I'll Take Van Gogh Any Day: An Interview with Sandro Kopp

Terence Koh

I imagine Joseph Rolin calling me on Skype late at night – drunk perhaps – angry at something or at nothing, but the internet is disconnected and his face is frozen on the screen, the image is almost impressionistic in its disintegrated, pixelated abstraction. Joseph Rolin would never Skype me of course, because Joseph Rolin existed in the 19th century – a postal worker and friend of Vincent Van Gogh and regular subject of some of his most famous paintings. Its not ridiculous to imagine….or is it? I'm simply trying to put figurative art in the context of a post-modern tool, not only for communication, but a medium for portraiture.  Next week in New York artist Sandro Kopp will be exhibiting a series figurative portraits of subjects that include the likes of Haider Ackerman, Ryan McGinley, and Waris Ahluwalia. What is unique about Kopp's portraits is that his subjects were all painted during multiple hour sittings via Skype. Replace the chiaroscuro methods of the old masters with the faint cerulean glint of the millions of pixels of the computer screen and you have the brilliant electronic light that falls on the face of Kopp's portrait of actress Frances McDormand. With broad brush strokes you could say that Kopp's Skype portraits are a broad stroke of genius.  I always think of the portraitist as a spiritual barber of sorts – hacking away at the aura of our spirit with a paintbrush instead of sheers; the setting personal, comfortable, with perhaps a sense eroticism in the intimacy between sitter and artist.   However, in the fragmented and frenzied chaos of the collective pathos of the 21st century, a stage is set for mechanical or even electronic reproduction.  Moreover, figurative art and the notion of painting from real life – not from photographs – or more appropriately google images – is a seemingly old fashion notion. Or is it?

Ryan McGinley

Kopp, who was born in Germany and grew up in Wellington New Zealand, has found a unique niche with the use of Skype to paint his portraits. Kopp, who now lives in the Scottish Highlands, might even find it a hinderance to paint the variety of his subjects without Skype. Fittingly, I caught up with Kopp on Skype, where he is in New York readying for his solo show, entitled There You Are, at the Lehmann Maupin gallery as part of Istanbul 74' whose goal is to bridge the gap of the art, film and fashion world to one of Turkey's major cities .  We talked about his earliest years and even earliest memories as an artist, we talked about his Skype portraits, and we talked about his inspirations and influences, but we also talked about the climate of figurative art in the 21st century.  Where before our conversation I was intent on the notion that figurative art is old fashion, I was enlightened when I realized that Kopp just might be part of a new wave of post-modern figurative artists hitting the major galleries and museums.  I think of the artist Alice Neel who lived in an almost netherworld for a female figurative artist of her era. Neel, who was born in 1900, had to wade through cubism, surrealism, abstract expressionism, minimalism, and pop art as female artist in a selective, male dominated arena.  It wasn't until the mid-seventies when her striking portraits of friends, fellow artists, poets, and lovers became appreciated and Neel became a minor celebrity. Neel died in 1984 and her fame steadily rose with a major retrospectives exhibiting her work within the last decade, as well as a documentary in 2007, and you can't help but imagine what would happen if she were younger and alive today?  Kopp, whose work could fall in the same vein as Neel, is in a new school of neo-figurativists like John Currin and Jenny Saville. Kopp, who is 33, has no definitive plans for the future except to keep making art and exploring his Skype portraits which he says on their own will evolve, with each exhibition offering something new, unexpected, and exciting.

Can you remember the first painting you ever painted?  I can not, no. But there are drawings in existence that I did at less than 2 years old…..around 1 year…..I started pretty early.  I have this page full of little objects which some are recognizable….some not…..and my mom has written beside what each one is….like, this one is a stone, this a snake, and she obviously asked me what's there and I wrote it down.  So I was cataloguing stuff back then. That was my cataloguing phase (laughs).

So, you've always been an artist? I've never had a proper job if that's what (laughs)…..

No, I'm an artist as well and i'm the same way….I can't remember a time that I've not been an artist…..so thats interesting. And I read somewhere that you had you're first solo show when you were seven years old?  What was that like….how did that come about?  The whole concept of gallery and showing art and everything for children is very different. I was kind of bemused by it, but didn't really understand what an exhibition was….and when I was little I found going to museums incredibly boring.  I still think its really important to take children to museums….I think its really great and one or two things will really stick. Its definitely more of a grown-up's game.

