Originally from Vienna, Austria, Krystina moved via Paris to London in the 70s and has lived in London ever since. After completing a sociology degree in the School of African and Asian Studies at the University of Sussex in the mid-70s she had a long career in the voluntary sector. In the early 90s, she studied Fine Art and Photography at Camberwell School of Art in South London, and returned to work in an urban regeneration project before taking early retirement in 2006. Since then she has pursued her passion in photography, shooting in both colour and black and white. Her self-published book Urban Parallels (2008) is available on Blurb.

For this interview we discussed Krystina’s series entitled In Between.

She says, “A quote from Gary Winogrand has lodged itself indelibly in my consciousness: “There is nothing as mysterious as a fact clearly described”. It is this seemingly contradictory combination of mystery and fact that keeps me searching from the corners of my eyes zooming in and out on physical forms and the spaces between them.”

Though her photographs may appear as documents of urban fragments, Krystina says they are not really ‘about’ those specific things. “It doesn’t much matter to me which particular objects or features I am depicting. I am far more interested in the relationships they have to each other across the spaces in between and how light, surfaces and forms intersect with my own psyche and cultural baggage.”

“I enjoy working with complex layers, incongruous or contradictory juxtapositions and constant changes in appearances. When making an image, I try to discover an underlying geometry within the picture plane and to reveal some harmonising unity or wholeness. Hopefully it is a unity that allows the diverse spatial and formal elements to breathe freely within and to communicate to us something of their own unique life.”

LIP: It seems as though you have endless opportunity to create images out of the subject matter you’ve chosen.

KRYSTINA: Yes, but no more than if the subject were ‘fences’ or ‘boundaries’. Ambiguity in perception and interpretation fascinates me and I expect it will do so for some time to come.

My approach to shooting is that of a gatherer rather than a hunter, in many ways akin to the way photographers of the past tended to work, photographers such as Dorothea Lange. Although working to document social conditions, she preferred not to plan what she would shoot:

“To know ahead of time what you are looking for means you’re then only photographing your own preconceptions, which is very limiting.”

I used that quote in the introduction of my book Urban Parallels, it has become my mantra. Having said that, I do like to work to projects, mainly because it helps me decide where to roam, but I’m always expecting serendipitous and chance encounters to happen. Whether the resulting images fit into any of my ‘boxes’ is left to a much later stage.

LIP: What do you consider your ideal shooting conditions?

KRYSTINA: As any photographer knows, the quality of light determines the kind of image you will get. Late afternoon light and long shadows are always seductive, but because I am after capturing different moods I do also like to shoot under less ideal conditions, even in the rain, if it suits that particular subject.

Sites and places that are fairly empty of people and uncluttered by cars are ideal for me, unless the car surfaces themselves are the focus of my attention as has recently been the case.

LIP: So what sort of locations attract you most? You must spend a lot of time wandering and looking for details.

KRYSTINA: Indeed I do. The type of photography I do doesn’t really depend on specific locations. The photographs may happen anywhere – it is the presence of man-made materials and structures, such as glass, metal, walls, and signs of use and abuse that is important to me. Hence locations in transition have proven to be particularly fertile gathering grounds – work sites such as places undergoing refurbishment, industrial parks, building sites and small workshops which are often found hidden away in back alleys. Here the new rubs up against the old, structures and materials have a history, they bear the traces of human activity, of time, weather or erosion and organic matter. All of this results in rich visual layers and complexities that act like magnets to my eyes.

LIP: I know you are experimenting with a return to using film, but what has your experience been like shooting digitally?

KRYSTINA: After acquiring my first digital camera over three years ago, after having been starved of any creative outlet for over a decade I went a bit wild, shooting well over 100 images a day at least five days a week. At some point though, I stopped. The world was flooded with images, why add to the flood? Looking back over my work I tried to analyse and make sense of what I had produced; which images stood out from the rest. As part of this process, I found it useful to put together a book using a self-publishing platform.

My current photographic output is by comparison considerably reduced. I still shoot a fair amount of images I subsequently judge to be mediocre, but fewer of those, I believe. Part of the attraction of trying out medium format film is that it will slow me down even further. I like the idea of having to be more deliberate and to sweat a little before achieving results.

LIP: On the editing of your work – What qualities do you think make great photographs rise above the mediocre ones?

KRYSTINA: The image should communicate something beyond the actual objects depicted within it, something ‘other’. What that ‘other’ is precisely, I do not know, except perhaps that it has something to do with how I, or my subconscious, responds to the body language of the materials and spaces involved. Ultimately, It is the degree to which that body language touches me and stirs my senses and imagination that becomes the deciding factor, although even this may change on repeated viewing. The image needs to be memorable and stand the test of time. Of course, it may not be so to anyone else. I have to take that risk.

LIP: What do you think there is to gain by making a book of your work?

KRYSTINA: The development of affordable on-line publishing offers great opportunities for putting together cohesive selections of one’s work in print. One can hold a book in the hand again and again, carry it around and share it with others – not only with people one meets, but with anyone in the world interested enough to view or buy it.

The book helped me evaluate my output of the past two years. It was interesting to see to what extent different subject matter and forms could relate across the double pages and through the sequencing and to find new associations and connections emerge. It was an altogether useful exercise and one that I enjoyed.

LIP: Do you feel these images communicate something about your personality?

KRYSTINA: All photographs tell us something about the person behind the lens. Each photograph, even a snapshot, has been wilfully created by someone making a conscious or subconscious selection.

Photojournalists and documentary photographers try to chase the ‘real’ by narrowing their focus on actions that can be seen. Or, they select frames that they judge will tell a story they feel needs to be told. Images are intended to function as a wider window on a particular group of individuals, a community or location. That leaves out a lot of reality even without considering other dimensions such as smell, sound and touch.

Artists on the other hand often subvert, manipulate or stage photographs using them deliberately for the purpose of expressing themselves or particular concepts and ideas they may have.

For my part, reality as I find it and the metamorphosis the photographic process enables me to achieve seems engrossing and rewarding enough. I am more than content to work on the fringes and in between these two fields – neither simply documenting nor unduly manipulating – a vast area that gets rather scant coverage and attention.

LIP: What photographers’ work have you been admiring, or inspired by lately?

KRYSTINA: I am curious enough to see a wide range of contemporary photography in galleries, books and online. Many works may stimulate my mind, but rarely do they touch all my senses, for that I usually turn back to favourite master photographers, such as Aaron Siskind, Minor White, Josef Koudelka, Raymond Moore. I particularly feel drawn to that unique and single-minded vision of Mario Giacomelli who did everything to his negatives one wasn’t supposed to do. I have a book of his black and white aerial photographs that I always keep by my bedside. It contains stunning abstractions of man’s imprint on the landscape. Some of the colour works of Richard Misrach derive from a similar preoccupation, but with far more ethereal and delicate results. I find his works rather beautiful, despite or rather because of their more serious undercurrents.

Inevitably, given a degree of shared concerns, Sabine Hornig and Uta Barth’s works continue to be of great interest to me. I am also rather impressed by the way they display their works within the gallery space, and in Hornig’s case how she extends her photographs into installation pieces. Although installation work is my background, I do not feel the urge to emulate her, at least not so far.

Krystina’s website

Interview by Tiffany Jones

Nicholas Cobb’s photography captures the humorous and humdrum events of our everyday lives as city dwellers. Many of his images are made first by creating elaborate set models populated with figurines, then photographing his own manipulated narratives. For some of his series he has bent and moulded plastic bottles, card and general waste, but whatever material he uses, the outcome is a collection of scenes that we can all relate to.

Coming from a background of art school and twenty years of abstract painting, Nicholas abandoned the canvas and picked up a camera to capture the life he imbues in his models. This abrupt change in artistic approach came about seven years ago as he began exploring all that was opposite to what he had done in the past. His interests in sculpture, model-making, the narrative and photography all came together in previous projects such as Ovid’s Metamorphosis, and Life of Christ.

In November 2003 Nicholas bought a simple digital compact camera that allowed him control over aperture and shutter speed, and over the next few months concentrated on honing his photographic knowledge whilst documenting a local allotment over many dawns and dusks. He now teaches photography to beginners part time and is continuing with new projects.

For this showcase we take a look at images from his series The Office Park as well as some from previous projects that show the breadth of his imagination for scene and structure through model creation.

LIP: The Office Park is much darker than your earlier work and is open to far more interpretations. Would you agree to this statement and what are you hoping to communicate to the viewer with this project?

NICHOLAS: Yes, I was after something a little more unsettling. Various ideas came together and by the end of the summer in 2008 I started making an elaborate model of a business park. That summer I had read several of J.G. Ballard’s novels including ‘Super Cannes’, which is about disturbing behaviour amongst the inhabitants of a gated community isolated from the world. Whilst walking along the arterial routes out of west London I had ‘discovered’ a nearly completed office park development. The idyllic setting combined with the ever-present ’security’ got under my skin and left me wondering about a dystopian outcome for this kind of world.

I was aware of the problems photographers have trying to photograph in certain locations. Parts of our cities are sold off to developers who create work, living, shopping and recreation facilities that appear public but are in fact private, with all sorts of rules enforced by security guards. Does one feel safer in these environments or more likely to be paranoid about how dangerous it is outside of their ‘protected’ boundaries?

