Gonzalo Bénard – Camera Obscura

Small Town Inertia, an interview with Jim A Mortram

Gonzalo Bénard — Wed, 14 Nov 2012 10:47:17 +0000

Gonzalo Bénard: Small Town Inertia: do you want to explain the title or the story behind it?

Jim A Mortram: Small Town Inertia is a long form documentary and environmental portraiture series that I have been working upon for the last 3 years. It concerns itself with the real life stories of several people within a 3 miles radius within my local community in Dereham, East Anglia in the UK. The title stems from the notion that many people end up and stay here even though they desire to leave.

  I entered into the series with the notion that everyone has a story and with a desire to afford a voice to those that often have no platform to communicate their story. Themes have varied from person and situation. I’ve reported about isolation, poverty, drug abuse, homelessness, self harm, mental illness, juvenile crime, epilepsy though for myself the over riding experience has been one of endurance in spite of the impossible walls life often presents to us. Wall’s that box us in, wall’s that separate us, wall’s to climb to be set free.

  Small Town Inertia reports from within these documented lives. Lives lived in the now. Lives lived within times of much change. As the cultural, political and economic landscape changes these stories depict the final destination for the results of many of those high up and far away decisions and influences. These photographs and supporting stories depict the full stop of the Welfare State cuts, Housing Benefit cuts, Health cuts, loopholes and failures of systems and what happens when the heart of a community is slowly eroded. They also depict the lives of those hanging on, bowed yet not broken, of lives where a fight to survive is very real. Fighting apathy, addiction, fighting loneliness, illness all the while clinging to self-respect, adrift in the community, in life, but not yet lost.

Gonzalo Bénard: Everybody can see the tremendous quality of your photography, even on internet where sometimes we can’t see it properly, so let’s not talk about it and let’s go beyond the technical stuff. Since I know your work you’ve been always focused on what it is to be human, bringing naked-fragile minds through your portraits. What’s the relation that you have with them all to achieve such deepness and honesty when doing a portrait?

Jim A Mortram: I always treat people, as I myself like to be treated. You can never feign nor fake interest in a person. I’ve never singled out people with an eye that they might make a good story for example; it’s a very organic evolvement. Though every person I’ve photographed I’ve met as a stranger over time bonds form, trust very much has to be earned. People are very giving and that humbles me greatly, my greatest debt is always to the person the other side of the lens. It’s such a great honor to be accepted and brought into another person’s life and given the access to document it. I’m sure I could work in a faster fashion but for me long form documentary is where my heart is. Often I’ll visit people and not even take an image, just talk and more importantly listen, and I listen more than I shoot. I have an equation that I always bear in mind Talk more than you shoot and listen more than you talk and it serves me well. I break shoots up into periods of straight documentary and periods so shoot portraits, make interviews and shoot video.   

The most wonderful outcome of the series is seeing the positive effects that it has upon the people featured within the series, our very real bonds and the sense of community, both with the people I photograph and from the wider photographic community itself whom have been of outstanding support.

Gonzalo Bénard: I know that your main job is to be a carer, but your hobby became a continuity of that. Do you feel a carer when you’re photographing them?

Jim A Mortram: That’s a really interesting question and something I’ve often mused on. My conclusion is that being a Carer, especially for a loved one, a member of the family has influenced me as a person and those experiences evidently trickle down and appear in my personality now so are present when I shoot. It’s a high stress situation working as a Carer and you need to develop many skills you’d never use in everyday life, elements such as thinking really fast in serious situation, life threatening ones from time to time, acute patience and knowing when to shut up and listen, to understand what a person needs when they can’t always communicate. All these have had a real impact on the way I communicate and especially listen during shoots but I have never felt like a Carer, everyone I shoot is just like me, were all human being regardless of what we might be experiencing, I always take that into every situation I go to document.

Gonzalo Bénard: Do you feel that for them is important you to be there and in some way leaving a register in your photographs? Do you feel this ex-change when you’re with them, being important for you to photograph and for them for being photographed?

Jim A Mortram: Yes. Very much show and for many reasons. Initially it’s to have an opportunity, ANY opportunity to share their experiences and to be heard. It’s, I feel a really empowering step for the people I work with on these long form series to make the decision to get involved, stay involved. It’s a way for many people to take a positive step, to maybe take some control where there might be a huge absence of any control in their lives. It’s also a mirror for many people, it might be the first time that they have paused for thought as every day is just surviving, enduring and when you live just to make it through one day to the next it’s often hard to distance yourself from that experience and take a moment for reflection.

Gonzalo Bénard: Do you want to share a special moment with any of the people you shoot towards your photography or you being photographer?

Jim A Mortram: I’d first encountered Shaunny totally by chance as I’d taken a street shot of him taking his shirt off outside a pub in Market Town. Subsequently that shot went on to place 3rd in the Photo Radar POTY (Documentary) and I wanted to find out who it was I’d made this random street image of.   

Market town is a small place and it did not take too long to find someone that knew someone that could put me in touch with Shaunny. I got an email and arranged a meeting at his home. At this time I was still borrowing a camera and lenses so I’d picked them up the morning of the shoot along with for the first time a 50mm.

  My sessions always work the same. There is a lot of talking. I’ll always set out what the project is about, where images will be shown etc and then we really get into exploring life. Many times the people I shoot have no significant opportunity to talk, open up or be listened to. I like to ask a question then let things roll, to let the person reveal as much as they are want to share and interject with further questions throughout the conversation making fresh junctions together, seeing where it takes us.  

