Ishiuchi Miyako

«Photography is the work of evoking time using light»

The photographer, Ishiuchi Miyako, grew up in the Japanese port city of Yokosuka in the aftermath of the World War II. Yokosuka is one of the largest overseas US Naval base, and it was against this backdrop that Ishiuchi Miyako grew up. She went on to study textiles and weaving in Tokyo in the late 1960s, and whilst there, discover a passion for photography. Ishiuchi Miyako returned to Yokosuka in the 1970s to confront the place that brought joy (in the form of American exports like jeans and pop music), fear and anger, as a city overrun by the – sometimes sinister –  pleasures of the military occupation. Once there, Ishiuchi Miyako began documenting the city in grainy black and white images that capture a place shrouded in confusion surrounding its identity. Her images are scenes of a Japanese urbanscape, that much is clear, but the lingering presence of Americanisms here and there in oftentimes deserted scenes feels alienating and menacing. Ishiuchi Miyako titled this body of work Yokosuka Story after a hit Japanese pop song, and its release as a book in 1979 launched her career in a male-dominated field. 

Ishiuchi Miyako would later create a series of work around the time of her 40th birthday, in which she contacted women of the same age to photograph their hands, feet and bodies up close. The work, 1∙9∙4∙7, captures imperfections, wrinkles, and scars as evidence of the life’s impression on the human form, not quite young but not old either. What is striking about Ishiuchi Miyako’s photography is that many of her projects seem to inform the next body of work. After the book publication of 1∙9∙4∙7 in 1990, Ishiuchi Miyako turned her attention to another series, Scars – a tender exploration of scarred bodies. One particularly striking image, Scars #13 (Accident 1976), shows a woman’s torso in soft focus; a lengthy scar etched into the natural dip of her stomach. ‘While a person hopes to remain unblemished through life, we must all sustain and live with wounds, visible and invisible,’ the photographer explains in the afterword of the 2005 book, Scars; ‘It is an imprint of the past, welded onto a part of the body.’ 

In 2000, when Ishiuchi Miyako had been working on the Scars series for almost a decade, she persuaded her mother to take part – hoping to document scars from a cooking accident that left their mark on a large part of her body. Unbeknownst to both Ishiuchi Miyako and her mother however, the latter would be diagnosed with liver cancer not long after the photographs were taken and died within a short space of time. Left with her deceased mother’s belongings, Ishiuchi Miyako began working on her next series, Mother’s. In attempting to grapple with the grief she was experiencing, coupled with a complicated relationship with her parent, Ishiuchi Miyako turned to photographing the shoes, underwear, dentures and make up left behind. A hairbrush is captured with strands of her mother’s hair still entangled in its spokes. In one image, Ishiuchi Miyako photographs a snapshot of her mother from the 1940s stood in front of a vehicle. Her mother drove an ammunition truck during the war; another reminder of Japan’s fraught history.

Mother’s was shown in the Japanese pavilion at the 2005 Venice Biennale; it was after that that the photographer was approached by the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum to photograph clothing and accessories belonging to the victims of the atomic bomb. Without the familial connection to the belongings of a parent, in hiroshima, Ishiuchi Miyako forges a relationship with the objects themselves. For the series, the photographer carefully positioned each item of clothing – sometimes talking to them, the curator of the museum told Getty in 2015. The images are beautiful, affording an almost anthropomorphic feeling to a dress or a blouse. But these images are hard to look at too; after noticing the detail of a collar, intricate needlework or the vividness of a print, the eye turns to the tears and charring in the fabric. As Makeda Best, Curator of Photography at Harvard Art Museums, wrote in 2015, ‘These “scars” on the fabric serve as metaphors for the bodies of bomb victims and of a nation.’

Following hiroshima, Ishiuchi was commissioned by the Museo Frida Kahlo in 2013 to photograph 300 of the artist’s belongings, sealed in the bathroom of her home in Mexico until 2004. The result is a body of work that both forms a bond with the clothing of someone the photographer never knew, and begins to build an impression of a woman’s life. Over the course of her career, Ishiuchi Miyako’s photography has worked to leverage an intimate portrayal of women and womanhood, of time, suffering, loss and memory, into a world of brutality and hardship. 

Has your outlook as a photographer changed over time? 

Photography has always been a product of its time, and has always changed with the times. My photographs may change in superficial terms, but what I am basically expressing and my mentality remain unchanged.

You mention that it was photographing your mother’s lipstick that led you to take colour photography. What difference is there between shooting in B&W and colour, and what impact does this have on the final image? 

I can do every step by myself when I’m working in black and white. My ideal here has been to take full responsibility for every stage: shooting, developing, printing. When I’m working in colour, I just take the photographs and have the rest of the work done at a lab. When I started doing this, it was very refreshing to have the works be out of my hands and be able to look at them more objectively.

With black and white, I felt like I was clinging to the photographs throughout the entire process. When I started working in colour, I felt in a way as if I had been liberated from photography. Black and white is a world of artistic creation, while colour is the world of everyday life. At the same time, both black and white and colour are just approaches, and it doesn’t matter which you use.

The photographs of Yokosuka are commended for their grainy texture. What are the attributes that make a powerful image? 

The Yokosuka photographs are not intended to have a powerful impact. When I printed my first photograph, I realized that a photograph is a collection of ink grains on paper. I wanted to print those particles properly, so I developed the film at a high temperature. Grains are like units of time, and I tried to make prints as if I were counting them one by one.

I like the analogy between your background in weaving and the process of photographic development.

Do you think there’s something similar with the photographs themselves; weaving moments of time into history? 

Photography and textiles are very similar – they are both water works. It was a revelation to me that the colour-fixing liquid used for dyeing yarn and the stopping liquid used for photography are the same thing. Making textiles is very labour-intensive work. Photography is the work of evoking time using light. Both of them are jobs done by hand.

A lot of your work involves photographs of objects and possessions. Do you see photographs as being objects and possessions too? 

«A photograph is a narrative that documents and renders memory visible in two dimensions, transcending objects and possessions.»

Photographed subjects are given new value and meaning, and by becoming part of a photograph they become almost eternal.

Did you take a different approach photographing the possessions of your mother and Frida Kahlo, compared with the clothing of Hiroshima victims (whose identity we might not know)? 