John C. Reilly

Do you remember going to museums when you were a kid….or anything that inspired you when you were younger? Yeah, although I have to say, and I think this is the way it goes, you're whole artistic sensibility matures with time and I was far more interested in natural history museums. Dinosaurs or paintings? Dinosaur skeletons…definitely (laughs).

And your Skype paintings….you've always been a figurative painter….you've always drawn, but do you feel like you found some kind of voice through the Skype paintings? Absolutely, yes. Well, voice maybe not, but I think I've found a very distinctive path to pursue…something really specific and to my knowledge I don't know anyone else who is doing specifically this thing, so I'm really happy that I found this and its been really interesting to me and it continues to be really interesting to me and its like I keep adding on another layer….I got this show in London in October and I'm going to be doing something slightly different along the same line…so its been a rich story to tell.

So, figurative art, especially in todays times almost seems old fashion, comparatively to other artists that are working today and are showing their work….I'm thinking of Damian Hirst and Jeff Koons who use big factories…..Damien Hirst and Jeff Koons do a lot of figurative work…

 Thats true, but in the sense of painting to canvas…portraiture is essentially old fashion, but you have sort bridged this gap between that and this post-modernist element of using Skype….Yeah, I think there are a lot of figurative painters that are out there.  There are not many at all, that I know of, that don't use photography as an intermediary step. I think a lot of figurative painting nowadays is based on photography in one form or another, like John Currin or Jenny Saville or Richard Phillips or also more abstract people like Peter Doig. I think there is a lot of figurative art out there….Chuck Close……but most of it has this step in between and in terms of people who really work directly from life....I know [David] Hockney does that sometimes…..[Lucien] Freud….god rest his soul…..he's no longer here, but he definitely did….he was the man when it came to that. Other than that, can you think of anyone?

Well, that is what I'm saying, especially Freud and Hockney, they sort of come from an old school of painting that was…..Well Freud yes, Hockney not so much….Hockney does whatever. I mean Hockney does large-scale video installations and working on Ipads and he uses photography a lot in his painting, but he also does work from life….he's out there in Yorkshire painting plein air…..old school….he does it all.

Michael Stipe

Do you take commissions? Yes.

Can you describe a typical Skype sitting? Sure, fix a time, fix a date….thats always very, very difficult and time consuming it seems (laughs). And it really depends on the sitter more than anything.  I sort of follow their lead in terms of how communicative or silent they want to be….I really like both….in a funny way if you have a very lively conversation going its easier for me, because there is something to distract my conscious brain going on and my body, my hand-eye can sort of take over and do its thing and my brain doesn't really interfere that much. Having said that, often the very talkative sittings aren't necessarily the ones that lead to the best paintings. Some of the really quite silent sittings are in a funny way more intense….maybe its purer experience….. this thing of sitting and being seen and seeing someone.  Its a relatively unique thing to do and if you allow it to be a silent moment I think that the specificity comes out more. Does that make sense?

Totally, that makes sense. I mean you do a lot portraits of friends and people you know, so the reason why I ask that is because it can be entirely different to paint a total stranger. Which I have done.

Do you have a favorite? Anyone thats been more engaging than anybody else? Well, I really like painting my friend Waris [Ahluwalia]….he's just super easy.  We just have this ongoing conversation while we paint….either from life or from Skype and he is not only very distinctive looking and therefore easy to paint but also just a very easy to talk to person and so we have a lot fun when we're painting, but in terms of sitters for the show….I painted Terence Koh….do you know who I mean?

The artist? And he was very….he was wonderful….he was very silent….very quiet…..very still….very focused and the painting as a result is pretty dope I think and its really….if I dare say so myself….a very powerful image and so I think the fact that he was so silent and so focused on the process really helped that. I was completely exhausted at the end of it. I mean there was no chit chat to keep me going and to keep me relaxed…..I needed to go and lie down after I finished that painting.

