The Unforgetting with Peter Watkins

This article contains image descriptions in the captions to help those with visual impairments.

The Unforgetting by Peter Watkins ID: A child's dress is levitating in front of a net curtain inside a house.

On the 15 February 1993, Peter Watkin’s mother walked off Zandvoot Beach into the North Sea. Her final act haunts Watkin’s series The Unforgetting (2012-14: a poetic exploration of the traces left by such trauma. Watkin’s autobiographical works incorporate a plethora of sculptural elements, such as casting, stacking and obscuring, but more poignantly, they are a meditation on the practice of archiving and remembering: how certain material is preserved or lost through the process of memorialisation. Watkin’s photographs of object assemblages - reminiscent of 16th century cabinets of curiosity - reflect on, but given their subject, are also notable for their lack of tears. While black and white photography is traditionally associated with nostalgia, the work is spared of straightforward sentimentality: objects are catalogued and composed in a manner that evokes early scientific photography or evidence gathered at a crime scene, encapsulating something universal, rather than remaining solely with the overtly personal - the distance of time, perhaps, affords here a mannered approach that is not only clinical, but poetic at the same time. 

Interview by Rory Duckhouse / Volume: Visibility and Ocular Truth, published 2014.

In the introduction to The Unforgetting you describe it as “an exploration of a personal history that cannot be told with any certainty, but is told anyway.” What drove you to explore this subject? Was it a cathartic process for you?

The fear of forgetting, and consequently an awareness of the limitations and failings of memory and photography, are perhaps the central concern of this body of work. The contradictory motif here lies in the treatment of the personal history as a narrative structure, which seems to preclude access to truth that is purportedly set forth from the title. The realization that this search for truth was futile stemmed perhaps from a series of interviews that I made with key family  members for a film that I never completed. I now think of most films as preparatory research for the resulting, mostly photographic, works that we’re discussing here; but what was interesting and transformative for me was the way the family had reconciled the trauma of loss, into a unified narrative that deviated very little from one person to the next. It was soon after finishing this filming to work that I altered my approach, embracing the ambiguities of photographic representation, turning my attention on the objects archived by my Grandmother, and the village where my mother grew up. 

The catharsis, if you can call it that, has come from the time dedicated to the subject, as well as in terms of the intellectual and emotional work invested. I suppose there is a great deal more that is withheld than revealed in this body of work, but this has been a particularly important part of the project: the tension between revealing and concealment. 

The Unforgetting by Peter Watkins ID: Three portraits of a young girl, stacked up upon one another.
The Unforgetting by Peter Watkins ID: A hand holding up ten books. The image has been flipped to give the impression the books are floating.

I think this idea of revealing and concealment is most prevalent in the studio images of super 8 film, the accordion and other personal objects. Their function is obvious but their personal relationship to your family history remain a mystery. 

Yes absolutely. Still life has a long history of placing the everyday and overlooked from center, using a language of symbolism that goes beyond mere function and form. These still life photographs go beyond mere function and form. These still life photographs were made up of objects or combinations of things taken from my Grandmother’s house in Germany - in fact all the photographic work was made there. I’ve come to think of her house as a kind of living museum or archive in a sense. Little changes, everything is categorised and organised in a way that meaning seems fixed, or has already been attributed to things according to an overarching narrative that constitutes her life. Isolating these objects out of this context seems to point them towards their value or importance as part of a greater whole. Three of the photographs (Super 8, Roemer Glasses, and Ute), which are considered a  set, deal both figuratively and abstractly with this idea of transparency and opacity, revealing and concealment. In Super 8, reels of home movie footage - containing images of my motherf as a child, holidays from the 70’s, and so on - are placed before the camera. The images contained are fascinating, and personally insightful, but here their treatment is to be reduced down to a singular, uniform image. There is a push and pull between being offered access to some personal remnant, and the opacity offered up by its photographic representation, which points towards a more universal reading. There are of course stories bound up within all of these objects, but not necessarily illuminated in any detail by the photographs. In my mind, they come to stand for something greater than a small personal piece of information. 

Do the assemblages of image and object reference specific events? Or deal with photographs failure to truly represent memory? 

I suppose it’s a mixture of both things really. The object assemblages work in different ways, sometimes referencing my memories, but usually going temporally beyond the reach of my memory, mixing up family histories and containing hidden stores - a temporal shift beyond one person’s memory. There is a photograph of a log with an axe embedded in its surface with a photograph of my Grandfather as a young man rested against it. This references memories I have from childhood of my Grandfather chopping and setting wood around our house, but also from the last time we spent time, doing this very activity. There is a physical, concrete casted log, which is also exhibited, reproduced three times, and rested upon a steel plinth. They are at once an indexical imprint of the object, but not the object itself; objects devoid of colour as on the most part the accompanying photographs are. I suppose the task is interpreting something inherent to the fabric of memory and time, and of course there is a part of this that acknowledges the inadequacy of memory, but the work is more concerned, perhaps, by its parameters, and its elasticity when explored. Memories aren’t fixed; their form is forever changing, so undertaking work such as this seems to give them a form, an output, but this transforms that purer, internalised form of memory, the kind of memories we rarely share with other people. There is always that kernel of truth at the very center of all this, and that’s worth pursuing. 

The Unforgetting by Peter Watkins ID: A set of older super 8 film and their cassette holders.
The Unforgetting by Peter Watkins ID:A hand holding onto some drift wood in front of a white backdrop. To the side of the backdrop a domestic setting where the backdrop has been set up.

Wood features across a series of images, being presented to the viewer before being chopped up. What is the symbolism of this in the project? 

I guess there is a lot in the recurrence of wood that speaks to me of Germany, of folklore, the forest, and rural life. The German side of my family are form a small village in the south of Germany - a bit of a time capsule really. Wood is used in different references, such as the waterwheel of my great-great-grandfather’s sawmill, the photograph of which obscures the face of my great-uncle, who drowned in a waterfall before I was born. There is the aforementioned photograph of my grandfather, the concrete casted logs, stacked wood, and such. Perhaps most ambiguously is the photograph of the cropped arm of my brother suspending a large, split piece of beech wood in a half domestic, half studio environment. There are a few things that I like about this photograph - the way the weight of the object can’t be ascertained, as well as locating a reason for its presentation, and the way the wood seems to flow organically out of his hand, like hair or water - but mostly I like its resistance to straightforward interpretation - it keeps you guessing, and there is this idea of suspension that works on various levels. I can still look at this photograph and find new meaning in it, the ambiguity of which in this case is attractive. 

The Unforgetting by Peter Watkins ID: A black background with a block of wood. On top of the block of wood is a photograph and axe wedged behind it.

The series is largely Black and White, but in parts changes to colour, such as in the image of the Baptismal dress which is behind yellow glass, What brought this change of focus? 

The work titled Taufe is perhaps one of the most integral pieces in this body of work and is a photograph of a suspended baptismal dress that belonged to my mother. She is really at the heart of all this, the subject that the rest of the work emanates from. It’s a black and white photograph, glazed in yellow glass. The dress appears to float, a weightless suspension in the center of the frame. There is something in the indeterminate scale of the dress that is fascinating to me; the way the fabric hangs in relation to the curtain and obvious corollary to themes of water, suspension, and the symbolic representation of death in the Christian baptismal tradition. There is a certain truth found in this remnant and in the contours of the dress and how it hangs along with the flowing gauze of the curtain. The yellow glazing that colours the photograph is thought here as a wash that is secondary to the photograph, but also of the fascination of putting colour back into the image, of trying to put the yellow back into the dress, so to speak. Colour is used here to move closer to the object, before abstracted by the photograph, yet somehow its colour inhabits the space of dreams and hallucinations, and an uncertain reality. The dress is of course yellow, but the yellow of the glass is not the yellow of the dress. Something that comes to mind is Wim Wenders’s film Wings of Desire and the interplay between colour and black and white, which of course is used here to signal a shift in reality. Quite crudely put, the sepia-toned black and white, in which the film is wrapped around, comes to represent the world of angels, the infinite, eternity, and is largely our visual register throughout. When the angel Damiel comes crashing down to earth, relinquishing his immortality and thus falling into the human condition, he also makes a fall into colour. He intuits, experiences, and bleeds in full cinematic Technicolour. Colour comes to represent the living, and the human condition and our place in the continual present. 