I’d started with a 28mm, a f2.8 and the light was very dark that day and the D200 I was using was not the best camera for an interior, little light and so I was pretty much forced into putting the 50mm f1.8 to the body to give myself a little more room to play with.   This first shoot with Shaunny was one of the first that I’d really explored intense 1 on 1’s. Walking into a total strangers house was quite something but my own fears were suppressed by the desire to do justice to what was happening within the room. Shaunny was opening up more than I had expected. Within 15 minutes of arriving he was opening his soul to me, every pain, loss, regret began to flow forth, at first just a trickle but soon becoming a river that was to burst it’s banks.  

“I never talk to anyone about this stuff” Shaunny said as we talked through the loss of failed relationships, finding his Mother passed away at 15, the death of his young children, his battle with chronic back pain due to an accident, his self medication with alcohol.   

“Do you want to stop? I can put the camera down at any time” I told him, we were very close, the 50mm forces you to use your legs as a zoom so I was maybe 1 foot away from Shaunny, both of us standing parallel to the single window in his flat. Winter skies outside, I remember someone revving their car, redlining it, testing the engine outside a monotone drone that seemed to amplify the words, the stories Shaunny was sharing. There was no longer a camera between us. I often look over the viewfinder so actual eyes can lock, I shoot manual so that was spot metered and taken care of, shooting wide open at f1.8 hand held is tricky at the best of time and as Shaunny’s first tears started to come I fought to keep my own hands from shaking.  

“Do you want to stop mate, I don’t have to photograph this” I asked again “No, I want you to, this is the first time I think I’ve ever opened up about these things, I want people to know I have regrets, that I am sorry, that I’m not who they think I am, I want people to see that I hurt too”.

  Shaunny saying that was a revelation for me. I could easily have put the camera down had he not said that. In that moment I knew that to not do my best in this situation would be a dereliction of duty. Here I was, in another mans home, toe to toe with him baring his soul and tears, very old, bitter, painful and real tears spilling from his eyes and I felt for the first time the burden of a very wanted responsibility. I could feel myself totally engaged in this moment, this shared moment and also aware of controlling the camera, probably nervously as I’d never used a f1.8 50mm before so I was as nervous as all hell of getting it wrong but everything was happening so fast I just had to let the fear go, rely on instinct and carry on.  

I shot a lot in 10 minutes, maybe 40 images and most all with Shaunny looking right into the camera, right into me, right into the audience. These were intense shots. Being so close to another human being in pain, sobbing their heart out. As Shaunny reached the climax of his very personal cathartic out pouring I took one last shot placed the camera to one side “Mate, that was amazing. Have you any idea how much that touched me. I’m almost in tears too! How do you feel?” I asked. Shaunny drying his tears looked up and at me and said, “Fucking brilliant mate, I feel fucking brilliant. Like a weights gone. Thank you.”

  This really choked me. Thank me? I’d done nothing. Pressing a shutter is no big mystery to me. I’d not expected this day to unfold anywhere close to where its destination eventually was. It was becoming a moment of very real clarity for me too. These moments were teaching me why I had to pursue the Small Town Inertia series, that every person has their story, tales of loss, tales of joy, endurance regrets and hopes of redemption. Instead of 15 minutes of banal transient fame they deserve, instead of being the focus of an imposed ego destined to be art on a wall we all deserve to be listened to at the very least within our lives.

 I put my arms around Shaunny and gave him a hug “You don’t have to thank me mate, thank yourself, you found it in you to face all these things, to get them out. You feel the regrets you do, they affect you. You’ve shown that in extraordinary circumstances today. I’m proud of you… be proud of you too. “  

I packed my gear away and as I left I told Shaunny that I’d sit on the images for a while and visit again with a print, if he wanted them public we’d go from there. When I got home I was relieved the shots had come out at all. Whilst editing them I found the shots with open eyes a little too obvious and they somehow through all their evident pain lost some intensity and they did not really reflect the most poignant moment of that morning. The very last shot however did. When Shaunny paused for that final moment, tears upon his face with eyes closed finally reflecting upon the life, his life and all it’s pain and all his regrets that he had just fought into and excised and shared for me epitomized the pain, struggle, endurance, reflection and acceptance of that cold morning shared in a flat with a stranger. A few weeks later I returned with a print. I was weary, would Shaunny be pleased, would he not want to share the image at all. My fears were allayed instantly. Shaunny loved the image, was proud of the day. We’ve gone on to share many other moments together as I’ve documented his life and the portrait we made together hangs on his wall still.

Gonzalo Bénard: You’re creating a relation with them, only that way you can also have the honesty in your work that is so important, and I guess that this is not a short time project but a longer one. Do you want to show the evolution of being alive in such register?

Jim A Mortram: Absolutely. I could not see myself working in any other way than long form. Without the time invested I think I would document in a much shallower, ephemeral way so taking months, years to constantly document and share it gives the series context, there is a evolution within the lives, to tell any story you have to do more than read chapter one you have to read from the front to the back cover.

Gonzalo Bénard: Which is the evolution you noticed more since you started this social photographic work till this latest one you’re still developing?

Jim A Mortram: I firmly believe that you never reach a destination; I’m constantly moving forwards in terms of the way I do things mostly as I believe we never stop learning. The largest constraints to the work are financial; it’s hard to self-finance travel, film, equipment, bills etc when you pay for everything from Carers Allownce Benefits and that’s frustrating but not enough of an obstacle to stop my work on these series.

Gonzalo Bénard: Apart from the exposure you’re getting with your photography that can and should bring more awareness to our society, is there a immediate and practical help you’re getting or can get doing this work with/for them?

