This week, Ali Bosworth interviews Sylvain-Emmanuel .P.

Ali Bosworth: How long have you been taking photographs? Why did you start? Your biography page says that you studied history and architecture.  How do you feel that this has affected your photographs?

Sylvain-Emmanuel .P: I can’t precisely tell when and where it directly influences my photographs, but of course I have a couple of references in mind since my studies regarding how the whole art field finally embraces Photography as a privileged medium.

Personally of course I do not have the conceit to place myself within one of those fields, i am not even a forming photographer so it’s definitely not a position i can assume from scratch.

All i do is to take photographs of what i see, and to sometimes share the result when i evaluate it’s receivable as interesting for one or another reason.
However i won’t deny such a formation didn’t affect the whole way i understand and evolve within my environment, so even not thinking about it, it should have a more or less consequence onto my photography for sure, but i usually don’t think about it when i shoot.

Talking about it give me an opportunity to say i often have the feeling the very specialized architecture photography falls to be boring to my eyes, and so cold. I tend to think it would be far more interesting to depict the relations between the elements of a building for instance, than only the building in itself, in it’s whole. It’s often sound too far away from the context and even if i do not have anything against deadpan photography (there are huge masters i do really have a lot of respect for), i think the whole challenge nowadays would be to translate those relationships.

But Again, i do not pretend to be able to complete such a work myself, i just share some thoughts with you.

AB: Your website contains many different sections organized in different ways.  Some projects are presented as grids of thumbnails, and some require clicking from one picture to the next to work through the project.  I feel as though your site urges the visitor to explore each part of it, and sometimes it is tricky to return to a picture previously discovered, almost like a big building with all sorts of rooms.  Perhaps it lends a quality more often found in physical objects (such as a shelf of books, or a pile of prints). Is this something you have done intentionally? Can you tell me about the process you use when adding or changing your site?

SEP: It’s amazing you’re coming with such an analysis, and i am happy that you are asking from that perspective Ali! Without claiming it has been done with that whole goal since the beginning, it’s my approach of the website set up indeed. I didn’t want to have a kind of portfolio’s website, but far more the progression and the correlations between pictures and the different sets i was interested in. I use to dislike when one have the possibility to embrace the whole work from a single glance, i then do prefer to let the possibility for each visitor to make his own way through the sets, and that way might differ from one person to another.

I think about my website as a sketchbook, constantly in progress and where its possible to experiment during the process, not at all like a folder done with the only aim to present my best photographs.

It might be exactly as you said Ali, the way it turns at home for instance where the library overwhelmed from each sides to piles of books and papers arranged onto the floor and furnitures through the whole flat!

My photos are in fact packed in several kinds of shoeboxes, often organized by the size of the prints more than by theme, and without any strong hierarchy between them, no chronological classification for instance.

Then since i very often check and watch them, it turns to a kind of maelstrom i am the only one to understand, but that maelstrom creates good exitings and enables me to edit those pictures time by time, to organize them on the computer with a display that shows what i have in mind.

Those displays are here to bring the emotions the photographs carry of course, but even more it’s a set up to improve a rhythm for instance, for people watching them, and those rhythms have often to differ from one set to another regarding the subject…

AB: Your website shows several series of “fashion” photographs, some of these photographs are apparently made back stage which is an uncommon perspective.  How does this fit into your other work and do you feel it is very distinct from your personal projects?  How did you begin to do these sorts of projects?

SEP: No i don’t have the feeling it differs that much from my other projects, in fact it comes naturally within the whole work to my mind because it’s the field i am working in day to day. Those works have to follow the same criteria and rule i use to have, for instance it’s done with the same material and till with films of course. However, maybe the risk would be to get a biased point of view since it’s done from the inside, within my own professional environment, but generally i don’t have the feeling those works differ because i look for the exact same kind of emotions one might find in friends relationship for instance, tender gestures, simple attitudes. I am into showing what’s behind because it’s part of my environment and also to show that’s mainly about normal life, again, i think it’s not so far from the photographs one might have of a group of friends.

My aim doing this is not that much to show the clothes as a holy masterpiece, but instead the relationship everyone deal with those items since we all wear clothes, expensive ones or not.

I started to have such kinds of photography as soon as i felt comfortable enough with the different people involved over there, as soon as i felt my presence wouldn’t give the feeling of an intrusion, it came quite naturally but step by step of course before being able to catch a bit of “intimacy” behind.

AB: At the top of your list of projects you state “Every single photograph from the website first exists as a print”. This reminds me that even though I only have access to the versions on my screen, they exist as real objects somewhere. Is this important for you? How do you deal with the process of moving your photographs from the tangible world to the electronic one? Do you think much is lost? Do you think it is a compromise?

SEP: Yes Ali, its important for me. As i started to explain a bit before i think it’s also why i shoot analogue over again and again, it’s the only way for me to keep reaching those feelings it carries beyond, and one of them and probably the most important to my eyes is the surprise. It keeps me quick-witted, and i can’t avoid myself from the great pleasure to receive my prints back from the lab where they’ve been processed, it’s one of the only way i do really enjoy to watch pictures, with a print in my hands!

Then, i also pay a great attention to photograph as an object, it’s definitely important to my mind to make the difference between a picture which is mainly a 2D item bringing ideas, and a photograph which is almost a 3D one, at least it’s a real object you know, it goes forward, it brings physicality, you can touch it, it smells, and it also got old for instance, time pass on it leaving its marks!

It’s all come together to my mind, how a photo is processed, is it a small one, or a bigger one, on what paper, is it shiny, is it matte, how should we display those objects, all those ideas a print carries definitely gets all my attention, and even more since it’s almost impossible to translate through the web.

Then yes, i believe something is lost as soon as the photo field turns to be only electronic, but at the same time that loss get offset by great channels such as interactivity, and new way to display our work, then we can’t deny the internet is truly an amazing diffusion tool!

So, just to summarize regarding my photography, i got all my films processed at the lab close to my home, and i always ask for the reading prints in their smaller size to come with, that’s enable me to have a first direct reading of my pictures, but of course i keep in mind that first print is already an “interpretation” of the rough film, it might comes too much color balanced, or too much brights sometimes, but that’s mainly help me to have a quick glance and a direct reminder of the content of my rolls once at home. I also directly ask for the scans at the lab sometime, but more often do it myself at home, and here again i both scan from the negative and sometime even directly from the print i have when i like the small imperfections it has, dust, paper damage, and everything. I do like to think the final result might proceeds from all those small middle steps.

AB: I think my favorite series on your site is “it might be a place”. How did you go about creating/grouping these photographs?  What significance does the title have?

SEP: Ho thank you Ali! It’s a bit of a peculiar set since contrary to what i said before, here it’s possible to embrace the whole series from a single look.
The grid display is fundamental for that, but the display didn’t fix itself from the beginning, several photos also take part of other sets for instance, and i don’t mind, i think a pictures shouldn’t be displayed once and forever in a single way!

What i’ve tried to question within it might be a place is the possibilities for the different photographs to dialogue each others while forming a whole, to wonder if they can be compared for instance, and i usually avoid this in my sets.

Another thing i tend to avoid is to give title for each photographs because i think it might limit too much the possibility of imagination for the people who look at it. But in return title for the sets are necessary in order to “frame” the work, at least a little bit. The title often come at the end, when the set is done, as a last wondering, and it might be a place actually works like this in my mind, it’s a question the photographs won’t especially answer to, the importance is not to know where was it, and when was it shoot but more to surround it should be anywhere on earth, nothing is sure.

AB: I like the title of your upcoming book “salade, tomate, oignon ?”  What photographs will this book contain, and how did the title come about? How do you find the process of assembling images for a book different from putting photographs on the internet.

SEP: ha thanks!

it will display a selection of my photographs from a period of 3 years, and i would like to limit their quantity at 70/max 80 pictures since i believe it’s a limit one can’t concentrate anymore on each images and their content.

I am still working on the final selection and the display however and since i don’t have a big deadline it might falls to be endless! it’s easily summarized as the photographs i do personally prefer regarding the emotion they bring to me, more than the different subjects they deal with which is not the focus point for that project.

But then, to come back to the title, it’s an everyday anecdote very french i think, about a quite folk sandwich.  It can both be called “chawarma”, or a “kebab” or even just a “Grec”, and in fact there are quite a lot of talkings here to know if its originally from Greece or Turkish, but anyway it’s done with a common base of thin grilled slices of lamb within a white bread sometime called pita, and it all comes with vegetables plus a white yogurt sauce…

I always find so fun when one order the sandwich here in France that the immediate reply is that super fast sentence “salade, tomate, oignon?”, it really more sounds like an assertion or the same old story you know, like a ritornello far more than a real question to the customer! I think it illustrates very well how flexible that sandwich remain, where nothing is definitely fixed, the ingredients and even the origin either, the fact that one can bring his own adjustments, his own modifyings regarding its culture & tastes.

I wish my book will have such a same flexibility indeed, and while it will display some very personal likings i hope it will leave some blanks for viewers to finish the story…

Then for sure, i find very different to display some photographs within a book compared to a website. I do personally believe the best way to show and even more to watch photography is the book form, i think it might even be more powerful than an exhibition with its original prints and frames and everything because one can develop a very strong relationship with books. The finish of it, is it bind by hand, how it smells again, what we can feel when we touch the paper grain, the rhythm of the display, etc… everything is important, and it’s true it’s quite tricky, i am convinced for instance it’s possible to find a lot of “bad” books done with wonderful photographs inside, just to say it might be so easy to lose the plot!

The size of the photographs is also essential i think, a picture should be seen in the correct size for all the informations it has to deliver, and i am not that much talking about this regarding books, but for example thumbnails on social networks like flickr or facebook, it’s incredible now that the decision to look forward a picture, to clic or not is all done regarding the aspect of the thumbnails. Such a decision is taken in a second just from a fast look at the thumbnails, it’s definitely misleading, there are some wonderful thumbnails which falls to be deceptive pictures at the end, mine including of course, but that’s a reason why i do prefer lists for instance regarding my own website!

Well, all this also to say how important while displaying a book remain the correct size defined for the photos in order to deliver the whole message, even if of course i am very concerned how the economic parameters are often decisive and make the balance as soon as the print time comes.!
haha i can’t stop, so just to finish regarding salade, tomate, oignon? my wishes at the end are kind of so simple and selfish at the same time so that when i will want to watch my favorite pictures i will just have to open it and turn over instead of looking for them through that damn shoe boxes, and i can’t tell if the aim is to build it as a kind of album, but why not?

AB: The photographs from your upcoming book “blinD” seem very different than most of your other work.  These seem more directed and composed.  Do you see a distinction?

SEP: yes, there are some differences due to the tools as a preliminary. For that project i only use 4×5″ large format films and camera, but still analogue of course, and i have to say it’s an incredible tool which might overwhelmed my capacities. I confess i am kind of stuck on that project. I have the feeling i cannot manage to extricate myself from the first idea i had, and then it doesn’t turn the way i wish it should. I wanted to try to have a  distant look on my closest environment, a blind look a bit like i didn’t know it and didn’t feel any emotion at watching it.

That’s why i came with that idea to use that big machine, that heavy camera between me and my environment, i just thought it would help to get that distance, to detach myself from that well known areas.  That’s also why i focused on that white character, blind and neutral whom goal is to manifest a detached human attendance from the scene he fits in. I don’t know if i will manage to complete that project, i am still looking for, i keep searching…

AB: I like the conversational quality of your blog Ping-Pong, where you exchange photographs with Ana Kras.  How did this project come about and how does the process work? Do you know Ana Kras well?

SEP: ha i so much love the project, i am really happy you ask about it!

Once again it took quite a long time to make it grows within my head. Actually i had that old idea to start an exchange of photographs online with another person i wouldn’t know, in order to let see how our relationship would evolve through this. I was interested to see if that kind of process enable to develop a relationship, enable to learn one from each other?

I first though about some people far away from France where i am leaving, with a different culture and everything but i never did any deep research to find someone who could get interesting in.

The project was a standing idea in my mind.

But talking about the web again, here is an incredible opening of possibilities thanks to the internet, cause even if people always use to exchange in the past through different medium, the explosion of blogs and social networks now grow in an amazing extent, it’s a wonderful medium regarding those possibilities.

Then, we’ve been started to contact each other with Ana Kras, and quite fast actually the idea grows in our mind to do it together, and it came out very naturally at the end.

I didn’t know that much before we start, and that was the deal, i knew she is from Belgrade, i knew a bit of her work which is truly awesome, then i knew she got a sensibility i would love to deeper discover.

There is no big speech or concept behind the project, it’s truly simple and so emotional at the same time, for both i guess. It’s a real blind exchange, since we don’t know in advance  what will be sent from the other, either when, it can come the day after, or just the next hour, or even a week later, so here again the surprise remain a key parameter of the emotions one can get from the exchange.