See more of Peter's work here : http://www.peterwatkins.co.uk/index.html

Neo Nazi's in The Great White North with Brett Gundlock

This article contains image descriptions in the captions to help those with visual impairments.

Back in 2013 we published in our subculture issue a project by Brett Gundlock, which explored Neo Nazi's in Canada, where Gundlock spent time with individuals whom all belong to the Ayran Guard. With far right politics and opinions dominating the world and have been given a platform through the likes of Trump, Boris Johnson and Jair Bolsonaro, we revisit our interview with Gundlock who sheds light on his intimate time with a group of people whom are no longer on the fringes of society, but dominating the headlines.

Rob is restrained by Kevin, following a fight with another member of their group, January, 2010. Calgary, Canada. Rob and Kevin belonged to a small neo-nazi skinhead group called W.E.B. (Western European Blood lines). Nine months after this photo was take, Rob was convicted of second degree murder and given life in prison, after he beat a man the death with a fellow WEB member. ID: Two neo-nazis with tattoos on their faces are on the floor, looking into one another's eyes. Blood can be seen on the fall they are up against.

Hi Brett, thank you for taking the time to answer a few questions about your project ‘The Movement’. My first question would have to be what led you to document the subject matter? 

While working for a newspaper in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, I stumbled upon a very vocal skinhead group called the Aryan Guard. My assignment was to cover this group’s first annual march through the streets of Calgary. I guess I was naive, but to learn what these guys - and groups like them around the world still existed. It really surprised me. I had to know more. 

Within the series the subject seems at ease with you being there, how did you approach the subjects? 

I approached the group directly through their website. It took a fair bit of time and a lot of interesting interrogations by the skinheads, but they eventually let me into their world. After a while I blended into the background, allowing me to photograph the group and their activities candidly. Through this group I made contact with other groups. My relationship with the Aryan Guard worked as a reference to gain access and photograph other groups. Thanks to the internet, the social web of these groups is really widespread. They are remarkably easy to find once you are looking for them. 

Rob sieg heils while making out with his girlfriend, January, 2010. Calgary, Canada. Rob was the leader of a small neo-nazi skinhead group called W.E.B. (Western European Blood lines). Nine months after this photo was take, Rob was convicted of second degree murder and given life in prison, after he beat a man the death with a fellow WEB member. ID: A woman with her back to us is kissing her lovers face, who is raising his arm doing the hitler salute.
Tyler and Tyler talk while drinking, March, 2009. Calgary, Canada. The Tyler on the left was convicted of second degree murder and given life in prison, after he beat a man to death in Calgary, along with a fellow skinhead. ID:Two skinheads, one topless with tattoos (left) hangs his arms around the other inside a house.

Can you talk about your favourite photograph from this project and why? 

I don’t have a favourite photo. At the time this series explored a new aesthetic and way of working for myself. I am happy with what they say as a group of photos and the dialogue they create together. Individually, I don’t think they are very good. But, if I had to choose one at the risk of sounding like an arrogant prick, I would pick the one of Jordan sitting at a computer in his basement. The emotion in his eyes is kind of the peak of the series for me and it was exactly what I was trying to capture. I initially approached this as a literal photojournalist, but thanks to my mentors I was able to move this to more of a lyrical, less linear piece. 

Your approach photographically seems very candid, how did that come about, was that your intention or did it just develop? 

I think it is the style of working I am drawn to in general. I am a participant in all of the scenes and I think the viewer understands that, but I pull back when I choose to photograph and make my observations with the camera. It is kind of hard to explain, I basically just hang out. 

Richard and Izzy talk in front of a local Pizza shop, June, 2009. Toronto, Canada. Many relationships happened within these neo-nazi skinhead groups, which also led to a lot of conflict. ID: A man and woman sat on a pavement curb at night, the man has his back to us wearing a green bomber jacket which shows a skull and the confederate flag.
Jordan rides public transit, August, 2009. Toronto, Canada. After a few various prison visits, including being accused of attempting to pipe bomb a rival skinhead's house by his fellow neo-nazis, he left the skinhead groups after being involved for two years. ID: A man sits on the bus, with shadows from the window cast upon his face. Other passengers are out of focus behind them.

After a while of shooting the project, did a bond between you and the people you photographed develop? Or was it more of a photographer and subject approach?

This was a very difficult part of shooting this work. I was so close with these guys I was kind of a part of the group; at one point half of my friends on Facebook were skinheads, which was kind of funny. I always made it clear who I was and why I was there though. I didn’t lie about my beliefs or opinions, they actually respected the dialogue when I presented counter arguments to their ideals. It is hard to describe. 

They always jokingly introduced me as the journalist, which I was cool with. There was a few times that I had to establish the boundaries though. 

Can you give a social situation as an example?  

One winter night I was sitting on a bus with Rob, Tyler and Kevin (who at that time formed a group called WEB - Western European Bloodlines in Calgary, Canada,) headed to a downtown bar. Fueled by beer, their drunken actions differed from that of other young males in their demographic; instead of chasing girls, obnoxiously yelling or breaking stuff, the Nazis attention was directed at a group of three young Asians at the front of the bus. Wearing backpacks, white Nike shirts and flat brim hats, the last people these guys were expecting to ride a bus with that night were some of the most dangerous Skinheads in Canada. 

Like any bully, the waters were tested with a few comments. Met with no response the Skin took advantage of their meek prey and began to question their language and heritage in an increasingly boisterous and aggressive way. Seconds away from the stop, the Skinheads were standing over this group of highschoolers, who were obviously very scared. As the doors opened, Rob, the unofficial leader of the group, called his friends off the kids. Rob was in violation of two terms of his various probation; if caught, a night out drinking would be a direct trip to jail. The other two welcomed this excuse to back out of a situation looking dominant and strong. They laughed into the night - getting off on the shot of adrenaline. 

Seeing the fear, confusion and pain in the eyes of everyone on the bus was pretty tough. When their eyes pointed at me, I wanted to apologize and explain my role in the situation. That would have compromised my relationship with the Skinheads though. I am happy the situation did not turn violent, I wouldn’t have had a choice at that point. 

Richard and Andrew's apartment, August, 2009. Toronto, Canada. ID: Nazi flag and confederate flag adorn two walls as a dog walks through the room in the middle of the image.

Can you tell us more about this group’s particular social and political stance? Or did they fall into what most outsiders would assume a Neo Nazi group ideals would be? 

Well, their views are pretty much in line up with the traditional Neo-Nazi Skinhead handbook. They believe that Zionists (an undefined group of Jewish people,) are slowly taking over the world and that Hitler was on the right path. Recently “non-whites” have become a major target with these white power groups. They see them as threatening the existence of the white race, through various ways, which is a pretty ridiculous argument with a lot of hotels in it. 

It is hard to talk about and repeat these ideas publicly, they make my skin crawl. But these beliefs are still alive and strong behind a lot of closed doors around the world. 