/hiroshima, Mother’s, and Frida all share the same intent in that they focus on what has been left behind. I took the same approach to photographing these three subjects, but Mother’s began as my own personal project, then after being shown at the Venice Biennale it became a photographic work that transcends my own personal concerns, expanding from the private to the public. This later shaped the specific development of /hiroshima and Frida.

I find it interesting that you don’t attach messages or captions to your photographs. How does that relate to the objects (clothing/possessions) that you photograph? Do you try to interpret the meaning that their original owner gave them? 

I consider my photographs to be creative rather than documentary, and I take them from my own point of view and with my own values. I believe that adding a message or caption to my photos would take away the viewer’s freedom of thought. I want people to be free to see my photos from their own perspectives, and to attach their own words to them. 

I cannot photograph the past. My work is based on encounters with things left over from the past, but which are in front of me, in the same space and time, in the reality through which I am living in now. In particular, the bombed artefacts of Hiroshima cannot become part of the past.

/hiroshima is very different to Yokosuka Story – how do they capture the aftermath of the war in Japan and the country’s relationship with America? 

I made my debut with Yokosuka Story, a series that is kind of a personal sentimental journey.

«I was born in the post-war era and spent my adolescence in a community with an American military base, and I enlarged these prints to exorcise emotions like scars I felt I had received from the Occupied Japan city of Yokosuka.»

There is a connection between Yokosuka and the history of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, which played a huge role in ending the war, and which I documented about 30 years later. Yokosuka still serves as the home port for Asia’s largest nuclear-powered aircraft carrier. The post-war period is not yet over, and the reality is that Japan is still under US control. My photographic work, which started in Yokosuka, inevitably turned toward Hiroshima, and /hiroshima is still an ongoing project.

Credits

Images · ISHIUCHI MIYAKO
Special Thanks · THE THIRD GALLERY AYA

Ewe Studio

«A horizontal approach of mutual learning, to promote and to translate a skill or knowledge into new meanings and possibilities»

Based in Mexico City, EWE is a design studio that celebrates the country’s rich history of artisanal practice. Tradition is interwoven with new ideas, combining innovation with heritage. The studio was started in 2017 by the Estonian curator, Age Salajõ, Mexican designer Héctor Esrawe, and Spanish industrial designer, Manu Bañó, whose varied backgrounds and expertise allow for their creative approach.

Their work falls somewhere between furniture and sculpture; beautifully-crafted objects that are also technically functional. By amplifying the skill of craftsmanship and the craftsman, their work is inherently collaborative – working with Mexican specialists to create ornate, yet organic, objects. The forms, shapes, colours and textures of their pieces recall the natural elements, something that is reflected in the studio’s approach to using four main processes – glass, stone, foundry work and wood.

EWE Studio’s limited-edition collections are part of a move in recent years to put Mexico on the world stage of design. Here, they explain how their process works and the inspirations that inform the studio’s approach to craft, heritage and their objects.

How do your different backgrounds and experiences influence the work of EWE Studio? 

What has made EWE a unique project is that combination; our origin, the skills, our individual knowledge and sensibilities. Our background and experiences are reflected in the way we approach everyday solutions, and through an open dialogue where those individual differences work towards a solution. 

How does collaboration tie into your work as a studio, and also with artisans in Mexico? 

Collaboration is an essential part of our philosophy, it is the axis of our project. A horizontal approach of mutual learning, to promote and to translate a skill or knowledge into new meanings and possibilities.

How do the four main processes you use (glass, stone, foundry, wood) individually and collectively represent the ethos of EWE Studio?

Those four have, so far, represented the expression of EWE, which by being a young company has created an aura focused on those materials. [That said] we are experimenting with many more materials.

What inspires the form and textures of your work at EWE Studio?

The forms and textures come from many angles; our heritage, the material itself, the sensibility to understand new possibilities out of a “found” moment or expression during visits to the workshops. We forge our inspiration from Mexican history and create new meanings and languages from that inspiration point. We love to mix raw and pristine textures and often keep parts of the stone surfaces as we found them. 

Since the studio began, have you adapted your processes for working together? How do you see the studio progressing and growing?

We have maintained the same creative process, with a deeper understanding of the soul of EWE. The studio has evolved, allowing us to integrate a small team in our everyday life besides design activities. We have assigned the efforts of production, administration, sales to each one of us. 

The three of us work very tightly together and with our team. We communicate throughout the day and are very much in the loop with different aspects of the studio. We regularly hold design meetings to create new work, but after that we all have different roles we play. EWE is a young studio but we have been fortunate to work with different galleries from around the world who are promoting and selling our work. 

Your pieces are a mix of sculpture and object – how do you see them being used?

They are pieces with an iconic and strong expression – pieces with character. Most of them are reinterpretations of an utilitarian background or a reminiscence of it. Many of our clients use them; some of them have them for contemplation. Even though we aim to create sculptural design, they are all functional. Even if the line between design and sculpture is blurry.

And how do you distinguish these pieces between art and design – does that matter?

From the start, EWE has been focused on promoting the skills of the artisans and create a dialogue with our heritage. Most of our inspirations comes from a utilitarian background, from elements that were used in ceremonies and/or worship.

Credits

Images · EWE STUDIO
https://ewe-studio.com/

Rina Yang

«the pandemic happened, and I think the drama world struggled more than commercials»

When she was younger, Rina Yang would keep in contact with her best friend in London by making, editing and sending ‘video letters’ from her hometown in Japan. Rina later moved to London to study and while there, saw an ad for a film school. The course was mostly theory with very little practical work, she told Lecture in Progress in 2017, but nonetheless gave her a reason to remain in the UK. Rina’s first roles in the industry involved working as a camera assistant on short projects. ‘I only did it properly for a couple of years,’ because as she tells me over the phone, it was a stressful role. But she did find common ground talking to directors during breaks about the creative processes behind the work. ‘I was better at that, than looking after the camera.’ And so, she pivoted – cutting her teeth in music video and short films jobs that her friends would ask her to work on. ‘One thing led to another,’ Rina adds – and she was able to carve out a space for herself as a director of photography (DP), a notoriously difficult role to break into and succeed in.