And then yes, i guess we start to know a bit better one from the other now, and i hope that’s only the beginning. This Shared project is truly amazing regarding the different feelings it gives me, it keeps me really excited since we started and i use to cannot wait for a long time Ana’s answer to my post ahah!

It’s from far what gives me the more pleasure lately.

AB: You have quite a large links section on your site. Do you spend a lot of time viewing other people’s work on the internet? Do you feel part of any sort of community with other photographers on the internet? Is there anyone you really like who more people should know about?

SEP: yep, i can’t deny i spent too much time on the web, when i don’t kill my computers haha! and you know what i am talking about…

I find interesting to give the possibility for the viewer to get a big list of links on my website for different reasons, i think one should have its own way through the web, but of course there is a small group of photographers whom work i deeply love, and i feel close to them.

Also with a couple of them, we sometime share some point of views or ideas, and we take part to the same kind of online projects or group exhibitions, then probably the community you’re talking about does exist. It naturally comes out when several people share the same kind of sensibility through a common medium like analogue photography.

Then i find normal to let viewers know about each others work, when one has been involved in a common field, projects.

However my feeling to be part of a real community is fluctuating because of my personality, it’s relative in my mind.

There are also some other photographers whom i have a big respect for their work but without having any contact with them, and i also use that links section as a kind of small memo, a bookmark folder so that i won’t forget to have a look time by time to the evolution of their respective works.

That list of links is evolving in parallel with my website, and it should be seen in its progression more than for each individual link, it’s a tool for other people as well, to find their own way when they’re about to leave my website.

AB: Aside from your two upcoming book projects, is there anything else that you are working on?

SEP: A couple of projects yes, hopefully one or two group exhibitions, and a lot of Interior designs which remain my main job day to day.

AB: Thanks Sylvain!

SEP: Thanks a lot for your questions Ali, i am really glad that you came to me with such wonderings!

This week showcases a selection of work from Adam Golfer.

If you have questions for Adam about his work, please feel free to leave a comment for him to respond to.

This week, Bree Apperley interviews Ali Bosworth.

Bree Apperley: Your photos have such a nice vibe to them, it reminds me of looking through my parents old photos, like kind of watching their relationship grow over time, year after year, the vacations, the holidays, the seasons…I used to spend hours pouring over our family photo albums. Your photos trigger these same sort of emotions, especially the ones with your girlfriend in them - I tend to get caught up in the narrative of your relationship…even the colouring of the photos seems washed out and faded golden yellow like an old photograph. Was this consciously something you were kind of going for or did it just happen? Do you alter the photos at all to get that golden effect or does it just happen for you? Do you think the strength of your relationship to your subjects is partly what makes the photos come to life? Or am I just being sentimental??

Ali Bosworth: No, I don’t think you are just being sentimental.  I think the relationship/photo album/etc. aspect is definitely present but it was never anything that I was trying to do with my photos.  I guess it is just a side-effect of the way I take photographs, just sort of bits and pieces of my day-to-day life.  I think it is interesting that there can be so much drawn out of what I perceive as being quite a sparse and spotty representation of my/our life.  I like that idea though, the reconstruction of it all.

I don’t try and color my photographs to any specific end.  I only shoot negative film and I scan it all myself with a film scanner. As anyone who has spent time looking into it knows, it is actually pretty tricky for the scanner/software to accurately subtract the film base color from the raw scan.  A lot of scanning software sort of auto color balances each frame based on its contents, which is probably OK for most people but I find it inconsistent and variable (for instance if there is a lot of red in the image it might skew the results). I use a program called VueScan which gives you very detailed control over how the scanner will act and basically lets you capture as much data as possible from the negative.  Anyways, when it comes to color balancing my images I always find that I choose the settings that I do because that is what looks best. I do buy almost exclusively expired or close-date film but I wouldn’t credit that with the tonality (for me it is simply the economics).  I definitely tend to balance things on the warm side. Someone once told me that it is a result of me being born in the summer.  Weird idea, but who knows.  It’s like that thing when you think about how everyone might ‘see’ the color blue totally differently but there is nothing we can do about it because all our reference points are exactly the same and there is really no way to know.

BA: Being a techno-phobe myself I am kind of curious how you deal with that side of things. What camera do you use and what lenses? What kind of film? Or maybe you use digital? I’m not sure. Do you carry around a huge bag of stuff with you all the time? Do you ever find that the technical side of things holds you back - like taking too long to set-up a shot or something? Or do you kind of just go with it - like you know enough and can do it fast enough that it doesn’t hold you back. Your photos certainly don’t look like you are fussing around much in the background with all these different lenses etc. but maybe you have just got so good at it that a person can’t tell. Was/is technical stuff ever a problem for you?

AB: I have a lot of cameras, a bit of a collection I guess. I am into them as a bit more than just tools to make pictures with, but they aren’t sitting on display shelves or anything.  If I am going out to take photographs or if I am on a trip I usually use one of a few Olympus OM SLRs that I have: I have an OM-4, two OM-2Ns, and two OM-3s.  I usually use a 50mm or a really compact 35-70mm zoom, sometimes a 28mm.  For a long time I used a Canon Canonet QL17, I probably have about 5 of them.  I also have some other similar compact rangefinders: a few Olympus 35SPs, and a bunch of Olympus 35RCs (which all seem to die on me).  I have a Canon Demi half-frame which I used to use a bunch, and I recently bought an Olympus Pen FT half frame SLR which is very nice and probably my most expensive camera.  Getting 72+ photos per roll is pretty crazy, although I guess everyone else in the world is packing their memory cards with a thousand photos at a time or whatever.

If I am just out and about or going to and from work or whatever, I usually just have a little point-and-shoot in my bag.  I think the Olympus Stylus Epic is really great and I grab them up whenever I see them, I also have a few Konica Big Minis.  “What camera do you use?”  is such a funny question that gets bounced around (do painters ask each other about brushes?).  I get as interested as anyone in what other people use but I really feel that it doesn’t matter very much in the end.

I don’t tend to carry a lot of things around with me, probably just a camera or two at most. I’m not big into swapping lenses around or anything like that.  But I am pretty into the ‘technical side of things’.  I don’t have lighting kits or tripods or anything, but I am into the details of how everything works.  I don’t really spend any time setting anything up, and I am pretty shy about even holding a camera or taking a picture. If I am trying to take a picture and someone walks by I’ll probably hide my camera! Ha, probably something I should get over.

With my girlfriend Sinead, the whole process of taking a photo of/with her is so natural at this point.  It might not necessarily seem like a vary natural process because she is looking right into the camera sometimes, but it is more that she is doing something or looking at me or whatever and I pull out the camera and take the picture. Obviously there is some level of orchestration on both our parts, but it really is just something that is done in passing amongst other things.  We never go out to take pictures of her or anything, I rarely even go out specifically to take pictures.

BA How did you get started with photography? Did you go to school for it or start as a hobbyist? Do you think it is important to go to school for photography? If you did go to art school how do you think that plays into things? Do you feel as though your work is part of the discourse of contemporary photography or just don’t really care either way? What are your thoughts about digital vs. film and the direction of the medium? Maybe you just do your thing and don’t get into it.

AB: I just started taking photographs on my own, my dad first gave me some little camera before a family trip and then later an old SLR for my birthday.   For me school doesn’t really factor into it.  I have done half of a degree in Visual Art at the University here, but I only decided to try that out after I was already pretty comfortable with photography. I have taken all the photo classes that I could take and have enjoyed them but I am not sure if it has affected my photo taking much.  It is nice to have more of a context for things, because I had never really gotten into knowing about all the big names and everything.  Having said that, I’m sure school can be totally influential and formative for some people.

I have never thought about my photos as being part of the discourse of contemporary photography, or really any discourse at all. Of course nothing exists in a bubble and it is an interesting topic, just not one that I have considered much. I don’t hang out with a lot of photographers, and in Victoria there is really only one person that I know who I can relate to in terms of the type of photos we take and the way we take them (Chris Taylor: www.winnersblues.com).  So I do think the internet is great in the way that I can casually ‘know’ (or ‘know of’) other people and check out their photos.  That being said I don’t really feel part of any community on the internet either.

Because I post so much to flickr (basically everything I shoot) it does occur to me that people might be regularly following along with what I’m up to, which was never something I was trying to foster (in general I am pretty reserved), but I guess it is kind of neat.  Sinead occasionally gets approached by people who recognize her. The weirdest thing is the apparent number of people who are under the impression that she is Ali Bosworth and that all of the photographs of her are actually self portraits. I totally understand that my name could be a girls name but how could she take all the pictures of her riding her bike, etc?  That would put an entirely different spin on things!  I think there might be a desire by some to project the girl as the photographer, documenting her own life, setting up these portraits where she is directly addressing the audience (rather than the photographer).

I don’t have any interest in using digital cameras, they are all so fiddly and plasticky.  Whats with all the massive bulky SLRs? They seem like they are hollow or something.  I’m sure there are some nice ones that don’t feel like a piece of junk though.  Aside from the aesthetics/feel/usability I also have pretty big concerns about something that never exists in the physical world. It’s not that I am anti-digital, I’m totally into the digital side of things and I spend a lot of time scanning/organizing/etc.  I get my negatives developed without any prints (which is way cheaper than with prints), scan them myself, and don’t often get anything printed because I only rarely have any reason to.  But I always have all the negatives filed away, and if i need a bigger scan for something, or if I need to get something printed large, I just go back to the negative.  So I am happy to be between both worlds right now. I like that I can buy a nice old camera for $50 and it will work great.  To get comparable quality from a digital camera I’d probably have to spend 10 times as much and I wouldn’t like using it and I’d have to charge it all the time and I’d be afraid that I was going to drop it and break it the second I tried to use it.

BA: Do you see yourself moving in new directions - even subtle ones? How has your practice of picture-taking evolved? For example I think of Ryan McGinley and how he started off goofing around - taking photos of friends and at parties, really spontaneously, and then kind of moved on to more set-up situations where he was casting models and using props and scouting for locations - have you seen yourself approach how you take a photo differently over time? If you had all the money you could need would you do things differently?

AB: I don’t see myself drastically moving in any direction.  Of course I hope things continue evolve on their own. When I started I took really a lot of photos of our family cat.  And then there was a summer when I took lots and lots of photos of these two friends of mine, Andy and Talia, just because we were hanging out a lot.  And then when Sinead and I started dating and eventually moved in together it was just natural to take a lot of photos of her and our house, etc.  I guess I am a little obsessive when it comes to taking pictures, but at the same time it seems very natural just to photograph my immediate surroundings, things I am comfortable with.  I’m not really one to stick my neck out.

The furthest I get from my own surroundings (photographically) is when we are on some sort of trip.  Sinead and I went to Greece and Turkey for a little over 3 months in 2008 and it was great. My parents met in Greece and lived on one of the islands for most of the 70s. I was born in Ontario but when I was little we went to Greece and lived there for a year and a half.  So, when Sinead and I were on our trip I took a lot of photos, about about 110 rolls.  The whole process was interesting because I didn’t get anything developed until we got back home, so there was no “feedback loop” for the photographs for the duration of the trip, which was scary and exciting at the same time.  And then when we got home we were starting classes and finding a new house and everything, so it took me a pretty long time to work through scanning it all.  I guess there is definitely still a personal narrative present even though we are totally out of our normal surroundings and routine, and I’d like to think that the trip photos share something in common with my photos form home.

BA: Do you have a day job? How do balance having the freedom and space to make a lot of work with paying rent and the bills? Have you found a way to make some money with your photos? What about commercial work - do you do any? How do you feel about it? Would you rather not or are you okay with it?

AB: I definitely have a job. I am a web developer and I work with a friend who has a little company with a bunch of designers and a few developers. It is really flexible and I enjoy it.

I have never had trouble finding time to take pictures because for the most part the photographs just happen.  There are certainly periods where I won’t shoot much but I’m OK with that, it’s not like I don’t know what to do with myself if I don’t have a camera in my hands or anything.

I have made a little bit of money through photos.  The most interesting thing was having a photo used on the cover of an Italian translation of a German book put out by a publishing company which was started by this left-wing activist who originally smuggled the manuscript for Doctor Zhivago out of the Soviet Union and published it.  I have done a few other things where I got some money for something, but never any real commercial work.  I’m not sure how I’d feel about it, it would all depend.  For example, I took some pictures of Sinead wearing clothes that our friends made, and I was fine with that. I would probably be uncomfortable trying to replicate the naturally occurring elements of my photos for someone else’s purposes or ideas.