While being amongst this particular group of people, were there times when your opinion clashed and caused debate? Or did you place yourself firmly as someone who is there to document, and leave personal opinions aside? 

I would never force my opinion on these guys, but when asked I was happy to offer it (although generally a little more diplomatically than this interview.) The key to my long term access with these guys was to actually listen with them and engage in a respectful debate. They really appreciated that and it is not something that happens often. 

But generally, I tried to play the ‘fly on the wall’ photographer. I would just spend as much time with them as I could. After a day of being with them I would have to go back to the real world and hang out with my regular friends. 

The Skinhead culture can mean many things, for some subcultures it’s just about the music and fashion, and there is no racism involved. Did the subjects express the reasons why they follow what they do? 

It is hard to generalize how these guys initially became involved with these white power groups, everyone had different backgrounds, influences and beliefs coming in.

Largely, the ideaology initially perks the interest of a perspective Neo-Nazi Skinhead recruit. The main identifying factor would have been the will to belong to something; being accepted in a group was the main draw for new supporters and also the main recruitment tool. 

Max and Richard hang out in Richard's apartment, December, 2009. Toronto, Canada. Max started a racist skinhead group called S.O.S (Southern Ontario Skins.) Richard went to jail for threatening his coloured neighbour in front of her house. He disappeared from the scene after that. ID: Two men stand in a dimly lit room. One with his head and shoulder to us and the other in a white tank top and nazi necklace, stands bearing his muscles.
Jordan and Dallas work out in a backyard, March, 2009. Calgary, Canada. Many youth are drawn to these neo-nazi skinhead groups because of the camaraderie and acceptance. The majority of the new recruits are still in high school. By the time the majority of the hardcore skinheads reach their mid twenties, they are often pulled away by shifting priorities, having children, or jail terms. Of course, there are exceptions to this rule. id: Two mens stand in a yard, one with their back to us. Both are stretching

Were there times when the opinions and political/social stance of this Neo Nazi group offended and troubled you? Did you keep a step back and approach it in a strict photographer relationship or did you speak your opinion? 

There were a lot of situations where I was uncomfortable with how they were treating someone or the general discussion. I never had any major altercations with the Skinheads, but there were often instances where I had to make a quick decision on whether or not to intervene. In these instances I justified the fact that this behaviour would exist whether or not I was there with a camera or not, so if nothing else documenting it would be a positive thing. 

What are your plans for the future? 

I am currently photographing vigilante communities in Mexico. There have been over 20 communities who see their citizens arm themselves and take control of their towns. 

My work has naturally gravitated towards photographing communities under extreme influence and the social conventions they develop to live a regular life. I am also photographing in Fort McMurray, Alberta, Canada, the boomtown associated with the Alberta Oil Sands. 

Volume 4: Subculture 

See more of Brett's work here - https://www.brettgundlock.com/

Late Night Feelings with Rhiannon Adam

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Your Disco Needs You - Rhiannon Adam ID: A ceiling filled with giant disco balls.
Your Disco Needs You - Rhiannon Adam ID: A person wearing a pink leotard with fishnet tights and a funny pack shot from the waist down. Part of a horse tattoo upon the subjects left is visible and behind are other club goers with their backs to the camera.

Since the 60s, the queer night scene has been a corner stone in the LGBTQIA+ communities daily life, the clubs and pubs where were you met to catch up, socialise and loose yourself in glorious technicolour. The Stonewall riots in 1969 helped solidify the queer movement as one that was not going to slow down, purse first into the fight for equality and the right to do, well, what we want to do. For me, as an openly queer man, my own relationship with the queer scene is different to others. It's not somewhere I went to socialise, it's a place I avoided. The bright lights, loud music and larger than life characters would be a welcoming draw for most, but my country boy sensibility and lack of access to these places left a big glitter filled hole in my life. It’s something I regret, and wish I could have experienced whilst growing up in my formative years. I am of the genuine believe that queer people take so long to figure out whom they are, that there is often a 10 year gap between our straight counterparts in terms of where we are in life, our wants, needs and how we view ourselves. This of course, is not true for everyone, hetronormality is a lifestyle that the queer community is expected to conform too, but graciously declines, one stiletto at a time. 

Your Disco Needs You - Rhiannon Adam ID: two men, wearing only pants on top of on another. One mans head is buried in the others crotch with their pants stretched over the other mans head. Colourful confetti is falling all around them.
Your Disco Needs You - Rhiannon Adam ID: A mish mash of limbs and face to the left. Lots of skin and energy.

This lack of experience of loosing yourself under the glitterball is what lures me to the work by Rhiannon Adam, a queer photographer who makes work on people, place and anything that strikes a cord. Your Disco Needs you is Adam direct response to her early years as a queer woman, expressing herself, finding herself and having a good time. Hairy chests bearing jewellery, bodies entangled with one another and limbs flowing across the frame in time with the music is what greats us with this body of work, a euphoric look at life on the scene and those who occupy the spaces.

The queer scene however used to be a lot busier than this. With apps taking over queer spaces (we can open our phones up and go on an app to fulfil our desires rather than go to the scene) the nights of regular parties, bright lights and a pulsing beat are less frequent, only saved by nights like Sink the Pink and other calendar events to keep our restless dancing feet to have something to look forward to. Adam recalls her early years on the scene, and what they meant to her as snogging gay men on podiums, sniffing poppers on rides at Brighton Pride and getting lifts home from DJ’s and drag queens when the lights go up. Regretting not documenting these moments, Adam's project Your Disco Needs You is a love letter to the past, as well as a time capsule of the now, preserving what the queer scene has now before even more spaces disappear into the night. 

Your Disco Needs You - Rhiannon Adam ID: A hair chest with a golden crucifix framed by a pink Hawaiian shirt with black palm trees.
Your Disco Needs You - Rhiannon Adam ID: A hand on a mans tanned and glowing topless back. Blue jeans with their shirt hanging out of the back.
Your Disco Needs You - Rhiannon Adam ID: A young man raises his arm as he dances in the club. They are wearing lipstick and a white top. Around them women with make up and colourful nails.

What I love about this work is its energy, the colour, the energy, how candid and care free the images feel. These are more than club photographs which we see all the time, these feel like feelings, a true send up to queerness in all its glory. This work is a fabulous step into the after hours when the norms have gone to sleep, where we can be free, happy, love and let the genders and sounds blend without care. It's far too often I see work about queer lives, the queer scene documented by straight photographers, and the energy, mood and feeling never feels the same compared to images produced by those who are apart of this community, and scene. Instead of taking portraits of drag queens, people in costumes which some made deem ‘outrageous’, Adam's has clicked the shutter down when it felt right, when the moment has taken her, when something filled with love and energy needs to be documented. There is no voyeuristic look at the ‘others’ here. These photographs represent a place and a mood where we are all welcome, without sliding into the tropes of ensuring the regular characters are documented. 

Your Disco Needs You - Rhiannon Adam ID: Half the body of a woman in a nightclub as they move across the dance-floor in a backless dress dress
Your Disco Needs You - Rhiannon Adam ID: A hand holding onto a drink. White sleeve of the persons blazer has lipstick on it.

Your Disco Needs You may be a love letter to the past and a recording of the now, but for me they speak into a much deeper level of how Adam herself, in these places feels. It's no surprise to anyone, being LGBTQIA+ isn’t easy, despite the steps in equality we get in the West and the more open the media is to treating us as equal, I myself always feel like I’m looking over my shoulder. That someone may take a disliking to who I am. This isn’t misplaced fear either, London for me has been one of the least tolerant places to be queer. With this in mind, these photographs feel like and are a safe port from rocky waters of the big smoke, places where we can become or simply be. Adam has captured her nights on the scene in such a colourful, honest and personal way, I want her to lead me onto the dance floor now and catch up on what I’ve been missing all these years.