As a DP, Rina has worked on music videos for artists including Kamasi Washington, Vince Staples, Björk and FKA twigs (including the “controversial” and “risqué” ‘do you believe in more’ advertisement that twigs directed and soundtracked for Nike in 2017). Rina regularly balances projects across music videos, commercials and narrative work, a crossover she tells me is quite uncommon. And though her approach may differ depending on the project, her work consistently demonstrates an aptitude and eye for capturing the people and characters in front of the camera. A scene from the BBC’s Windrush drama, Sitting in Limbo, from last year, or the third series of Top Boy (for which Rina shot a number of episodes) are as beautiful and captivating as, say, a Rimowa commercial with Adwoa Aboah or her work for Sephora. 

Rina’s talent and vision as a DP have made her a sought after name in the industry – even at such an early point in her career. She was named by British Vogue as one of the 14 rising stars in the creative industries back in February, described as a “New Wave of boundary-breaking visionaries bringing fresh, exciting perspectives to the creative industries”. Her portrait to accompany the piece was shot by Campbell Addy who, like Rina, is part of a new vanguard of young talent. Last year, Rina was also included in the BAFTA Breakthrough list for 2020. Being recognised by organisations like BAFTA is great, Rina tells me, but it’s not something she’s had much time to think about, ‘I haven’t properly got my head around it.’ But, she adds, she definitely feels as though she’s at an interesting point in her career. That said, having faired the storm caused by the pandemic, Rina is now remarkably well-placed to continue to grow and nurture her skill. 

You’ve done a lot of commercial work with the likes of Nike, Rimowa and many others, and TV work for shows like Sitting in Limbo and Top Boy. How do you balance the different projects you work on? Is there something specific that draws you in?

I think the selection of the projects really comes down to your personal taste and what you find interesting. When I do commercials, I’m less selective because it is a very short commitment, and it’s a good opportunity to meet new directors and new collaborators. So I’m less picky and I’ll take the risk to work with new people. When it comes to narrative, it’s a whole different conversation. There’s a lot more boxes to tick to see if it’s the right project to do. It’s a different process, but I do like doing both. With my narrative work, you get paid less but I think it’s more of a romantic thing.

With that said, I love that your commercial work don’t just feel like adverts. They’re like short stories in their own way.

The directors and all the creatives I’m drawn to tend to have that kind of style. I don’t find the very straight up advertising that interesting. I mean, to be honest, sometimes we just do very boring commercials. You just don’t shout about it. But I think the ones that I get to shoot, they tend to be creative ads with slight narrative threads. And I’m grateful that I’ve been able to shoot some of them. You kind of flex your narrative muscle a little bit, but it’s a very different working environment in commercial compared to narrative. 

You’ve got a very distinctive use of colour, texture and lighting. How did you develop that style? 

When I started out my style was a bit more documentary because it’s hard to afford to do a big lighting setup. But even with documentary style, I don’t want it to look like what it looks like with the naked eye. So I try to heighten what you see, by using different lenses, or how you expose the sensor or the film – to add your take on the reality you see. 

As I progressed in my career, I could afford to have a good crew with me and all these big lights. And I guess that’s when I started using a bit more colour. I did go through a period of using a lot of colours because I kept getting asked to do that. I think with any artist or DP, we’re versatile so it’s nice not to get pigeonholed into one look. In general, I like to heighten the reality of a scene, and I think, “what if I did this” – I talk about a lot of what ifs, and still do some colourful lighting here and there.

So as a DP, how do you tell a story and create narrative?

How would I tell a good story? First of all, there has to be a good script, and there has to be a good director to execute that. I can only advise how I think we could shoot things, or collaborate with the director. In the beginning when I started out, it was quite hard to find directors on that level. One the hardest things in the beginning is to find a director who can execute the narrative in the way you see it, or better than how you imagined it. So I think I really collaborate with my directors, talk about how we see it. 

I guess it’s such a collaborative process; you’ve got to be able to work together well.

Yeah, definitely. The level of collaboration is different in music videos, commercials and narrative. With commercial, they tend to come with already established ideas –  with exactly how they want it to look because they’ve gone through a lot of chats with the clients and agency, and they tend to have have every exact visual references that I will need to execute. So there’s no huge room for us to create the look from scratch. And then music videos, you can be a little bit more funky with it. And with narrative, if it’s a TV show and you’re the first block DP, you can create the look with your director and showrunner. If you’re coming into the TV show in the middle of it, then you have to replicate what’s been established. And then if it’s a movie, there’s a lot more room to experiment. That’s why a lot of DPs prefer to do movies and the first block of TV shows. 

Has the pandemic changed your work process and schedule much over the past year?

Before the pandemic, I was going to shoot TV shows or films in 2020. I was shooting a lot of commercials early in the year because I was going to work hard on commercials until the spring, so I could afford to do a film or TV show that I like. But then the pandemic happened, and I think the drama world struggled more than commercials, so they’ve been on pause for a lot longer than advertising. Now, I’m reading scripts and trying to decide what narrative projects I should do next. This past year has been an interesting switch I think, because I was going to shoot a drama this year, and after doing commercial for a year, I’m really ready to shoot another long project, TV show or movie. 

Does it help having the balance of both commercial and narrative work, and being able to fall back on one or the other?

For sure – I take influence from both commercial and narrative. But, you know, I do switch my brain; if I’m pitching for a film, I’ll switch my brain to a narrative aesthetic and approach. My visual references would be quite different from what I would put in for commercial work because I think the commercial world is more like eye candy. It has to be catchy because we only have a minute or so to tell something. You have to say something in a very short amount of time. But when it comes to narrative, there’s a lot more room to grow and develop.

Credits

Images · RINA YANG

FormaFantasma

«we position ourselves to be real ignorant but in turn this motivates us to get out of this ignorance»

Formafantasma, led by Andrea Trimarchi and Simone Farresin, is an Amsterdam-based design studio that focuses on investigating the ecological and political responsibilities of their discipline. By placing research at the core of their practice, they create a holistic approach that aims to reach back into the historical context of material used by humans, and outwards to the patterns of supply chains that have been constructed to support and expand its use. Formafantasma’s work often investigates material’s effects on the biosphere and their survival in relation to human consumption.