BA: Any upcoming things you are excited about? Projects or exhibitions? I think I saw that you were doing a book with the Gottlund Verlag press - Wow! Is that true? Anything you would like to say about it? Any big future ambitions? Or moves? Or maybe you are just going to settle down in a sweet little bungalow on Vancouver Island with your lady and your cats. That sounds perfect…

AB: No big projects. Maybe a few group shows in the next few months.  Yes, Nicholas and I have been discussing something which should be cool.  I have made miniature attempts on my own at booklets and stuff but I never get very far.  I bought a really fancy stack cutter for edging books which comes in handy every 6 months or so but I haven’t really put it to proper to use. As I said earlier, a lot of my stuff mostly only  exists as scans, but I do really like the idea of something you can hold in your hand, keep on a shelf, etc.  I still have to update my site with older stuff and newer stuff. It was quite a bit of work to edit things down into manageable groups and I really intended to regularly add more segments, but I haven’t yet.

I don’t think we are going to settle down in Victoria quite yet!  It already feels like we have been settled down in sleepy Victoria for the last little while.  Sinead will be finished her Women’s Studies degree after this school year so we will probably try living somewhere else for a bit.  Not sure where yet but we will see what happens.

BA: Thanks so much Ali! I appreciate you taking the time out to answer all my questions. Good Luck with all your stuff okay?

This week showcases a selection of work from Clayton Cotterell’s project, All in the Family.

Clayon’s statement about this project:

All in the Family is an ongoing project in which I am primarily photographing my younger brother, Ian Cotterell, before and after he has joined the U.S. Army. This work investigates the current generation of young Americans crossing the gap between childhood and adulthood in a time of war.

I began photographing Ian in 2007 with no real intentions of using him as a subject. He is my brother and it was a way for us to spend time together, as we are very different in our personalities and interests. When he decided to join the military it created a new and strange patriotism in my family, simply because my parents wanted to support him in his decision. I started to take interest in this shift and the project began. As time went by, I understood what I was doing more and more, and decided to focus completely on Ian. As with previous projects, I felt by honing in on a specific individual I could then speak about a broader community experiencing a similar period in their lives.

If you have a question or comment for Clayton about his work, please feel free to leave a comment for him to respond to.

Body Armor

Unarmed

Muffler Hut

Bunk

Tattoo Shop

Camo Headphones

Lunch on Base

Weekend Leave

Army Boots

(No title)

Visiting Rosemary

With Nicole

Rock Opera

Firing Range

Out Back

Civilian Vehicle

Graduation Day

This week, Stacy Lundeen interviews Bree Apperley.

Stacy Lundeen: As a small town girl living in the big bad city, can you trace out specific influences that have crept into your work due to your new environment, or have you always maintained a similar sensibility?

Bree Apperley: Hmmmm…tough to say. Probably my basic sensibility is still the same but maybe a bit more tuned in? Stronger hopefully? I think I have a better eye than I did before maybe just from seeing so much stuff here. Art stuff and stuff stuff, absorbing everything and editing it out in my mind…

SL: I love looking through your photos, but apparently they only constitute a small portion of your artistic output. Do you consider yourself primarily a photographer and is your photo work connected to say your design or drawing?

BA: I get a little frustrated sometimes because I feel like I am just constantly reaching out to so many different things - dabbling in this and that - mediums and styles and ideas…it almost feels like a really adolescent way to be working but I guess it must be a necessary stage for me to go through. It is like my foundation year of art school secretly lasted like 13 years or something…but I finally kind of feel like with the photography I am getting somewhere more solid. Just the photos I have taken in the last few months even are kind of reassuring to me. Not to say that I won’t use any other mediums from now on, but I am for sure most excited and motivated by the photography thing right now.

SL: You work in publishing and design - when you think about the presentation of your work how do you see it - on walls or on shelves between covers?

BA: I would love to see it in both! That is one of the nice things about photography I think - that it  stands at a crossroads between all my interests: new media, art, design, books, film, narrative, fashion…

SL: What do you look at, why is it interesting to you?

BA: I guess if I am in the right zone, I am kind of always looking at things, colours, compositions, textures, framing, cropping…if I see something I like I think for a sec and then I either snap or wait, reframe and then maybe snap again…

I really enjoy looking at the world. Sounds simple but no kidding.

SL: What do you find engaging about photography, could you express or articulate those ideas in any other medium?

BA: I guess like I said earlier - it is a meeting point for several of my interests. I am also kind of fascinated by its present day connection to the internet. It is kind of unique to the medium that it can be shared on the internet and look good - or look how it should - not like painting where it has to be seen in real life. Same for in books, a photograph is partially meant for books, to be digested that way. I probably wouldn’t have even touched the camera if I wasn’t at this point in time where the camera is so connected to new technology…I totally came into it with digital - where you could snap a million photos and keep the ones you like…that was so appealing to me and I think it helped me get better faster. If I had started with film I maybe would have been to precious about everything because of the cost of film and printing and everything.

I don’t think my work is even that idea driven. Which seems weird and anti-artschool to say but it’s true. I just don’t do it that way. I don’t really have an idea and then go out and shoot it. For me I think it is more that I like to make photos that kind of have an abstract quality, some sort of internal compositional structure, and a gestural quality like drawing. I am not into setting up shots or having more control. And I am really not into any of the technical aspects of the medium, I find that kind of suffocating, but I don’t know. Maybe I will learn some of that by accident just from shooting all time. That would be nice. I like the idea of capturing something on the fly, a more athletic approach perhaps? Trying and trying and once in awhile nailing it at the right moment. And hopefully getting better at consistently nailing it.

SL: You seem to spend a lot of energy showcasing other artists both on your blog and in your website, who are the people - artists - that most interest you - what is it that you relate to about them?

BA: Well…I guess I am just always sifting what is out there and sometimes I find gems and need to share them! In a way it is like thrift shopping or something - consuming images - eating images for breakfast - wading through all this stuff and when you find something that is right on - it is such a good feeling!! Like a high. I get such energy from finding stuff I like and fully digesting it…I think that is what culture is all about. Like a refreshing drink. Drinking from the well of humanity!!

I also really like the community building aspect of all the finding and sharing which I honestly didn’t even think about when I started all the internet stuff. There are so many people who inspire me - established artists in all types of mediums - and people I just find on the internet, young and emerging artists…they are all so important to keeping me riding the creative wave…

SL: For you, who are the great groundbreakers?

BA: Through different times in my life I have been really into different artists. For photography in particular, I got specifically into this photography/film kick from looking at the work of superclever, ddario and valeria picerno on flickr, which opened up to a whole network of young photographers whose work I really enjoyed checking out. Then I met Denise Schatz and Jennilee Marigomen online who both included me on some of their projects and that was awesome.

In terms of established artists - I went through a thing with Nan Goldin a million years ago in art school - I bought a copy of her book “The Ballad of Sexual Dependency” for a deep discount back then from a bookstore where it had been on display and it was so cool with all these fingerprints everywhere and dark black marks where people had been flipping through it again and again and again. It is like an art piece in itself…

Then of course from there to William Eggleston, Wolfgang Tillmans, Juergen Teller…I had a real thing for Rineke Dijkstra a few years ago…my talented superbud Takaaki Okada turned me on to Nobuyoshi Araki, Daido Moriyama, and Takashi Homma, and now I am kind of (really really) into Viviane Sassen, Estelle Hanania, Roe Ethridge, and these two students from Cooper Union - calla virginia and pitegoff - Oh! And carson e.f.v….

Also a big fan of my other photog bud Richard Petrucci!

SL- Thanks so much Bree.

This week showcases a selection of work from Peter McCollough.

If you have questions for Peter about his work, please feel free to leave a comment for him to respond to.

This week, Vincent LaFrance interviews Stacy Lundeen.

Vincent Lafrance: I saw your last show in Montreal; there was two photographs of yours and tree drawings by the canadian artist Marc Séguin hanging in front of them. I haven’t had the chance to read anything about this gesture. Can you talk about it, did you do that using the posture of a curator or one of an artist using someone else’s work to underline some statement?

Stacy Lundeen: I saw that work By Marc Seguin several years ago and it really did something for me. Unfortunately the space we had to work with wasn’t  able to accommodate that entire series which I thought told a morality tale. When I approached Marc about doing the show I  was interested in presenting an opposing argument to my work which I think of as a morality tale without the moral at the end of it.

VL: That show also included a Saran wrap sculpture, the same type of work that you photographed a lot in the past months. How much do you think your sculpture can exist as art objects?

SL: I think you can find an appreciating viewer for anything, it doesn’t matter what. My current work relies so heavily on specific lighting that achieving the desired affect is more a question of installation, but given the right means they would be nice sculptures I think, both for your home or office. Why not have one for both.

VL: A lot of the elaborate that you create are low relief. They end up being flat photography as well. What is the biggest issue in the act of photographing the objects?

SL: For me the biggest issue is always trusting that it is time to do this now, because you can work and work on things. I often go back and rework sections of a piece then re-photograph them. Also getting the right lighting can be tricky. I still work with film so I make my exposures, process my film and take a look. If the work is half baked I know it at this point. I don’t have any problem abandoning a piece if it doesn’t do what I want it to.

VL: Your work tends to take meaning a lot from the title. Are you aware of that, how much does it have an importance?

SL: I used to be more inclined towards elaborate titles because I felt you were missing an opportunity to express yourself and expand on the scope of your work if you went the “untitled” road, but now I just like to call a thing what it is.

VL: I suppose you expect people to walk in front of your work and enjoy it. What do you expect from them when they leave the gallery? In other words: what is your work suppose to stimulate over time and distance?

SL: Im not sure I have huge expectations for responses to my work. I guess I’m just trying to connect with people and things in my environment. I feel like one of the best things that could happen is some one looks at a piece and feels like they get what Im driving at, that they are in on the joke or the tragedy.

VL: What kind of work ethic do you have? How many hours a week do you punch in at the studio?

SL: I work in spurts, I could be in the studio every day for weeks and then not go in for a month, also colder weather gets me up to the studio. I love being in the studio but sometimes I cant figure out what Im doing up there. Thats when I’ll switch things up and do some drawing or make a water colour or just piss around and look at all the stuff. I consider this research. Drinking beer and noodeling on the guitar is also research.

VL: Do you sometimes feel like you should learn a job, do you get afraid by moments?

SL: I have always worked jobs to support my art habit, and I have doubts about things. Who doesn’t. I guess I just wouldn’t know what I was unless I was making art.

VL: You are from the Canadian Prairies, you grew among cowboys and guns. Do you think it makes you be more exotic?

SL: I was certainly exotic amongst that crowd, out here in montreal everyone is doing something, making music, making films, its a wonderful environment to exist in. People like people who can bring something new to the table, they really like it when I bring my revolver.

VL: I would like to start my next question by a quote from the muppet show. Kermit once said: How important are the visual arts in our society? I feel strongly that the visual art are of vast and incalculable importance. Of course I could be prejudiced. I am a visual artist.  Is Kermit right or is he prejudiced?

SL: Visual art is about as important as NASA the UN or spaghetti. Its really about checking things out and figuring out how we should get along and get by.

VL: Now If you had the chance to either play chess with Marcel Duchamps-arm-wrestle Bruce Nauman- Play trivial pursuit with Walter benjamin or sing karaoke with cindy Sherman. Wich one you pick and why?

SL: I’d sing bridge over troubled water with Cindy, but if I could I’d arm wrestle Duchamp. He could use getting taking down a peg the cocky bastard. I think Cindy sherman is fantastic and I like social people, plus we could speak English together. I need to  practice my English.

VL: Your work happens in the studio, you are a studio artist. Are you nostalgic?

SL: I just do what I need to do. I work outside the studio if thats what I need to do. I do suffer from nostalgia on occasion though, but to me the studio is just aplace to go and get your shit done, a place where you can concentrate and get loose. I would certainly be nostalgic about my studio if I didn’t have it any more.

VL: Would you like to be a painter?

SL: I would only switch if I could be the best painter ever. I like feeling connected and spending time with my work, feeling a sense of process and resolution but all the rest is just whatever. I think all work that is good is just good, fuck the materials or supports. Anyway I’d rather be a film maker then a painter, more people see films, and, if there any good they even see them again.

VL: You love the artist Ed Rusha. Ed Rusha said that that: Good art should elicit a response of Huh? Wow! as opposed to Wow!  Huh? Is it something you are working along especially with these well endowed monsters?

SL: Ed’s a Chevy man, I’m a Ford man so we think differently about some things, I think that as long as there is a “wow”  and a “Huh” your doing something right whatever the order.

This week showcases a selection of work from Hin Chua’s series, They Called Me a Corporate Whore.

If you have questions for Hin about his work, please feel free to leave a comment for him to respond to.

This week, Radeq Brousil interviews Vincent LaFrance.

Radeq Brousil: Vincent, your works are filled with a certain type of irony and poetry. How would you describe your work to a person who has never seen your work before?