So the series has at its centre a dark artificial lake which appears to have the opposite effect on some of those that gaze into it than that intended by the landscape artist. Some employees come and go happily enough in the resulting images but others seem to be engaged in extracurricular activities of a more malevolent nature.

LIP: Previously you have worked with junk based characters and backdrops, but for The Office Park you’ve used ready-made human models, created a sophisticated set, made great use of differential focus and there is a complete change of colour palette. What was the inspiration for this change in approach?

NICHOLAS: I don’t work to commission or worry about funding for projects. I get by teaching. This means that I can go where I want with ideas. So I set myself the challenge of making architectural models out of the materials that such model-makers use, including readymade trees and figures. I knew that I could help make the images appear believable by using a shallow depth of field, generally throwing much of the buildings out of focus. Even the main subject could be out of focus as many of these photographs were meant to have the edgy look of surveillance about them. I wanted to explore how very realistic looking images worked on the viewer. The photographs are virtually black and white, evoking ideas like the past, memory, the things in one’s head.

LIP: You seem to have used image manipulation and layering to great effect in this work. How important is image manipulation in your work?

NICHOLAS: The digital darkroom, like the digital camera, made it possible for me to see that I could make work photographically. All this could be done without digital though. I try to get it right in the camera! So, I use Photoshop sparingly, simple double exposures, for instance. The prints are not quite black and white, I was after a tint, a draining of colour, that Photoshop makes easy to apply.

LIP: Making models and photographing them seems to be your medium of choice. What inspired you to see characters in recyclable plastic drink containers and other waste? Is recycling an important part of your work?

NICHOLAS: One thing in particular that caught my eye on the allotment was the use of drink containers as ’scarecrows’. They were beautiful translucent objects to photograph.

Later, when I wanted to make an image of the Virgin Mary, I realized that all I had to do was slit the throat, as it were, of a blue capped, two pint milk bottle, tilt that ‘head’ back, set it in a window and photograph it.

As far as recycling is concerned my curiosity led me to research obscure texts such as Michael Thompson’s ‘Theory of Rubbish’. So, although I’m a dutiful recycler, that’s not the message. I’m drawn to the way that a creative intervention can take place along the route of commodities to trash – for instance, Picasso made a bull’s head sculpture out of a bicycle seat and handlebars.

LIP: So, is the photograph itself the actual artwork or is it merely a documentation of your models?

NICHOLAS: From the start I wanted the final work to be not only photography but a book of photographs with a narrative implied.

LIP: How long does it take you to make your models and photograph them?

NICHOLAS: The figures were purposely made from material that I could quickly shape into believable poses. The backdrops vary considerably. Some sets are of a single shop front and take a day or two to make. Others are long sections of a street or business park and take a month or more to make. These can cover an area eight feet square providing many viewpoints. Like a tableau vivant, ‘figures’ are carefully arranged, lit, photographed, rearranged, swapped and photographed again until it works.

LIP: Did you use street photography as a starting point for the ‘Walking Down Rye Lane’ series?

NICHOLAS: Yes, I was certainly discovering all the great names of the genre as I developed that work. But I was also looking at the work of Jeff Wall, Gregory Crewdson, Thomas Demand and others. If you mean do I take street photographs and recreate them in model form then the answer is very rarely. On occasion I have thought it could work if I created a scene based on a particular photograph, my own or another, or painting. That’s more like a starting point and the end result can look quite different. I’ve lived near Rye Lane for over twenty years. Having made many of the images I did finally go down the street taking pictures and was very pleased with the result. But the whole secrecy, permission and intrusion issue on inner city streets left me feeling that I had found a novel approach to the genre by ’staging’ it with models and I should stick to that.

LIP: Would you say that studying street photography helps you to create such engaging moments, injects such a sense of life, humour and activity into the world of the models you create and photograph?

NICHOLAS: Although it’s true that I’m mimicking street photography, and humour is invoked, I’m also paying homage to it. Along with urban landscapes it’s what I want to do when out of the studio. The ‘In-Public’ street photography website has many examples of humour found in everyday juxtapositions but I wanted to find it in the very material of the models. The viewer is engaged in a constant toing and froing between recognizing an all too familiar human gesture and the fact that it’s made from an all to familiar bit of junk.

I use all the ‘errors’ that can occur in real life – who’s in focus and who’s walking in or out of the frame? For some shots I would create a shoot from the hip look, others are more in your face. It’s generally a case of creating in the moment, fixing a gesture as one sculpted figure interacts with another – a greeting for instance – and you react to what’s in front of you. Over the years I’ve built up a store of memorable scenes that I’ve witnessed and I used them. It’s a soup of memories, media images and imagination.

LIP: What do you do with the models once you’ve captured what you need in a group of photographs?

NICHOLAS: The models get broken up, thrown away or useful bits saved. I’ve nowhere to store them even if I wanted to.

When I embarked on the ‘Walking Down Rye Lane’ series I wanted as much of the model making as possible to be made out of discarded material. There’s an ongoing tension with the materials: paper and digital reference images, detritus ‘rescued’, sculpted, ‘documented’ digitally, sculpture destroyed and returned to trash status – the irony of sculpture’s expectation of permanence – and finally, the paper print. The photograph, the frozen moment, a moment that has passed… the relationship with time, all these things are of great interest to me.

LIP: You’ve recently had two exhibitions of your Rye Lane work. Any plans for a show of your Office Park work in the pipeline?

NICHOLAS: I plan to have some of them featured in a proposed group show at the Viewfinder gallery in Greenwich next summer.

The Office Park book is available at blurb as well as a number of other books.

Nicholas’s website

Interview by Corin Ashleigh Brown

John Levett is the leader of the Greenwich Satellite Group of London Independent Photography, since it’s founding two and a half years ago.

He explains his background: “Receiver of unwanted goods from ex-RAF aerial reconnaisance photographer at age ten. Various darkroom experiences in reconstructed outside lavvy and inside kitchen scullery followed, as did pocket money from snapping graves for families of deceased neighbours. Forty years later resurfaced in inspirational Cambridge Darkroom Gallery, joined transcendent LIP, found a life beyond shopping in Asda.”

For this showcase we discuss his collection of images called “Intent”, which did not begin as a series but emerged after various events. John says, “The taking of each of the photographs in the collection was accompanied either by a public monologue (occasionally threatening) or dialogue (sometimes demanding) regarding, variously, my motives for taking the shot, who I represented, the limits of privacy, matters of decency, questions of legality. These experiences raised issues of personal vs public space, the increasing restrictions upon our behaviour in the civil arena and how I conduct myself when photographing within identifiable communities.”

LIP: We are looking at quite a disparate series of images here where the common thread is your experience of being questioned or otherwise approached as to your intent as the photographer. What are your reasons for showing these images as a collection?

JOHN: In September 2008 I was walking along Sydney Street in Cambridge and decided to take a shot of a fading CND graffito. I’m interested in traces of social and economic history; I’d ignored it for too long. I took ten shots, stepped away, PC Dixon flashed his badge and politely asked why I was photographing the wall sign. I asked why he needed to flash the badge in order to find out. A semi-legal discussion with outrageously exaggerated claims on both sides took up ten minutes.

The incident made prominent issues of increasing incursions into civil space, restricting and manipulating how we negotiate place and space without interference from government and its agents. It is easy to counter by indicating that Cambridge city centre is not Tiananmen Square but principles of civil liberty are indivisible; every State prefers quiescence especially in public places. It’s not an exclusive issue for photographers; it is an issue for football supporters, party goers, picnickers, skateboarders, free-runners, train spotters, climate campers, anti-capitalists.

Most importantly it’s an issue of politics and how we engage in securing our own spaces. The terrorist-security trope is the catch-all for all manner of incursions and, understandably, it’s easier to comply than confront. It’s easy to adopt a metaphorical sliding-scale of liberty; if it’s a toss-up between arguing taking of a photograph and missing the last train out of town then the train wins.

There’s also another aspect to this collection which relates to our own protection of our privacy aside from official and extra-official policing of it. I’m referring not to the casual interest in why I’m photographing what I’m photographing but to its scaling-up to interrogation, demand and threat. I’m guessing that if I set up with easel & paint in a high street then I’d get a certain indulgence; tripod and the bellows on Richmond Hill above the Thames would tick the right boxes; a walk ’n snap past Petts Wood mock-Tudor gets you serious attention; the same thing under the Westway near White City can bring gatherings. “You might own the house but you don’t own the view” doesn’t match up to “If I still see you here in five minutes time I’ll smash that [] camera over your [] head”.

This aspect of the ‘photographic walk’ raises different questions. One is the extent to which the photographer is both an intruder and is seen to be an intruder—one who comes into a community and seeks to record an aspect of it but without any reference to or negotiation with those who occupy that space.

The other is a perceived change regarding the responsibility for protecting community spaces from the community to the individual. Jane Jacobs in ‘The Death and Life of Great American Cities’ showed how safety in urban areas was protected not only by their physical configuration but by the way the residents moved around their areas and promoted a communal awareness and acted upon it. This is still true of some neighbourhoods in the city but with redevelopment of traditional street patterns, the formalising of play and recreational areas and the confusion of private and public thoroughfares the lone photographer is assessed as a risk and there lies a communal responsibility to confront the scoundrel.

LIP: How do you justify taking such photographs?