Jim A Mortram: I’ve had a wonderful reaction from so many photographic peers, curators and editors, something that began slowly and led to a point where I have a wonderful network of friends that help out in many ways which is something I value so dearly. RE the project I get no financial help outside the occasional donation, no Arts grants etc. One company that has helped me has been the UK Office of Hahnemuehle papers that were just fantastic in supporting my last exhibition, without their help the show could never have taken place at all.

Gonzalo Bénard: Of course that there’s always people who think that you’re taking advantage of them, and I’m saying this by some comments I read on an article about your project on BBC news, maybe from people who never did anything useful nor are aware of your real work. Is there anything you want to share to our readers who don’t know you?

Jim A Mortram: It’s easy for people to make a snap decision when looking at a series or a single image, I can understand that and honestly many of the situations people I work on stories are in, I’ve experienced myself so I have a real and true empathy, a connection with them and that’s mutual. I’ve always made sure everyone I’ve ever worked with fully understands the project, consent is always the first element discussed and I’ve never had a complaint from anyone that’s been a part of a series in fact it’s just the contrary as my phone often rings with people wanting to do it, to be involved. What people maybe don’t understand is the depth of commitment between all the people in the series and myself, it’s long term and very real.

Gonzalo Bénard: How can someone take part on this project or how can someone help you/them on this Small Town Inertia?

Jim A Mortram: The most important thing I would always say is to view the images in context with the interviews and testimony upon the Small Town Inertia site or the Aletheia Photos site of which I’m a member. If anyone would like to help the project there is a donate link upon the Small Town Inertia site.

Things, Winds and the emptiness without a void – Notes from a conversation with Jungjin Lee

Gonzalo Bénard — Wed, 31 Oct 2012 06:12:59 +0000

© Jungjin Lee
Courtesy: Galerie Camera Obscura
Please visit Things, Winds and the emptiness without a void – Notes from a conversation with Jungjin Lee for the full size image.

The still mind of the sage is the mirror of heaven and earth, the glass of all things. Vacancy, stillness, placidity, tastelessness, quietude, silence, and non-action – this is the Level of heaven and earth, and the perfection of the Tao and its characteristics.

Taoist emptiness (Wu) by Lao-tzu’s disciple, Chunag-tzu.

Jungjin Lee‘s artworks in real life size, had the magic of sending me back to the eastern culture, or to breath what I deeply felt while in a Tibetan monastery meditation state: Emptiness. Emptiness of mind.

And here I’m not talking of a transcendent trip from Paris where I saw her photographs exhibited at Camera Obscura Gallery, nor the wonderful technique she uses so organic and so appealing for touching-feeling. In fact, the way she prints the photographs is quite unique, over a huge organic paper, like the white Himalayan Lokta (hand made paper from the Lokta bush) where you can see the real fibers, and where Jungjin brushes the liquids to fix the images. It’s almost if you could feel and see the whole process: the brushing of the emulsion liquids, the collage of papers for them to become more resistant and the print fixed. Easy to feel that the author went through a deep meditation work beyond the whole process.

But this is what you feel and see on the surface, so I invited Jungjin Lee for a talk at a terrace, a Sunday morning by the Seine: a wonderful conversation, I must say.

Jungjin Lee was born in Korea, studying in Seoul and later in NY to study photography – being living between both places – taking NY now to live and work.

© Jungjin Lee
Courtesy: Galerie Camera Obscura
Please visit Things, Winds and the emptiness without a void – Notes from a conversation with Jungjin Lee for the full size image.

“I like the desert. I love to be in it.” she says.

I should have been prepared for this kind of answers she gave to me through all the conversation we had, but I guess I forgot to re-locate myself in an eastern culture. How come Jungjin tells me that she likes the desert when she lives between 2 of the 4 most populated cities in the world?

Of course! In fact she doesn’t live there, she lives inside her own work. In her own silence. Her own desert, where she feels and lives the emptiness of the desert.

And there I was with her and with nobody else. In the middle of Paris, at a crowded cafe terrace, drowning myself to her own desert of emptiness. She was right, there was no one around us, just us two in the middle of nothing. Now I understand even better her work, her “Things”.

© Jungjin Lee
Courtesy: Galerie Camera Obscura
Please visit Things, Winds and the emptiness without a void – Notes from a conversation with Jungjin Lee for the full size image.

“The empty space is more important than the photographed/represented object. Like the stage of a dance show where you have the dancer in movement, he can’t move if there’s no empty space around.”

Ok, when I arrived, I introduced myself as an art-photographer who also writes, and who lived and studied in Tibet, so the conversation would be informal on the same level as colleagues. What I didn’t expect was that every time she paused to answer me she would send a Köan to the cosmos for me to catch it.

This text is all wrong. I should stop writing and just post her photographs with few sentences that she told me. No more was needed. The whole page empty with few objects lost in space so you could have a better understanding of what I’m talking about, but I need to try to make sense for myself, sorry for that. I’ll keep thinking out loud. In the void.

It’s curious to hear a photographer saying that the important is not the object, but the emptiness. A photographer would never say that, an artist does, in this case an artist who uses photography as a mean of expression, like huge drawings or paintings. Like a Japanese master of calligraphy brushing the soul’s “thing”: You must be the emptiness to create.

© Jungjin Lee
Courtesy: Galerie Camera Obscura
Please visit Things, Winds and the emptiness without a void – Notes from a conversation with Jungjin Lee for the full size image.

“I seat down, meditate and leave the Winds to go away from my mind. Then I can visualize a Thing. I focus on it. I hypnotize it. I collect its energy. And only after I get its soul I’m able to photograph it.

Then, in the studio, I take all the shadows that don’t belong to the Thing. And I evolve it with the emptiness with which I felt in meditation as that Thing only existed because there was emptiness of mind.”