Vincent Lafrance: I am usually trying to avoid doing this. My work has gone in many directions and I hardly make sense of it; appart from it being indicative of my behaviour. I use art to filter my reality, it’s broad, it’s diversified. I have short and intense interest for things. But if I have to make an effort for you because you once invited me over in your family for easter I would say that I often use humor, visual gags and parody. My work also implies the vision itself, I use photography to underline aspects of my visual environment. I like watching. For me, seing is thinking. Somehow I am interested in perception, I create illusion and try to elaborate visual complexities. A lot of my pictures are about construction, like still life. I may be eclectic but I am also and deeply a traditionnaI photographer. I use film most of the time and print it directly on photo paper. I care about the surface. My discourse seems really inherent to the medium of photography, also because of the multiple reference to photography history. Now to end on something else, when I talk of my work to someone who doesnt know me, I usually try to speak about the present, about what I am doing now. It gives people a better sense of what you are interested in. It makes them believe that you are busy. We are attracted to busy people, we want to have a bit of their attention.

RB: You graduated from photography at Concordia University in Montreal, Canada. Do you think it’s important to study photography, especially today when we hear discussions about the death of this medium?

VL: I have never heard of a discussion about the death of the medium. Studying photography is just like studying anything else: you learn a language. It’s a great shortcut, it’s  a fantastic blast of ideas and it’s  also where you create most of your professional relationships. In Canada we live in an art environment that encourages discursive practice. The institutions are omnipresent allowing grants for artists. Those institutions requires a certain level of language and a certain precision in how we construct an art project. Going to art school gives you the tools to perform well within that system. It affects the art scene I believe, for better and for worse.

Radeq Brousil: Most of your older works are missing human element especially compare to your new videos. I see a big difference between your photographic and video works, is that any particular intent?

VL: The video work offers the opportunity to use language at another level. When I am surrounded with people, I define myself largely with speach. I am interested in how people communicate, I like to see people using words and formulation that gives them a certain caracter, a distinction. I am really sensitive to that. I like to be impressed by someones ability to describe reality. So at the end it seemed natural to start writting a script for actors and have them play a fiction. I was curious, I wanted to see something new coming out of me. I was tired of being me. I need new clothes too.

RB: What do you think about photography as a limited medium for “seeing things”, do you feel a need to cross this medium and go further behind 2 dimensional picture?

VL: Ask this to a writer; if he believe that his medium is limited by black symbols printed on paper. Think of poetry, the space that exist between a reader and the object- the book. That space is all what matters. Having someone standing in front of an image and making stories in his mind. Isn’t it the greatest contact one can have with art, this moment of generosity, of open mindness. It is actually all I am asking or hoping; someone caring and paying attention to a picture that I have made. It is, to me, the greatest form of interaction. So about the medium: you can go further or behind, it’s about the same, the finality is invisible.

RB: Do you see yourself more as a photographer, a director, an actor or a sculptor?

VL:  I was trained as a classical photographer, all the rest is done with amateursim. I use some random skills in the process of making a work but most of what I do end up being a photography. I am a photographer.

RB: Montreal is well known for it’s music ; scene. Is this element of town you are living at important for you? Do you feel any influence?

VL: Only in the sense that music, more that any other art practice I believe, brings an important flux of cultural migrants. It creates vitality in this town so yes it influences me in that regards.

RB: Your brother is a painter and noise musician. How is it to have a brother working in the same field, especially art?

VL: Two of my brothers are working as artist (Etienne and David), my father was an art teacher, we care a lot about art in our familiy. It’s interesting because art instead of being a marginal practice as always been a natural way to find happiness. My older brother David holds a special importance. First, he is the head of our hockey league where I ended up top scorer in the last season with 56 goals. The painter Etienne Zack is just behind with 49 goals. Second, David is highly influential, somehow I need his approval on the project I am working on. I need him to be enthusiastic, otherwise I start having doubts. We all have someone like that in our lives. A writter friend told me that he was throwing his manuscript in the garbage when his wife doesn’t like it. I think he over estimate his wife.

RB: You visited a residency at BBB art center in Toulouse with the program Pepinière européennes pour jeunes artistes in 2009. Can you tell me some of your experiences, what is the program about and what have you made there?

VL: I tried to shoot a feature. I have found actors and rented a good camera. I am now editing a 75 minutes fiction. It’s a comedy, it’s absolutely experimental but also quite conventionnal. It almost starts looking like a real movie. It’s very french, almost in a parody manner. I have to say that I am really excited by this project, it looks like nothing I have done before. The residency was fabulous. They had me there for five month offering me the best working conditions, a great salary and a lot of human ressources. I bought an old red car and fancy vintage sunglasses and made everyone belive I was a director.

RB: You are represented by Division Gallery in Montreal. Is it important to be represented by a gallery in Montreal? What is the situation with galleries in your town?

VL: A gallery makes people think that you are good because for sure at some point someone decided to work with you believing you were good. It is also important for me since I show almost essentially photography in that gallery. Working with residencies and institutions is nice but it keeps me away from photography. Video is what I show in art center. It’s a money question. It is maybe not that important to be represented by a gallery if you can find your way through artist center, if your pracice fits well in that kind of circuit. My practice requires a gallery otherwise I would never put a picture in a frame.

RB:  Any recent project of yours which you would like to talk about?

VL: I am making t-shirts right now. I use oil paint sharpies. I also take a lot of pictures. Lately I have been photographing flowers. But I am, before all, trying to finish editing my film. It’s good to close a project sometimes. Otherwise things are just pilling up. I have shot an animal documentary in 2008 and it still sits in the computer. It’s something I shot in Florida during a short residency. I am the narrator of that documentary in super 8 film. It is a comedy as well. It’s is very cartoon-like. It’s a piece about nature representation and animal depiction. Of course, It all goes wrong.

RB: Thanks for your time and your work, Vincent.

This week showcases a series of photocrom prints made throughout Italy between 1890-1900. These images are exhibited through the flickr page of the Library of Congress, which I suggest visiting often. You can read more about photochrom prints here.

[Bellagio, general view, Lake Como, Italy]
[between ca. 1890 and ca. 1900].
1 photomechanical print : photochrom, color.

[Cadenabbia, Lake Como, Italy]
[between ca. 1890 and ca. 1900].
1 photomechanical print : photochrom, color.

[Cadenabbia, Lake Como, Italy]
[between ca. 1890 and ca. 1900].
1 photomechanical print : photochrom, color.

[Blue grotto, Capri Island, Italy]
[between ca. 1890 and ca. 1900].
1 photomechanical print : photochrom, color.

[Mount Solaro, Capri Island, Italy]
[between ca. 1890 and ca. 1900].
1 photomechanical print : photochrom, color.

[Como, the harbor, Lake Como, Italy]
[between ca. 1890 and ca. 1900].
1 photomechanical print : photochrom, color.

[General view, Arco, Lake Garda, Italy]
[between ca. 1890 and ca. 1900].
1 photomechanical print : photochrom, color.

[General view, Gargnano, Lake Garda, Italy]
[between ca. 1890 and ca. 1900].
1 photomechanical print : photochrom, color.

[A branch of lemons, Limone, Lake Garda, Italy]
[between ca. 1890 and ca. 1900].
1 photomechanical print : photochrom, color.

[Ponale Road, Lake Garda, Italy]
[between ca. 1890 and ca. 1900].
1 photomechanical print : photochrom, color.

This week, Tereza Zelenkova interviews Radeq Brousil.

Tereza Zelenkova: You completed your MA studies in photography at AAAD in Prague only last year but you’re already a quite notorious persona of the Czech art scene. However for those who are not familiar with your work, could you give some brief introduction?

Radeq Brousil: I was born in 1980 in a small town Nitra in Slovakia. When I was 6 we have moved with my family to Prague, Czech republic. When I finished high school we’ve moved to Brussels in Belgium for a few years. That’s where my first contact with art was and I have studied painting for one year at the Academy. I have also started to flirt with photography there. We have moved back to Prague with my parents in 2001 and applied at AAAD(New media studio) and AVU(photography studio), two biggest art academies in Prague and I got in to both of them. I have finished my MA in photography at AAAD in 2009. I studied at Concordia University in Montreal, Canada during 2007. That’s actually a place where my work have changed the most.

T.Z.: What is it that interests you about photography? Why not some other medium?

R.B.: I haven’t been interested in photography actually. The main thing why did I choose photography was to understand the philosophy of image as itself. As time is running I am trying to explore my experiences in photography in the other mediums as well.

T.Z.: Your work appeared in cult magazines such as Zivel in Czech or Vice and you photographed many bands and musicians. You have also made some rather conceptual works such as your Study of a Young Man series. What work do you enjoy making the most?

R.B.: I am doing band photos basically because of my love to music and interest in portraiture. I am not that interested in magazines as I used to be, it’s much more about challenging real space in form of exhibitions. I don’t calculate about types of art, I just answer my own questions by their own realizations.

T.Z.: Many of your works are portraits but it seems to me that you are not very preoccupied with the individuality of your subjects. You are often using masks or concealing the faces in some other way and the resulting photographs’ meticulous arrangement often remind me more of still-lives rather than portraits. What is it that you are interested in when photographing people?

R.B.: As I said I am interested in portraiture. It’s maybe just a different way of a portraiture. For example when I am photographing a band portrait I am not telling a band to do anything, I want to show real people not my fantasies. I don’t retouch photos neither.

But when I am working on my own projects, that’s the moment when I am talking about my personal dreams, fears, questions and subjects. In that moment it’s not about the person I am photographing, but mostly about my vision and that is the main different between my personal projects and work.

T.Z.: In Study of a Young Man you created short video pieces that lay on the border of stills and moving images. What stands behind your choice of this nontraditional approach to portraiture? Do you see photography’s stillness as its limitation?

R.B.: Moving image was always my big topic. I have started to study photography to answer a question about moving image, to understand what is actually a basic of moving image. Is it photography? Is photography something different then moving image? Is photography a limit?

Now when I have finished studies I am trying to apply my new experiences.

Study of a Young man was one of the first projects where I have applied this theme, but it is also in a connection with theme of a contemporary relationship between woman and a man. The installation was not presented in the form of photography, but in the form of “dynamic photography”, in short video sequences. They were on the edge of photography and video. The only static photographic section was actually also moving, but physically in the form of slides. Study of a Young Man engages in the relationship between photography, movement video sequences and the image.

T.Z.: Where do you seek your inspiration?

R.B.: I don’t have any idols actually. I always wanted, but I am just not that type of person. So there are no favourite artists I could mention. Actually my biggest inspiration is music probably. To me music is the strongest medium, next to wild scenery of course.

T.Z.: I am from Czech Republic as well but I’ve been living in London for the last three years. You live in Prague now so I would like to ask you how is it, from your point of view, to be a young photographer in the Czech Republic at the moment? What are the positives and negatives and what would you like to change?

R.B.: Well we could talk about positives and negatives of certain places for hours. It’s very individual. To me Prague is a place I can focus on my own work. I can go to nature whenever and for how long i want. I can go out in the night and I know the right places. Prague is magic. My personal problem is that I can’t stay here for a long time as I am used to travel from my childhood. So I usually stay for a few months, year maximum and I go somewhere else. But what is bizarre that I always love to go back…

If we talk about art scene, it’s very hard. Prague is a small city and it’s culture has been destroyed by years of communism. That is the hard reality and we have to live with it. Present times are not very easy for a young artist to survive, if it’s Prague or New York, but the main differents are market and audience. What I see as the main problem of Prague is that we are doing art for our friends and there is actually not a different point of view from the “normal” public. We can always export our art out of the country of course…We wouldn’t be able to do that during the communism.

T.Z.: What is the latest project you’ve been working on right now?

R.B.: I am actually working on some more conceptual pieces at the moment, but I am using my own photographs. So it’s again on the edge of photography and some other theme. Another thing I want to work on is some more filming this year. Besides that I am trying to do music…

This week showcases work from Jody Rogac.

If you have questions for Jody about her work, please feel free to leave a comment for her to respond to.

This week, Grant Willing interviews Tereza Zelenkova.

Grant Willing:  Can you tell me a little bit about your background?

Tereza Zelenkova: I am from Czech Republic, but I’ve lived in London for last three years. I am just finishing my BA degree in Photographic Arts so at the moment I’m undergoing a process of major change – I am ceasing to be a student and becoming unemployed artist. Of course I can’t tell the difference yet.


GW:  Most of your work seems to deal with some form of the occult, how did you get interested in this?  How do you relate to the occult personally?

TZ: I think that my serious interest in the occult started with Huysmans’s novel The Damned. I’ve also heard a lot of crazy stories about occult stuff and it really fascinated me so I started to read more and more about it. I was raised atheist, but no one from my family is exactly a rationalist either.
For some time I was in search for some form of religious belief that I would like to adopt but unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately) I haven’t found a single occult system of thought that I could identify myself with or I could possibly devote myself to. Once I was thinking about trying to perform some demon invocations from the The Goetia (The Lesser Key of Solomon) but I just couldn’t get a lion skin anywhere in London…hmm

Anyway I think that the true occultist and magician, like Austin Osman Spare or the Czech writer Ladislav Klima, is an anarchist who seeks his own way without having a need for being followed by others.