Your Disco Needs You - Rhiannon Adam ID: A party goer with a blue feather and white cowboy hat, painted white face with blue eye shadow and pink blusher. A pink feather bower drapes below their arm as they look over their shoulder with their left arm raised.
Your Disco Needs You - Rhiannon Adam ID: A discoball on a red ceiling.

See more of Rhiannon's work here: https://www.rhiannonadam.com/

Tenderness and for the love of Croydon with Ameena Rojee

This article contains image descriptions in the captions to help those with visual impairments.

Lockdown Diary - Ameena Rojee ID: A pair of hands letting go of a magpie which is flying off to the left of the image.

What excites you most about photography, and who or what is inspiring you right now?

So much about photography is amazing; the way you can immortalise a moment and pause time, the way you can reveal something new to yourself and others - something that they may have not noticed otherwise. Being able to do that with people, and showing them something that they never saw in themselves.

Inspiration has been low recently. Lockdown has made it really difficult for me to focus on anything, but I’ve noticed while stuck at home all this time how much the weather affects my mood and inspires my work. I feel super British saying that, but it’s so obvious when I scroll through my Instagram feed; when everything is colourful and pink is when the weather has been good. When it’s black and white and dark is when the weather is shite. A bit like being able to track big life changes through your old music playlists.

I’ve been generally stepping back from looking at photography during the past few months - way too much time on Instagram I think - and looking at other forms of art. One new thing I have been trying during lockdown is printmaking, specifically lino printing. It’s been incredibly fun and refreshing to try something that lets me use my hands, something I’ve really missed since becoming a photographer. I’ve also been enjoying curatorial feeds - WOMENSART, Stephen Ellcock, Folklore Thursday.

Tim - Ameena Rojee ID: A portrait of a man who is topless, only his head and shoulders are visible.

Your ongoing collaborations with Tim Andrews have developed over a long period of time, and most recently has led to photographing him remotely during lockdown. Can you tell us a bit more about first working with him four years ago up until now, and how your relationship has developed?

It’s been a really interesting collaborative relationship and Tim has become something of a muse for me; a somewhat subversive artist/muse pairing. Each collaboration has been incredibly important; I always learn something new about my work, my practice, where I want to go with both - or where I don’t want to go.

I first came across Tim when he did a talk during my second year of university about his project ‘Over the Hill’ in which he was the sitter and he invited numerous artists to photograph him. In the end I think there were over 400 photographers. Not long after this, he asked to work together. It wasn’t until 2016 that we managed to actually get a date in. By that time, I’d already graduated, had been working in marketing at a fine art print lab for a couple of years and had just left to go travelling and get back into photography, since I had not really made any new work during that time. 

When I photographed Tim for the first time, it was during a time of personal change. That shoot was a significant catalyst for where I am now and the way I work. At the time, I’d thought that fashion photography was where I was heading, but after one test shoot, I realised how much I disliked it. When I photographed Tim, I realised it was people that I was interested in.

We’ve met up and collaborated mostly every year since. Our most recent collaboration was via webcam. Though I enjoyed it, I found it challenging; you lose so much of the social aspect, the subtle movements you can observe when someone is physically sitting for you. The resulting photographs were unexpectedly moving though. This time I learnt the lesson of not discarding something before trying it. I saw all these trendy webcam shoots happening and I was so hesitant to have a go. I didn’t think I could really make anything of it. A surprise then that these webcam portraits of Tim are some of my favourites. The low quality, which I was worried about and tried to improve later, in fact added so much character with the noise, grain and blurriness. 

Knowing that he stopped working as a lawyer after being diagnosed with Parkinson’s, tenderness, frustration and self-reflection all feel present in your images of Tim. What was the dynamic like between you when photographing him? Did you share the creative input between the two of you, such as in the Renaissance-esque picture of Tim in the church crypt for instance?

For sure, when I photograph Tim it’s always a collaboration between us. The dynamic is always very casual though, natural reactions to the space we use and each other, constantly bouncing ideas and suggestions and we usually throw some ideas around beforehand so we have something to aim for.

During our first shoot I was still very new to photographing people and I was nervous, so I was happy for Tim to take the lead on some things. Now, I actively try to do this whenever I’m photographing people - for me, portraits work better when it’s a relationship between photographer and sitter, when you feed off each other and bounce ideas around. Especially when the sitter is not creative, sometimes they see something I don’t or would never usually try.

Eight Limbs - Ameena Rojee ID: Two fighters in a boxing ring are entwined in one another.
Eight Limbs - Ameena Rojee ID: A white flower amongst vegetation.

I remember reading recently about your project Eight Limbs (which looks at a Muay Thai gym in Thailand), that at first the work didn’t feel quite right. That was until you accidentally converted an image into black and white. The series feels very succinct and there is a quietness to your subtle observations, which I imagine is in contrast to the energy and heat of that environment. How long do you ‘sit on’ a project before it feels ready?

This is a really good question, and something I’ve been struggling with a great deal. I don’t know if this is influenced from the culture of school/university deadlines, but when working on projects I feel so anxious about getting it all done and dusted as soon as possible and it stresses me out if I leave it too long - but I’ve realised now that I’m very slow when it comes to project work, and I’ll sit on a project for quite a while. Eight Limbs took me just over a year to work on and publish - it was photographed in late 2018 and released in December 2019. I have a project that I photographed the month before Eight Limbs and I still haven’t released that. I have a huge project that I am super excited about, that I photographed March to May last year, and I haven’t even begun to work on it yet because I’m trying to get this other one out first.

It’s driving me up the wall, but I’m starting to accept and realise that it’s not really important that I haven’t got it all done and published and out there before this fake one year deadline I seem to have given myself. Personal work takes time, and sometimes it takes a long time. There’s a worry that the work will be irrelevant the longer I leave it, but someone recently mentioned to me that if the work is important to me then it will always be relevant, and I really needed to hear that.

So it seems that even though the projects I do aren’t “long-term” themselves, I do need to sit on them for a while and just let things brew before I feel ready. I think the important thing here to note though is that there’s no “should”. Do what feels right and good for you.

Lockdown Diary - Ameena Rojee ID: A night sky sits behind some plants which are light up to give a glowing golden effect.

It seems as though you have been creatively active during the pandemic, and your lockdown diary has many beautiful observations found in your locale. There’s a slight feeling of uncertainty and an anxious edge to the work, which resonates with how many have felt during this time. How have you been affected by the current situation, and has being creative helped?

Well, I’m glad it seems that way! I feel the complete opposite, that these past few months have flown by and I’ve done absolutely nothing and I am in fact a slug disguised as a human. 

A lot of what I talked about in the last point about being anxious and stressed is partly because of the current situation; I know so much better than to pressure myself to just “do” constantly, but it’s difficult to get out of the mindset. Lockdown has been challenging because I feel like I’ve had so much time to accomplish stuff - I think the first week I put down on my to-do list to finish the multiple previously mentioned projects before May (ha!) - and it really feels like I haven’t, even though I know I have.

Aside from one shoot a couple weeks back, I haven’t had any photography work this whole time and I’m also having to turn jobs down because I can’t justify the risk. Having this little diary, documenting the space around my house which is pure creativity for the sake of enjoyment, has been essential while I’ve not been able to do any of my usual work.

A Love Letter To Croydon - Ameena Rojee ID: Orange berries sit amongst bushes of vegetation.

You have just released a zine available for preorder with Another Place Press. Could you share a bit more about A Love Letter To Croydon and your motivations for the project? 

