Week 69: Radeq Brousil

The rotating gallery features the work of an emerging photographer as well as an interview with him/her, and will change every Wednesday. The gallery is based off ‘collective curatorship’, where the photographer from week 1 chooses and interviews a photographer for week 2, week 2 chooses/interviews week 3, etc. There is only one stipulation to the process: Next weeks photographer has to be someone he/she has not had direct contact with yet. Ideally, this will take the gallery on a linked tour around the Internet, and exploring and unearthing new photographers as it goes.

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…