JOHN: In two ways—to myself and to another.

Most of what I photograph has some connection with memory—most strongly my own memories of growing and becoming, importantly my memories of the environs in which I lived, intellectually the memory etched on the face of a city. Creating a photograph of my personal memories involves only those who see the finished work; photographing my memories of an imagined city and the city’s reflection back involves others in the making and it’s this that can promote feelings of intrusion and being intruded upon.

If I can say of a place, “I used to live here” or “My mum used to run a grocer’s shop just round the corner” or “There used to be a bandstand there” then I make a connection to a past that is in possession of everybody. Others can relate to my memories.

History as remembrance matters. A people without history is vulnerable: “This is how we used to be” can be a source of purely romantic sentiment or it can be one of inspiration.

Photography not only records but it makes sense of things—how space is changed and changes in its turn; how communities grow, how they decline; how we built for permanence, how we build for immediacy. An entrance to a disused sorting office sets in stone the belief that post men will forever deliver the post; a shop is abandoned in step with the abandonment of its tape cassettes; trespassers were indeed once prosecuted for walking through Hawes Lane allotments. “All that is solid melts into air” wrote Marx correctly of modernity whilst then going on to unfortunately prophesy the end of history. Sir Kenneth Clark once said that civilisation began when people could envision a future; history is a remembrance of that people’s aspiration and endeavour, it roots us. It roots me.

When questioned I often never get past “This is where we lived just after the last war”. That’s usually good enough. If asked “Which war was that then?” I get started.

LIP: Do you appreciate when people are curious about what you are up to?

JOHN: When I returned to photography in the mid-90s I flapped around finding what engaged me most; it was architecture—modernism & it’s successors. I learnt all the angles, found the spots, finessed the crop, heroically pursued the heroic. If anybody took notice I didn’t notice it. For about ten years I walked through university campuses, shopping centres, office complexes, housing estates, new towns, old car parks—no questions, no confrontation, no badge-flashing.

Then things changed. What we can do in public spaces changed; questions came to be asked, positions taken, poses struck. Security was everyone’s affair, everyone a threat, the wandering stranger especially so. No more gaily snapping without consequence.

The strident questioner is more a player in what I do now than at the beginning of the decade but, more generally, those who are curious are simply more protective of self, kin and community—one way of making sense of disruption. Am I from the council? Am I going to do anything about the rubbish tipping? Are those houses coming down? Am I snooping for a solicitor? Do I know that this place is sacred? Had I thought of contributing to the wreath? Am I aware that this is a flood-plain and any more building on this’ll cause flooding in those streets?

I welcome the curious. I get stopped. I want to know what they know of the history of this place. Everybody knows part of the history of this place. Educational reform has tried for decades to kill off history (“It’s so ‘yesterday’ my dear”). The idea of the narrative, of placing oneself in history, of using it to make sense and shape of how we are now—these things matter to me, anchor me in a spot from where I get bearings, allow me to see that there are alternative ways of shaping a world. I’m not alone.

LIP: There are plenty of ‘T’s and text among these pictures, have you noticed this?

JOHN: Public text is a prime indicator of social and historical change. Punctuation, phrasing, typeface, position of use, its permanence or impermanence—all can place a neighbourhood in a particular moment, express assumptions of common interest, show confidence in a society and indicate a state of ‘here today, gone tomorrow’.

The ‘T’s are coincidental but the crosses aren’t. As a child and well into my teens I went to church and chapel a lot and by ‘a lot’ I mean that it became the foundation of my life—three times a day on Sundays, prayer meetings, bible study, out on the streets proselytising. The chapel became the only place when I felt unconditionally accepted. I changed and my belief changed but there is part of that experience that is permanently with me. Recognizing a Christian symbol out of context in the street still brings something back. It’s an acknowledgment of somewhere I passed through; it never goes away.

LIP: You mentioned creating a narrative – of placing oneself in history and alternative ways of shaping a world. Do you see your work contributing to a collective narrative, the history of ‘us’ as you see it, or is your photographic approach primarily driven by your individual stories?

JOHN: I’m not alone in attributing a narrative to my life and thereby making sense of ‘The Whole Thing’. I also used to believe in the power of the collective narrative, the ‘purpose’ of history as a centripetal tendency that might contribute to and bring forth a collective shift in consciousness regarding how we organized our world. The history of the last century should have destroyed any belief in history as containing elements of purpose and inevitability.

The idea and creation of a people’s history is, however, a practical project and is a central feature of the work of a multitude of photographers. In some cases it’s centred in museums, galleries and libraries, in others in local history societies, elsewhere in trade unions and what’s left of working people’s clubs. Alongside written accounts, taped interviews, folk song, island languages and restored film the photographic record is crucial. It exists in an album, in a bottom drawer, in a semi-detached house, in a suburb of any town. It tells me how something of once was when I was born. It tells me about my relation to other cultures, other sexes, other classes; it tells me more than we ever admitted or wanted to know about family relations; it tells me about school, workshop, factory, holidays sacred and profane, urbanisation, de-industrialisation.

The history of Us is intimately connected to our individual stories but like all ‘histories’ they can sink with only faint traces. One of my cousins used to be the family archivist. Photographs from the end of the nineteenth century gathered in her albums. Once she died there was no one committed enough to continue the collection. The family, once concentrated in a few south London boroughs gradually dispersed during the last century and the close connections of one branch with another gradually frayed. What was once ‘The Family’ is no longer, what was once ‘The Archive’ is now many archives but they’re just as meaningful, they still have the function of connecting.

LIP: With so many photographers these days documenting our time in vastly different ways, how will your images physically be seen 50 years from now when they may have more value in the world? I mean, how do our photographs live beyond us, who will show them around after we’re gone? Is this important to you?

JOHN: Personally, it is not important that anything of me or anything of mine survives, but as a representative amongst many who grew to maturity in the immediate post-war world I think that our collective documentation of our era is important. I believe that the nature of what we believed to be representative democracy is changing along with governments’ relationship with elites and non-accountable agencies in society and that this threatens an individual’s relationship with the political process. If political accountability declines then economic accountability is further stifled.

Mainstream, prime-time news outlets do not serve us well—Sky plays the piper’s tune, the BBC self-censors after the Hutton-David Kelly events while the paper press revolves around imperial and post-imperial concerns and frightening celeb saturation.

Meanwhile, there are many fine photographers in the Majority World who struggle for outlets—those who document the Somali war, oil extraction in the Niger Delta, conflict in the south Philippines, labour unrest in Egypt, the public execution of gays in Iran, the violence on civil rights campaigners in Russia, environmental activism in central Asia, immigrant workers in South Africa. Photography documents struggle; it also documents success—New Internationalist featured photographers from the Majority World back in August 2007; here’s the link: www.newint.org/issues/2007/08/01/

Showing how we got from there to here matters in the personal dimension because it provides continuity of family, of clan, of tribe, of sect—it grounds us. It matters in the community dimension because it provides evidence which, given the multiplicity of channels of communication, can bypass the state and its agents. In this time in which we live the means and agencies of repression are growing and agencies of coercion are being outsourced. Photography keeps the pot boiling; keeps scratching the itch. Go back to Don McCullin’s images of the Vietnam war. Amongst all the noise, the single image shouts loudest.

LIP: What effect has photography had on your psyche? And would you recommend it as a practice for personal development?

JOHN: For someone totally self-obsessed, my psyche gets a hard time from photography. Like everyone else there are things in my life that didn’t happen and I wish they had. There are things in my life that did happen and were severely troubling. I am, however, happy with the result.

I have spent much time privately and publicly documenting aspects of my life. I have done it specifically to try and understand parts of my life that seemed forever boarded-up—things never talked about, things lied about, things avoided, people missing, people without names. I’m trying to fill gaps and it’s impossible. What it does do, however, is tell me much about the coping mechanisms that I’ve created, the bluffs I’ve played, the ignorance I’ve tolerated, the self-deception I’ve practiced, the snake oil I’ve bought, the scumbag I once was.

It works. I’m now healed, totally spiffing, safe as a tightrope walker, as certain of the correctness of my self-belief as a futures trader.

Photography and personal development—better results than reading Proust.

Interview by Tiffany Jones

This Showcase is an extension of a piece published in the Autumn 2009 issue of London Independent Photography Magazine. The magazine features a series of ‘non-portraits’ that Ellie created for Format Festival 2009 with Latitude Photographers (a collective she is a part of) as a response to the line ‘I Always Knew You’d Come Back…’.

In this continued interview Ellie discusses her landscape work entitled Silent, Dark and Deep and gives us some insight into her development as a photographer and how she approaches her projects.

Ellie graduated in December 2008 with an MA Photography from London College of Communication, and already this year her work has been shown in five exhibitions including Beautiful Landscapes at 3 Bedfordbury Gallery and New Landscape at Kalman Crane Gallery in Brighton, which she co-curated.

LIP: How did you find the MA course at London College of Communication?

ELLIE: Really good. We had great guest lecturers and teachers and turors. I found it tough. I just wasn’t really used to the crit process of working – that’s something I found hard, exposing my work to people when it wasn’t finished, it wasn’t fully developed. You take an idea and you work on it for two years so it changes. As I was still working through it I often I felt I hadn’t decided what I thought about it before I had to then talk about it to other people, who were then giving me their opinions. It can really sway your judgement. Although In the end I could look back on it and feel it’s all been constructive and it pushed me to seriously consider what I was doing in a way I wouldn’t have done otherwise

LIP: Are you sensitive about your work then, or has that subsided somewhat after all that critique?