NR had the pleasure to speak to Andrea and Simone for this issue. The conversation explored their practice’s journey thus far, the processes behind the research and commercial sides of their practice, and what they’re looking forward to in the future. They spoke in depth about designers responsibilities to understand the impact of the materials they use, and that they should be more transparent about the impact of their work. The duo placed emphasis how the lack of communication between practices, corporations and consumers often prevents meaningful large-scale changes to shift the industry towards a more sustainable future, and highlighted the role that designers can play in facilitating better communication in this process. Our talk also covered the Geo-Design masters course the pair currently lead at the Design Academy Eindhoven, which started its first academic year this year.

Andrea and Simone it’s a pleasure to have you with us today and thank you for this opportunity to have this conversation with you. I want to start by asking you about how you met and your journey together as Formafantasma so far.

Simone Farresin: Me and Andrea met in Florence during our bachelors studies. Andrea is younger than me and he really cares to say that. I was in my final year and I was starting to lose interest in design in terms of product design and object based design. When we started to hang out we were looking at many other things. We were going to art exhibitions together, we were traveling around in Italy checking out things we were both interested in. We started living together and realized most of our conversations were design related.

Andrea Trimarchi: And he was helping me throughout my projects. So we started to work together on projects, starting mostly with ones related to graphic rather than product design, which was quite fun because it was something we were doing in our free time. We decided to make this into a more programmatic experience, and while this process was happening we decided to apply to Eindhoven together. Strangely enough we applied with one portfolio for both of us, so the only way to take us was as a duo. And of course we were really interested in what was happening in design in the Netherlands, specially at Eindhoven, because there was an entire generation that were our generation that had studios there, and had created a community around the design field.

SF: It was different in Italy were although there was a fantastic history in design that continues till today, nevertheless the heritage from the past felt extremely heavy. And the Dutch have a tendency of looking forward instead of looking back. This was a reason were we wanted to come here, and its been an extremely informative period. Specially our time in the Design Academy (Eindhoven) were we always say that we received just the questions we needed. We were full of energy and potentiality, but we didn’t know were to channel that, and in the design academy the questions were raised were extremely critical, and in Dutch fashion quite brutal at times. Nevertheless it was invaluable experience because we were asked existential questions for designers rather than focusing just on how something is produced. For example “Why would you produce this in this moment in time?”, “How does it relate to the past development of the design discipline?” and “Where do you position yourself in the world as a designer?”. Although these questions can be overpowering for some, we felt that they were empowering us and encouraged us to establish an agency, and therefore became quite formative for us.

AT: And it really prepared us to the extent that the day after we graduated we opened our studio, and we started Formafantasma and so on.

I realize that its the 11th year anniversary of your studio so congratulations on that. As an aspiring designer it’s quite informative to look at your progression throughout these years, and how you’ve managed to position the research and commercial sides of your practice in a way that they inform each other. My most recent experience of your work was Cambio (Serpentine Galleries, London), and the project focuses on the use of wood as a material in the industry, and the impact it has on the environment. To me this project highlights the emphasis you place on reaching across different disciplines, and engaging with a variety of practitioners in your research development process. Can you explain why this outreach is vital to this process, and what quality it brings to your research driven work?

SF: I think it’s because when we look at the macro picture within which design preforms it becomes inevitably vital to reach out to other practitioners outside of our field to understand that macro view better. We are more and more interested in looking at design as not only a means to deliver services and products, but rather looking at design in a much bigger infrastructure. Which in relation to materials includes resourcing, distribution, refinement, transformation, recycling and so on. When you start to look at design within this broader system you can begin to question what design can do and cannot do, and in this process reaching out to other practitioners is a way to better understand the implication and consequences of design.

AT: Also because there is this big narrative that design can solve problems, and in a way it can. But it is important to acknowledge that it’s also true that it can’t simply because we don’t know a lot of things, and the only way of acting on this is to reach out to people that are much more informed than us. So in a way we position ourselves to be real ignorant but in turn this motivates us to get out of this ignorance.

While going through Cambio and the series of interviews you conducted, one of the things that resonated with me is that it was felt in some way that your interest in these ecological issues is driven by the consequences of being designers. This idea that a sense of responsibility transcends into establishing a holistic approach throughout your practice. To further understand this dynamic, what outcomes do you aim to achieve from your research driven work? and what is your process of reaching out to your partnerships to input this research into practice?

AT: Firstly I want to say something, I believe a problem within design is that it is complicit in a way in the disaster we are witnessing. This in turn makes the discipline quite interesting, and whatever we do that is not perfect it can’t be perfect because it sits between exploitation and the destruction of the world. It is in this liminal position were we see all things happening.

AT & ST: Potentiality and also disaster.

SF: Some of the projects we’ve done recently, for example Cambio and Ore Streams, are good models to display our way of operating when we do research. For us it is a way to present ourselves with an expertise that not necessarily people think we have. What I mean by this is that in a way these projects are responses to the questions we never receive from our partners. 

The questions we pose ourselves when we develop those projects are the questions we would wish to receive, and the challenges we would wish to be asked. But we are using this to show that we hope that the conversations we have with our more commercial partners , and partners in general, can grow in this direction. I think the more people get to know us, the more the questions we receive become sharper and pertinent for what we can do. Of course it is still a struggle because the infrastructure we were talking about before is not necessarily easy to penetrate, so even when you work with a partner, that does not mean that partner can make a change in that system even if they show willingness to. Nevertheless we always know that there is plenty that you can do as long as you accept the limitations of your own discipline.

AT: I want to add that while in Ore Streams it was much more difficult to get in contact for instance with electronic companies, with Cambio it made a complete difference because it was much more possible from a design perspective in terms of design companies. For instance, right now we are in discussion with a company that we are essentially continuing Cambio as an internal RND (Research and Development) were we are trying to apply the same ideas we discussed in Cambio within the industrial production realm. Even if a percentage of our research would be re-applied in this context we would be in any case really happy. We are beginning to see this shift in mentality.

Companies are starting to approach us because of the ways in which we work, as opposed to before were they were more interested in the more superficial side of the business and how our products were looking.