If you know London, you’ve probably heard of Croydon and its terrible reputation. Ask almost anyone and they’ll tell you that Croydon is a pit; an ugly, concrete mess with deluded aspirations of wanting to be its own city, “not to mention the crime”. Some of this is earned, though no more deservedly than most other London boroughs, yet Croydon is the most reviled of them all.

I’m born and bred in Croydon, I grew up here and I still live here. I’ve seen and experienced this place in all its many personalities, good, bad and ugly. The thing about Croydon, however, is that it’s also full of incredible beauty: in its abundant green and natural spaces which many don’t know about, its melting pot of people, culture and characters, and in the easily missable everyday moments.

Over the years, I’ve made many photographs of this place I call my hometown - commuting to work, heading home after a night out, just wandering around... and I built up something of an archive that shows an unseen side to Croydon; a beautiful, delicate, poetic side. 

The wonderful Another Place Press has published a selection of my photographs from the last five years or so as a zine. If you fancy a copy, check it out here.

A Love Letter To Croydon - Ameena Rojee ID: A fox standing in the street. Behind them tree's and a house. The scene is at nighttime.

A love letter to an area of London probably means you like living there! Do you think other creatives who do not live in the capital are at a disadvantage? 

So I actually wrote about this a few weeks ago in #NotesOnFreelancing (my newsletter all about freelancing as a creative/photographer). While I have made this love letter, I did it because I’m protective of my hometown and really it’s quite petty of me - my way of providing an alternative view of the place.

In reality, I’ve been ready to move away and move out of the city completely for a while. In fact, if one or two things were different, I’d have probably moved already. Having been here forever, aside from a few years away at university, I’m pretty tired of it. London’s great in so many aspects, but the downsides have become too much for me and there are many of them. You can probably see from my work that I simply enjoy being outdoors, and I love the idea of living somewhere remote, wild and quiet.

However, I’m so lucky to have had this privilege that many others won’t have. The issue is that the creative industry has always been so London-centric and there hasn’t been any genuine attempt to change that. Until now, when we’ve all had to switch to a more remote way of working and socialising. It’s been interesting to see how things have had to adapt, and I think there are questions about how this kind of accessibility was always possible. It’s my hope that things won’t go back to normal after this, and this accessibility will stay and become the new norm.

So, it is a challenge when you don’t live in this London bubble, but I don’t by any means think it’s impossible and there are those who make it work for them. For me, my surroundings are so important and they have always been a huge influence in my decisions: where I went to university, where I go travelling or for fun, where I choose to work… and now that the cons are outweighing the pros, I know my time in London is coming to an end.

Portrait - Ameena Rojee ID: A woman with vitiligo sits with her eyes closed and large black hair occupying much of the frame. The background of the wall she rests in front of is green.

As well as working as a photographer, both on personal projects and commissioned work, you have experience managing campaigns for the likes of British Journal of Photography and theprintspace. Which side of the creative process do you prefer to work, behind the overall campaign or behind the camera?

I definitely love to be behind the camera, and it’s what made me realise that I was ready to go freelance when I did - I realised when working on those campaigns that I was more excited about being behind the camera and would imagine myself as the photographer and the work I would do.

Now that I’ve had some time away from it, though, and because of the current situation meaning I can’t go out and freelance as I was before - perhaps for the rest of the year if not further - I’ve been considering doing this again in a freelance capacity. It’s never a bad idea to create multiple income streams in any case!

What is next for you? 

I haven’t got a bloody clue. I have a couple of personal projects to work on and publish, and a few solid thoughts in the ideas bank that I’ve started to work on. A locally based project that I can do safely during the pandemic, which is ideal, and another one that’s quite different from what I’ve done so far based on a wonderful book I read during lockdown.

Other than that, I’m not sure at all. I’m going with the flow and trying to adapt as I go - and it looks like I may have to adapt a lot. While I was really loving freelancing as a photographer and things were getting so exciting for me just before lockdown, things have changed and I may have to consider new avenues of work.

For now, I’m trying not to drive myself up the wall and bingeing Gossip Girl when things get a bit too intense 🙂

See more of Ameena's work here - https://www.ameenarojee.co.uk/

Interview with Josh Adam Jones, 2020.

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Photography as poetry with Bryan Schutmaat

This article contains image descriptions in the captions to help those with visual impairments.

Words by Michael Sargeant - Originally published in Issue 5 - The Neighbourhood 2014

Greys the Mountain Sends -Bryan Schutmaat ID: An old man site in the drivers seat of his car looking at us. Behind him is a out of focus landscape. His hands are holding onto the bottom of the driving wheel.

The American West is a fabled land, deeply rooted within American mythology. It is the birthplace of the American dream, an ideal built upon promise, freedom and prosperity. As a non-American, it has long fascinated me, since scraping the surface of its rich history in school and subsequent consumption of its many representations in 20th century popular culture; from depictions of the Wild West to the writing of Kerouac. Such is the richness of its mythology, I too have felt the whispers of the dream, and its powerful westward pull.

In Grays the Mountain Sends, Bryan Schutmaat reveals the reality of an AmericanWest that is not aligned with the narratives of old. Schutmaat began the project during late 2010, when Schutmaat was living in the small city of Bozeman, Montana, located in the American North West. During this period, the photographer became absorbed in literature about the region, with the writing of Richard Ford, William Kittredge, Raymond Carver and poet Richard Hugo igniting a long-held intrigue in the West’s history and mythology.  It was in the tough, often bleak realism of Richard Hugo’s work that really struck a chord with the photographer. 

“The principal supporting business now is rage. Hatred of various grays the mountain sends, hatred of the mille, The Silver Bell repeal, the best liked girls who leave each year for Butte. One good restaurant and bars can't wipe the boredom out. The 1908 boom, eight going silver mines, a dance floor built on springs - all memory resolves itself in gaze, in panoramic green you know the cattle eat or two stacks high above the town, town dead kilns, the huge mill in collapse for fifty years that won’t fall finally down.” - Richard Hugo

Greys the Mountain Sends -Bryan Schutmaat ID: A quarry with roads leading down carved into the rock. Snow and sunlight is casted upon the tracks.
Greys the Mountain Sends -Bryan Schutmaat ID: An older man with brown hair and light brown beard looks passed our gaze. he is wearing a red and grey striped shirt in front of a wooden panel background.

Scutmaat - continuing in Hugo’s poetic approach - began exploring the small mountain towns and mining communities located in the American West, capturing the atmosphere, landscapes and lives of the working people residing within. What we bear witness to is a stark contrast to the engrained mythology of this land, hope, freedom, prosperity and promise are no longer the reality in the contemporary landscape of today. With sensitivity and grace, we are guided through these small, often desolate towns. In each progression through Schutmaat’s imagery, the weight of time is palpable; a closed mine shaft, old rusting huts, broken down vehicles left to be reclaimed by the land. This sense of weight of time is present too, in the quite extraordinary portraits of men who work in these towns. Appearing old before their time, worn down by the hardscrabble life they have led, each of these faces hint toward the continual narrative present in GTMS; a narrative that weaves together man and landscape, highlighting the intrinsic relationship between them and how, in many ways, the stories of these men run in parallel to the towns and indeed the nation they belong to. Perhaps one of the most poignant examples of this is below, in which a bleak tired cemetery is overlooked by an illuminated mountain range in the distance. This is the resting ground of the forefathers who have shaped these lands - perhaps having lived and worked their entire lives here - as the next generation struggle on in the same stoic fashion.

Greys the Mountain Sends -Bryan Schutmaat ID: A graveyard of small wooden and stone graves upon an arid ground. In the background mobile homes and a mountain range are lit up by the setting sun.