ELLIE: I think everybody has an emotional investment in their work, so I wouldn’t say I’m any more sensitive than anyone else who has put a lot of time into something. It’s enabled me to talk about my work, because before I hadn’t really put it into the structure of a body of work with a strong kind of conceptual underpinning.

LIP: So how much of your time do you spend actually creating conceptual statements?

ELLIE: I do quite a lot of reading and writing. I tend to write lots of notes and keep books of diagrams, and generally I’m thinking about a project at least six months before I start shooting. I always have my notebook on me and I’m writing down ideas so there’s quite a lot to draw on when I actually sit down to write a statement. I tend to tweak it later, and this is a technique I suppose I developed from doing my MA. We were writing our artist statements all the way through the course and every time the work changed and evolved you’d need to record your artist statement. I think it’s a good way of keeping a grip on what you’re doing.

LIP: It seems like you shoot most of your work at night, at least what you are showing on your website?

ELLIE: Actually all the tree landscape images are shot during the day using natural light. I always shoot in really bad weather. When you have a forest with light pouring into it, there are pools of light inside and the idea was to have a dark interior. When it’s gray and raining I run out to take pictures which is the different from what most people do.

LIP: What about your choice of format, I also thought these landscapes were panoramic?

ELLIE: No they’re not. I use a D300 with a wide angle lens and I put my camera on a tripod. For the trees I take a shot, move along a little bit and so on. I then work them together on the computer by hand. I suppose I could shoot with a panoramic camera but I really like that by building it with different images that lay on top of each other, each of them may be shot in a wonky way, it’s a slightly haphazard process and I end up with a landscape that’s different from how it looks in real life.

LIP: Your experience with the landscape then is a bit more intimate isn’t it?

ELLIE: It is, it feels more painterly because you’re building it and making it. They’re meant to be constructed reflections on traces of memories of woodland and forests. I like the pictures to look otherworldly and slightly magical because I want them to seem like imagined landscapes and I like to show them really big so that you can engage with them and feel that you’re being either drawn in or repelled.

LIP: Once you have constructed these images and take a step back to look at them yourself, do you get a sense of stepping into a narrative that was never your original intention?

ELLIE: It’s funny you say that because I went to Dartmoor with two friends and we were driving and they’re quite used to me having my equipment in the car and saying stop and jumping out and running down to the tree line to make photographs. I shoot quickly, so it might take less than an hour. My friend had been telling ghost stories about some scary things that had happened to him and he’s from Dartmoor. It was a really dark day and started to rain and we drove past this amazing forest. He was holding an umbrella for me in this creepy woodland. That night I woke up and thought ‘imagine if I start to retouch these pictures and there’s somebody in there’ and really freaked myself out. When I was retouching it, the image did take on this strange sort of presence, and I really like that about it. Because they are of the imagination I want to build something that has a kind of psychological presence. There’s a mythology with woodland, like the idea that you’re told to keep out as a child and what might happen, you know every culture has a mythology and fairytales about woodland.

LIP: So you shoot rather quickly?

ELLIE: Actually sometimes hours will flash by and I’ll think, my god I’ve been here for ages. But, the actual taking of the photographs is part of a long process. It’s deciding how I’m going to do it and then an awful lot of thought planning and testing and experimentation has gone into developing this way of working. Shooting it, I know how far away I’m going to be, where the tripod’s going to be. I know what exposure I’m going to be on, the shots I need to take, what area I’m going to cover. A lot of the decisions have been made already. And then following taking the photographs there’s a long process of retouching.

LIP: I find it interesting that you work with digital at a time when it seems fine art photographers are using medium or large format film. Is this just your preference, and do you think it prevents some people from appreciating your work in a serious way?

ELLIE: Essentially I am working with enormous files that when you see the work printed could very well have been shot with a Hassleblad digital camera. Some people feel that digital is still not acceptable quality, but for me it does everything that I want it to do and it actually enables me to work in a different way than with film. With film I’d be working very differently, I’d still be scanning everything.

I hadn’t really shot at night before using digital and I realised you get these amazing colours, I mean it’s just like magic! I didn’t know, and I remember taking my first ever digital night photograph, which was in the LIP Annual Exhibition last year, of a man standing next to a swimming pool looking at a woman approaching the surface. I was absolutely blown away by the colours. That’ll do it for me really, it was seductive. And with digital I find looking at the image in the back of the camera quite a constructive way of working because you see what’s happening and then you can play with it.

LIP: Looking at your portfolio I’m wondering, do you print your own images?

ELLIE: Yes. It seems like one of the fundamentals of photography, from its earliest stages, and although some people would say that digital is not a fine art medium I think that amount of control reflects fine art practice. I find it really important.

LIP: Are you working towards a solo show anytime soon?

ELLIE: Definitely. It’s a really expensive business to do a solo show and at the moment I’m really enjoying working towards group shows, so I feel that’s what I need to be doing right now. Maybe I’d like to do a solo show in a year or so. I’ve just co-curated New Landscapes with Wendy Pye who is also showing in the exhibition. Getting people excited about what we wanted to do and making it happen has been great, a really exciting process. I’d love to do more of that.

LIP: What are your aspirations now?

ELLIE: I would say at the moment I’ve come out of college and I want to keep on producing personal work, keep on trying to sell work and see where it takes me, see if I can sustain myself in that way. I feel very lucky at this point to be allowed to do what I want.

Ellie’s website

Interview by Tiffany Jones

At the age of 16 Mike left Edinburgh to visit London and was so taken by the city he hasn’t managed to move home yet. That was 16 years ago. Having been influenced at a young age by technical drawing he started a career in cartography, but his developing passion for visual communication evolved into taking his dad’s old camera to gigs and now a career as a photographer. Mike returned to university in his late 20’s to complete a BA Photography from University of East London with first class honours and has since been accumulating awards and extending the reach of his work internationally. In May 2009 he won best Fine Art Single Image at the New York Photo Festival. Last year he was a BJP Project Assistance Award nominee and his photographs have also been recognised in the 2008 AOP Assistant Awards (Merit winner, Interiors & Architecture category) and the 2007 AOP Red Dot competition, amongst others.

The images accompanying the following interview are from Mike’s project entitled Ad-Site. He says:

“The catalyst for my Ad-Site project was the increase in new construction works taking place in London. Walk past one of these building sites and you’ll be greeted with artists’ impressions of modern utopias, which promise an elevated social existence by living, working, or even just visiting one of these locations. But there’s a radical distinction between utopian vision and the social reality which attends the upheavals of regeneration – and which remains out of public view. I wanted to deconstruct these projections of pristine living and suggest towards the unseen on the social infrastructure that gentrification entails.”

LIP: You just won the award for best Fine Art Single Image at the New York Photo Festival. What does that recognition mean to you personally?

MIKE: It’s a massive sense of relief to be recognised on your personal work by such influential people in the industry. In some ways it feels like all the hard work is starting to pay off and obviously the exposure gained through the award has so far been fantastic, this all helps in raising the profile of your work.

LIP: Were you in New York for the awards?

MIKE: I wasn’t over there for it, I knew a few days before that I had been nominated and I was tempted to go but I’m not really into the whole awards ceremony thing. However I am really looking forward to going over next year where the work will be exhibited as part of the 2010 NYPH festival.

LIP: In your opinion what qualities make for an outstanding fine art image?

MIKE: For me a fine art photograph must contain a specific aesthetical presence, it needs to come from an idea that is considered and a concept that’s developed into a final image or a series of images that contain both a graphic form and elements of beauty.

LIP: Do you feel your background in cartography has affected your perspective and aesthetics as a photographer? How?

MIKE: Without a doubt, I spend quite a lot of time just observing what’s in front of me before taking a shot and that’s probably down to the surveying. When shooting landscapes I try to visualise how the contours on a map would look and how this can be captured in a photograph. I’m obsessed by geometric forms and I hope that’s prevalent in most of my work.

LIP: In your Ad-Site series, you photograph the contrast between an idealised picture of lifestyle and community and the reality that exists beyond that visually. What instincts attracted you to photograph these scenes? Is it mainly an aesthetic attraction for you, or do you have strong opinions about gentrification and the sociological impact of urban development?

MIKE: Initially it was purely aesthetical, I’d seen a few of these hoarding sites around town and started to be fascinated by the idea of developers using projected images of utopian living and through developing the project it became more of a social study for me.

LIP: What methods do you use to make such a project – from the time you have an idea through to planning and actually making the images – is there a routine you keep to?

MIKE: Most of my ideas tend to come out of just seeing things whilst I’m out and about, I normally do a quick test shoot to see if there’s something interesting there then spend a bit of time researching ideas and developing a concept. It’s during this stage that I start to really understand what it is that I’m trying to say with a photo project and then I’ll spend around 3 or 4 months on planning, out on reconnaissance (assessing the environment for things like permits, traffic, sun path, etcetera), shooting, editing and retouching. This has been the way my last few projects have gone and it seems to work well for me. I like to have a bit of time in the initial stages just considering the final intended outcome, there’s no point in spending all that time and money on a project that is mediocre.