Waris Ahluwalia

You said earlier that each one of your shows there is something different. What can we expect from your show next week? Well, one element to this show that I'm really happy with is recycling an idea earlier series called There You Are Dave, which is 20 paintings of the same guy…..its this guy David Le Fleming I painted from London who is a friend of mine….he's from New Zealand originally so we met there….we were in a couple of group shows way back when and then he moved to London and we re-connected and he was kind enough to sit for me 20 times…..I think his girlfriend really didn't like me at the end of it (laughs).  Then putting that together you become aware of different they all are…..they really are 20 different paintings and completely different people in the paintings although they are all the same person. Part of that maybe is in the inaccuracies of what I'm doing, but part of it is also just I think whatever chemistry was that was brought to us on any given day and tying them together in a block in a sequence and thats something new that I haven't done on Skype before and I really like that. I had written on my easel….I've scrawled in pencil: "Make new mistakes," which I think is really important and thats an opportunity to do that you just start again…do the same thing again…and you become aware of what you are repeating and then you can correct that and you can make a new mistake. I love working repetitively. Its always really great to paint the same person several times.  Its almost a sense of disappointment if I do a session with someone and it turns out too well on the first session, because I know the second one is not going to be as good as that if I do another one. Where if I mess up the first one up, I can do a second sitting and sometimes that can be a good one.

Did you go to school for art or study art or anything like that? I went to a school in New Zealand for a year.

Who are some artists you admire or are inspired by or influenced by?  Hockney is definitely a thinker and a painter that I really like…..he gets my mind reeling and I love a lot of his work.  I really like Ryan McGinley actually ….do you know who I mean?

The photographer? Yeah, the thing that I love about Ryan is the way that he is managing to do something with nudes…..I would love to be able to find something as powerful as he has with painting, but I think that with portraits its really easy to get a story because every person brings a story with them, but with nudes, especially painted from life, its much harder, and I'm working on that….I mean I've done a lot of nudes and I'm still working on that, but I don't necessarily show them that much and I hope in the next few years or so to crack that nut…..and come up with something really fresh to do with nudes….simply because you have to hold the same pose for three, four hours….there not much you can do with a naked body….there are some various but not holdable that amount of time.  So, its difficult to come up with something new, whereas Ryan goes out and throws people off cliffs or puts them in caves and has them interact with wild animals….so they're just full of life! You know?

Yeah, his work is really beautiful. Really wild. And who else? Ask me on any given day and I'll give you different answer. Marlene McCarthy is really interesting….she is someone who I just discovered again….she's does those giant biro drawings….she did a whole thing with apes….very sexy…..very weird….very kind of ethereal, but drawn with ball point pen on huge pieces of paper. She's awesome. John Currin, definitely. I mean there is just all sorts of great people out there. And I do absolutely worship the old masters….I'll take Van Gogh any day.  There is very exciting about seeing work by people who are still around. I really like going to galleries and discovering it a contemporary painter.

So you're interested exploring nudes. I mean whats next? I can't reveal my future plans yet…..for the mere fact that you say something and then life happens. Its a slippery slope to go down.  I can that there is more painting…..there will be a show in London in October…..and there is both do more using technological mediation in one form or another…..and actually heighten the use of technology, but I'm also looking forward to doing some stuff that does't involve technology as a kind of sideline. I'm going to do both. And it will be more figurative painting…

ISTANBUL’74 presents There you are, an exhibition of new work by Sandro Kopp at Lehmann Maupin Gallery on view 25 January – 4 February, 2012 at 201 Chrystie Street. Text by Oliver Maxwell Kupper for Pas Un Autre

Kirsten Dunst and Sandro Kopp

Good Times: The Photography of Ben Pobjoy

You  could say that the photographer Henri Cartier Bresson was a punk, because he didn't give a fuck.  The punk ethos is all about not giving a fuck. Its not all about breaking the law per se, and its not all about not giving a fuck, but its the notion of changing the order of things. Its about upholding the sanctity of the holy shades of grey. Henri Cartier Bresson was a punk, because he saw the world in a passionately different way. His photographs are vibrant, stark, and violent depictions of his time told from a voice of artistic and spiritual dissension. If you look up the word punk in the dictionary you'll find a number of definitions: prostitute, novice, beginner, young man, petty gangster, hoodlum, ruffian and so on. A punk is a soul on the edge – on the precipice of an infinite, metaphysical abyss. Ben Pobjoy could be any of those things or none of those things, but the ethos of punk is very much alive in his photography. Pobjoy, a photographer from Montreal, is a fervent documentarian of the human experience and his images are an attestation to his seemingly intense curiosity.  From his portfolio of photographic essays, a zine, called The Tourist, the current issue of which featuring over 40 pages of exclusive photographs of Justin Bieber, and a digital adaptation, called The War of Spoils, of a journal kept from his raucous days in a band which includes polaroids of drug induced debauchery, destroyed hotel rooms, and lots of nudity – it is plainly clear that Pobjoy is practicing dissent on the same precipice.  His photographs tell the common story of our downfall, our vulnerability, our vice, and our eventual hope with the piercing and blinding vision of some kind of silver lining. But most of all – like all prophecies of the great punks before us – Pobjoy's photographs are a telling reminder of the true circumference of the iceberg that will destroy us all. Read interview and see more photos after the jump.