Nevertheless I think the a balance between the two needs to be established, and platforms were research is shared are definitely important. For example when we did Cambio we conducted a lot of interviews, read a lot of content and we could have kept to ourselves. But then what is the purpose? So when we put together the website we wanted to say that we’ve only represented a percentage of the topic, but it is up to the audience, if they are interested, to continue to look more in depth into the topics presented in our work. It is also a responsibility we must have to current and future generations, to be much more generous.

I think that this process of sharing was truly felt in the on- going conversations happening throughout Cambio, whether through the digital material or events taking place at the Serpentine. This seems like a good point to discuss the Geo Design masters you are currently running at Eindhoven. What a time to launch a course considering the current situation we’re living in!

SF: Tell me about it!

It would be great to further discuss your experience in Geo design thus far and your ambitions for the course. Also, to ask you how you think the pandemic has effected our relationship with ecology as designers, and shifted our approach in resourcing materials?

AT: It is unlucky to start this year, but in the Netherlands we’ve been lucky to do a lot of in person teaching considering the current situation. We had a whole first semester in person and now we are starting to do that again. Our experience of teaching has put more urgency on us on speaking of these certain issues and bring reform to the way in that we teach. 

SF: I would wish that more journalists would talk about Covid in relation to ecology and the climate crisis. I think most of us are aware that they are linked, but a great outcome of this situation is that it’s made the climate crisis physical and embodied. We are taking a virus around and because of it closing our environments, which has made it physical and this point is important. Sadly not enough discussion is going on about it. The conversations have been more about what you can do with a virus, and again compartmentalizing knowledge. It has not been about the ecosystem but it has been about the virus. But how can you look at the virus without looking at the ecosystem? It is clearer and clearer that entanglement is the way to look at things in terms of knowledge, development and so on. This is the most visible part of the pandemic.

In terms of design education the pandemic has made it very clear that design is an extremely humane discipline that needs physical interactions. Therefore, I think education online doesn’t work for design because it is not only about the passing of knowledge, but more about conversations, interactions, exchanging energies and having a connection to materials. I went back to teaching physically the other day at the design academy, and it was a joy to be able to do that again.

I think it has so much to do with human-scaled exchanges and the body language through which we communicate in a physical environment. As a student myself, these types of proxemic interactions are something I miss the most. I wanted to ask you on behalf of myself and many other aspiring designers at the early stages of their practice, what climate do you see us going into? and what insight or advise can you share with us to help shape our mindset for moving forward from this point?

SF: It is a difficult question. I think that it depends how you look at education. If you look at education in terms of forming professionals, I don’t necessarily believe in that. We don’t believe in professionalizing someone for a Job or a task. It is not the way we consider education, although there are other institutions that do that. I think as an advice it is important to keep the discipline closer to yourself.

AT: Don’t Compromise. For me this is extremely important because when you graduate you tend to gravitate towards whatever work comes into your hands because you need to survive. But most of the time this causes you to shift focus on the things that matter to you, and especially in the beginning you should never do that. I believe the most radical things you can do in design thinking should happen in the beginning because things get more sophisticated as you move forward.

SF: Some people think that you should be humble in the beginning and aim higher later, but it is the opposite way around. Because the more you grow the more you have necessities than in the beginning. When you graduate you have less compromises and responsibilities towards others than later on in your practice.

AT: It is really important to analyse with a clear focus the reality of design. When we started it was 2009, right after a huge economic crisis, and we knew that to us it wasn’t even important or interesting to work in big companies. Of course we enjoy collaborating with certain companies, but it is important to realize that system of design is more based on royalties and lower pay. I think that this has become more relevant now than even before. I think it is important to understand that design as a discipline is tough and not for everybody, and it is also quite important to say this as a teacher to your students. The ones that go to much more of a authorial side are maybe the one percent, and there is nothing wrong with being in the other 99 percent and working for others. It is totally fine. The problem with universities nowadays that they aims to fulfil this idea that everyone can be an author.

I wanted to conclude by asking you about what you’re looking forward to in the near future? And what direction do you see your practice moving towards from this point?

SF: Let’s start from what is very close by. Cambio will travel, and its expanding in the way it was mentioned before by Andrea. It is travelling to Tuscany and it will expand there, and then to Switzerland and it will expand there as well into a new section, were we will do a extended third version of the catalogue. We are hoping for it to also make it to Mexico, but with the current situation that is a bit more uncertain and difficult to plan. But there is a touring of the exhibition. In terms of our practice in a much longer term, lets say the next ten years, we wish to continue working in the way we currently are, but possibly making the research projects more radical, and the commercial projects more commercial so we can make the radical projects more radical. And in the meantime find ways to input the research that we do. So not only present them and make them available to others. But also find applications for them.

Andrea and Simone I want to thank you both for your time and for joining us for this issue. It has been such an insightful conversation, and I look forward to following the development of your work and practice.

AT & SF: Welcome! it’s been a pleasure and we look forward to the issue.

Anne Holtrop

«The driving force behind both temporary and permanent work is similar; it’s about the performance.»

Dutch architect Anne Holtrop started his eponymous studio in 2009. Anne designed the Bahrain pavilion for the World Expo in 2015, without having visited the country beforehand. Now, the architect divides his time between his hometown, Amsterdam, the Kingdom of Bahrain, where he is working to refurbish heritage sites, and as a Professor of Architecture at the ETH in Zürich, Switzerland. Anne’s work spans temporary installation to permanent structures, but it is his use of tactile and organic materials for which the studio is both recognised, and recognisable. Having started out as an assistant to Krijn de Koning, the Dutch artist known for his site specific installations, Anne’s first project was the Trail House in Almere. As part of an exhibition by the Museum De Paviljoens in 2010, the installation consists of a series of paths that make up the house’s structure – described as ‘A house that curls, bends and splits through the [vegetal] landscape’ surrounding it.

Alongside his work in Bahrain, Anne has worked with John Galliano since 2018 to redefine the brand identity of the Parisian fashion house, Maison Margiela – culminating with the remodelling of the label’s London store earlier this year. The curved gypsum walls and fabric-cast surfaces are evocative of both the studio’s signature feel, and of Margiela’s recent in-store presence. But, as Anne explained over Skype back in February, his work process is limited to neither the studio, nor Galliano’s vision for Margiela. Rather, he heralds the disappearing craftsmanship of specialists and family-led artisans. ‘For Margiela,’ he explains, ‘almost everything is produced in Italy. Around the time I started working in Bahrain, I started working a lot in Italy with small workshops that were specialists in the different materials I’m interested in.’