GW:  You’re from the Czech Republic, and live in London.  It also seems like a number of your images from ‘Supreme Vice’ are taken in the western US.  Does location affect how you work?  Describe the most ideal setting for you..

TZ: I don’t think that the location significantly affects the way I work. I mean technically it does, because you won’t take expensive equipment on a road trip or won’t photograph in studio with disposable camera (not usually at least). However photography definitely has a strong connection with traveling for me. I think it has to do something with being alert and sometimes it is hard to be alert in the city where you live: taking the same roads, passing the same people and places. But there is nothing like the most ideal setting for me. I guess that when you are a photographer it is natural for you to photograph things that seem to interest you in some way and at some point I can be interested in the floor of my apartment and other time in the American desert. I can shoot an entire body of work around my flat sometimes and other times I need to go to Death Valley and take one photograph.

GW:  You have 2 versions of a book for your ‘Supreme Vice’ series, 1 is an artist’s book the other being published by Morel.  You also have a book of your series ‘Watch Your Skin Peel,’  Can you talk about how books play a part in the representation of your work?  Do you think a book is the best way to see your work?  And why two books of the same body of work?

TZ: To answer the last question first, I have two books because I am obsessed with books and because I don’t see any reason why not. There can never be enough books in the world.
The book I made myself is an homage to Austin Osman Spare whose ghost I believe is hunting me. The lay out and font are taken from his book Earth Inferno from 1905 which I held in my hands at British Library a few weeks ago and I just couldn’t stop thinking about it. Then I went to this small occult book store and bought the latest reprint of Earth Inferno (a beautifully made edition of Spare’s book by I-H-O Books) to further examine it, the lady who works there pulled out from behind the counter two original paintings by Spare. It turned out that she is one of the first people who rediscovered him and organized one of his first solo shows in UK back in the 80’s. She really made my day and when I got home I started to make my book.

I think that books are important. We live in digital era; everything exists only on the computer screen or as an immaterial file. Even the photographic prints are mostly digital reproductions without any indexical value and so I am not surprised that many photographers are making their own books nowadays. It is cheaper to buy a hand-made photo book than one large digital print and paradoxically the book might have a greater value as an art object.

There is no “best way to see my work”. I exhibited my work as wallpaper prints couple of months ago, now I am presenting it in frames at my upcoming show, I also made a book and have a website. Context is definitely important but I hope that the sort of photographs I produce don’t necessarily rely too much on the way they are presented.

GW:  Your work feels very intentional and considered, but there is still this lingering sense of spontaneity in some of your images.  Can you tell me how you go about making your images?

TZ: Actually my work is very unintentional and unconsidered. My latest project on Bataille is definitely a bit more controlled; at least I am trying very hard for it to be and that’s why I’m shooting in the studio. But usually the way I control the final outcome and communicate my ideas is through editing. I don’t take too many photos but editing is seriously at least 50% of my work. The amazing thing about photography is that you don’t have absolute control over the resulting image and some of the choices you make while creating a photograph are entirely unconscious. In the end it is the process of editing that allows you to be entirely in control and work with specific agency.

GW:  Tell me about the eyes in your series ‘Hommage à Bataille.’  The text you have on your site gives the reference, but how did you become interested in this?  How do you feel your images work with Bataille’s ‘Story of the Eye?’

TZ: I wrote my dissertation work on Robert Mapplethorpe and was interpreting his photographs through the writings of Bataille. I don’t particularly like Mapplethorpe, but I love Bataille and I tried to find a way to write about him in connection with photography without using the typical references of Jacques-André Boiffard or Hans Bellmer.

My visual response to Bataille is still in its beginning. I started with the more obvious stuff, mostly related to Story of The Eye and also to his ideas about the body. But I hope that it will develop into something way more intellectually challenging.

GW:  Outside of photography, what have you been really interested in right now?

TZ:  In playing the guitar. I’ve been practicing Hey Joe by Hendrix for the last two weeks. I really suck but my friends are very supportive.

GW:  What do you have coming up?  Shows, new work, etc.?

TZ: I have a degree show coming up. It’s this week on the 17th at the The Old Truman Brewery on Brick Lane in London. There will be a lot of free drinks. Come! I am also trying to get into a residency program in France to finish my project on Bataille.

GW:  Any shout-outs?  Hellos?  Goodbyes?

TZ: Just some acknowledgments:

I would like to thank you for choosing me for this interview and in general to other people, such as Aaron Morel, who took an interest in my work lately. I would also like to thank to my boyfriend Anthony who has to suffer for my art more than I do and to my friends James and Adam who helped me with collecting bones last week for my installation at the degree show and then carry them across the whole of London in IKEA bags while being abused by amateur archeologist. Thank you!

This week showcases work from Stefan Ruiz. If you know of Stefan, this is a chance to revisit his work, if you don’t know of Stefan, I highly suggest visiting his website.

If you have questions for Stefan about his work, please feel free to leave a comment for him to respond to.

Stefan was also the Creative Director of Colors Magazine from April 2003 - April 2004, these are some spreads from the magazine (of his work):

This week, Jérémie Egry interviews Grant Willing.

Jérémie Egry: The first time that I met you told me about your native region, in the mountains of Colorado. I’m interested to know a bit more about your background, and how this region influence your work?

Grant Willing:  I grew up in Colorado, near Denver, but spent most of my free time as a child in the mountains.  I still feel like nature, most specifically the woods and mountains, is a huge draw for me and my work.  After spending 18 years in Colorado I also grew to resent the area a bit.  I think just being in the same place for so long became kind of stagnate, I didn’t feel like I was really moving ahead anymore.  This is why I wanted to move to New York.  I still love visiting Colorado, but I get anxious if I spend more than about a week there at a time.

JE: Looking at your series Svart metall, I feel a strong inspiration from the Scandivavian culture. You’ve spoken to me about your journeys in Norway and Sweden, what have you absorbed from these experiences?

GW:  My main inspiration for beginning this series did come from Scandinavian culture, most specifically Black Metal.  My ancestry is Scandinavian, so I feel like I’ve always had an interest in this culture, but being able to visit Sweden and Norway last year was really great for me.  I didn’t make as much work as I had originally intended to while I was there, but just being there gave me a lot of inspiration and reaffirmed a lot of the ideas I had going through my head about the region.  For me this area felt like the perfect meshing of New York and Colorado; it had the natural feeling of Colorado and the more cosmopolitan sense of New York.  I feel like this is the perfect breeding ground for something like Black Metal, especially when you inject a religious and mythological sentiment into it.

JE: I very much like how you treat and present the Black Metal culture, in a very subtle and distanced way. Is this culture close to you?

GW:  The Black Metal culture isn’t something that I’m necessary involved with directly.  While I really enjoy the music and the imagery, its not something I participate in really.  It is mostly a very sincere and intense interest I’ve had for a while, and it felt like a great avenue for me to explore more things that I have an interest in.  What has always excited me about Black Metal, even more than the music itself, is its relationship to history.  What is behind the music, the lyrics, etc. is so fascinating to me and is something I don’t see quite as much in other styles of music.  At least to such an extreme as to involve church burnings, murders, etc.  I don’t really know my personal stance on these acts, but it is undeniable this is something powerful if a genre of music is being blamed for such events.

JE: Recently you have complemented Svart Metall with more photos, didn’t it seem complete to you as a series? Why have you chosen to continue working on it?

GW:  After the first 20 or so photos had been made, I felt like I was at a good stopping point for the work.  I used this time as a small break to look at what I had done so far, reflect on it and think of where I could go next.  I still had a lot of ideas in my head and didn’t feel like the body of work was fully complete though.  All of the new images I added recently begin from my trip to Scandinavia and run up till a couple of months ago.  I’m still not sure I’m totally done with the work yet, I have a few more ideas that I’d at least like to try during the rest of this year.

JE: Can you tell me a bit more about your photo “The Infernal Names”, also from the Svart Metall series? What is the story behind it?

GW:  That image is a photograph of a page in The Satanic Bible.  The Infernal Names is a list of many different representations or incarnations of Satan.  I like this image a lot because I feel like it conveys the same type of emotion a lot of my other images do, but in a completely different way.  A lot of my other work from this series is reliant on symbols, similar to the lyrics of a song.  For this photograph I knew I had wanted to use this idea to create an image, but every time I would look at the page to think of something I kept getting distracted by just reading the page over and over.  Even though this is a semi-literal image and is just of plain text, the text is so metaphorical and symbolic that it functions similarly to my other work.

JE: What does the title Fils de la Liberté mean to you?

GW:  Fils de la Liberté is the name of a Québécois organization that was working for the secession of Québec from the rest of Canada during the 1800s.  They took their name from the Sons of Liberty, in the US during the American Revolution.  I learned about this also through Black Metal, and the idea resonated for me similarly to how I was thinking when I first started working on Svart Metall.  The images are, for me, loose interpretations about separation and pride.

JE: You are curator at Humble Arts Foundation. How was this project born, what motivates you, and how do you handle your role as curator?

GW:  My relationship with Humble Arts Foundation started a few years ago, I was asked if I wanted to curate the Solo-Show portion of the website.  I’ve been working on that since, and have also co-edited the Collector’s Guide to Emerging Art Photography and currently run the blog on a daily basis.  All of this stems from me really just being interested in seeing as much new work as possible.  Regardless if I were in this position or not, I love just seeing a lot of new things and spending my time looking at artist’s work.  I started working on the blog in the middle of December last year, and this has been sort of a challenge for me.  I’ve tried starting a few personal blogs over the years, but they usually just died off after about a month or so of posting.  The Humble blog has me thinking more and pushing me to keep track more of what I look at.  I also really enjoy doing my Photo Book of the Week posts because it has kept me continuously looking through all of my books.

JE: Together with Alana Celii you are also the founder of Fjord and Rotating Gallery, could you explain the concept of theese proejcts and how are you currently working with them?

GW:  Fjord was an idea Alana and I had a few years ago of assembling a collective of young photographers whose work we really admired.  We created a website to showcase the work of these photographers, and have also added a couple of other features.  Recently we’ve been taking a break on the site, but we’re hoping to re-invigorate it someday, hopefully with a bit of renewed interest.  The Rotating Gallery is also an idea we had been working on that is basically an online apartment gallery.  We would collect tons of random stuff we found from almost anywhere and also asked artists to submit anything to us they would like.  We were doing monthly shows for a while, but it has slowed down since moving out of the original apartment.  We recently participated in the 01 Magazine show at 107 Shaw Gallery in Toronto as the Rotating Gallery and we are currently selling Rotating Gallery editions (small, unique exhibitions for purchase that you can install in your own apartment).

JE: You participate in various exhibitions and publications, in a purely artistic context. Aside from this, do you also have a commercial approach towards photography?

GW:  I don’t do too much in the way of commercial work.  Its something that interests me, but just something I don’t have too much experience in.  I’ve shot for a couple of magazines and newspapers, but not too much.

JE: Are there any upcoming projects that you have that you can share with us?

GW :  I’m starting to make some new work separate from Svart Metall, its been an interesting experience so far since I felt so dedicated to that series for a decent amount of time.  I’m also hoping to make a new publication sometime this summer, but I’ve just started thinking about that also.  I have some work in a show at Capricious in July, and hopefully some other shows later in the year.

This week showcases work from Tim Kelly.

If you have questions for Tim about his work, please feel free to leave a comment for him to respond to.

This week, Jennilee Marigomen interviews Jérémie Egry.

Jennilee Marigomen: I chose to interview you because although there has been a lot of coverage on your publishing house Je Suis Une Bande De Jeunes, you have always been a bit of a mystery. Can you tell us a little about your background?

Jérémie Egry: My name is Jeremie Egry, I was born in 1979 in Grenoble, a small town in the heart of the French Alps. In 1999 together with Aurelien Arbet, we founded Hixsept, a project bringing together different influences, landing somewhere between art and clothing. I have lived in Barcelona during these last five years. In 2007 me, Aurelien and two other friends founded JSBJ, without any pretension whatsoever, only resting on our desire to share our sensibilities in the area of photography. For a short time, I’ve lived in Stockholm, Sweden.

JM: You’ve mentioned to me in the past that you live in different places from time to time. Despite this nomadic lifestyle, your photos have no sense of nostalgic documentation. The uncommon imagery that you find within common environments do not seem to have an evident time or place. It’s traces of humanity are quiet and ghostly. How do you hope to make viewers feel when looking at your photos?

JE: I like find myself in new environments.. Misplacing myself. Taking photos of banal things, and that way take them out of their temporary and geographic contexts. I like to discover uncommon places and putting those places in opposition to human presence. I like the person to detach himself from the environment. Its a way of subtlety expressing a mix of discovery and solitude.

JM: There is a quiet and strong sense of poetic observation shown in your work. It also has a sense of distance and pensiveness  - something easily felt but not easily described. Does this reflect your own personality traits?