Can you remember the first image you ever took?  Truthfully, I can't remember the first image I ever took- only because I grew up in a home where my Father practiced photography as a hobby so there were always 35mm SLRs sitting around the house. While I don't remember the first image I ever took, I do fondly remember being real young- like being 5 years old- and going on walks in a local marsh with my Father and him occasionally passing his camera to me to let me fire off a few frames. Despite being real young, I was fascinated- that with a camera- you could venture off into the world and document it however you wanted to.

Your style seems much more photo-documentary than tableau vivant or studio, what do you think led you to to a more candid type of photography? When my Father was in his early 20s he was a paratrooper in Great Britain's Royal Air Force. He served in Northern Ireland during the Troubles and carried a SLR without permission. When he was patrolling- and he wasn't under attack- he would photograph the patrols, his peers, arms dumps, arrests and beyond. While he never boasted about the images he shot (he was actually very private about them), they were in an envelope in our home, and I'd look through them every now and then when I was a kid. I liked that that they were filmic, had a narrative and that I could ask him about the people, places and things within the images. While I was too young to grasp what I was looking at, I was obviously looking at documentary photography and it made a deep impression on me. Combined with my Father's subscriptions to National Geographic and Life, I just grew up loosing myself in documentary photography and photo essays. I just loved how transportive they were in that they could take me to worlds beyond my immediate world.

A few years later, my Mum worked as a set stylist in a production house where they created 'sets' for magazine shoots. Every now and then she'd bring me along and I'd observe the whole process of sets being styled, lighting systems being set up and models being directed then photographed. I remember thinking how orchestrated it was, and basically well, how phoney it was. It was such a departure from documentary photography which was so much more off-the-cuff and natural.

Hilariously, I started doing 'hand modeling' at the production house where I would be photographed holding game pieces for board game packaging. I remember being like 9 years old and having to hold a chess piece above a board for like 30 minutes and my arm started to tire and the photographer kept barking at me to keep my hand raised and steady. It was so unenjoyable and artificial that that sort of 'production-heavy' photography made such a poor impression on me- something I've never been able to get over.

Who are some of your biggest inspirations or influences? When I was a young teen, I got into punk and loved zines like HeartattaCk and Maximumrocknroll because they documented the scene I was a part of. The energy inherent within the live music photography intrigued me so I really liked the work of Glen E. Friedman, Gordon Ball and Ryan Russell. However, it didn't really satisfy my appreciation for visual storytelling as most of the images were- despite being fabulous- just these 'one off' live images or portraits, and I didn't have much of a personal interest in shooting music photography. I then started to get into the work of documentary photographers like Robert Frank, Martin Parr, James Nachtwey and all the Magnum photographers. Thereafter, my appreciation widened to encompass fine art photographers like Nan Goldin, Larry Clark and others who utilized reality as the basis within their works.

However, my appreciation these days has widened to encompass many fashion photographers since I was gifted with a medium format camera last year, and began to experiment with studio photography (just to expand my skills). Because of this, I started to look at the work of Richard Avedon, Helmut Newton, David Bailey and others of that ilk in a whole different light. In one way or another, I've cherry picked something from all of the above. Basically, I aspire to shoot documentary photographs that hopefully possess a degree of style that is commonly associated with fashion photography. I just like honest images that are stylized, and by that I mean possess a 'look' that people would can associate with the photographer that shot them.