LIP: What does that process involve for you, considering the final outcome?

MIKE: It depends on the scale of the project. If it’s a longer term project then I’d be looking into exhibiting the work so I’ll make contact with galleries and curators. If it’s a smaller project I’ll consider the type of editorial I want it to be published in. I also keep an eye on any major upcoming competitions as it’s a great way to get your work seen. I often find myself speeding up the complete process to meet deadlines.

LIP: What form do you think is the optimal way to display your final images – in exhibitions or books, or some other form?

MIKE: I think my work is best suited to the traditional white walls in galleries. I am putting together a book at the moment, it’s in the very early stages and the more I look into it the more I realise just how much work is involved, but it’s something I need to do.

LIP: What are the most valuable skills or lessons that you took away from doing your BA?

MIKE: The course was a bit of a mixed outcome in that it was the first of its kind at UEL. There wasn’t too much structured learning and facilities were lean, however we had some amazing teachers over the 3 years and the library was one of the best around so I spent a lot of my time just researching and developing my theory skills. I guess as a mature student I got exactly what I wanted out of the course. I also realised early on that once I had graduated I wouldn’t walk out and become a photographer overnight so I started assisting as early as I could to learn about the industry on a commercial level.

LIP: Aside from your personal work are you taking on commissions, and what is it like separating the two ways of working?

MIKE: I’m getting some interest from a few architectural clients and I’ve just finished a job for a hotel chain shooting a site in Beijing that will hopefully be extended to more hotels in other countries. There’s also a few part-commissioned projects that are being finalised now that I’m very excited about. I’m precious about my work regardless of whether its personal or commissioned, however I do enjoy the complete creative control I have when working on my own projects but I imagine it’s like that for most photographers.

LIP: Do you enjoy travelling with your camera?

MIKE: It really depends. I don’t travel around London with a camera in my bag but that’s because I don’t rely on the incidentals of photography. However if I’m going away from London then I’ll always have at least one camera with me. I’d rather run out of clothes to wear than not have enough film in my bag.

LIP: Have you noticed much change your style and approach the more projects that you complete?

MIKE: It’s becoming more developed with each new project. I’ve realised you need to keep pushing yourself and your technique otherwise your work becomes stagnant and laborious to produce. Working in the industry you get exposed to several styles and its one of the most difficult things to find is your own unique style that you are actually happy with and that isn’t heavily influenced by the people around you. One of the best compliments I’ve ever received was when somebody told me they had seen my work in a magazine and knew it was mine just by the style.

LIP: What’s the ‘Fresh Faced and Wild Eyed’ group exhibition at PG that you’re involved in this month (June 2009)?

MIKE: It’s a competition that the Photographers Gallery run for recent graduates to showcase their work. I was lucky enough to be selected as a finalist.

Mike’s website

Interview by Tiffany Jones

David Brownridge was born in Scotland in 1957 and studied photography in Glasgow before moving to London in 1978. He currently works as a freelance picture researcher mainly in the areas of current affairs, art and science. With 25 years of experience he’s worked for many newspapers, magazines and publishers and regularly with The Economist and Nature magazines.

David’s personal photography is now primarily done in the streets of London, but his interests have been varied, including an earlier black & white project entitled “Familiar Cows“. Prints from that series are in the collections of London’s Victoria and Albert Museum and the Scottish National Galleries in Edinburgh.

Here David discusses his extensive ongoing project “Walk on By“.

LIP: Could you explain where you like to photograph for this series and what draws you to shoot in the street?

DAVID: Well what draws me to shoot in the street is obviously people and the London streets are teeming with the whole world. The sheer mass of people and pace of movement makes this type of photography relatively easy. I think it would be much more difficult to do this in a provincial town or even in the outer London areas. I did a little bit of work in Barking and that was difficult. Even Camden town is different from the West End. Oxford Street is irresistible but I try to move around the smaller streets of Soho, Mayfair and sometimes the City. Narrower streets create light problems. I like Regent street for its wide open light.

LIP: Do you feel this is a confrontational method, photographing strangers at such close range?

DAVID: I don’t think it’s too confrontational. I never stop for a picture. I just snap and keep moving. I’m gone before people realise – mostly. But I can’t deny a certain degree of intrusion and the possibility of confrontation.

LIP: In some of your other work, in particular your “Things” series on your website, you seem to spend time meditating on aspects of composition. What happens when you photograph moving people, which certainly requires a very different approach? How do you make adjustments to photograph in these circumstances?

DAVID: That makes this work a real mental challenge. I still hesitate too often. I’m trying to practice just letting go of all inhibition and “be there” and get the picture (or a picture). Concentration and mental focus is very important and very difficult. Ideally I’d be totally “there” with a strong picture filling the whole frame but given the speed of movement it very rarely happens like that.

LIP: As you move so quickly, how does the composition form? Is a stronger composition in this case something you recognise only later or can you prepare for it?

DAVID: There is never time for composition or even focusing. I prefocus and judge distance then just point, shoot and hope for the best. It’s totally the opposite of what I’ve been used to doing with careful composition. Getting an interesting picture is so much a matter of chance. I think that’s what makes it exciting for me to do. There is a huge wastage rate. I delete about 90% immediately. Composition is done on the computer afterward. I eliminate the extraneous detail around the edges of the frame but it’s always a difficult decision. It’s tempting sometimes to crop too much but that often leads to a picture that’s just too neat.

I’ve learned to give the image a bit of space. A sense of context and atmosphere is very important even if means the edge of the frame is a bit messy. I’m getting to like the mess. Come to think of it it’s often not just the edges that are messy but the middle of the frame too where there is just so much going on it can look a bit confusing. I’m trying to allow the mess to just be there. After all that is what the real experience is. If the street is messy and noisy why should the pictures be anything else?

LIP: Regarding the messy and noisy circumstances – your “Things” pictures often show elements of interference as well. Do you want your pictures to show the chaos or do you think your successful images show peaceful moments within those scenes?

DAVID: Ultimately there is no such thing as chaos and peaceful. Hopefully the image will suggest to the viewer a way of seeing which dispenses with those concepts and judgements. We can enjoy the visual world more if we don’t fall into these traps. There is a freedom to be gained here and that’s more important than peace.

As much as we like to make it so the world isn’t ordered for the convenience of our sensibilities and value judgements. This is as true of the visual world as any other aspect of life. It’s important for me as a photographer to try to accept what’s there and leave it alone. How to do this and, at the same time, make an image which has some weight and power is the biggest challenge. I could say it is THE challenge for me as a photographer. It’s also, of course, a challenge for the viewer. I hate the kind of criticism that says it would be better if that detail wasn’t there or if you were a bit more to the left or a bit this or a bit that. It is what it is. It either touches you or it doesn’t. My instinct is to include as much as possible. I think we get a more authentic view that way. I remember watching a TV film about the photographer Fay Godwin. She was standing in a field somewhere photographing a landscape. She was about to take the picture and a car appeared in the frame. She said “let’s just wait for the car to pass” and I’m thinking No No No get the car in.

LIP: Situations obviously aren’t always as they appear, and often in “Walk on By” I see pairings or groups and wonder which people are together and who are strangers to each other. This I think is an integral aspect of your work compared to that of other street photographers. Is there a point to this?

DAVID: I think it is amusing how we look at a photograph and treat it as a sort of story. But it’s a story which exists entirely in our heads. The busy street creates a kind of cold intimacy between people which a picture fixes into something we assume is a relationship which in reality just isn’t true. It always amazes me how even very experienced photographers do this. We should know more than most how deceiving a picture can be. This goes back to what I was saying earlier – we should be able to enjoy the visual world without interpretation and narrative making.

LIP: Would you say you are sympathetic to your subjects?

DAVID: The process of shooting can be a bit aggressive I suppose and intrusive but my intention is generous and entirely positive. That doesn’t mean flattering people or being sentimental in any way. The city is often seen as cold and alienating but the sheer mass of humanity means that the possibilities of creative communication, relationship and intimacy is immense. Although I have no particular intention to express a point of view or opinion I can’t help my own sensibility coming through. I am certainly very sympathetic to my subjects. I feel a great warmth towards the people in my pictures. Perhaps when people are brought together in a picture that cold intimacy gets warmed up in a way. Well, I think that happens in my work anyway even when people look aggressive the eye contact is very human.

Just thinking about it you’ve made a very interesting observation about pairings and groups because even my earlier work, the landscapes in Scotland, are largely about comparisons between different forms and that’s what’s happening again with the “Walk On By” pictures. The eye moves around comparing one face with another so perhaps there is more continuity here than I thought.

LIP: Well in a way these pictures could be the ultimate ‘Urban Landscape’ images. The crowds of heads are like rolling hills, and individuals possibly like lone trees. Maybe that’s a stretch, but the city really is such an organic environment. What do you think?

DAVID: Hmm, yes I like that idea. Every picture is like a little world in it’s own right and is therefore a kind of landscape. The street is certainly organic and buzzing with life. Trudging along when you’re doing the shopping the street can feel boring and oppressive but if we allow ourselves to look closely it is endlessly engaging and fascinating to see and be part of the flow.

LIP: Do you have any finish line in mind for this project, or is shooting this something of a way of life for you? What’s motivating you to keep up with it?

