Week 74: Sylvain-Emmanuel .P

July 30, 2010 0

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, 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?