Week 72: Bree Apperley

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, 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.