Schutmaat’s portraits of the younger men of these towns evoke a more romantic notion; one which is infused with an ancestral hope of reinvention. Hope of escape, of freedom. Hope to dream. A hope that was perhaps felt by their ancestors as they ventured west to a land full of promise and opportunity. We can only wonder what will become of these boys - will they get out of this town or will they end up like the “old timers who are worn down by the mountains around them”?

“Say no to yourself. The Old man, twenty when the jail was built, still laughs although his lips collapse. Someday soon, he says, I’ll go to sleep and not wake up. You tell him no. You’re talking to yourself. The car that brought you here still runs. The money you buy lunch with, no matter where it's mined, is silver and the girl who serves your food is slender and her red hair lights the wall”.

-Richard Hugo “Degrees of Gray in Philipsburg” in Making Certain It Goes On

Greys the Mountain Sends -Bryan Schutmaat ID: A woman sits at a bar with bright red hair. She has a pen in her hand which is resting on a note pad.
Greys the Mountain Sends -Bryan Schutmaat ID: A young man with a buzzcut, wearing a dirty green polo top and brown trousers sits on a wooden stump. behind him is a messy yard. A fire with smoke rising to the right of the image and to our left a child can be seen playing.

Grays the Mountain Sends, much like the works of Hugo that inspired it, explores a contemporary American West and is unwavering in its frank realism. Though it might be perceived as bleak depiction, this narrative is laced with a romantic poise, produced with cohesion and sensitivity. It is not a cynical, or politically motivated work. It is poetry, quietly tipping its cap to the ‘ordinary man’. It does not pity these men. Instead it admires the dignity of these individuals who endure and challenge this vast, beautiful but uncompromising land presence in our modern age. Grays the Mountain Sends positions the contemporary reality alongside the rich mythology of the West, sensitivity posing questions; how long will people continue to endure? Has the hope of rejuvenation diminished, just as the mines did year before? What does the West promise now?

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Synchronised Swimmers with Eva Watkins

This article contains image descriptions in the captions to help those with visual impairments.

ID: Six women stand behind one another on the steps that go into a wild swimming pool. They are wearing colourful swimming caps of yellow, orange, purple and blue.

Natural swimming lakes and ponds are a lure for us all in the warm summer months, it's a unique experience which helps connect us to one another and nature. Synchronised Swimmers by Eva Watkins is a portrait led body of work which documents the relationships of swimmers who train in Henleaze Lake in Bristol. Originally set up to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the lake, the swimmers train, bond and perform in the lakes natural waters. With the leafless tree's and visibly chilly looking environment, it would be easy for these photographs to come across as cold. However, the frames are filled with warmths from the passion of the swimmers and clear deep and unique bonds to celebrate the landscape which they have grown to love. From touching hands in freezing water to posing on the banks of the lake, Watkins has created a series we can all relate to, community and companionship.

ID: Two peoples arms lay across one another in the water.
ID: Three women in black swimming costumes and colourful swimming caps stand in marshy grassland on the verge of the natural swimming pool.
ID: A woman's hand with wedding wings on splashing in the water.
ID: A portrait of a wild swimmer, she is wearing a yellow swim cap with her red lipstick and make up visible. She is standing side on with her head turned to us.

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A town on the brink of change with Simon Martin

This article contains image descriptions in the captions to help those with visual impairments.

On the outskirts of London, small towns and villages are undergoing big changes. With the cost of living spiralling above your average salary and rented properties having their price hiked up, new housing developments are being built around the edges of London, known now as 'commuter towns'. One such town is Sittinbourne, hometown of photographer Simon Martin and the focus point for his ongoing project Bearing Fruit.

Bearing Fruit - Simon Martin ID: A suburban street with new houses to the left and right of the image. Blue skies with fluffy white clouds occupy the sky.

“The project started with a deeply personal response to the plans, I felt a lot of my childhood and identity was being taken away. As I’ve grown older I’ve realised that I have those memories and that is fine, I don’t need a walk in time capsule to have them.”

With development going ahead in Sittingbourne, Martin explores not only the change of the physical landscape, but the changes in the people who live there too. Change is something we are all going through in the UK, from Brexit to life in lockdown. But change isn’t always for the best, even if it is inevitable. The development of Sittingbourne has split its community, a tension that can be found within Martin’s portraits. 

“Opinions vary depending on who you speak to, a lot of the wealthier parts of town are frustrated and don’t want their lives changed by busier roads and large housing estates; others just want a Primark and a new bingo hall.” 

Bearing Fruit - Simon Martin ID: Three young women stand wearing purple dresses, white cardigans and tiaras. They all have a sash across their bodies which say "Miss Sittingbourne Princess 2015".
Bearing Fruit - Simon Martin ID: A bingo hall filled with two by two chairs and tables. A woman is sat at a table playing bingo with a few other players scattered around the hall.
Bearing Fruit - Simon Martin ID: A large model of a race hound on top of a car parks on a road with onlookers walking besides the car.

Although the expansion of towns and small cities can be a positive thing for jobs and attracting new visitors, the loss of identity is something that has been seen across the UK. Small independent businesses can’t compete with the big chains when they set up shop close to new residential builds for new residents convenience. Bearing Fruit brings this to the forefront, there's an emptiness to scenes depicted and a level of anxious anticipation on the faces of local residents. The photographs have this quiet patience about them, a sleepy town with industrial roots, waiting for this change to be sprung upon them. There is a strong sense of community and how spaces are used by local residents, a sense of hanging on to identity comes across. This sense of hanging on is felt by Martin himself;

Bearing Fruit - Simon Martin ID: A factory with piles of wooden pallets and a large industrial building with its lights on in the background.
Bearing Fruit - Simon Martin ID: A supermarket scene with islands of beer stacked up and produce on the white shelves.
Bearing Fruit - Simon Martin ID: A small dog with a red harness with its owners legs and feet alongside. The dogs harness has a sign on it saying "no to 700 houses".

“The project started with a deeply personal response to the plans, I felt a lot of my childhood and identity was being taken away. As I’ve grown older I’ve realised that I have those memories and that is fine, I don’t need a walk in time capsule to have them.”

With the memory of what a town once was and being documented as it begins to change, Bearing Fruit holds a unique place as a transitional moment in the town's history. A place where the community carve out the traditions and future of the town, clinging on to the past whilst looking into the future.

Bearing Fruit - Simon Martin ID: A sunset sky with pink and purple colours over a wet marshland.

You can find more of Simon's work here: https://www.simon-martin.org/

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Community and the river with Sian Davey

This article contains image descriptions in the captions to help those with visual impairments.

First published in 2013 in Darwin Magazine volume three. Words by Kate Mercer.

Rivers have long featured in the make up of communities, drawing people to their shores. Thought to imbue healing powers, their waters have been revered since the earliest times, often represent vitality and life. Popular even today through leisure and tourism, sentiments of improving health and rejuvenation through visits of the country continue to make the British Countryside appealing.

It is this embodiment of the countryside that frames Sian Davey’s body of work, The River, documenting her own small community drawn to its water in search of relief from the heat of the sun. With subjects seemingly acting out romanticised rituals of childhood and summer holidays, Davey’s vantage point is both independent of, yet familiar to those whom she is photographing.

Credit: Sian Davey ID: A young boy stands topless and in swimshorts after swimming in the river behind him. Water can be seen dripping off of his body. He is wearing goggles which cover the top half of his face with one piece of glass / plastic. Not like traditional swimming goggles that swimmers use, these look like scuba diving goggles.