DAVID: I don’t think I ever ‘finish’ anything I just seem to come to a stop and then eventually move on, usually with a vague intention of going back and getting it “right”. But the intention never turns to reality. We can never go back, really. I don’t think I’m ready to move on from the “Walk On By” pictures yet. I think there is a great deal more pushing of myself to do. It’s partly about exploring my ideas about what makes a ‘good’ picture but also about the mental challenge that I mentioned earlier. I said at the beginning that this sort of work is relatively easy in central London but there is still a considerable degree of fear, hesitation and reserve which I feel still has to be overcome in order to capture the ‘dance’ of the street. I’m a very shy person really and this type of work is something that only a couple of years ago I couldn’t have imagined doing. But something happened and I’m going with it.

David’s website

Interview by Tiffany Jones

Carole Rawlinson’s photography has developed in parallel with a long career as a hospital planner. It is a mixture of contemporary and documentary work and covers urban and natural landscapes and some archaeology.

After 30 years as a hospital planner, Carole has also completed two major hospital photographic projects between 2002 and 2007 – one of a new hospital being built and the other of a famous old hospital closing down. In 2006, she was awarded a Contemporary ARPS for her book called Transformations about the building of the new Evelina Children’s Hospital at St Thomas’ Hospital. In 2008, she was awarded a Contemporary FRPS for another book called Middlesex Memories about the closure of the Middlesex Hospital on Goodge Street.

Carole has had three solo exhibitions of her hospital projects and has shown work in other exhibitions including LIP annual exhibitions. She is a stock photographer for the Royal Geographical Society and has been a member of LIP and also Hampstead Photography Society for many years.

For this showcase we take a look at Carole’s landscape images from a body of work she calls Wild Places.

“I don’t go out with my camera with the hope of capturing great individual images but tend to take photographs in the context of a project or predetermined idea. My aim is to capture the essence of a destination or tell a story. ”

LIP: This series of work is quite different from your hospital documentary projects. What’s your attraction to these landscapes?

CAROLE: I enjoy the solace that comes from being in wild remote places.

When you live and work in busy urban environments and particularly if you’re experiencing major changes in your own life, the emptiness, bleakness, silence and solitude experienced in these wild places can provide a real sense of calm and peace. This is equally true of hot, cold and icy deserts. Remote wild places can also inspire awe and wonder, refresh the mind and body and allow your imagination to soar. As a result, I’ve become something of a polar and desert explorer over the past 10 years and have also developed an interest in the archeology associated with these remote destinations.

LIP: Wild Places includes photographs from Antarctic Peninsula, Iceland, Norway, Greenland, Arctic Canada and the North West Passage. Could you explain how you came to travel these places and by what means you have done it?

CAROLE: This series of journeys to cold deserts and icy landscapes began with a trip to West Greenland to see the giant icebergs which break off the glacier near Ilullisat and ultimately float across the North Atlantic and down the coasts of Labrador and Newfoundland. I flew to Kangerlusak and then travelled north on the local coastal steamer. After this trip I was hooked on the visual qualities of ice and the peace and solitude of icy locations.

The next trip was another coastal steamer boat trip in winter up the coast of Norway, north of the Arctic Circle, as far as the Lofoten islands where I spent a few days. My main aim on this trip was to experience and attempt to photograph the Northern lights, which I managed to do late one night from the prow of the ship. I’ve since been back to the Lofotens in the spring to photograph the dramatic mountainous landscape and also the dried cod industry.

In Iceland I wanted to experience the sheer drama and variety of the remote landscapes that this country has to offer, from cold deserts to hot springs, giant waterfalls icecaps and yet more icebergs. On this trip I drove all the way round Iceland in a 4 wheel drive.

The Antarctic peninsula I explored from a Russian icebreaker expedition ship travelling across the Drake passage from Ushuaia in Argentina. Ice, icebergs and icy landscapes were the attraction here and the feeling of almost other worldliness from being so far away from anywhere else. There was ample opportunity to go ashore and explore.

I had been interested for some time in the 19th century search for a navigable North West Passage and particularly the failed Franklin expedition of 1845 and the finally successful Amundsen expedition of 1906. So when the opportunity arose to make a trip myself to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Amundsen’s trip I took it. Again I travelled in a Russian icebreaker expedition ship from Resolute, an Inuit community north of the Arctic Circle. We spent a week travelling west to Amundsen Gulf and then did the transit back in the other direction, something still only done by relatively few ships even today. The remote cold desert landscape had a real feeling of emptiness as there is little human habitation there. Signs of those earlier 19th century expeditions were apparent in several locations, evocative reminders of the hazards of those early explorations. The most poignant of these were the graves from Franklin’s expedition on the desolate beach of Beechey island. Remains of the summer tent houses and winter earth houses of the Thule people, ancestors of the Inuit were also apparent in many locations we visited.

LIP: Resolute has 24 hours of darkness in winter and 24 hours of sunlight during summer. What lighting conditions did you encounter?

CAROLE: I went through the NW Passage in late August so it was light for most of the time but not for a full 24 hours. I haven’t been in either the Arctic or Antarctic when it has been mostly dark.

LIP: What is it like traveling on an icebreaker ship, is it rough-going and what are the nights like?

CAROLE: These icebreaker ships are comfortable but not luxurious. The conditions can be very wild with strong gale force winds whipping up very heavy seas, especially crossing the Drake Passage to the Antarctic peninsula. We also had storm force conditions at times in the NW Passage. In extreme conditions, parts of the ship’s exterior were closed off to prevent passengers from going outside and slipping or being blown overboard.

LIP: Travelling these areas is quite a rare thing to do, could you tell us anything about people you met along the way, or were your experiences very solitary?

CAROLE: Because of the remoteness of these places and lack of habitation, most of the people that I met were fellow passengers or crew on board ship. Apart from them I also met some Inuit in the two Inuit communities I visited in the NW Passage and scientists at a research base in the Antarctic peninsula.

LIP: What sort of equipment were you using to keep warm and comfortable enough to make pictures in such cold climate?

CAROLE: Lots of layers of clothing and several pairs of gloves. I kept some gloves on to take photos and kept my camera in an insulated and waterproof bag so that it didn’t seize up or get wet when I was travelling or going ashore in small zodiac boats.

LIP: It seems you have traveled extensively in much warmer places, such as Namibia and Jordan. What were some of your experiences like in these places?

CAROLE: I have made two trips to Arizona and Utah drawn by the drama of the desert landscapes and also by the extensive archeological remains of the ancient Anasasi people – ancestors of the Pueblo Indians.

Apart from photographing the wide variety of hot desert landscapes, my trip to Namibia in 1998 marked the start of what became a 10 year project photographing routes around the world in icy, desert and wild locations. This project used these particular landscapes to express the feelings of loss and the search for new directions that follows multiple bereavements.

In Jordan, I wanted to see the desert landscapes like Wadi Rum made famous by Lawrence of Arabia and the Arab revolt. Camping in the desert one night, I had the memorable experience of watching desert foxes playing close by.

In Libya this year, I focused primarily on photographing the extensive archeological remains of the Roman cities of Leptis Magna and Sabratha.

LIP: What do you think the archeology of our roads, or routes, will tell about our cultures in future?

CAROLE: I don’t know how to answer this question – you’d have to ask an archeologist! In addition to my wild places images, I have photographed routes as a metaphor for expressing feelings and emotions.

LIP: What challenges do you face when photographing ice and sand?

CAROLE: Challenges in icy landscapes are keeping your camera dry and sheltered from the cold, taking several camera batteries as they don’t last as long in the cold, holding your camera still in howling gales or whilst standing up in a moving zodiac and reacting quickly to dramatic changes in the weather.

Challenges in desert landscapes are mainly keeping dust out of your camera.

LIP: Are you currently working on any new projects?

CAROLE: I have recently self-published a book via the blurb.com bookstore on my Routes project which can be found here.

Carole’s website

Interview by Tiffany Jones

Mark Denton is from Manchester but currently based in Kent. He started photographing at age 13 or 14 and carried on into university. Though he studied politics he spent as much time hanging around with friends doing fine art photography degrees at art college as with his politics classmates. Those friends helped him gain access to a place he enjoyed spending much time in – the college darkroom. Prior to starting his degree he took a year out to work at a photographic gallery and darkroom co-op, where he did a bit of everything from helping to hang exhibitions to teaching a beginners’ black & white darkroom class.

About five years ago after taking an extended break from photography, Mark was inspired by the Cruel and Tender exhibition at Tate Modern. “I was exposed to Eggleston, Boris Mikhailov, Philip-Lorca diCorcia and Rineka Dijkstra and suddenly the world opened up for me photographically speaking.”

Mark’s series ‘Missionaries’ (2008) portrays the young recruits of a fundamentalist evangelical Christian community in Sussex, England. In this project we see images of young people as they undergo six months of intense training and conditioning in a closed environment set very much apart from mainstream society.

Mark is currently studying for an MA in Photography at Thames Valley University in Ealing.

LIP: Which subjects do you have the most interest in photographing?

MARK: I’m really interested in issues of belonging. I’ve always been inherently quite a social, large-group kind of person, and I think there’s actually a personal search for family and community lurking behind a lot of my work.