JE: For me, taking a photo means the search and the desire of watching what surrounds us, and not giving in to the monotony of the rhythm of life. Making distance to sense the present moment. De-ambulate, search for the coincidence.

JM: Some of your photos show themes of displacement and absurdities within found objects. More recently, your photos have been showing still life arrangements. For these type of images, are you a sculptor, a photographer using these objects as a prop, or a combination of both? Have you shown these arrangements as sculptures on their own?

JE: I consider them as photography, they are an investigation of the shapes and functions of objects that we find in our everyday life. They have touch of irony, but they as well question the labels that each one is stuck with, as a person, an artist or an object. I’m not limiting myself nor to present this work as sculptures nor as photography. Having to make an election between that proves again the ambiguity in this investigation.

JM: I’ve noticed that many of your photos are not easily accessible online and are viewable mainly through print zines. I admire this very much as I find it difficult not to share my images on a regular basis. What is your ideology behind this practice?

JE: You’re right, many of my pictures are not visible on the Internet. I have another relation to printed matter, I like their stories, they way they are made, the possibility to trade and precisely the power that images have when they are not already presented on the internet.
So, naturally I don’t spread all my images online.

JM: You’ve recently launched a website featuring some of your personal selected works with fellow co-founder of JSBJ, Aurélien Arbet. Some of your zines are also two-person collaborations. Why do you choose to present your images collectively?

JE: Aurelien and I work together since ten years, we share the same sensibilities and we supplement each other. We wanted to present a selection of our work from the last five years. I like the energy that comes out of working collectively. The possibilities to exchange points of view. I like to make a print with someone close to me, that object will be the fruit of two people meeting and sharing a history.

JM: How did you come together with the friends whom you now collaborate with on JSBJ? What motivated you to feature other young contemporary artists through zines and online galleries?

JE: We are a group of friends and we each had a practice of photography, and we were used to traveling regularly together on “road trips” as we say. So the idea and the desire to do a common project came quite naturally.

Our approach is instinctive. We try to work simply, without necessarily having to rationalize. We present photographers and carry out image selections based on our personal sensibilities.

In the beginning, the idea was to present our personal work, as well as the work of people close to us. However, due to the diffusion of the Internet, we started receiving submissions from other people. We noticed that there were many people out there who share the same sensibility and visions as us.. Again, we like do zines for the simplicity behind the realization, and the possibility to exchange and encounter due to this form of diffusion. And continuing with zines, posters and other home-made creations through a rare and limited spread, is an anti-pole to our contemporary digital world.

JM: Are there common qualities within your collective of featured artists? What makes an image compelling to you?

JE: We selected the photographers for their sensibility to the themes and the style of their images. In addition, it was important for us to show a new generation of people. Lately we have looked more at the entire work of a person that corresponds to us some way, rather than only one sole image.

JM: What do you hold as the most important things to you when working on a publication?

JE: The theme is very important, as is the choice of artists. Then comes the reflection about the object (the publication), and how to make it coherent with the work presented. We try to be more and more aright, presenting more elaborated projects, and trying to not make choices that are too evident.

JM: Has working in publishing had an influence on your personal work?

JE: I’m not sure if it has an influence on my work. I think I’m very sensible towards a printed matter, and I think its this desire that has made me want to publish other artists too.. I continue wanting to develop parts of my work through this media.

JM: How does your clothing line Hixsept tie into the mix and does it reflect your artistic approach?

JE: Hixsept is a project based on various influences and on motivation. Every collection is the result of doubts, of re-questioning ourselves. Like our other projects our objective is to surprise ourselves, and experiment with new things. The line between Hixsept and our artificial sensibilities gets finer and finer.

JM: Are there any upcoming projects that you have that you can share with us?

JE: We are working on our next book which will come out in September. Its a project that we have been working on for a year. It’s features the work of various artists. We also have the series of fanzines with the blue cover, that will be published these coming months. We will also be participating in a couple of shows, the next one being in London next week.

JM: Thanks for taking the time to be interviewed, Jeremie.

This week showcases work from Randi Berez.

If you have questions for Randi about her work, please feel free to leave a comment for her to respond to.

This week showcases Chad Muthard’s series, Lost in Thought.

If you have questions for Chad about his work, please feel free to leave a comment for him to respond to.

This week, Pedro Ramos interviews Jennilee Marigomen.

Pedro Ramos: Lately I’ve been seeing your name associated with various exhibitions, curatorial projects, magazine editorials, etc. You also run your personal blogs and post as a guest on a few others, right? I wonder if you ever get some sleep?

Jennilee Marigomen: I enjoy balancing different projects at once and working with kind people from different places. I also enjoy a good Americano the morning and sometimes at night.

PR: You live in Vancouver, a place I’ve never been to but imagine to be a big city like other big cities everywhere. Looking at your work I’m constantly amazed at how your photographs seem so blissful. They have this quality where you feel you’re resting your eyes when looking at them. Are these taken during small lulls of metropolitan life or at some inner city oasis?

JM: Most of my photos were taken in Vancouver, its surrounding areas, and parts of Washington. Vancouver is a special city in a sense where both urban environments and nature are apparent and are not necessarily mutually exclusive. The city’s identity is based on it’s preservation and reinvention of it’s natural landscape, and it experiments with ecodensity. The quiet beauty of vast landscapes and waterfronts, misty mountains, and overgrown greenery are everywhere,  as are the random remnants and absurdities found on the streets of a major city. My geographical location is a large defining role in the themes within my pictures.

PR: You worked on both Night Vision and Stream-  projects where the work of photographers is projected on a screen at different locations. These events seem almost clandestine in their nature when compared to regular gallery/museum shows. How did these come about?

JM: Night Vision started as a fun project that I worked on with Tasha Lands to share work amongst friends in unconventional locations. The first exhibition was a renegade event that took place in a park in Vancouver last summer. It was a surprising success, with several hundred people in attendance. Renegade events are always open to unexpected surprises and that was the case with Night Vision 1. About thirty minutes into the slide show, the sprinklers went off in sections of the park! Most people found the humor in it and pitched in to help. Strangers banded together and took it upon themselves to cover the sprinklers with whatever they could find- jackets, bikes, beer boxes, and buckets. It was an amazing collective effort to see, all so that the show could go on. The shared experience brought the audience closer together. As opposed to being spread out on a field, everyone came to the front and huddled together in front of, and behind the screen, with a sense of satisfaction and community. People cheered when they saw a photo they liked. It was definitely one of the memorable and funny experiences of my life!

We realized that we had something special and continued with the project a few months later. For the second installment of the show, I expanded the artist list and invited artists who I’ve admired from afar to participate. Approaching artists who’s exhibits I have attended, books I’ve owned, and work I’ve written about - but have never communicated with before - was intimidating at first. Fortunately, almost all of the invited artists were as enthusiastic about the concept of the show as we were. It amazed me to see how open established and emerging artists were about sharing and entrusting us with their work. I think that this generation of artists is extremely supportive of one another and isn’t so precious about sharing their artwork. The satisfaction of making something meaningful and beautiful collectively is it’s own reward. I’ve been influenced by people like Denise Schatz from Minature Garden, and David Horvitz, both pioneeers in my own experiences in collaboration. I’ve always been very appreciative of everyones grace and generosity and take that attitude with me when I approach new people for projects.

Stream, a bi-coastal photograph projection show, came about a few months later, when I collaborated with photographer Andrew Laumann. Stream was organized to show at Pent House Gallery in Baltimore. I thought it would be cool to have it show in a completely different city at the same time, and when an opportunity with Gallery Space at Space 15 Twenty in Los Angeles came up, and we made the show bi-coastal. Andrew held the show in Baltimore and I went to LA and worked with the nice people at Space 15 Twenty.

(photo by Julian Hecht, projected photo by Peter Sutherland)

PR:  I saw some photos of the last Night Vision show held at a baseball field in Vancouver. That gathering reminded me of a campfire-like set up. Could you describe the atmosphere at these events? Do you find these a successful way to show artwork?

JM: These kind of shows are a great way to show a wide range of photographic styles with very little set up and restrictions. Night Vision featured over 30 photographers and more than 700 of their images, and Stream featured 23 photographers and 400 of their images.

It’s hard to describe the show without sounding like I am romanticising it as there was a magic quality to the night. Hundreds of people on blankets on a grassy field, a sunset, a DJ playing music and bald eagles flying above us. I liked that idea that each image projected was showing for one moment in time, in that space, never to be shown in that way again. That made every moment feel very precious and in combination with live music, made the experience of watching the show very special and engrossing. The audience was very respectful and devoted their full attention to the art in the show, like they were watching a movie. I sometimes get distracted in the social aspect of art openings and feel that watching a projection show is more a poignant, tranquil, and reflective experience.

(photo by Julian Hecht)

PR: Is curatorship something you see yourself doing more of in the future? Do you find it easier to select and edit other people’s work from the fact that it’s stripped down of personal/emotional attachments?

JM: Although I consider myself more of an organizer than a curator, I definitely enjoy it and will be working on more projects of that nature in the future. Lately, I’ve been thinking about more concept driven shows. Selecting images from other people’s work varies by project. Choosing for a projection is easy. Since the viewer only has a few seconds at a time to resonate with an image, I pick images that make the biggest visual impact and are the best representation of the artists sensibilities.

PR: What kind of involvement do you have with 01 Magazine? Do you see it becoming a print publication soon?

JM:  Last Spring, the founders of 01 Magazine invited me to work on an editorial for them for their first issue and it went really well. After the assignment, we continued working together, and I eventually became involved with the creative direction of the issues. I currently work as the Photo Editor/Art Director for the magazine. We are working on our sixth issue and feel very lucky to have so much support from the community. Keeping 01 as an online magazine works well right now, and makes it accessible to everyone. Having it progress into a print publication is a possibility for the future.

PR: You recently shot a very beautiful editorial for them. You don’t seem to separate personal from commissioned work. Is this something you want to keep doing?

JM: I agree that it can be hard to distinguish one from the other when looking through my photos. I think that your images are the same way, and that is their appeal.  I like images that are simple, unintrusive and go beyond the context of  what’s shown, whether it be a fine art or editorial image..  thoughtful observations of everyday phenomena with a bit of mystery. Something that leaves the viewer with more questions than answers. I’ve been lucky enough to work with people who value the kind of pictures I like to take and appreciate my creative integrity. Although I am very new to commissioned work and am still learning, I’ve come to really enjoy working with a team and adapting to different situations. Redia Soltis art directs and styles all of the fashion editorials for 01 Magazine and is a big part in conceiving the ideas. She is my biggest supporter and deserves just as much, if not more praise for the shoots we’ve done together.

PR: Do you ever fear getting into the full on commercial photographer frame of mind and becoming disenchanted with the medium?

JM: No. Right now I stay selective and only take on projects that reflect the spirit of my photos. Staying close to the art is important to me. It has to feel right.

PR: Do you ever feel uninspired and/or go through times when you don’t want to take photos? Do you have an antidote for that?

JM:  Rarely. I make a point to stay informed with what’s going on within this little community and that encourages and inspires, pushing me further.

Vancouver is also very pretty. Something usually catches my eye walking down the street to the grocery store.

I do occasionally have lulls where I get weighed down by the business and marketing side of projects and lose that sense of wonder from making art. That is when I take a break and ride my bike down to the water, any body of water. And then I sit.

PR: Should people be waiting to see something new and exciting from you in the near future?

JM: Today I found out that I was one of the selected winners of Magenta’s Flash Forward Emerging Photographer Competition, so I’m really excited about that! Recently, I worked on a photo essay for Barcelona based The Plant Journal, the same people who have put out great magazines like Metal, and my favorite publication - Apartamento. That is coming out soon. I also have a few secret projects in the works right now, including a zine and of course, few projection shows.

PR: Thanks for doing this interview Jennilee!

JM: Thanks for having me!

This week showcases a selection of Joe Leavenworth’s new project, Late Night Boys.

If you have questions for Joe about his work, please feel free to leave a comment for him to respond to.

This week, Jackson Eaton interviews Pedro Ramos.

Jackson Eaton: Hey Pedro, thanks for doing this interview. The first time someone mentioned you to me they said “Pedro is a rad dude”. Do you feel that is a pretty accurate character summary?

Pedro Ramos: I think I should take that as a compliment but it might be pretty limiting as far as describing me goes. I find it pretty hard to outline my character through words so I’ll leave that one for anyone that meets me in person.

JE: I was looking in my inbox just now and I found a flickr mail from you from May last year regarding my then upcoming USA road trip. You said that you were also intending to go on a trip that summer. Did it happen? The main body of personal work on your homepage has a strong element of exploration. How much of an inspiration is travel and the foreign environment to your photography?

PR: Yes, I remember sending you that message. At the time I was amazed by the amount of photographers that met online and ended up flying over to other countries and continents to crash on each other’s couch. I couldn’t believe how easy it seemed. I like your work and since you guys were doing a proper trip across the states and given the fact that I couldn’t find anyone back home that wanted to do the same thing, I tried to see if something could come out of it. I ended up spending that Summer at home before coming to Australia though.