I must say that I felt blessed with her words after being blessed by her works, but I’m sure that you already got it after reading few lines. Now, let’s go back to the Winds of emptiness.

© Jungjin Lee
Courtesy: Galerie Camera Obscura
Please visit Things, Winds and the emptiness without a void – Notes from a conversation with Jungjin Lee for the full size image.

Form is emptiness; emptiness is form

(Buddhism)

One of the things that I found curious on this exhibition apart from the impact of Jungjin’s works was the differentness – almost opposite – feeling between the Things and the Winds, placed in 2 different floors, being the Things on the ground level, more exposed to natural light and the Winds in the basement, a more introspected room without natural light.

The emptiness that Jungjin shots on the Things is given to us, straight away. You’re invaded by that emptiness, and you feel placed in it as a viewer. You’re in there without even thinking. You’re the Thing itself.

However, down there at the Winds room, you must let your self drown in them, you must go and find your own emptiness as it was not given to you. You must be the tree. The rock. The desert.

Prepare yourself, as you will be emptiness. And emptiness is form.

© Jungjin Lee
Courtesy: Galerie Camera Obscura
Please visit Things, Winds and the emptiness without a void – Notes from a conversation with Jungjin Lee for the full size image.

Talking about form, you don’t see people very often in Jungjin’s works, maybe because she lives in such populated cities like Seoul or NY, so you realise that she doesn’t need people to be in her creative world. I mean, I know she did few self-portraits with silent body parts, but you don’t see faces, people very often.

Jungjin smiles with that peaceful smile that she has, takes a breath and say:

“All my works are self portraits, I’m in all of them, and I always leave space for you to be there with me.”

“I’m now preparing myself to do a series of portraits, but it’s more difficult to hypnotise and take the soul of the people so I can shoot them like I did with the Things.”

She said with a magnificent silent laugh.

Things, Winds and the Emptiness without a void.

Notes from a conversation with Jungjin Lee, by Gonzalo Bénard.

Interview with Dave Farnham

Gonzalo Bénard — Sun, 29 Jul 2012 19:01:30 +0000

Back in 2001 when I was invited to create and curate the International Salon of Contemporary Artists in Lisbon, I invited Dave Farnham to participate with a few art-videos that were a great success. Since then I’ve been following his work, always surprised at what he comes up with and awaiting the next pieces with anticipation. Dave Farnham lives and works in London.

Gonzalo Bénard: I have been aware of your work since you were eating pink marshmallows and rolling yourself in bubbles, whilst tying yourself to street lamps, scaring old ladies in the street. What has changed since then? I am guessing that the old ladies have died and now you are MRI scanning them?! Was that your plan, all along?

Dave Farnham: Wow, we have known each other for a long time. I hope the old ladies didn’t die! Art school is very different from the ‘Art World’ – so, I guess I grew up! The studio at art school is a very different place to the lonely studio of the artist in the real world. I had a very close-knit group of artist friends at university who I utilised within my work; once I left university, that group couldn’t stay together. My work back then was very much performance based – I can’t paint, I can’t draw, I don’t do sculpture, but I’m good with video – so it seemed a good way to go.

One thing I would mention is that my art school work was very heavily based around the body – mainly mine – and my new MRI scan works seem to have gone full circle and I am back on to the body – just not mine, this time.

Gonzalo Bénard: You are a multi-media artist who plays with videos, computer animation, fire, MRI scans, x-rays and political nonsense, happily picking everybody’s nose. Where do you locate the photography in your work?

Dave Farnham: A very interestingly worded question – nose picking?! Photography, for me, is very much a way of capturing my work. I won’t say that I am a photographer – I am an artist who happens to use photography. I have never had any training in traditional photography – I just know what I need to do to the camera to make my images appear. Photography came through wanting to capture still compositions that I had seen within my video works.

Gonzalo Bénard: This is an interview for a blogzine about photography, so I won’t ask questions about your videos, unless you ask, giving me a photographic reason for doing so. Please do.

Dave Farnham: My video works are built up from a series of photographs, which happen to be moving. I can’t talk about my photographic without talking about the video aspect, as this is where the photography comes from.

Gonzalo Bénard: Fireworks use to be for spectacular, open-space amusement, to put everybody in a happy mood, staring at a sky full of colours, lights and annoying sounds! You not only frame them, but you also play with them within a political war scene with ‘made in China’, plastic soldiers getting shot. I want to question this.

Dave Farnham: I never wanted to make political artwork, just works that are visually arresting – but, I have to accept that using toy soldiers within my work will always cross a political line. I always wanted to capture a representation of war, not a political message. Maybe that’s why I am slowly moving away from the toy soldiers?

Gonzalo Bénard: Your work started some years ago with a somewhat humorous style, or more of a light mood, as if you were laughing whilst working. Over the years, your work became more “serious”, more worried, not only sociologically but psychologically. Are you more aware of the importance of art as a socio-political play/dialogue?

Dave Farnham: Is playing with fireworks, explosions and toy soldiers in my garden, at three in the morning, more ‘serious’ work? Or, am I just getting too old to film myself bouncing up and down on a pogo stick in my pants?!

Gonzalo Bénard: Suddenly, a snooker piece to break from the fire works. For someone who sees your work chronologically, for the first time, this video is a surprise. Can you give us a picture of it? Did you make it as part of a personal ritual?

Dave Farnham: This work was a very personal project; it took me two years to make, not just because of the technical process but also because of a grief process. I have only exhibited this piece a couple of times (most recently in Florence). The work is about the loss of my Grandfather. I have never made work about family, or personal loss, before – but this felt right. Due to the humorous and aesthetic appeal of the work (the snooker players playing snooker with no snooker balls!), the viewer won’t necessarily read personal loss into the work straight away – unless they read the title!