You are just about to release the second issue of your zine called The Tourist which features exclusive photos of Justin Bieber. It isn't so much about Justin Beiber as it is a treatise on fandom and child fame, right? Can you tell me how The Tourist zine came about and shed a little more light on the current issue? By day, I'm a Creative Director at a creative services company I co-founded with my best friend Shawn Butchart who is also a Creative Director. We have a sister office in New York City that is run by Jamie-James Medina who is himself a Creative Director, Photographer and a Director. Medina is a photographer for The Observer in the UK and often- typically over late night dinners after working on projects together- we'd discuss photography. He'd often speak about the state of photography, and specifically how long form photo essays were increasingly being given less real-estate in print publications due to the rise of the internet and the fall of print publications. Unfortunately, photo essays mostly now exist as slide shows online and it's just such a terrible, cluttered format and experience (i.e. you're trying to look at an essay and it's surrounded by blinking ad banners or intrusive ad vokens). So, Medina was the real impetus behind launching the Tourist as a collaborative interoffice publishing project where we'd essentially put one photographer on the road with one musical act and have the work contextualized by an intro by a cultural luminary. While we could've released each issue as a coffee table book- as the content is of that quality- we opted to release it in a zine format so it would be affordable to everyone and just really unique overall.

The Teen Issue - which features images of Justin Bieber on tour taken by Alex Sturrock - is a really different look at Bieber. Sturrock's images are very frank - capturing things as they are. That's not to say that the images are unflattering- because they definitely aren't- it's just that they show how intense Bieber's touring life is, and how fanatic his fans are. While the issue revolves around Bieber- to me- it's more about the relationship between child stardom and the general public's intense mania of, and fascination with, celebrity.

War of the Spoils is a really interesting site. What was the impetus behind it? Last year I turned 30 and randomly revisited all these journals I maintained in my teenage years where I'd shoot a polaroid, write an anecdote and glue it into a book. Between August 1998 and January 2007 I ended up creating 9 volumes of the journals that housed over 2000 polaroids. For years I ignored them- they were just so stupid in terms of the images and the anecdotes- and I was kind of embarrassed by them. However, looking at them as an adult I realized that the journals are unique documentation of youth and all the insanity and chaos that goes with it. I decided to start a blog called War of Spoils and post a polaroid along with its corresponding anecdote each day- mainly as a way to share the old photos with friends that I grew up with (but who are now strewn all over the world). However, the reaction has been really crazy- people beyond my small group of friends have gotten a real kick out of War of Spoils and publications are really interested in writing about the blog. In a universal way, I guess we all do stupid stuff as kids and people seem to really relate to the content.

You seem to be using the internet to your fullest artistic advantage in order to get your work out there.  What are some of your thoughts on art, more specifically photography, in the digital age?  I think the internet can be a fantastic platform for sharing work and accessing an audience that you could never reach with an editorial in a regional publication or with an art exhibition that takes place in a specific city during a defined time frame. The internet is basically this living, breathing repository of content that is accessible 24/7 wherever an internet connection exists anywhere in the world, and I find that really fascinating. If you're a photographer, why wouldn't you take advantage of it? I just think that the internet is an incredibly powerful tool for enlarging your audience, and this audience- at least in my experience- is loyal and takes interest in my other projects so it increases my value to publishers and curators so it's basically a win-win situation for everyone. I get to make more work, my audience gets to see more of my work and publishers and curators get to make increased money off of my work, and the internet is basically the 'driver' of this entire content 'food chain' scenario.

What's next? I'm currently at work on both The Apostate and Father, Son and the Holy Ghost which are two, multi-year spanning documentary photo essays. However- and this if the first time I've mentioned it publicly- but I'm also working on a new, currently untitled exhibition slated for 2013 that is a collaboration with artist and sign painterDave Arnold. Working under the alias Black Lung, Arnold and I are collaborating on a new body of work where I'm shooting high end, B&W medium format portraits of men and women in states of undress and Arnold is painting over the 35" x 35" prints. The 'process concept' is that I typically approach photography in a really raw, unplanned way whereas Arnold approaches his painting in a very planned, orderly way. For this collaborative project, we're both using our traditional tools (I'm working with a camera and Arnold is working with paint) but we're swapping approaches- as in I'm shooting fine, well-lit fashion influenced portraits and Arnold will be painting on them with mixed media in a very raw way. It's in its early phase right now but the initial works are pretty outrageous in that they're this highly visual bombardment. Dave Arnold and I are really excited about the new body of work, and we cannot wait to share it with the world as it's vastly different yet totally connected to the work we've previously made.