The gypsum casting that embodies Anne’s work with Margiela? It comes from a small company in Veneto; the profession almost died out, I’m told, because house molding is no longer en vogue. When Anne started working with the company, they had only two employees; they’ve since re-hired former collaborators. That’s not to say that irreparable damage hasn’t been done to artisanal craftsmanship though; despite enjoying something of a renaissance in recent years, Anne is quick to point out that ‘because of our lack of interest for a long time, these industries, which are often small family-based companies, have died out.’ The aluminium that features in the Green Corner building in Bahrain (2020), was cast at a foundry in the Netherlands, where their specialism allows for the experimental techniques that Studio Anne Holtrop employs.

Central to Anne’s design approach is an innate belief in the ‘gestures’ that define materials; the source of those very materials, and the ways in which they’re used to construct spaces and the architectural environment. And as our conversation below demonstrates, these are themes that inform Anne’s vision for the temporary, the interior and the exterior.

Does your practice take on different approaches depending on whether you’re creating something temporary versus a permanent?

With [Maison] Margiela, we did a catwalk show in 2018, shop windows in Osaka and a pop-up store in Tokyo. So these exist for one week, one day, a month – and in architecture, that’s a very short time. What I like about temporary work is it can be more radical in a way, because we have less to fulfil for a permanent use. So for instance, with Margiela, the [display] in the shop windows in Osaka, we made them out of very thick felt that we let hang. So it was a kind of architecture that’s literally soft; that has no rigidity. To make architecture that is literally soft is very difficult to maintain or to use. Although Margiela would love that idea, the practicality of it is just more difficult to manage. The driving force behind both temporary and permanent work is similar; it’s about the performance. You know, how can we form space and how can we also discover space?

The Margiela store in Paris has crooked columns (textile-cast gypsum), which was a process of making, where we deliberately searched for an undefined outcome. It redefined the process of making, and the outcome is different every time you produce it. In that sense, we can discover and invent spatial conditions. John Galliano describes this kind of pyramid where everything starts with the artisanal collection, and then it trickles down. With architecture, we build maquettes of projects with the materials that we want to construct with. So that’s also a kind of temporary building – to scale, but it exists. It has a reality. Even if a project is permanent, that’s its temporary state.

I was looking at images from your work with the Charlotte Chesnais jewellery store in Paris from late last year; the acrylic sheets you use have these really organic shapes. I’d love to know a bit more about the kinds of materials you work with, and how you translate these into organic forms?

I have a liking for irregular forms like the Rorschach inkblots, the butterfly inkblot tests that are basically just ink on paper. But because of its form, you imagine things in it and for me, the irregular or organic forms of things have more possibility than a purely rectangular form. You can project more into it. That’s the way that we work because we have form that is not necessarily architectural. So, we can start to imagine how we’ll use something; how can we read the architecture? And for visitors, that happens [all over] again.

With the Charlotte Chesnais store, [the approach] came from a project before that, where we started casting materials directly in sand, using sand as a natural relief. So we cast another material in it and it takes the imprint of it in the material. We started doing that with gypsum, concrete and aluminium. For the store, we used acrylic but we didn’t cast it; we scanned a 3D relief of the sand. The irregular relief diffuses the light a lot more than it would a flat surface, which works more as a mirror.

[But] the irregular relief starts to diffuse the light so you cannot see through it anymore; the ceiling has this irregular form, and that diffuses light into the space and onto the display. Then we repeated the exact same thing with the display table, which works as a backdrop for the jewellery. So with the specific treatment of a material, we benefit from certain characteristics of it. By changing the relief, we have different characteristics that we can work with. So the material is the same, but the way it is formed and treated enhances, or brings forward, other properties. That is something I call material gesture; to work with the gestures that are intrinsically bound to a material, but also the gestures that, in the process of making things, are formed with the material.

And this is the same process you used for the Green Corner building in Bahrain?

Yes – in the Green Corner building, all the concrete (so, the façades, the walls, the floors) are cast on land next to the building. So we cast it directly in the sand; every time the sand has been worked on by the workmen on the site, and so every time we had different reliefs in the concrete. It was also very efficient, so in that sense it contributes to an idea of sustainability because most of the form work is just in the sand, in the ground that is already there. We didn’t have to transport building materials, just the concrete. I think up to 50% of the energy [to build] is used in making form work, and the other 50% to cast it. So, by shortcutting that first 50% of formwork, we reduced the energy consumption used to make a building. But that’s not the only driving force.

The driving force is that we can building something that feels very local, and very [site specific]. The site itself produces the building, and leaves its mark on the building. With the façade, each one is a fragment of the landscape, but also a moment in time. One was done in March 2019, another in April. So you have this time recording in it as well. The building isn’t static; it becomes a time document and a process. With the Green Corner building, we also have aluminium doors and windows that are also sand casted, but we did that in a foundry. But with aluminium you can’t cast solids so, with the doors, the front side is an imprint of the sand and the back side is hollow.

By changing the material, you get something else. Suddenly you have the negative of the sand that you could never see in concrete. For that reason, we placed the doors and window shutters facing the other way. So when you see the sand cast concrete, you see the aluminium as a hollow version, so they are in a kind of juxtaposition with each other.

You’ve been living and working in Bahrain for seven years now – how has this time allowed you to use different techniques like, for example, the sand casting?

I mean, I was already doing that when I was [still] in Amsterdam. I was visiting Jordan, and going to Petra, a few years before I moved to Bahrain. So, for me there was definitely an interest in the type of landscape and conditions there. It’s very minimal – it’s rock and sand, and that it’s base. And I like that base because that’s also the base of building material; when I see a building standing in that landscape, I just see two versions of the same thing. And I was very excited to work in a place where I can research that kind of relationship.

So the Green Corner building is a very clear building for me in that way because it builds hat relationship between the soil in which it is built, the material, and the matter of it – the building itself and its construction.