Linked to this I’ve always been interested in people who exist outside the mainstream, who have carved out a niche and defined themselves as part of a community that is exceptional, that defies expectations. I’m interested in how those people are at once defined in opposition to mainstream living but at the same time are parts of what is often a very structured, ordered and normalising community. They swap one set of rules and conventions for another. Stemming from this I’m interested in questions about how photography – and especially portraiture – conveys meaning and ‘truth’ to a wider audience.

LIP: Could you tell us how your Missionaries project came about?

MARK: It started when I met someone who had been involved with the group many years ago and had, in her words, ‘escaped’. The story of her experiences and time there interested me, but what really fascinated me was her underlying need to belong, to be part of something that offered salvation and an apparently complete model for living. Having heard about this community existing just 40 miles away I just knew I had to get in and photograph it, to try and get to the heart of what it was about.

It’s not a documentary project, though aspects of the work certainly skirt close to that definition. I was very conscious that I was in many ways hovering around the documentary genre but was determined not to allow things to fall into that mode. It’s definitely on the ‘fine-art’ side of the documentary-art continuum, though I think this notion itself is pretty outdated nowadays. The project is almost entirely portrait based, though it also includes some photographed pages from the diaries and the journals of the students.

LIP: How did you approach making arrangements with the community to gain access?

MARK: I got in touch with some people involved with the group, and they in turn put me in touch with the leadership at the place in Sussex. It took me three months to negotiate access – I met with various staff and leaders beforehand and had to make a couple of presentations about the project. It was quite a nerve wracking time for me, as the project could have been halted at any point. To be fair, the reaction of the leadership was pretty positive. I think they were as interested as I was in seeing the results. In these kinds of situations, honesty is always the best policy and I simply explained that I would be taking quite formal, studied portraits of the students, and that I wasn’t interested in creeping around with an SLR taking candid or pj-type shots.

LIP: How long did you spend shooting?

MARK: I spent 6 months shooting. I’d generally go there once or twice during the week and at weekends. I followed a group of new students starting out on an intensive 6 month long initialisation and training course. The students came from all over the world, and particularly from USA, Scandinavia, the UK, Holland and Belgium.

LIP: Why were you so determined to avoid Missionaries becoming a documentary project?

MARK: Although the lines between traditional documentary and fine art practices are becoming increasingly blurred – I’m thinking of photographers like An-My Lê, Simon Norfolk, Luc Delahaye, Alec Soth – I think that the motivation and intention behind each kind of practice remains fundamentally different. Because of its nominal subject matter- religious fundamentalism – it would have been easy for Missionaries to have become a documentary project and I was very conscious that at several points I was skirting close to this, but it was never about documenting the community per se, it was about exploring the ways in which individuals relate to and are shaped by the wider communities of which they are a part, and about how I related to those individuals through the act of photographing them.

A more documentary-based project would have focussed on conveying the life of a closed and quite extreme religious community by including scenes of background life and the daily activities of the members. It might have relied on more spontaneous shots, whereas mine were set up, were very slow and very deliberate. A documentary project would have likely been more focussed on the extraordinary, the sensational, on the spectacular; these things were certainly in evidence and I was (and remain) deeply critical of them, but they were not what I wanted the project to be about. My interest was in the people, and the project is almost entirely portrait based.

LIP: Did the process work out as intended then?

MARK: One of the most interesting things was how its focus changed so drastically during the shooting. I started out from a very critical position – I’m a firm atheist and I was definitely critical in my own mind about what was going on in the community, about how people were being indoctrinated or brainwashed. But as the shooting commenced and as I got to know the students I was mixing with, the project shifted and became less about my opinion and more about their experience of the community and of the relationship between myself as photographer, and them. The photographs became evidence of a moment of shared trust between me and the sitter, and I became acutely conscious that these people were offering something of themselves to me and the camera. I’m drawn to situations and people where this possibility for connection exists. I love the ambivalence, the uncertainties and contradictions that are in some of those images.

LIP: How would you describe some of the relationships you built with individuals during the Missionaries project? Are you still in contact with any of your subjects?

MARK: The relationship between myself and the people pictured is what lies at the heart of the project. It’s cliché, but It really is all about establishing a condition of mutual trust between you. For the first few visits I went along without a camera just so we could get to know one another away from the presence of the camera. And this helped to establish a relationship later when the students came to have their pictures taken. For many of them, the 20 minutes or so spent each week in front of the camera became a kind of release, a kind of refuge from the pressure they were under the rest of the time. You could see them almost retreating into themselves for a moment, taking time to reconnect with themselves and a kind of stillness descending. They really were under a lot of pressure – psychologically and time-wise – during their training.

I’m in email contact with some of the students, but they have all been dispersed to various corners of the world as soon as their basic 6 months induction was completed. I’d love to find out where they are and maybe make some follow up portraits of them in their new lives.

LIP: Do you feel your portraits scratch the surface to reveal anything of their specific personalities, and if so what?

MARK: I can talk about what motivates me to make a particular portrait, and about what I think that portrait is a record of, but I’m wary of making too many claims beyond that about what the image reveals of the sitter’s true nature. After all, as soon as the image is displayed publicly and viewed by others it takes on a life and a meaning of its own, largely regardless of what I as photographer may originally have intended. People bring their own histories and psychologies with them when viewing photographs and these generally have far more impact on how an image is perceived. This ambiguity of meaning – almost a loss of control – bothers some photographers who feel that it weakens the case for photography as a medium of valid personal expression but for me it is one of the key strengths of photography rather than a weakness.

LIP: You have presented individuals in your pictures. Do you see these as clearly depicting their different personas or as parts of a whole that without the others are separate, either literally or metaphorically, of the Mission?

MARK: That’s a good question! The work was intended from the outset to be viewed very much as a series. During shooting I became aware that I was shooting people individually but was starting to depict them in a similar way. They’re shot full length, generally alone, confronting the camera directly. It occurred to me that there was an interesting dynamic going on – I was using photography to try to isolate and emphasise the individual, to liberate the individual – visually at least – from the wider community, only to then place the individuals back into some sort of photographic series. In a sense I was taking individuals out of their literal community (a group of which I was essentially critical) and placing them into a new grouping that exists photographically. I think there is a subconscious desire in there to use photography to investigate, make sense of and even visually recast situations in which I feel individuals are being deluded or manipulated.

LIP: What are your future plans for Missionaries? Do you see yourself producing a book?

MARK: There will be a self-published book, plus an exhibition of selected prints at the community itself. I’d love for the project to be picked up and exhibited by a gallery as this was always the principal output I had in mind when making the work. If any curators are reading this then hey, let’s talk!

Mark’s website

Interview by Tiffany Jones

Chris first took pictures in the 70s, mostly in black and white, and mostly developed and printed in her basement flat in the East End. She went on to study graphic repro at London College of Printing, where photography was on the syllabus and continued to enjoy it for a few more years before other interests distracted her. She didn’t pick up her camera again in a serious way for about twenty years.

More recently, Chris took voluntary redundancy from her job producing websites and retrained as a counsellor. She says, “Although I enjoy this immensely, it doesn’t fulfil my creative side in the same way. So I started to go out with a camera again, first photographing people in my local area – and as before, mostly in black and white.”

For this Showcase Chris shares with us a series of pictures she has made at the seaside, and discusses her background and motivations in pursuing her interest in street photography.

LIP: Could you explain what inspires you to photograph people in seaside locations?

CHRIS: I was born in Brighton and wherever I am, whichever country, I always gravitate towards the sea. It therefore seems fitting that one of my ongoing projects should be the seaside. I’m lucky in that it attracts such a transient crowd and there’s no shortage of material.

My seaside pictures aren’t all of England, but what connects them together for me, is that they have a very English feel about them. I think when most people think of the English seaside they naturally think of Martin Parr, but I think more of Tony Ray-Jones or David Hurn, only in colour – these are my influences. However, I’m not trying to emulate them. I try to put my own spin on things, to capture some sense of involvement from my subjects – to make the landscape theirs and theirs alone, even though tomorrow’s population may be different. Sometimes the people I photograph feel like characters in a play only I don’t need to direct them. They seem to know exactly where I want them to be.

Although these guys were playing petanque, their movements suggested the bad dancers at the school disco. I found them very comical to watch. I like how they’re frozen in mid-step.

The sheer abandonment of this person’s pose caught my eye. I’m full of envy for someone that can just fall asleep on a bench, with no inhibitions.

LIP: Do you mostly take pictures as an outside observer, or are your subjects aware of your camera?

CHRIS: Initially, I wasn’t so confident and wanted no interaction with my subjects… but at some point this began to feel less satisfactory. I missed the connection. Now I’m getting closer in order to obtain that connection, which I think gives a different feel to the more recent work I’m doing. Alongside this, the gift of a new camera (my first DSLR) which is larger and noisier, more often attracts the attention of whoever I’m shooting.

This chap was well prepared for his day on the beach with his chair, towel and newspaper. I imagine him scanning the beach for a likely lady to strike up conversation with.

LIP: How often do you shoot?

CHRIS: I now go out two or three times a week to shoot – between seeing my clients. My camera is always with me. I wander around town, scanning the street for interesting faces. Sometimes I’m so entranced by an expression that I forget to take the photo but it doesn’t seem to matter. I rarely return home disappointed.

LIP: When you photograph people, aside from expressions that you see, can you explain what draws you to certain characters?