Traveling to certain locations is very inspiring in terms of making new photographs. I do however, find it extremely difficult to take photographs in places like Sydney, Tokyo, New York and all postcard picture perfect locations one visits during travels. They’ve been depicted so many times that it seems that I’m just confirming what I’ve seen previously through my own eyes. I’m more interested in making photographs where the viewer has a hard time locating the image in space and time, creating a new world, something that I can picture in my head but doesn’t actually correspond to real life. Photos are good in that sense. You can make up your own world, situations and narrative through a relatively simple process.

JE: You also mentioned that you are from Madeira Island. Where in the world is Madeira Island, and what brought you to Sydney?

PR: Madeira is located in the North Atlantic Ocean. It sits around 500 km west of the African coast and it’s the top of an underwater shield volcano on an underwater mountain range called Tore. I love the island life, how easy going it is and being around the important people in my life. But I felt that if I stayed there, my life wouldn’t change much for years to come. I had been to Australia a year or so before, and stayed for 6 months. Before coming back here I was very undecided between Sydney and New York. I think I chose Sydney for the easy life and being close to the ocean. I find it very hard to live far from it. I guess I’m just spoiled because I grew up on an island.

JE: I will meet you next month in Sydney for the opening of a group show that involves 16 contemporary Australian photographers. Do you approach other photographers more as competitors or cohorts? Do you think in general people in the Australian photo world have a different attitude towards supporting vs competing than in other countries, such as America?

PR: I think it’s pretty cool to be in a show like that. I don’t think galleries and museums in Sydney are very open to what’s being done in/with photography at the moment. It seems like curators are just lazy to look into it and rely solely on academic transcripts to choose which artists to exhibit. It seems to me that there’s a greater sense of community between photographers/artists in places like New York, Vancouver, Berlin, etc. I feel that there’s a bit of non-assumed competition between photographers in Sydney and I find it hard to understand why. If it’s doing something to these people, it’s holding them back. I believe that it’s very important to get in touch and share experiences and knowledge with other people in order to finding what works best for you and even improving your own work.

JE: You have some excellent commercial work on your site as well. Has that fallen into your lap or have you actively pursued it? Is there any particular outcome you would like to see from that sort of activity?

PR: Thanks! Some of it came to me and others, I actually had to get in touch with the people I wanted to work with. I’m interested in keep doing it as far as I can do it the way I like to. I’d be very happy not having rigid borders between personal and commercial work.

JE: An academic said to someone who knew me a few months ago, “Jackson will do well because people like him.” Is there any place for motherfuckers in the industry these days?

PR: There are plenty of motherfuckers doing well in this industry, but I don’t think you need to become one in order to do so.

JE: On your news page you thank the people at Cosmic Wonder in Japan. I love Cosmic Wonder! What was your relationship with them?

PR: When I went to Tokyo they were having an exhibition at their gallery/retail space with Takashi Homma, Mark Borthwick, Henry Roy and Laetitia Benat, some people whose work I have a lot of respect and admiration for. Sachie who works there, and I, started talking about photography, art, Tokyo, Sydney, etc. and we eventually became friends. She and the CW staff helped me get around, told me what to do and where to go to, got out of their way to show me amazing places, took me out to amazing restaurants that a hopeless tourist like me would never be able to find or even place an order on his own. They offered me tea, fruit and home made cake every time I would visit them and were just full on japanese legends!  Next time you’re in Tokyo go say hi to them, they’ll make you feel at home!

JE: You don’t seem afraid to make a set of photographs that involve black & white as well as colour, and to experiment with stylistic inconsistencies. Editing is such an important part of the whole process. How do you approach putting together a set or series of works?

PR: I love black & white and I love color. I’m a very undecided person. Pairing both seemed like the natural way to go. It never created any moral issues in my mind. For a while I’ve been interested in photographing in color but with as less color as possible in a single exposure. And I think that kind of image transitions perfectly into and out of the black & white images when working on a series.

I normally start a project out of a personal interest or something that I’m drawn to. As I’m shooting and gathering information for said project, I start developing other interests within it and this can go deeper and deeper but always maintaining a connecting line. Then I link photographs in a way that makes sense to me and try to come up with a narrative, as ridiculous as it may end up being.

JE: Are you working on a new project that you could share with us?

PR: I just released a self-published book called Black Scabbard Research Centre. It took form when I was reviewing older work and collecting new material regarding subjects that I’m interested in at the moment. I had to get that out of my way in order to move to a next stage. Hopefully I’ll be able to start working on this new thing pretty soon. Apart from that I’m editing some new stuff which is always a slow and at times painful process.

This week showcases work by Dean Kaufman.

If you have questions for Dean about his work, please feel free to leave a comment for him to respond to.

This week, Hasisi Park interviews Jackson Eaton.

Hasisi Park: I know that you had a second solo exhibition a couple of months ago, how did it go? Was it different from the first solo show? How differently did it affect you?

Jackson Eaton: Oh, that feels so long ago. I guess it was only October. I don’t know. I find it so hard to judge how well it went. People would always ask that question and I wondered did they want to know about sales or numbers through the door or some other identifiable measure of the rise in interest in my work? Most likely it’s just the polite thing to ask I guess. I think it went well [shrug], I would say. It was so utterly different to my first show. This was the show I’d been wanting to have for 2 years. The first one was the show I should never have had. It feels almost impossible to compare the difference in how each felt. The first show in Seoul was instrumental in me forming my identity as an artist, and very much had that giddy sensation of “that’s my work on the walls over there”. The second solo show was less about a sense of personal identity than one of trying to show people in Australia who I was and what I had been doing. For personal reasons I also had a sort of urgency to show that body of work. Mostly, the process was frustrating. Exhibitions cost too much and happen too infrequently to have such a steep learning curve. I immediately felt regret as to how I would have done it differently.

HP: You once used a digital camera for a while, all the photos from the first solo show were taken with the digital even, why did you stop taking with it? Would you use that again for commercial works?

JE: I hadn’t owned a camera for a few years and like most people, I thought back then that digital SLRs were logical next step, that there was nothing unique or important about film cameras. I was wrong. I just needed a little help to fall in love with film again. This girl I knew suggested I buy a particular compact film camera and after that I just never used my digital again. I have considered the idea of getting a digital back for my Contax 645 if I ever had the volume of commercial work that would demand it. But I doubt that would happen, and honestly I just can’t be bothered to learn how to use a digital camera. They have too many functions.

HP: It seems like the most popular photos of yours are the portraits but at the same time you’ve been presenting quite a lot of landscape or still life photographs as well, although they are not as popular as the portraits. How do you feel about that?
Personally, I love those nature ones, there’s a decent and consistent sense of feeling, not quite eye-catching or flashy but quiet and thoughtful, but you don’t seem to try to convey a strong message with them, could you tell me more about that?

JE: Thank you. I guess by popular you are talking about Flickr activity. I had to learn over time to not misinterpret those stats. Thousands of people became very interested in my stream I believe mostly for its narrative elements and I think a lot of that is what drives people to like certain photos over others. Also, I think inherently people are more interested in images of people.

Sometimes I pay attention to when other photographers who I respect might like a particular photograph and I take something away from that, but mostly I pay no attention and take photos of things I like to take photos of, which seem to be nature these days, yes. I think in the absence of a traditional subject of ‘love’ or a ‘love object’ to put it awkwardly, I have found it difficult to know exactly what to take photos of. But while I attempt to explore that terrain conceptually, I think there is a degree to which my mood rubs off on the way I take photos and those natural phenomena as a subject matter presents a pretty good fit for exploring that problem.

HP: What did you dream last night? If you have to create one photograph from the scene, what would it be? Can you describe it? (Which camera will you use? which film, the tone of it etc.)

JE: Haha. I can’t remember my dream from last night. I had one from the night before where I am shocked to find out this girl I am attracted to is attracted to another man, someone disgracefully opposite to me. The scene is noticing a sign that there is something going on between them. A semi-concealed piece of affection. The mood is very claustrophobic, which feels to me like a manifestation of the fact that reality is just a sheer film of skin and a disturbance away but the reality of my dream is so intense. I would want there to be an incongruous brightness about the image that would make it difficult to look at. I have no idea how I would shoot it.

HP: What do you do when you feel like you’re trapped in your works?

JE: I’m not sure I know exactly what you mean but I will take it to mean feeling like I’m being defined by particular work I have done, by others or myself. It can be quite frustrating, to be asked constantly to share works only from the intimate diary series. I start to consider whether that is the only important work I have done or perhaps ever will do. But I think that presents a challenge, and like most emerging photographers there is a particular body of work that helps you emerge and then the onus is on you to keep becoming inspired and producing good work. Time is allowed to move slowly.

HP: You took a trip to the USA last year with your photographer friends, are you familiar with being with other photographers all the time? if not really, how do you deal with that? for normal people or even for your friends, it can be really annoying if you always try to take photos of them, no matter what they do, especially if the model is a photographer as well.

JE: Yes, I went to the USA to meet up with two good friends, Ben Acree and Robert S. Johnson. We travelled about 10,000 miles across the country in a Mazda MPV on a snaky path that had a few designated stops but was mostly dictated by town names and highway numbers. It was a lot of fun. I am very familiar with being with other photographers all the time. In fact, the last year in Perth has been the deviation from the norm. I met Ben and Robert in Korea and taking photos was kind of a part of our daily life there. But the USA trip was different because we had it in our mind that we were creating a project together, about AMERICA, or whatever we found, and so we took very few photos of each other and there was actually a really nice collaborative frame of mind the whole time. Someone would spot something interesting out the window and we would circle back and all jump out and harass whichever poor individual caught out eye. I guess in that sense we served to facilitate and legitimize each other’s actions. For me, being around photographers, or at least people who are aware of and understand my art, is much preferred to being around “normal people”.

HP: Have you ever felt like ‘oh damn, I wish this photo was mine.’? If so, whose photo was it, can you tell us?

JE: No, not really. If I see other photographer’s work that I really like I usually think, ‘I want to do something else, something that good, but something different.’

HP: Do you think it’s different to think about ‘what picture should I take tomorrow?’ and ‘what picture should I take for my whole career as an artist?’ Do you have the answer for either one?

JE: Interesting question. I often feel consumed by the first question. I’m not sure I’m ready for the second. I think some people; true artists perhaps, are constantly engaged with the second question, but not necessarily at a conscious level. I would say that the instigators of the significant movements in photography and visual art in general didn’t sit down and try to nut out their life’s work but like everyone they made decisions every day about what specifically they would create and how they would go about it. Personally, I would rather not work to create an image that I have in my mind. So no, I don’t have any answers.

Daeja Fallas: I have noticed your work on several photography blogs lately but there is not much personal information about you to be found on the web. Can you tell me a little about where you are from and how you got started as a photographer?

Lane Coder: I’m sure that there isn’t a lot of personal info on these blogs that you have looked at because most of them are not asking permission to use my images or interviewing me… though some do, so that’s a little surprising. I don’t mind them using my images, but it would be nice to know and to have a chance to discuss them.

I’m from New Canaan Connecticut, but I have lived quite a few places. I have also lived in Greece and Florida and I have studied in New York, Paris, Rhode Island, and Los Angeles. I moved back to New York in 2004 where I have lived and worked since.

I was introduced to photography by a friend of mine in NY in 1996. He was about my age, 19 and he was shooting Calvin Klein ad campaigns and showing his personal work in galleries all over NYC. This blew my mind. One night we were out in Greenwich village walking around with a group of friends and he was stopping people on the street and taking these time exposures with a Polaroid SX70 camera, the results were ethereal and this is what initially inspired to pursue photography. These photographs reminded me of paintings, a characteristic I didn’t realize photography could possess. I don’t think I have picked up a paintbrush since.

DF: In your last answer you mentioned picking up a paintbrush, before photography were you interested in painting? Your aerial work has an ethereal feel, much like a painting. It is unlike any other aerial work I have seen before, can you tell us a little about the photographs and how you started doing them?

LC: As a fine art major at Parsons, drawing and “painting” were my focus.  I drew a lot of spaceship battles in early elementary school after seeing Star Wars for the first time and the Last Star Fighter. My aunt, who passed away recently, introduced me to art at a young age, taking me to museums and buying me books about the French Impressionists.  She was a big part of my wanting to be an artist, and when I started taking pictures, I immediately wanted them to feel like paintings.  That why I am very conscious of things like color palette, composition and texture, all of which are of critical importance to my aerials project.  I would much prefer they seem like paintings than topographical documents.

