simple Joys of Another English Summer

 
 
 

Chanel Irvine is a London based documentary photographer, her personal work reflects the tension between preservation and change. With an eye for moments she deems timeless, her observations consistently focus on scenes that are reminiscent of older, simpler times which persist despite the advancements that otherwise transform the world we live in. As a result, her photographs accentuate the ‘ordinary’ - reasserting its importance as a photographic subject and highlighting the beauty that can constantly be rediscovered in the everyday.

Her stories often focus on livelihoods, environments and communities that are susceptible to change based on emerging trends, development demands and the technological progressions that inevitably accompany today’s increasingly modern society. Aware of the multitude of sustainability issues they face, she is particularly interested in the people and organisations who are working to make a positive environmental and social impact in their communities.

Another English Summer explores the summer of 2020, when England was emerging from the first Covid-19 national lockdown. Chanel documented her own travels throughout England, from Kent to Devon, Cornwall to Shropshire, drawn to the quintessential and the nostalgic; traditions, joys and sights seemingly unafeccted by the global pandemic.

“The warmer, unseasonably pleasant weather during the early lockdown months granted people the ability to enjoy long walks and rediscover the simple joys of a picnic or time spent in one’s garden. Then, when travel restrictions eased, Brits recognised the true value of a ‘staycation’, and all matter of adventures they could have without stepping foot on an airplane”.


Interview by Tom Skinner

TS: Before completing your MA in Photography, you studied Politics, Philosophy and Economics at the Australian National University, how has that education informed your approach to photography?  

CI: I studied PPE because I was, and still am, incredibly passionate about people and interested in the different issues they face and combat – across all levels of society. I wanted to have an informed and balanced understanding of the socio-political, economic and philosophical forces that drive them. My degree has made me a meticulous researcher, and I believe stories are always paramount to visuals. Because of this, I always work to ensure my photographs honestly reflect the experiences and history of the people and places I photograph. To date, the best way I have found to do this is to talk to those I meet and who feature in my images, so that I can do the scene justice by capturing a genuine, lived experience within the frame. Of course, it is near impossible for a photographer not to impose any of his or her own perspective, feelings or interpretation onto an image... we do compose the shot after all. Because of this, I am hoping to focus my work on fewer, longer-term projects; granting me the ability to conduct far more research and develop a more in-depth understanding and relationship with those I photograph. 

TS: Your work appears to draw on the rich history of documentary photography and riffs on the large format motifs pioneered by American colour photographers such as Joel Sternfeld and Alec Soth, where do you draw inspiration from?  

CI: I certainly look to the pioneers of documentary photography (their names too many to list here), predominantly because I have an intense fascination with all things timeless, or reminiscent of older, simpler times. I think my eyes have become trained to look for scenes that are reflective of what Shirley Baker or Tom Wood might have photographed... scenes of a time gone-by, which, nevertheless, persist in a country so deeply protective of tradition, custom and identity as England. The large-format images of Simon Roberts have certainly inspired my photography as well. If, however, there is one photographer whose work I look to with the most admiration (and the hope that I might one day be able to achieve something similar), it would be Sheron Rupp, and the images in her book ‘Taken From Memory.’  

TS: Another English Summer explores the time in England following the initial lockdown. With hindsight it feels a long time ago, and potentially a long time until the current lockdown ends. What were the conversations like with the people you met while making the project?  

CI: I couldn’t agree with you more; I doubt any of us imagined that we’d soon return to a lockdown more indefinite and concerning than the first. During that summer, however, the people I photographed were all so elated by the small and seemingly-luxurious joys the summer months afforded them. I encountered a widespread, collective sense of gratitude, and whilst people referred to the lockdown months, they were all focused on what the ongoing pandemic didn’t take away from them. I believe these lockdowns - by restricting what we can do and taking away the ability to host customers in your store or café, to go to a friend’s house for a cup of tea, or travel to visit one’s parents – has instilled within the majority of us a heightened awareness of what we can still do. And so, when those summer months and freedom of travel finally arrived, people were overjoyed by rediscovered possibilities, and less-focused on the otherwise-disheartening restrictions.  

TS: How has your view of the work you made during the summer changed, and what are your hopes for the future?  

CI: Of course, now it seems like only a fleeting moment in time, as we have since retreated into yet another indefinite and broadly-discouraging lockdown. Perhaps, had I been more realistic about the fact that the joys of the summer months (and not just those dependent on the sunny weather) would inevitably be taken away again – the roadtrips, the daytrips, the picnics and re-opened pubs – I might have focused my questions on how people felt about returning to lockdown again. However, like my subjects, I was too blissfully distracted by our newfound sense of freedom to even imagine losing it again. In saying this, I think the photos adequately represent how the nation jumped to its feet with enthusiasm and optimism when it was within reach, and I don’t doubt it will again – whenever we eventually conquer this persistent and devastating virus. I have since taken a break from photographing life during the pandemic, I think I need to take a step away from it – maybe just to help shift my own focus away from the virus – and I am currently planning potential projects that I might be able to commence when this is all over... 

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Identity and Fatherhood, in Conversation with Kalpesh Lathigra

 
 
 

Kalpesh Lathigra is a London born and based photographic artist. His work occupies the space between documentary and art practice. He originally studied a degree in law, before dropping out in 1992. He began evening classes in photography at Central Saint Martins and gained a post-graduate diploma at the London College of Printing. Kalpesh started his journey in the photographic field working for The Independent as a staff photographer. This led him into freelancing for national UK newspapers before undertaking editorials for magazines and eventually working on long-form personal projects.