You’ll notice that most of the subjects in this body of work are wearing everyday clothes perhaps rolled up to the knee or with a soggy hemline. Save the formal portraits that permeate the series, all those photographed here are apparently done so without being overly invasive in their activities. Davey’s independence as a photographer, drawn to the groups around the water allows her to observe with gritty criticalness that strips the romanticism out of these picturesque scenes. Far removed from the hustle and bustle of our 21st century cities and offices, this river appears as an oasis free from the trappings of social pressures imposed by our everyday lives. Viewing Davey’s work in the context they are removed from whoever imposes the cultural eye they escape. 

Personally, Davey’s work transports me back to my own age of innocence of growing up in rural Oxfordshire; gathering berries from head grows as a little girl to make ‘potions’; trudging through trees softly wafting of wild garlic; punting on the Cherwell; being 17; skipping classes to drink beer and swim in the river Henley with boys. All of these instances where the point at which an individual may relax and escape themselves with those who matter most to them, also appear to be when they are at their most vulnerable at the most literal point away from where they ought to be. Childish innocence. 

Perhaps that is what both pleasures and troubles me the most about Davey’s images. A community collectively defines how it wants to be seen or represented to the world around them, and indeed, who and what are included (or excluded) from them. In that sense, it frames their members' private lives like snapshots. It does not hint or elaborate on the lurking darker controversy voyeuristically seen by those outside of that intimate circle. Thus Davey’s photos flirt coquettishly with the sunshine and romance of an ideal summer's day, whilst bearing silent witness to social currents lurking underneath.

Credit: Sian Davey ID: Two boys in their pants stand with their backs to us on a muddle river bed as they on-look at friends swimming in the distance.

In The River Davey records right of passage for mothers, fathers, siblings and friends.They are united through the playing of games, the intimacy of their touch and the likeness in their clothing. However, each person remains subject to scrutiny, amplified by the presence of a camera. Two women for example, conversing. Hovering between action and inaction on the banks of the river. They look not at eachother but towards something happening out of frame. Children in the water maybe? Boisterous games getting out of hand? Their arrest by Daveyis significant; these women are separate from the group, yet are presented united in front of Davey’s audience. Snatching snippets of conversation, they are bonded at the very least through friendship, and at the most complex level motherhood, brought together through their communities use of the river. Yet these women exude a nervous tension and a sense of confinement. Sheltered under the boughs of a leafy oak tree, they are secluded in the shade from the implied scruitner of their community further up the riverbank. Privacy in public spaces implies secrecy, their confidence in each other at odds with the veneer of light heartedness associated with summer days.

In Davey’s The River, we also see members of the community on the periphery, for example younger children on the edge of the riverbank desperate to join in with older siblings games. What is apparent in Davey’s depiction is the awkwardness of their involvement. Perhaps the older group consists of teenagers peacocking in the water, showing off to impress the object of their affections. The riverbank for these youngsters can be seen as metaphorical of their acceptance and inclusion in the community. Perhaps it is also metaphorical of their acceptance and inclusion of their role in the community. Perhaps it is also metaphorical of their abilities to know the wider world around them.

Credit: Sian Davey ID: A group of four adolescent friends stand together in swimwear. Three boys to the left and a woman to the right. They look content after enjoying swimming in the river.

Explored through a numerable array of devices, the reproduction of activity and portrayal is as marked in The River as the feeling of rehearsal, particularly when focused upon younger members of this small community. We see this in the juxtaposition of two portraits,; particularly; one of a woman in a polka dot swimsuit and that of a young girl under the boughs of a tree. We cannot help but scrutinise the woman's physicality by the framing of her body, in the same way that we cannot help but scrutinise the young girl in a bikini. This woman wearing a polka dot swimsuit in the style of a 1940s pin up girl defines a body image that the young girl is aware of, albeit not necessarily subject to. Wearing a mistmatehce bikini set this girl's modesty is imposed upon her, the covering up of her body an expectation of development and implied fertility though it is not physically apparent. Both individuals are seuxlaised without being sexual through the regulation of their appearance. What distinguishes one from the other however is the subject's regard of the camera and the passing of time. There is an air of curiosity in the young woman's photograph as she is half turned away from, but gazing relaxedly at the camera. The woman with her trim appearance, greying hair and drawn expression in contrast shows the reluctance even resistance to engage Davey’s gaze. (In conversation, Davey recalls this woman's unease at being photographed.) The Protective gesturing of her hands in front of her torso demonstrates an awareness of her situation; a resolve to be photographed mixed with self-consciousness of being scrutinized by others. 

Credit: Sian Davey ID: A middle aged woman stands looking at us in a red and white polkadot swimming costume.

Also in Davey’s body of work, two particular little boys at play, one wearing a facemask to see underwater, another brandishing fishing net. Snorkeling. Paddling. Hunting through the shallows catching unsuspecting creatures not fast enough to get away. What they are in fact doing is playing a most primal game, exercising their desire to catch but not their instinct to kill.

These are the two points that The River keeps coming back to: swathed in strong shadows, light and dark, twilight and failing light, the riverbank in this community skirts the edge of innocence and knowledge. Davey’s subjects appear at their most relaxed, at their genuine and unguarded albeit uncomfortable at their scrutiny. Reproducing nostalgic scenes from previous summers since long passed, I expect members of this community will be visitors here for years to come, with future generations rehearsing their behaviour before longer still. I cannot help but wonder though what else will be taken downstream with the waters from this small community. From tears to laughter, to playmates and heartbreaks, the only true measure of their passing shall be time, on this occasion at least, captured on camera and immortalised on film. 

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Tender and intimate moments in the golden hour with Ruth Baldry

This article contains image descriptions in the captions to help those with visual impairments.

Since making The Invisible Circus, which is a project that I first became familiar with whilst you were still at University, you have developed a consistent style and a way of working. What is it in particular you are looking for when starting a new project?

I think that I find myself particularly drawn to communities that I’m unfamiliar with. The Invisible Circus was in response to a specific brief we had to work on for my course but I think that it set the precedent for future work. I became fascinated with people that lived a life that may be deemed a little off the beaten path. Since then, I suppose it has materialised into a fascination for groups of people that all take a similar interest in something, whatever that thing may be. 

The Invisible Circus - Ruth Baldry ID: A circus performer sits on the floor with a red sash wrapped around her body. She is wearing a pin striped jumpsuit that has a ruff and red flowers imprinted on top of the white and black striped. Red balloons and a white ropes are dotted around her body.
Landguard - Ruth Baldry ID: A man (right) standing in the ocean with a woman (left) next to him sitting on a sea barrier stumps. behind them is the skeletons of a building in constrictions.

Your commission, Through The Eyes with Ace & Tate resulted in a body of work called Landguard. How did this particular opportunity arise?

The opportunity arose very beautifully, it all really felt quite serendipitous. I had made the big (and daunting) decision to move back home for the summer after living in Bristol for five years but the decision was panning out better than I could have predicted. After everything had felt wrong for so long, things were starting to slot together with such ease. I started to spend a lot of time at Landguard that summer, and thought about the kind of project I would like to make. When Ace & Tate contacted me with their brief, the project I had been obsessing over fitted so very perfectly. 

Perhaps not known to the general viewer, but I recognise some familiar faces within Landguard alongside pictures of strangers. How do you find the process of photographing people you do not know compared with those you are close friends with? Do you have a preference for either type of picture making?

I was very excited by the idea of combining these intimate photographs of close friends with strangers. I imagine the viewer can probably tell who the close friends are but I really tried to approach both friends and strangers similarly and intimately. I find the process of photographing strangers absolutely terrifying. It took a lot of visits to Landguard with my camera before I approached someone. But that feeling you get after approaching a stranger and taking a brilliant photo of them? Well, nothing really beats that. And rather beautifully, some of the subjects that started off as strangers turned into friends through photographing them. I guess both types of picture making have their advantages and charm but ultimately I get a lot more out of the rush of photographing a stranger. 