The aluminium was also chosen because Bahrain has one of the largest aluminium smelters in the world. I saw it as being a local material, a vernacular material. When we look back in history, we say, you know, we built with clay, stones and things like that. But over the past 50 years, aluminium [has become] one of these materials. It’s a process [rather than a material], but nevertheless still part of it. And I like to build up that relationship. It’s all part of that investigation of material gesture; from the sourcing of material, the process, the craftsmanship of working with the material.

Goya Gumbani

«it’s like breakfast or dinner»

Born and raised in Brooklyn, rapper Goya Gumbani moved to London as a teenager. Landing a retail job at the London branch of Pharrell and Nigo’s streetwear label, Billionaire Boys Club, Goya joined a hub of fashion and music. The story goes that when the store closed, BBC would become a de facto studio – with industry heavyweights passing through its doors. Goya went on to pursue music, notably with the release of the 2018 EP, Morta & More Doves, but fashion has remained on his orbit. For one, he walked the Louis Vuitton AW presentation earlier this year – a far cry from ‘[modelling] in mad streetwear stores basements’ five years ago, as he shared on Twitter. Goya’s slick personal style is both an amalgamation of his inspirations (‘I like shit that looks 80s – pro Black, UK Reggae and Dub man from Brixton,’ he told BBC), and a visual embodiment of the London music scene that has come to influence his sound. Last year was a busy year for Goya, releasing five EPs with the likes of producer Oliver Palfreyman, on November’s six track EP Truth Be Sold, and with Bori on Steps Across the Pond from March (which got a limited edition vinyl pressing last month, a year after its release). Goya’s catalogue is consistent in its warmth. Often reflective and contemplative – and at times, existential – Goya’s vocals are perfectly matched to the soulful, hazy beats that are coming to define the artist’s sound. 

How do you set the pace of making music, and when do you know if something makes the cut for release?

I do this every day – at this point it’s like breakfast or dinner. I wake up and think about something music related. The making the cut process really just depends on where I’m at sonically or visually.

“Being from Brooklyn, living in London” is something of a tagline attached to your name. In terms of your sound, style and influence though, how do these elements come together?

They are both two great cities, they have both taught me different things from different perspectives. Both cities are in my DNA at this point, so they make me – if that makes sense.

I’d love to know if working at Billionaire Boys Club opened up your experience of London in different ways. How much of working there influenced your transition into music?

Yeah BBC was like a hub, everybody from every crack of the world used to pass through. So I met a lot of people in all fields, but most of the people I worked with there, also made music. I use to think I would just meet people to meet ‘em. But soon after, I realised you meet everyone for a reason. It’s not only to talk sweet nothings, but to build an grow to some degree.

At what point did you feel ready to share your music with people around you? 

Few years ago, I just had something I wanted to show, which kinda lead me to a place where I wasn’t fazed by my own self-doubt. 

I really love the EP covers/videos, and how they’re all quite different – is there any relationship between the music and the visuals you use? (If so, to what effect?)

The artwork and visuals are a lot. I feel like that’s gonna speak to you before you even hear anything. So it’s chosen with the intent to grab and leave wonder… Everything relates though; it’s all one big canvas of imagery that can speak on its own if needs be.

Besides appearing in the Louis Vuitton AW21 presentation, what defines ‘style’ and your style? 

Style is expression and personal touch to me. I worked in a couple menswear spots back in the day, so that gave me the knowledge into different eras and how style was a time stamp. But, my old boy Jack used to tell me: “if no one likes it, you going in the right direction”, Which I took as get dressed for yaself and you can’t go wrong. So that’s the motto.

What are you currently working on, and what can we expect from you this year?

I got a collab project coming out with [the producer] Subculture and a solo tape coming out this year I’m excited about. Few things with some familiar faces too… Oh and catch me on a few festival line ups!

Credits

Photography · DAVID REISS
Styling · SERGIO PEDRO
Creative Direction · NIMA HABIBZADEH AND JADE REMOVILLE
Interview · ELLIE BROWN

Lyndon French

The Mysteries of the Secrets

Credits

Images · LYNDON FRENCH
https://lyndonfrench.com/

Rick Schatzberg

«conversations helped to create the atmosphere I needed to portray vulnerability»

Rick Schatzberg grew up in a suburb of Long Island in the 1950s – a place constructed out of nothing but a post-war optimism for prosperity and abundance. A place that, by Rick’s own admission, was in reality, characterised by its monotony and it’s ‘nowhereness’. Surrounded by the comfort of middle class living, Rick and his friends discovered the world by hanging out in one another’s bedrooms, the local mall or a wooded area not far from their suburban enclave. As teenagers, the boys (as they came to be known amongst themselves) would experiment with alcohol and drugs, and hang out with girls; an upbringing unremarkable to anyone who wasn’t there at the time. As they grew older, the boys took on different careers. Rick moved to New York and became an entrepreneur, the others would become teachers, taxi drivers, salesmen, realtors and healthcare workers But they remained what Rick calls a ‘cohesive entity,’ eternally bound together by their childhood moniker.

The Boys, the second photobook by Rick Schatzberg, is the result of both his pivot into photography and the unexpected death of two of his friends in close succession. Confronted with the fragility of life, Rick began in earnest to take photographs of the remaining boys. Using a large format camera, the images of himself and his friends, now in their mid-60s, are a stark reminder of the passage of time. In and of themselves, Rick’s photographs are tender portraits capturing the toll of time and age on the human body. But in the book, these images are interspersed with snapshots and photographs from the boys’ youth. Aged bodies become youthful, smiling faces – hanging out, experimenting with weed. Though Rick is quick to outline that The Boys isn’t nostalgic, there’s something poignant in flicking through the book’s pages and recognising the quirks and characteristics of each of the boys as time passes by. Addressing the responses he’s had so far about the book, Rick sums this feeling up well in our interview below: ‘anemoia: nostalgia for a time or place you’ve never known’. Many of the old photographs included in the book are snapshots that had been forgotten about – forgotten in the almost immediate aftermath that they were taken. They raise questions of memory; can the boys even recall the time and place that the photograph puts them in?