CHRIS: With the elderly people I’ve photographed, it was a sense of strength combined with vulnerability. As a bereavement counsellor, I’m always amazed at the strength people find to cope with the situation they find themselves in. I think this can also apply to the aging process. Getting older isn’t always easy – with its associated issues; immobility, ill health, bereavements, thoughts of ones mortality – and in many cases, invisibility.

More generally, I’m drawn to people that can I feel some connection with – or would do if I knew them. There may be something a little quirky or unusual about them (though I can’t always put my finger on what it is)… and as someone that doesn’t easily ‘fit in’ I can identify with that. Of course, these are purely my perceptions as I really have no way of knowing… and in some ways, voicing these thoughts makes me feel uncomfortable as they play to assumptions that I don’t like to have. After all, it’s very possible that I’ve just caught them having a quirky moment.

Compared with others that were around on this really hot day, this pair struck me as rather over-dressed and formal for their seaside environment. I think there’s some sense that things are not quite as they seem.

LIP: You mention that in many cases, aging involves issues of invisibility. Your body of work indeed includes a remarkably significant number of images starring aging and elderly people. Do you see your work to be shedding light on their issues and if so, what points do you think you may be trying to communicate with your audience?

CHRIS: I certainly don’t aspire to be a champion of the elderly in terms of the issues they have, however, if as a bi-product of people seeing my photos, it makes people more aware, then I feel that’s a good thing. After all, the population in general is getting older.

I thought their pose quite interesting, and I liked how he was holding her hand in such a protective way. There’s such a sense of warmth between them.

LIP: Are you setting out to create a body of documentary-style pictures, or do you have any usage in mind for your images before you shoot?

CHRIS: I didn’t set out to create a body of any style at all. If it’s there now it’s something that’s evolved naturally. If you take photos very often over a long period, then I guess certain patterns can start to emerge and you kind of grow into your style. It’s hard for me to see these pictures in a documentary light right now. When I look at photographs I took in the 70s they have a documentary style… but that’s 30 years hence. I think this is something that might become more apparent in say, 30 years time.

As far as whether I have any usage in mind before I shoot; sometimes I do, sometimes I don’t. One project I’m currently shooting for is a book – and I go out specifically to shoot for that… but if something entirely unrelated presents itself, then I can be easily distracted.

Here, I was drawn to the strange perspective. The motor home is firmly on the ground, as are the blue boxes that the couple are sunbathing on – yet somehow, it all looks wrong. I also thought there was a rather painterly look to the scene.

LIP: Do you find the task of editing, or making selections of your work for different purposes, a difficult one?

CHRIS: In the past I’ve found it pretty difficult because my shots have tended to be more random, with no specific project in mind. Now, I endeavour to work more towards specific projects I’m finding it a lot easier and actually enjoy the process of editing. I do have to step back a bit sometimes as if I keep looking at the same pictures again and again I start to get sick of them. If I have a break I find I can come back to it with a fresh pair of eyes.

I saw the composition before I saw anything else. I liked the shapes and juxtaposition – and I liked how they look so at home. It feels like their special place, where they’ve been coming for years.

LIP: I see you are a member of a collective of photographers, ZuperQuirk. Could you tell us what your experience collaborating with other photographers is like?

CHRIS: It’s been very exciting for me. I’d got to that stage where I wanted to take things further but I wasn’t sure where to go. Working with others in this way has helped me to start thinking more in themes. It’s interesting that as a group we have certain things in common – in particular, an interest in the quirkier side of life. Yet, we each have our own style… and of course, being from various corners of the globe, our environments are very different. They are all people whose work I admire and in terms of feedback and support it’s invaluable.

Chris’s website

Interview by Tiffany Jones

Ivo was born in Amsterdam and earned a degree in Mathematics, though after a few years working in the field he realised he had neglected his creative side. His interest in photography led him to complete a BA at the Academy for Photography.

He says, “This was a change of life. It was so inspiring and fascinating. Then after finishing this school I decided to spread my wings and go to England three years ago. I still earned my money as a mathematician, but I knew I wanted to become a professional photographer.”

Now 35, Ivo has given up his maths job to start his new life, and his focus is fine art and illustrative photography. We asked him some questions about his work.

LIP: How do you find your inspiration and ideas for pictures or series of work?

IVO: I find inspiration by looking around me. That could be people rushing to jobs they do not like, rough locations in industrial areas, people mowing their far too small garden or a forester next to a dying tree. In fact, I get inspired by people’s ‘failure’ to act upon their desire. Most of my ideas are about the dream, the contrast between desire and reality. Other than observing my surrounding, I look at art. I visit museums and galleries, read books and explore the internet.

LIP: Do you shoot candid pictures at all then? Some of those scenarios sound like unmissable opportunities!

IVO: The scenarios I describe are just sources of inspiration. When it comes to the final shooting I organise the setting to get the best and most striking image. The reason is that I try to get away from pure reality and add my own imagination to the final photograph. In that way I am not a street photographer or journalist. That’s a different discipline.

LIP: Could you explain what process you go through once you have a concept in mind?

IVO: When I have a new idea or theme, I work things out on paper. I make little drawings and write up ideas. Before I go out to take the picture, I have a rough idea of what the final image would be like. Then I need to find a location, the props and a model. During the shooting I am pretty organised and spend time in finding the right composition. This is very important and every detail counts. Fortunately, there is a lot possible in the post-processing stage, so sometimes I can ignore a disturbing lantern or can change the color of a door.

LIP: Do you think being a mathematician has brought something significant to the way you approach this creative work?

IVO: I think my meticulous approach and the idea of having this almost final image in mind before shooting is related to my maths background, I do a lot of research before shooting.

LIP: So are you shooting film to start with? Any strong feelings about shooting digital?

IVO: I would like to shoot digital in a way. It is quicker and easier. But I love the film feeling. It is also a matter of price. If I want the same quality and ability to get big enlargement it is going to be expensive [for top quality digital equipment]. I was considering a digital back for a medium format camera, but that’s expensive and you also lose the wide angle effect. And that is something I don’t want!!

LIP: Your pictures have a bit of both humour and tragedy, and are theatrical in that way. You’re often the actor in these roles you create too. Is there a particular reaction you want to provoke?

IVO: I want the viewer to think: what is going on? As my theme is about the dream, I want to shake people up a bit and wake them up. Humour comes naturally and is a way to make people wonder and keep wondering.

LIP: It seems you enjoy using props, could you tell us a bit about that or what’s the meaning of it?

IVO: Yes, props are important and I choose them carefully. In the series with the rowers, I choose an oar as an absurd element that connects the portraits in the series. It was a sort of metaphor for the silent thoughts people have. Again, this is about the dream of being someone that you are not in reality. The oar stand for passion. Another example is the man with the party lantern near a leafless tree on a beach. This shows a nice contrast between happiness and the confrontation with reality.

LIP: I imagine in your image of the woman with the handbag – she has forgotten where she is, has amnesia… or has she just finished a cup of tea at a roadside tea stand?

IVO: This is a series I am going to work on. The concept is ‘being lost’ and it is based on some short stories I did about a grandma and a grandpa. The grandma was always doing weird things and the grandpa felt embarrassed about what his wife was doing. He didn’t understand the world she was in. He liked reading his newspaper and smoking his cigar. Again, a sort of contrast between reality (grandpa) and a dream world (grandma). For the pictures I will only use grandma.

LIP: The landscapes you shoot are also significant in your images. What appeals to you about a particular location?

IVO: Locations are very important. They represent the world in which the personage lives. So in most of my creations, they are empty and hopeless. I like industrial areas, large fields and forests.

LIP: Do we really live in a hopeless state? Is that what you perceive as reality or part of the dream?

IVO: I am not saying reality is that hopeless, but I look for contrasts. The location is a sort of symbol of reality. Another reason to select empty places is that it draws the attention to the person and props. I don’t want disturbing elements in my pictures.

LIP: Now that you have committed to pursuing professional work, how do you see things evolving? What would be a dreamlike commission for you?

IVO: I would love to create some great artworks for a public space like an airport. I would work within a theme and do some sequences. That would be a real challenge.

I am in my early days and I guess my approach has to change a little. My work is very personal and I need to focus on commercial works which is very exciting. I believe in my approach and I think it is applicable. Though it will be tailored to the person or company I work for, I would like to stay as close to my personal style as possible. It will be very interesting to see how this will differ from my personal work. I will definitely not change 180 degrees, but I am open to new developments and styles.

LIP: You have just recently joined LIP. Could you tell us how you came to find the group and what experiences you have had as a member so far?

IVO: When I decided to start as a photographer, I was looking for a group in which I could share my ideas and get inspiration. In my search I came across LIP and it looked very interesting, especially the monthly meet ups. I went to my first satellite group meeting recently and it was very motivational, there were friendly people and lots of good work.

LIP: You brought a really lovely printed portfolio book to that meeting (City & Shoreditch)… could you tell us a bit about how you made it?

IVO: This was my portfolio book with my academic work. I printed the images myself on Hahnemuhle double-sided matt paper. Then I had it bound by a book binder. This man is a real artisan and uses traditional techniques. I was very pleased the way he did it. The disadvantage of the book is that all pages are fixed and you can’t change images. At the moment I am working on a book that I can update, but I want to try to keep the same feeling as the other book. I will bring it to the meeting one day.

Ivo’s website

Interview by Tiffany Jones