Tribodar - Ruth Baldry ID: A group of tree's with yellow leaves in a field light up by the golden sun set.

What have you been most excited about since graduating from University?

I think I felt most excited about having free reign to develop my style more and to challenge myself without the safety blanket of University deadlines. Maybe it’s strange to call University deadlines a safety blanket but I know that it helped me to stay disciplined over those three years. Without that blanket, I had to really push myself to finish personal projects of my own accord. 

Speaking of University, what was your experience like? 

In hindsight I don’t think that I made the most out of the resources available to me and this thought still plagues me! I was fortunate enough to have tutors that encouraged me to experiment with medium format as film has become such a prominent part of my work and has massively shaped my style. Frustratingly I think that it took me a long time to figure out what my style exactly was and consequently I floundered for the most part of the first two years. 

Tribodar - Ruth Baldry ID: A man standing with his back to us in a red shirt and grey trousers looks out across a hilly and arid landscape.

Your work has so much depth and richness to it, particularly within the portraiture and across various projects, yet they all feel so tender and intimate too. How do you put people at ease and make those in front of your lens feel comfortable?

Tender and intimate are my two favourite things! I think that there’s always an advantage with the Mamiya RZ as you hold it at your waist so it feels a little less intrusive. I always try to engage in conversation just before I take the photograph to normalise the situation and make it feel like less of an intimidating process. I mean, I’ve always felt that my portraiture has quite a ‘quiet and calm’ feeling to it which would make sense as I’m quite a ‘quiet and calm’ person. I like to hope that I’m easy to be around and that’s reflected in my work. Even though a portrait is a photograph of another person it’s also a reflection of yourself and I certainly like to try and be as tender as possible in all parts of life. 

What has been the most challenging thing you have faced in your career so far? 

Perhaps lack of confidence and consistency has hindered me in some ways. I think as a photographer you really have to sell yourself, if you want your work to be seen then you have to make it be seen and be your own cheerleader. I think I have struggled to consistently self-promote if I am going through a period where I’m lacking confidence in myself. 

What are you working on at the moment, photography related or other? 

There’s some plans brewing! But I’m taking it slow. My partner and I are working on a collaborative project that will be a lot more conceptual than my previous work. It’s going to be a lot of fun, very odd and hopefully challenge me as a photographer. I have always wanted to dip my toe in set design but it’s always felt so far removed from my social documentary work. Having someone to work on ideas with has made it all feel a lot more possible. 

Tribodar - Ruth Baldry ID: A family gathering around a table with a young girl in a red dress in the foreground with her back to us.

In your project Tribodar, you spent some time living and working with a community in Portugal. There is a mixture of various domestic and rural settings, with posed and candid portraiture scattered throughout. Living a lifestyle alternative to societal norms seems really apparent in this work, and the overall tone seems to celebrate this way of life. Is this way of life something that appeals to you, and perhaps one of the motivations for making the work? 

The series Tribodar was borne out of my University project The Invisible Circus. Most of the circus performers that I photographed tried to live as self-sufficiently as they could and I began to fall in love with this way of life. It was at an age where I was starting to figure out what kind of person I wanted to be and what kind of life I wanted to live. I wanted my next project to be a way of further educating myself about alternative lifestyles which inspired my trip to Portugal. I spent some time researching eco-communities in Portugal and came across Tribodar. The initial idea was to solely focus on the people I met in the eco-community but after spending some time in the nearby town Nisa, I became fascinated with the contrast between the locals and the people I met at Tribodar. 

Tribodar - Ruth Baldry ID: A white cat prowling towards us upon a rocky ground withs shingle and tree's in the background.

The series (Tribodar) feels quietly observational and optimistic, with careful studies of light considered throughout. What is your process in terms of directing people within your pictures? Does this process change depending on the project?

When I was in Portugal, the sunlight was very harsh in the daytime so I would often wait until the golden hour to photograph people. At Tribodar, perhaps I’d be having a moment with someone and the light would fall so perfectly that I would run and get my camera and ask them to stay still. Whereas in Nisa, I had my friend ask the locals in Portuguese whether I could take their portrait. I found that by having that language barrier with the locals there was a kind of awkward stiffness in their body language which I loved in contrast with the more intimate portraits. 

Your style seems to spill over into editorial, fashion and music commissions. Is this something you would like to do more of in the future?

I found that my photography was the perfect gateway into Bristol’s music scene. If there was a band whose gig I’d particularly enjoyed, I’d contact them later on Instagram to ask if I could take some photographs for them. So for me, the music commissions are rather selfishly a way of getting to meet musicians that I love. I would really love to do more editorial and fashion commissions in the future as it would be a great opportunity to challenge myself and incorporate that ‘tender intimacy’ from my social-documentary work. 

Tribodar - Ruth Baldry ID: A woman sits in a small tree with no branches and few leaves on it, looking out at the sunset which is casting a golden glow across her body and tree.

The pandemic has affected people in many different ways. How are things looking for you with ‘lockdown’ slowly easing?

For me, I found that the ‘lockdown’ really creatively stunted me. The summer has always been a period for me where I create a lot of my work and so this is the first time I haven’t felt particularly inspired but I’m really trying to go with the flow and accept this creative lull. I can’t say how long this lull will last for but I am allowing it.

What is the next chapter for you, both in terms of your stage in life and your creative output?

I guess I’m just trying to find a little more balance. Right now, life isn’t always creative and that’s ok. I’ve started a counselling course which I feel very passionate about. I’ve been accepted for an artist residency in Florida next year but that feels very uncertain right now, but I know that I feel my most inspired in an entirely new place that I’m unfamiliar with. 

Interview with Josh Adam Jones, June 2020.

See more of Ruth's work here - https://ruthbaldry.format.com/

Want to feature on Darwin Magazine? Submit your work to submit@darwinmagazine.co.uk

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The Buffalo that could not Dream - Felix von der Osten

This article contains image descriptions in the captions to help those with visual impairments.

Credit: Felix von der Osten ID: A young boy dressed in tribal attire is holding an axe. Feathers are in his head dress and colourful prints and patterns adorn their light brown outfit.

Set on the Fort Belknap Indian Reservation, home to two Native American tribes, German photography Felix von der Osten produced a body of work exploring how Native American's live and how they have been treated over the years by the American government. Through the Appropriations Act of 1851, implemented by the US Government, Native Tribes, often long enemies have been flung into the same location to co exist, breaking centuries of tradition and history.

Wanting to challenge the aesthetic of how we perceive Native Americans and "Cowboys and Indians' as children, Felix's work breaks down the stereotypes to create a beautiful, troubling and powerful body of work. By breaking down our initial perceptions and giving a glimpse of daily life and reality, The Buffalo that could not Dream is a poignant body of work on how native people are treated and live in their homelands, now controlled by foreign settlers.

Credit: Felix von der Osten ID: Inside someone's house, a chest of draws with piles of clothes on top. Along the walls family photographs and trinkets of personal and cultural importance hang off the edge of the frames.
Credit: Felix von der Osten ID: A native american woman stands with her hair platted on both sides. She is wearing a brown jacket with a warm fleece lining. Her hands are held together and behind her are rolling hills.
Credit: Felix von der Osten ID: A father is sitting in the drivers seat of a car with a baby wrapped in blankets sits on his lap. A skull gear stick and other cars can be seen outside the drivers window.
Credit: Felix von der Osten ID: Three children sit on a upturned sofa. On the left a boy is holding up a blue book with a white circle object rests on his side. The boys to his left stare down the camera at us.

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