Gonzalo Bénard: Light and fire; always connected within your photographic work. I would love to hear from you on how you prepare the sets for a shooting.

Dave Farnham: Setting up for my shoots is always very tense. A couple of days beforehand, I buy loads of fruit and props: wicker baskets; books; candles; bottles, etc. Then, I spend a day or so looking at old Masters and still life paintings/drawings.

I tend to stress a lot beforehand, mainly about the weather (as I always shoot my works outside, due to the fusewire being hazardous!)

I have a great assistant with whom I have for years, and he puts me at ease; between the two of us we spend about six hours, once the sun has gone down, shooting different compositions and then re-shooting and re-shooting until I have run out of fusewire and all the fruit is burnt and dead. We finish really late into the night, I drive him home and then I come back but usually I can’t sleep as I am buzzing about the new images.

Gonzalo Bénard: Soldiers and chess are often related, and side-by-side, in your pyrotechnic pieces. Do you play chess as a war tactic, with soldiers, when you’re alone, to create some dynamic within yourself, with a board for each subject?! I mean, they are often related in your work, but I don’t remember seeing a soldier playing with the queen in a game of chess. Why have you not put these together?

Dave Farnham: I don’t think they need to be in the same image. They both represent a version of war and putting them together ‘over-eggs the pudding’.

I moved into using chess pieces as a way of trying to move away from the overt political questions I had to answer with the toy soldiers. But, at the end of the day, using either chess pieces or toy soldiers, the viewer is still confronted with an artist’s representation of war – an artist who has no experience of war, only the reportage of the media. By the way, I am rubbish at chess and never used to play with toy soldiers as a kid – it’s all coming out later in life!

Gonzalo Bénard: Photography; video; animation; scanning. Can you imagine your work without any of these, or could you survive well enough and be happy/fulfilled with just photography?

Dave Farnham: I have always used these mediums within my work so for them to be taken away – I wouldn’t have an arts practice. I wouldn’t know what to do!

Having worked within the media (Post–Production), I am always looking for new ways of pushing my work, technically – new techniques, new technology, faster and bigger computers, scanners, cameras, etc. – it’s all very exciting stuff. I think just doing photography would be very limiting to me; both disciplines constantly merge and come together. As an example – in my new MRI scan pieces, I am taking the video footage of a body and re-building it using a photographic process.

Gonzalo Bénard: Is the hangover from creating a masterpiece too hard? Do you need time between series, or once you have worked on several, does it mean the whole process gives you the time needed to take a breath?

Dave Farnham: One always needs time to step back and just sit and assess the work. I tend to work on one body of thought, at one particular time.

With regards to creating a masterpiece – I did feel some pressure after winning the 2004 prospects drawing prize (see next video).

I had just left art school, having completed my MA, and I won a big London-based art competition. I had galleries, curators and artists calling me and trying to meet up and work on shows together, etc. It was a very exciting time – since then I have always subconsciously compared my new work to the art piece that won. I guess that’s not very healthy!

Gonzalo Bénard: Can you do a “MRI scan” of your latest works?

Dave Farnham: My recent body of work entitled, ‘Drawings From Life’ are an investigation into traditional Life Drawing – thinking of new techniques and methods of capturing the body. In this case I have taken MRI scanned footage of the body – and have exposed the footage in a photographic process, using a DSLR and an iPad.

An MRI scan is a technique used in radiology to visualise internal structures of the body, by using magnetic fields. By doing this I am not just presenting a traditional life drawing of the external body but an image that captures the internal workings of the sitter, their brain, muscles and bones etc. I am hoping to physically expose more of the sitter than a traditional life drawing would.

I don’t know the person in these images, why they have had a full body scan or what is wrong with them.

I have a number of ideas for future path of these works and the potential to scan other ‘things’ is very exciting – watch this space.

For more informations and art works, please visit Dave Farnham website and vimeo channell.

Oneness, by Gonzalo Bénard

Gonzalo Bénard — Sat, 14 Jul 2012 17:26:20 +0000

Oneness — Uncaged Nature, 2010
© Gonzalo Bénard
Please visit Oneness, by Gonzalo Bénard for the full size image.

Text and photos by Gonzalo Bénard.

Not even for one moment did I have a conscious break asking, “What am I doing here, naked among the sheep, trying to create a dialogue with these piles of wool when the only thing they know is how to bleat?”

Oneness — Chicken Head, 2009
© Gonzalo Bénard
Please visit Oneness, by Gonzalo Bénard for the full size image.

I’m one of those people who have so called ‘difficult mornings’. A period of time between ‘waking up’ and ‘being awakened’. A period of time when the conscious remains inactive, so not filtered. It is in this period of time when we create, when everything flows through our subconscious as if it were free.

A few years ago I woke up from a coma which made my brain run out of oxygen. I was living in Barcelona at the time, right in the centre of the city, in a building much like any other. Surrounded by concrete. Concrete people. And windows looking on to more concrete.

Oneness — Conversations as a Bird, 2012
© Gonzalo Bénard
Please visit Oneness, by Gonzalo Bénard for the full size image.

Previously I lived and studied in Yolmo, in the Himalayas, with Tibetan monks in a monastic school of arts, dance and philosophy. This was many years ago. Maybe 15. I lost my chronological memory during my coma, and never worked at recovering it as I never found it necessary to live. Time just doesn’t exist. There is the past supporting the present to help build the future. And all of these, the whole life itself, is a collection of moments. Moments with no time. Making a single major moment called life.