Tami Aftab speaks with Kalpesh; discussing portraiture, his relationship with India, fatherhood - and how these all intertwine with photography.


When I asked Kalpesh who his first portrait captured, I wasn’t expecting the answer “Leonardo DiCaprio”. He tells me he began on a lot of ‘film junkets’ assignments, shoots which had no backdrop, lights, or props - and had to be taken in a short amount of time in a way that was relevant and engaging. “That shoot taught me a lot, very quickly, about what a portrait can do for you and how it can have legs. I had an agent contact me within a day for syndication, and for the next 5 years I had cheques coming every month for that shoot”.

By opening his eyes to portraiture, Kalpesh shifted into magazine work which gave him increasingly varied jobs from photographing a-list actors to members of the general public. However, this wasn’t part of his game plan; “I worshiped at the altar of black and white photographers, I was originally a classically trained reportage photojournalist!”. A shift in Kalpesh’s style was influenced by the American colour photography movement around 2005, work such as Alec Soth’s Sleeping by the Mississippi.

“I also didn’t want to get stuck in a rut and fall into looking constantly at social media. There tends to be trends where portraits are made, and I try my best to walk away from that”.


As each new generation and wave of photographers emerges, Kalpesh has continued to embrace fresh ideas by staying in touch with the ever-growing community. “I don’t want to feel like I’m old, the people I’d train with at my boxing gym would be 18-25 year olds. They gave me the energy to be part of something, and that’s the same for me in photography”.

The creative dialogues we have between us helps us to grow as artists and as Kal notes “it keeps us relevant”. In 2014, Kalpesh took part in a residency with Lightwork in New York, where he met fellow artist Daniel Shea. “We had a very different way of seeing, but the conversations we had and critique of the work brought us together, and now I count Daniel as one of my closest friends”.

Kalpesh's most recent project Memoire Temporelle is a collaboration with editor Emmanuelle Peri. The story is based in Mumbai, India and looks at the surrounding ideas of perceived and real memories. Emmanuelle is a Photography Director in London with a background in Art History and Museology. “She educates me in an intuitive way that shows confidence in my work. My parents gave me a literary education, but not a visual one, Emmanuelle has taught me intuition. I feel lucky that throughout my photographic career, I have had a lot of serendipity, people who have helped to push me and my work forward”.

Kalpesh has been sharing work with Emmanuelle for Memoire Temporelle over the last four years, discussing a longing for a place that doesn’t exist, one of immigrant diaspora. “Inspired by those around me, I have learnt to depart and experiment from my practice, and given myself the permission to just be free”.

“People born in the country they’re taking images of make very different images, the narratives and languages portrayed are subtle. There is certainly a validity to how I see India, as a second generation immigrant, but I can’t take away the fact that I’m still an outsider”.


Like Kalpesh, I’m also a second generation immigrant, with a father from Pakistan. I’ve only visited the country a handful of times and there’s a longing to learn more about the other half of my identity I feel distanced from - and a sentimentalisation of a place so close but also so far. It was unsurprising that our conversation meandered into the question of identity in photography. When born and raised in London, despite heritage, British culture becomes embedded in both personal identity and the constantly surrounding visual language of newspapers and magazines, for better or worse. Kalpesh tells me “I was aware that this must have impacted my idea of India, and how I had romanticised it”. The idea of the East, in Western photographer’s eyes, looks very different as we’re coming from a different point of view”.

Where Kalpesh often feels at home in London, he also captures those who are no doubt closest to him, his children Maya and Sehn. “Maya loves her clothes and is into her art, sculpture and sciences. But Sehn is more in tune to the visual language, especially in terms of popular culture and has an opinion about it. It’s disarming, and they can say something that will completely throw me and have to really think about it. That all feeds into my photography now, it’s very different and more pronounced and staged at times”.

Sehn became more interested in modelling and actively wanted to partake. “I started photographing him properly at around 5-years-old, filming him with my Canon 5D. I think I was influenced a lot by Larry Sultan, my good friend Doug DuBois, and of course you can’t get away from Chris Anderson”. Kalpesh started to see taking photos of his children as a love letter to them. “I really struggle with fatherhood, with trying to make a connection with my kids and I started to feel that there was a distance. Photography allowed that to be documented with Sehn, and became a way of connecting”. Now that Sehn’s a teenager, Kalpesh described that he’s far more aware of how he looks and how he prefers to be photographed. He’s conscious of his fashion, smell, the way that he talks. “It started to make me question, how do you shake off your father’s authorship? In a way that he can react as him when being directed by another photographer?”

Sehn

Sehn

Maya

Maya

I asked Kalpesh to think about which portrait holds the strongest or most loved memory. “I photographed Muhammad Ali, before I would even call myself a photographer. He was promoting a book by his best friend, and personal photographer, Howard Bingham. The image was shot on an old Fuji SLR camera… I guess that the image is the confluence of the loves of my life, photography and boxing”. What’s even more touching, is that the book is about friendship, and is indicative of the journey Lathigra has had within photography and the people that he met along the way. “Photography has massively impacted my life, it represents who I am. Why do we take photographs? We’re all story tellers in one way, but the stories you tell lead you back to yourself and who you are. I used to think I was this independent photographer, shooting stories I deemed interesting, but the stories are mainly rooted in myself. There is an essence of me in every portrait I take”.

www.kalpeshlathigra.com
@kalpeshlathigra

Memoire Temporelle is due to be published as a photobook. Keep your eyes open for more of Kalpesh’s series as it develops.