I have been taking photographs out of plane windows since I was in college in Los Angeles in 2001, but the project really began when I started visiting my girlfriend in Los Angeles in 2008 and essentially just being mesmerized by what I saw out of the window. The convenience of using compact digital cameras that shoot raw files has made this project possible.  Unexpectedly, there is a good deal of speed and reaction required to shoot Aerials.  Every scene is fleeting, and therefore every picture is unique.  If you also consider also changing weather patterns and solar interaction, it is almost impossible to take the same picture twice.  My father was very passionate about aviation and could fly anything from a Cessna to a 727.  Indeed he was a pilot from age of 16 until he passed away at the age of 49.  In many ways this project is an homage to him, and I feel close to him when I am on a plane.

Very little is done in post production with these pictures, beyond correcting for the atmospheric haze.   I want the  true colors and details of the landscape to come through.  When flying I choose very specific plane seats  in order to make sure I have an unobstructed view of the ground below.  Also necessary to consider is flight direction, and whether to shoot out of the north or south facing windows (which depends on the season, weather, etc.)  I can also monitor the plane’s approximate in-flight location with the Google Maps feature provided by the airline.

DF: So wait a minute, you take those aerial photographs out of a commercial airplane window? This is a silly question but do you always ask for a window seat?

LC: Hahaha… maybe I shouldn’t be revealing such secrets!

I always try to book a window seat and one that has an unobstructed view of the landscape below, the wing really renders a lot of the seats useless. If I can’t get one, I’ll do my best to try and get one at check in. It can bereally frustrating when I can’t and I see things over another person’s shoulder that I like, this very thing happened on my way back to New York from Hawaii recently. I think missing the chance to photograph something that inspires you is difficult for a photographer. I can remember quite a few images since I began taking photographs that passed me by and sometimes I am ok with them existing as memories, but sometimes it can kind of haunt you.

DF: Aerial landscapes and fashion seem to be on completely opposite ends of the photography spectrum yet you do both and have managed to marry the two in a way that works so well. How does one influence the other?

LC: I enjoy many different kinds of photography.  Whether doing portraits, fashion, landscape, or music, it is always very important to me to make sure that there exists a common thread, an aesthetic tying all of the different bodies of work together.  Gallery shows or exhibitions offer a platform for juxtaposing a portrait or a fashion photograph next to a landscape or an interior. This sort of dichotomy can be really effective in storytelling, and if done properly challenges the viewer’s preconceptions of what, for example a fashion photograph really is.  Boundaries as they relate to photographic genre are not my concern. Those are terms made up by viewers to categorize and easily understand photography before seeing it objectively. I try to create a seamless world where all my work can be shown together in the same room.  I have a solo exhibition in June here in New York, where I will be sharing work from an upcoming trip to Iceland, alongside other portraits, landscapes, fashion work, and recent band photographs.

DF: I for one would love to see that show can you tell us where we can see more of your work in June?

LC: I have been asked to do a solo exhibition at a new gallery that Brooklyn Brothers, (which is actually in Manhattan) ad agency has opened on the top floor of their building, it is quite beautiful and I am really excited to have such a platform to exhibit my newest work. Unfortunately an exact date has not been set as of now, however I will be doing some promotion for it on my website when I update it early next month. I am also in a group exhibition / auction at the Milk Projects gallery in Manhattan to benefit victims of Haiti. The show is sponsored by McCann Erickson ad agency and will benefit Doctor’s Without Borders.

DF: I’d like to ask you more about your fashion work, particularly about how it seems to have a strong Asian influence.

LC: I am often told there is an Asian or German influence in all of my work and I can see why someone would make that correlation, but it has never been a conscious effort on my part. I think these comparisons can be attributed to the aesthetic being ‘clean’ and with an emphasis on composition.

This week showcases work by Ryan Pfluger.

If you have questions for Ryan about his work, please feel free to leave a comment for him to respond to!

This week, Lina Scheynius interviews Hasisi Park.

Lina Scheynius: Hello Hasisi! How would you like to introduce yourself?

Hasis Park: Hello Lina, Thanks for inviting me first of all. I’m a photographer who also make short films, currently living in Seoul, I just opened my studio in Itaewon area.

LS: I read somewhere that you were making films before you were taking pictures? Why did you start taking pictures?

HP: I went to the London Film School to be a commercial film director, which had been a goal for my whole life but at the same time, I think I knew that I wasn’t a proper person who is able to work with many people around, so I quit it, I did BA in film-making/directing in Korea already, I should’ve known that earlier but wanted to experience more, thought the other countries might be totally different and better but hey, the film field is same everywhere. haha. I don’t know, it was so natural for me to move on to the other visual media. Recently I found out that the commercial or fashion photo industry is the same as the film field, staffs, staffs, staffs, so many people! it’s good fun though.

LS: You use your life as a subject for your photography, how do you go about this?

HP: The other day, I had an interview with VBS TV, they asked me, ‘So, Sisi, what’s your philosophy of art?’  I refused to answer it so many times because I didn’t think I had such a thing, but there was one sort of motto (nothing like ‘philosophy of creating art’), which is ‘genuineness and honesty’. I always try to tell a story what I want to tell at the time, which is totally simple and basic, something might look really interesting but if there’s no link to me, I can’t tell the story 100% to people and I think if people see this artist or artwork tries to catch something else in the air then that’d be an absolute failure.

LS: I found you through nofound and then flickr quite a while ago and I check in to your website or flickr page every now and then for an update. I know a lot of photographers that shy away from the internet and then there are those like you who embrace it. How would you describe your relationship with the internet? What effect do you think the internet has had on how you work and do you think it has changed the actual work?

HP:Difficult question, hey, haha, it’s funny that you think that I embrace it. I think a lot of photographers have had a ‘love and hatred’ phase with the internet, part of them try to ignore the whole relationship with the internet but some keep trying to meditate. I think what I’m doing is visual art after all so it has to be seen, no argument on it, if lots of people see my work, that’s absolutely better than burying it as my own masterpiece. Posting public makes me look at my work objectively as well, which is quite helpful but also it freaks me out sometimes when I look through the old posts. I can not say it hasn’t effected me a lot I guess, but I try not to rely on it for sure.

LS: On your flickr there is a picture of a book you made together with Jackson Eaton called Jackson and Hasisi were never married. In the comments it says that only 10 copies were ever made and i am really curious to see what is in this book! On both of your websites you are showing series called were never married, although what you show seem to be very different things and even taken at different times in your relationship. So i am wondering, what is inside this secret book? Can it be seen anywhere?

HP: HP: It’s strange that people know about this book and are still curious about it. It was too expensive to make it, thick, full colour, almost 500 pages of photos,
we decided not to sell it but there was one girl who still wanted to buy it, so I sold one copy of it. If someone’s still interested in our past relationship and wanna put some money on it, I’d like to consider re-printing it but I don’t know.

LS: I have never actually been to Korea, but I am curious about what people in general think of your work there? I might sound completely ignorant here only actually having China or Japan as a reference point, but is the directness and intimacy and nudity ever a problem?

HP: Haha, well, no, not really, I never had a problem with it actually, maybe that’s just because I’m not big enough in the field yet? haha. I don’t know. if it’s a probelm, how could I be naked and run around in the library? I think it’s same for everywhere, it can be a problem but not every single time, you know.

I often see Korean compares me to other foreign photographers, they think my photos are exotic? Which is ironic, I think my photos do look too much like Korea sometimes. Haha.

Hm. ‘Taking photos’ and ‘Being cool with a good-old film camera’ is a phenomenon in Seoul, people easily forget how powerful IT industry we have in Seoul, I’m pretty sure we have the fastest internet in the world haha, which means like every single person, doesn’t matter how old, has their own blog, just imagine all your family members (including, 10th auntie’s son’s daugther) have facebook and watch you all the time, it’s kinda like that. hmhm, all I’m saying is it’s definitely different from China or Japan, somehow we are more open, but secretly.


LS: So you are using a good old film camera. Does that mean you never shoot digitally? Are you finding it difficult to hold on to the good old film when everything is digital and fast in the professional world of photography, and the films are disappearing one by one or going up in price?

HP: Yes, I haven’t shot with digital so far even though I’ve been working in the commercial field a lot more than before. It’s been amazing that my clients have never asked me to use digital, they contact me knowing that I only shoot with film, so I didn’t have to explain myself or be convinced by them. Even if it’s for K-pop idol group or indie bands, for me, it’s just the same process and work. Of course there is a limit in terms of getting various works but that doesn’t bother me yet. Getting films are relatively cheap in Seoul, processing of course, I think that’s probably part of the reason how I can still work with films. There’s only one hard thing about sticking to the old-fashioned way, which is that ‘I’ am the one who spend more basic material cost and get payed less, haha.

Well, I don’t like saying ‘never’, I wouldn’t say I would never use digital but I might think about it if someone gives me Mark2 for free with 3 different lenses. Yerp.

LS: You have started working with some big American companies, but you are still based in Seoul, did you ever think about moving somewhere else?

HP: Oh.

If the right agency or opportunity comes across to me, I would do so. (or the right man)

LS: Thank you Hasisi, and good luck! And here is my last question: What do you hope the photography will bring you in life?

HP: !!!!!!!!!!!!

This week showcases work by Luis Sanchis.

If you have questions for Luis about his work, please feel free to leave a comment for him to respond to!

This week, Alek Lindus interviews Lina Scheynius.

Alek Lindus: Would you describe the context of your visit to Sarajevo and did you have the book in mind before you went?

Lina Scheynius: I was approached by Antoine at be-poles in August last year. He was wondering if I was interested in making a book about a city - any city in fact. Sarajevo was my first choice. I had such a strong image of this city in my head from growing up with the war in yugoslavia on television and I was sure the image I had been fed and still had was completely incorrect for Sarajevo today (it was probably slightly incorrect for the Sarajevo of yesterday as well, but that is a different subject). So i was curious to go there and see what i would find myself and saw this as the perfect opportunity.

AL: How did these 2 [the fed and the actual] impressions correlate during your visit?

LS: Go on google image and type the words sarajevo and war in the search field first of all. Then imagine you have never heard about this place before. And that you are 12 years old and living in one of the safest countries in the world, and that these images appear on television and in papers frequently. And then you find out that the war is over, but you do not hear or see much else about the city for the next 15 years.

I was obviously more than aware of Sarajevo now being something completely different. But it was hard to not associate the word Sarajevo with those first dark impressions and to know what this different thing was.
The first thing that struck me when arriving in the city was how incredibly peaceful and beautiful it was.

It’s not hard to find traces of the war, but the impressions (as I expected) didn’t correlate well at all to be honest.

AL: The war and the evidence of it is a significant part of your images and their relation to one another; you use 2 images of images, I’m referring to the one of the large battalion of soldiers in WWI uniforms and another of what seems to be German WW2 soldiers and an explosion, the map also could be military divisions would you describe/explain these?

LS: I spent the two weeks in Sarajevo walking around with my camera exploring and photographing things the guidebook told me about and things that people told me about and things that i just happened to stumble upon. I did find quite a lot of traces of previous wars. These images were found in two different museums, and as I found them striking I photographed them. They remind me of ghosts or scars, and I thought it was important to include them in the book.

AL: Your work has been described as personal, of which there are elements here in this series, but there is also very much a documentary slant in some of the images [the escape tunnel  under the airport, the gun display, muslim graveyards, building pock marked with bullet holes and 'sniper alley'] when you edited your selection [I'm assuming here that you did and not the publisher] how did this work for you? Did you find the contrast more difficult?

LS: I would describe all my work as personal with a documentary approach, and I didn’t want this book to differ too much to what i normally do. It’s a very different subject, but I wanted to approach it with the same method as I would any subject. It’s true that the editing process was slightly difficult at first. I had to ask the question weather certain very personal pictures that could have been taken almost anywhere were important for this book or not. But since i had a completely free hands from the publisher and since I wanted this to be a record of my experience in sarajevo, and my impression of the city, and not anything else - I kept them in. After i made that decision it got easier. My editing process is very instinctual.


AL: In your series of images of specific and personal are those which are ‘anonymous’ [the stone box in the ground, shrubs with water, wolf...] how do you see the role these play in your combining of images?

LS: For me they are there because they add a feeling or a break or a question.

AL: Would you like to do more work [commissioned] like this? A different subject, with your impression of it?

LS: I would absolutely love to! It’s amazing to be given free hands by someone who trusts you, and to be able to work with a subject you might not have done normally. The deadline is actually a good thing too in my case, it gives me an extra kick in the butt.

AL: Please tell me what that illuminated thing in the 4th image is.

LS: We (my boyfriend and I) were in Sarajevo in November so the weather wasn’t amazing at all times. It rained quite a bit and we spent some of those rainy days in our hotel room. Resting or working or watching telly. There wasn’t much in english on tv, so we started watching animal channel. This is a photo I took of the tv screen. It’s from an underwater sequence about life in the ocean. It sort of reminds me of Sarajevo at night with all the lights from the houses on the hills looking like stars surrounding the city.

This week showcases Alex Prager’s most recent series, Week-End. It opens June 8th, at Michael Hoppen Gallery in London.

If you have questions for Alex about her work, please feel free to leave a comment for her to respond to.