Oneness — Deep Wooded, 2010
© Gonzalo Bénard
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In the same area where I spent summer holidays when I was a kid, and teenager, there was an immense field where I used to run free. Most times naked. Sometimes painting my body and playing Indians with my brother’s presence, after he died. It was the way I had to make him feel closer. We used to collect pieces of wood and sculpt them creating rituals of life, and rites of death. We used to perform ceremonials in nature, to nature. Acting like wolves. Birds. Trees. Wind. Feeling the elements. Earth. Fire. Water. Air. The air we could feel on our naked bodies. The cold waters of the river near by. The heat of the sun. On earth. Sometimes we used to steal a horse to ride free. As if the owner wouldn’t know that.

Oneness — feather, 2011
© Gonzalo Bénard
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Since a kid I had this connection with the elements, and with death. It has always been part of me, growing up with this. Talking with dead people who come asking for help, when they left unfinished issues in their life here. I’m used to listening to the elements. To creating dialogues.

After some years living in Barcelona I started feeling a need again for this. For nature. For the basic elements as I couldn’t find them in the concrete. I then had a motorbike accident on the highway going to a place where I used to find it. I needed more than a moment. I needed that time to connect life. With life.

Oneness — Feathered, 2009
© Gonzalo Bénard
Please visit Oneness, by Gonzalo Bénard for the full size image.

When I woke from the coma I took finally the decision to find a wooden house in the middle of a forest near the sea, far from everything so I could find myself again. Fix lost puzzle pieces. Find memories lost. Knowing that I could only be successful if I were being me in nature. After this first re-encounter with me and nature, sometimes dancing nude under the moonlight being touched by moon beams filtered by the trees of the forest, I moved to the country house for a sabbatical year, far away, closer to myself.

Oneness — Garden Me, 2010
© Gonzalo Bénard
Please visit Oneness, by Gonzalo Bénard for the full size image.

There I found my brother again. In nature. Where I left him the last time, waiting for me to play again.

If before the coma I had had an intense and immense fight between the subconscious and conscious worlds, the whole sabbatical year in the country side was a battle to fix the whole me.

Oneness — Horned, 2009
© Gonzalo Bénard
Please visit Oneness, by Gonzalo Bénard for the full size image.

I decided to stop.

To listen.

To feel.

To live.

Oneness — My Body Sheep, 2010
© Gonzalo Bénard
Please visit Oneness, by Gonzalo Bénard for the full size image.

To create new boundaries so I could feel and understand them—so I could break them.

To feel nature and be a part of it; as a giant cactus can co-exist with a fragile flower.

To observe and learn how an eagle was building its nest in that tree, and how the kids were born there, and how they had the first lessons in flying free. And not falling down. Feeling the wind and going with it or through it.

Oneness — My Stoned Hand, 2008
© Gonzalo Bénard
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To create dialogues. Within and without the fences.

And no, I didn’t give up for a single moment when I decided that I would have a deep dialogue with the sheep walking around there. I listened to them bleating as if they were teaching me how to do the same. And I answered till I achieved dialogue. Naked with them on my four legs. I was happy. I was feeling part of nature again. I felt one of them. I broke boundaries to be in oneness again.

Oneness — Self-fish, 2008
© Gonzalo Bénard
Please visit Oneness, by Gonzalo Bénard for the full size image.

Then something happened as a welcome from nature; one of them gave birth next to me. So I helped the baby one to come out. I was giving life to life. Participating in Life. Living Life. Again.

I took the horses then, and ran wild and free. Feeling the winds and breezes, its breaths and heart beats. As oneness, or in oneness with the horse as if it were the horse taming me. The horse felt that I trusted her. And when you trust you receive the same back. When it’s honest and deep trust without questioning. Just being. I let the horse tame the man to become one with her. So she become one with me.

Oneness — The bird and the wolf, 2012
© Gonzalo Bénard
Please visit Oneness, by Gonzalo Bénard for the full size image.

And the wood. The trees, the mud. The plants growing. The smell and all the senses renewed day after day. I started dancing again, dancing rituals of life. Dancing rites of death. Dancing stars and infinite skies. Feeling the mud underneath my bare foot. The air feeding the fire feeding the earth feeding the water feeding me. Dancing as air as water as earth as fire. Feeling the eagle’s wings, the wool’s warmth, the wolf’s heart, the horse’s power as a steady rock. Feeling myself in nature. As a wizard, a shaman, a boromatchi… a wise being feeling nature as it is. Without labels. Without boundaries. A hybrid of many lives.

Oneness — The Tamed Man and His Horse, 2010
© Gonzalo Bénard
Please visit Oneness, by Gonzalo Bénard for the full size image.

With respect. In Oneness. Being honest. Being death. Being rebirth. Being alive. Being life.

Being love.

And Being One.

For more information and photos, please visit Gonzalo Bénard website or buy Oneness Blurb book.

Oneness — Voodoo Dance, 2009
© Gonzalo Bénard
Please visit Oneness, by Gonzalo Bénard for the full size image.

Apparitions, photography by Gérard Castello-Lopes

Gonzalo Bénard — Sun, 08 Jul 2012 17:04:17 +0000

#1 © Gérard Castello-Lopes
Please visit Apparitions, photography by Gérard Castello-Lopes for the full size image.

To understand an artist’s work you can’t keep your eye stuck only on the image that’s worth a thousand words, and Camera Obscura gave me a click on this sentence, making me go deeper and beyond. A week ago I couldn’t avoid going to an exhibition held here in Paris, at the Centre Gulbenkian (French delegation of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation in Lisbon), and if you’re coming here, please do yourself a favour and go see it!