Alongside the images, old and now, are twelve short texts. One is an email exchange between Rick and two of the boys trying to piece together the facts of a fight that happened at a wedding. Their recollections of what actually occurred differ; evidence of the unreliability of memory. To celebrate the release of the book, Rick spoke in conversation with the photography writer and curator, David Campany in early 2021. As well as discussing the subject matter of The Boys, something that came up as crucial to the book’s release is its design. As part of the book launch, Rick shared a video of himself going through the book to demonstrate that the large format photographs of his friends feature as fold out pages (something, he tells the audience via Zoom, his mentors and peers from his photography course advised against). But something that also stands out in the structure of the book is that the 12 texts Rick includes in The Boys read like snapshots themselves.

An accompanying essay to the book by the writer, Rick Moody, raises this point, writing about the ‘relationship between a still image and the kind of expressive power that we associate with narrative activity.’ In the context of The Boys, as a photobook, this takes on historical significance. Writing about the 1920s, a time of the proliferation of the photobook and the photo essay, the academic Andreas Huyssen describes how a new form of literature appeared.

The “modernist miniature”, popularised by novelists like Franz Kafka and critical thinkers like Walter Benjamin, sought to capture modern life with photographic precision through words. In that way, then, Rick’s book is much more than a selection of photographs of his peers – young and now old – it’s a reckoning with how we navigate time, memory and our existence through the lens of modern life.

How did your experience of studying photography influence The Boys?

My work on The Boys was influenced by my art school education in several ways. To begin with, the photography MFA program I was enrolled in at Hartford University, Connecticut, is heavily focused on photobooks, and I went knowing I’d be making one. I thought I already knew a fair amount about photobooks, but the breadth of what I was exposed to by teachers, guest artists, and student colleagues was eye-opening. I had to examine my motivations to make any work and to think about how I would make a book that wasn’t just a collection of interesting pictures, but something with substance and depth.

In grad school, one of the challenges of making work that you hope to eventually present to the world is interpreting and deciding what to do with the near constant feedback you receive. You go to art school to not be limited by your inclinations. But there’s also the danger of gearing your work for approval of teachers and fellow students. In the end, I had to absorb what was helpful and discard what wasn’t; making that distinction was sometimes a confusing struggle. 

At the virtual launch, you emphasised that this book had to be universal, and not nostalgic. What feedback have you had from people about The Boys? Does it differ from the boys themselves, those who come from the same place/time, and those with no real connection to the American suburb?

For me, the work is not really nostalgic; I feel that the almost forensic nature of the large format portraits grounds the work in the present. But I may have overstated my case against nostalgia a bit. The feedback has been consistent in that the work evokes an emotional response, which I find very gratifying. But judging from what people have written or told me, the way into the work has really varied. For some, the immediate connection is nostalgia for their youth or that time or place. For others, typically younger readers and often European, it may be anemoia: nostalgia for a time or place you’ve never known. (Like films and novels, photography is good at evoking this.) I’ve heard from people for whom the portrayal of enduring friendship was the hook, and after reading the book they either felt the urge to reach out to friends they have not been so attentive to or lamented that they didn’t have friendships that lasted into adulthood.

Obviously, this work is radically specific: a very particular group of white guys of a particular generation, raised in a very particular American suburban community.

«From the outset though, my feeling was that if this work isn’t felt to be universal then it’s a failure. Mortality, after all, is the bedrock of our biology.»

You mentioned the importance of collaboration in making the book – did this collaboration extend to your friends? Or did they feature just as subjects? Why did you use a large format camera for the portraits? 

I discussed the deeper underlying themes of the project – aging, loss, memory, mortality, friendship – with my friends during our photo sessions. Though my directions for posing were minimal, these conversations helped to create the atmosphere I needed to portray vulnerability. I also explained that I planned to use the work as the basis of my master’s thesis so they understood that there would be a critical audience for the work beyond our circle. Their attitudes went from gracious acceptance to genuine interest. It was as though they became partners with a stake in the outcome.

«It was clear that I would be making unheroic portraits that might not be flattering, and they understood there was good reason for doing so.»

The word that often came to mind in these photo sessions was ceremonial. Using a 4×5 film camera, with all its fussy rituals and storied traditions, felt performative and serious. The slow, cumbersome, and mysterious (to my subjects) process helped amplify the psychological intensity surrounding the project. In the face of our brothers’ deaths, together we were creating a formal certificate of presence (to use Roland Barthe’s expression), using traditional tools.

That said, it is was not a true collaboration because the power to select specific portraits for use in the book was mine alone. My friends did not even see the images I was choosing between, nor did they know how I would ultimately deploy the portraits in the book. They trusted me. It was important to assert my authorial voice, but without entirely drowning out the voices of my friends, which they asserted through the written word, their snapshots, and their gestures in the portraits.

We’re faced with the processes of ageing, time and mortality in The Boys – when returning to your childhood home and neighbourhood for the book, had the nowhere place you came from aged too?

In the winter, with the trees bare, the neighborhood looks very much like it did 50 years ago. In the warmer months the trees, mature and leafy, give the neighborhood a homier, more established feel. The automobiles in front of many of the homes are now more numerous and luxurious, probably more a sign of growing consumer credit and a shift in values than of greater wealth.

The short texts in The Boys read like snapshots, how and why did you choose the texts you include?

I was interested in constructing narratives to loosely link text and images that would stand as discrete memories – not stories as such but fragments that help tell the larger story. I chose to write short texts that could function in different ways: sometimes straight narrative; sometimes like vague, recovered memories; sometimes as meditations; and sometimes more as dream than narrative. The one outlier is the story about my father. I didn’t initially think to include this in the book. I was having a conversation with my editor and I related the story to her.

«She told me to write it down and as soon as I did, I knew it belonged in the book.»

In his essay, Rick Moody refers to a good photograph as one left in a drawer for 30 years. Did the archives of photographs of yourself and the Boys ever come to light in the intervening years leading up to the making of this book? If so, in what circumstances?

Several of the snapshots have been circulating for ten years or so on social media. Others, which I found loosely strewn in boxes stored away for years, may have been passed around shortly after they were taken but were mostly forgotten. Time conferred poignancy as Rick Moody describes, but curating enlarged full-bleed versions astride pictures of old men and stories of death, makes new meaning. Even the more familiar old snapshots felt like new discoveries.

Credits

Images · RICK SCHATZBERG
https://rickschatzberg.com/

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