Gérard Castello-Lopes was born in Vichy in 1925, son of the cinema (his father, José Castello-Lopes, founder of Filmes Castello-Lopes) and music (his mother, Marie-Antoinette Lévéque, piano player), spending most of his life living in Lisbon – or between Lisbon and Paris -, being himself a disciple of Henri Cartier-Bresson.

I knew his work since always – I guess that I have less years of life than he dedicated to photography – but always felt something was missing for me to understand his whole work. It can be understood perfectly well the influence of the music on his work, specially piano, as he was a great piano player and composer himself, and also co-founder of the Lisbon Hot Club, the Lisbon jazz spot. This, you will find on the lines and rhythms and compositions (photo #1).

It can also be perfectly visible the influence he had from the cinema, in the use of light (also from Cartier-Bresson, using natural light), composition, stolen stills from a film. But still… there was something I didn’t know: his main passion and hobby and where it all began:

Water.

Under Water.

Gérard Castello-Lopes was a passionate autonomous diver. From the Ocean to the sea, the Atlantic to the Mediterranean, where he learned how to dive (Cannes) or near Lisbon, where he lost his friend and diver colleague Philippe Cousteau. And it was when diving that he starts doing photography with his French Foca.

Suddenly it all made sense to me, so I went back to the exhibition’s rooms to review all his main work. It’s true that he had an amazing work of light, as I wrote before natural light taught by his (our) master Cartier-Bresson. Even though there’s a huge difference of lights as the light of Lisbon is much warmer than the light of Paris. I experienced that already in my own photographic work. However, Castello-Lopes’ light is different. It’s not the usual light of Lisbon or Paris. He, somehow, brings the underwater light to his photography giving to it a special mood very characteristic on his work. That was exactly the feeling I had when seeing his exhibited work: diving in submerged cities, where water isn’t an issue for us to breath.

His view, or the view that he gives us is not only through his camera lenses but also through his diving armour’s glass, as if he had the gift of taking us to the place making us living and feeling it as he did.

There are photographs that you feel diving through submerged places, finding living humans there or just their presence even though being all them existing on the surface, and when on the earth’s surface feeling he brings water puddles (photos #2 and #3) or glass reflections, to give some water mood as well.

Gérard Castello-Lopes started taking photography while diving, but soon he realised that was not so easy, also for the camera as it had immediately to go through several complicated processes of cleaning the camera even if he had a supposed waterproof metal case with flash, so his photographs really under water became more as a frustration to him.

On the photograph taken in Scotland, 1985, (photo #4) there are two kids throwing pieces of bread to flying seagulls, however, the image I “saw” was the 3 seagulls as swimming fishes reflected on sky. A play of sea and sky, as if the sky was showing the reflection of the sea and not the opposite, that he repeated in other photographs like the one he took in Chambord, France (photo #5), in 1984.

Castello-Lopes projects this way his underwater world to ours.

He also brought kids diving, as I’m sure he saw them and projected them as so, even if they were just jumping and playing on any street (photos #6 and #7). They both appear to be diving and playing in deep ocean.

Or the photograph with the 4 priests sit down on a bench talking (photo #8), like corals in a reef, with such aquatic and organic movement they have.

And the “mermaid” looking lost as any human-fish at “Dubonnet’s sea”, taken in Paris, in 1957 (photo #9).

From the magnificent portrait of his mother taken in 1959 (photo #10), the piano player as a reflected bust lost and found next to a sank boat under the Mediterranean waters that he could have take while diving… to the photo he took already with his feet on earth, from above, watching the body submerged, in 1998, (photo #11) when it seems that he finally assumes he is out of his main element. He feels his feet on the ground now, after he got married and become a father of two. He explores earth.

And here on earth, he shoots his photograph that I like the most, in Paris, 1985. (photo #12). Probably one of his most abstract images, inviting you to be there. In this one, if you’re a follower of the rules, you’ll be disappointed, as it seems that he broke them all. Even the basic rule of thirds. The main subject is on your left side. It reminds me another one, taken by Cindy Sherman, where there’s a lonely lady on the left, leaving the line-curve on the right so you can feel yourself there, or even a blank space for someone who’s yet to arrive.

Some people can break all the rules: they are called masters.

Patterns were also something that attracted Castello-Lopes. But not to be repeated. They existed to be different, even if this can seem awkward or non-sense. He doesn’t photograph a pattern; he gives us the concept of patterns. Like they exist in nature, or the walls created by seaweeds creating patterns that don’t exist… as a pattern. But as a whole. So that’s what he also brought, shooting ropes left at the sand by fishermen, or even trails left by their boats, wheels and feet. Or coming out from the sea and sand, already at the urban landscape the scaffolding that is used to build, with men and by men. And with men, is also the iconic photograph of them all turned back, in line, bending, looking at the sea. In Algarve, 1957 (photo #13).

His marriage with Daniéle and the birth of his two children (daughter and son), brought him out of water, giving him a new universe, even if he never stopped diving in his mind and way of seeing. He was living on earth.

He now enjoys another element: Fire. Finally. That he started discovering with his series of blood at the bullfights, and later on with his other colour series of the burning scare crows (1996) (photo #14).

If there is a need to cut Gérard Castello-Lopes photographic chronology in 2 parts -due to his marriage and the birth of their 2 children-, there’s a first part where he never left the Water, even if using the Air element to reflect it, and the second part -after being married and becoming a father-, where he is connected with Earth. And finally Fire. Scaring the crows. Playing Jazz.

Visit Gérard Castello-Lopes (1925-2011) exposition Apparitions (photography 1956-2006) curated by Jorge Calado. Centre Gulbenkian, Paris from April 25th to October 25th 2012.

B Shot by a Stranger, by Gonzalo Bénard

Gonzalo Bénard — Fri, 06 Jul 2012 06:06:08 +0000

Text and photos by Gonzalo Bénard¹.

When I first started creating this project in my mind I had no idea how interesting it would be, and especially how much I could learn from it – in so many ways. What I learned about people, about human feelings, the subjects’ reactions, how they face emotions, how they (we) grow up building our own rituals to survive emotions, or how psychological or sociological this became. Also, bringing a new meaning to what is it to be a photographer.

A camera has always been a tool of voyeurism; I’d not realised that before. Till I started the B Shot by a Stranger project… and stretched the boundaries. Street photography can be as voyeuristic as shooting a model posing. A war or disaster photographer catching moments of pain and distress uses the camera as voyeuristic tool too. But none of this can go as far as watching someone in their vulnerable, intimate, nude, private, lonely moments.

Most of the volunteers are young people with a social life, people with life, regular people with emotions and feelings even if they have masks to hide their emotions and feelings towards society (don’t we all?). However, when they go back home, alone, they feel their own loneliness, some emptiness, some “facing ourselves feeling”. University students or workers, most of them are experiencing their first years of life living alone or sharing flats far from their families. Experiencing their first more serious break downs. They’re young and experiencing the first steps of adulthood. How to deal with new emotions, how to face them. Building defenses and rituals to help them fight and grow up.

B Shot by a Stranger had volunteers worldwide. These people are from different cultures, different faiths and different corners of the earth, all of them experiencing lonely moments. The same feelings and emotions. Aren’t we all humans? How we react to them can be different from each other, but can also be similar no matter where you’re from. It’s curious to see, for example, the ritual of a bath using the water as cleanser, or as protection. Water is used by all religions to give the protection of the Gods, to purify our spirits. But a bath can also feel like going back in time to the most protective moment for a human: the mother’s womb. And there you’re “allowed” to cry or just let some tears out . . . because those tears will merge with that water which purifies the spirit. Also you don’t even have to see that you’re crying because you’re already wet by the bath.

Some people decide to face themselves, they do look straight and naked into the mirror when lonely. In moments. When they are not in a dark corner of the room with the face covered or hugged by their arms. Or just lie down naked, face down into the pillow breathing in their own existence.

But sometimes we are so drowned in our own sorrows, our own loneliness that we forget an infinite world of things we love to do, things that makes us happy and which do not require anyone else. Things we do when we’re alone because we’re in the mood for that. The so called hobbies for example, like playing an instrument, drawing, writing, dancing, singing, cooking . . . and sometimes we just need a “click” to find that out. And immediately we leave the self-sorrow, the sadness and move on to some moments of joy, to some moments with ourselves, to the pleasure and the happiness of being alone: a wonderful way of “being” alone not “feeling” lonely.

So we dance. We sing. We draw. We cook. We enjoy our own self. Being alone and lonely.

And suddenly moving from the moment that we’re face down covering our sadness, we jump up and say: “Do you want to see the drawing I did the other day?” Or we just jump up and put some music on and start dancing. You realise that you can take out some pleasure from within you. And you gain new life. You found joy in the way you created a ritual, a way round to fulfill your loneliness. You’re dancing now. And you don’t even need to “drink to forget”.

I didn’t know what loneliness meant before I started this project and I was quite curious to understand the feeling of it. Since I was a kid I have always created things to do, I always filled my spare time drawing, writing, painting, doing photography, or just walking observing nature, human nature. I’ve been always an observer and a creator. I spent almost my entire life alone, but never lonely.

Loners are loners because they allow themselves to be loners. Sometimes they seek the attention of others not realising that they’re just seeking their own attention. Having someone else – especially a stranger who will not judge you, who will respect you, with whom you don’t have any special emotional ties – can be distracting, but can also be a sweet and comfortable way for you to face yourself instead of the cruelty of facing the mirror. You share with the stranger waiting for him to tell you what you need – or want – to hear from your own self. And then you have two possible answers if they cross the boundaries: leave fulfilled or leave running away (from yourself).

As this project, “B Shot by a Stranger”, was undertaken without an imposed physical presence or even an energetic interference, it left much more space for you to keep feeling your own loneliness. The volunteers were not acting, they were going through it for real. They were alone and lonely. I was on this side, shooting (and sometimes listening to them) as a stranger, from the other side of the world, using an Internet satellite. They just had to leave the laptop and webcam open, “taking me” with them to their physical places: bedroom, living room, bath, kitchen, garden . . . So I could be there with them . . . not being. They could trust in this stranger as they knew they could just turn off if they didn’t feel safe. At certain points the Internet can be unreal, can belong to a dream’s box. You can enjoy the dream, you can release your subconscious mind and you can just wake up from it whenever you want. You can show who you are. Or not. You can be listened to by a world. You can be seen. You can exhibit yourself. You can share. With or without your own identity.

And me? I was just playing the listener role, the watcher, observer, the stranger in their life. The friend they needed at that moment, with whom they chose to share their intimate loneliness. For them, I became a friend, an acquaintance or I remained a stranger. Like a life play, a game of feelings, a psychological fulfillment, a sociological observer. A creator of different moments in others’ lives. A learner. A stranger they could trust. Knowing that I could open their eyes as they opened mine. Learning from both sides. From both sides growing up with each other in one more experience of life.

For more information visit Gonzalo Bénard website or buy B Shot by a Stranger Blurb book.

Gonzalo Bénard is an artist photographer and creator/author of B Shot by a Stranger project