Visit Ben Pobjoy's portfolio, stay up to date with War of the Spoils, and stay tuned The Tourist zine.

Text by OLIVER MAXWELL KUPPER for PAS UN AUTRE

Les Testaments Trahis: An Interview with Gian Cruz

Gian Cruz is an up and coming photographer from Manila, Philippines who is also studying art theory and criticism at university.  With hints of Daido Moriyama, Cruz's photography are a quotidian, photographic diary  of his life. Razor sharp grainy black & white images capture his subject often with their heads, arms, legs, face cut out from the photograph entirely.  Gian Cruz is definitely a photographer to keep an eye on.  See interview after the jump. 

PAS UN AUTRE: What brought you to photography?

GIAN CRUZ: There are a lot of things that brought me to photography, but the two major motivations would be my fascination with cinema and the inherent paradox with taking photographs which I got from reading [Milan] Kundera. Being a cinéphile led me towards this desire to render my quotidien into cinematic images or to fashion photos that I take as if they are from some film or collectively as if they are film stills. My aesthetic was much inspired by the films I’ve loved from childhood which were Wong-Kar Wai films and a lot of films from the Nouvelle Vague cinéastes.

As for the paradox that charmed me with photography, it’s something lifted from the pages of Milan Kundera’s Les Testaments Trahis that has gone to a state of hyperawareness each time I take photographs. He said something about remembrance as to not being the opposite of forgetting but rather a form of it. Ever since, I have read that, it hasn’t failed to escape my mind. As memory is often seen through images, I find photography as a means of forgetting or forging elsewheres. For instance, you could be having a difficult time in your life yet on the surface these photos look like images of utmost sophistication and as these images further themselves into reproducibility, it turns things into something else. In a lot of the things that I do, I often like to see it in this love/hate relationship, or in this ironic manner because I believe it’s something that makes your images richer perhaps with meaning or some other unspoken aspect that your spectator could fathom from them.

AUTRE: Can you remember the first image you ever took?

CRUZ: I can vaguely remember the first image I ever took. When I started taking photos, I wasn’t really too big on the quality of my images but things started to change when I started to find my photographs as a crucial means of self-expression and of exploring my identity. Probably, maturity and the things I exposed myself to over the years- films, books, etc. paved way to take photography more seriously.

AUTRE: How does living in the Philippines inspire your work?

CRUZ: Living in the Philippines present itself as some form of paradox. I often come up with this love/hate discourse about my country. Quite specifically, it’s more about Manila, the city I live in. At times, my images could be some declaration of love for Manila and the things I love about it. On other occasions, it is this profound accumulation of anguish of being in it and this difficulty of living in a city wherein you feel you’re always underrated because the things you love do not fall into the aesthetic canon of the public here. And in this sort of love/hate relationship, I find it enriching my creative process. I think if it was all about loving something, it would turn out to be a dead-end because there wouldn’t be a sense of self-reflexivity working its way. Irony is crucial these days or perhaps humourising yourself finds itself more entertaining.

AUTRE: Who are some of your biggest influences?

CRUZ: Well, in the domain of photography my biggest influences include Nan Goldin, Jeurgen Teller, Robert Doisneau, Richard Avedon, Peter Lindbergh, Helmut Newton, Evelyn Jane Atwood, Sally Mann, Inez & Vinoodh, Robert Mapplethorpe, Karim Sadli, Sofia Sanchez et Mauro Mongiello, to name a few. And quite recently, I’ve also developed a deep admiration for the photography of Sunny Suits because of the palpable intimacy resting on her images.

Photographic references aren’t necessarily an impulse for taking photographs chez moi. Other domains like art, music, dance, literature, and cinema often inspire me as well. A few names I find indispensable and always inspiring me would be: Eric Rohmer, Claude Chabrol, Georges Bataille, Patti Smith, Bertrand Bonello, Serge Gainsbourg, Paul Eluard, Wislawa Szymborska, Alain Resnais, Johannes Brahms, Wong Kar Wai, Jean-Luc Godard, Friedrich Nietzsche, Dries Van Noten, Melvil Poupaud, Jean-Pierre Melville, Yves Saint Laurent, Jacques Demy, Maria Callas, Grégoire Chamayou, Nicolas Bourriaud, Pina Bausch, Mehdi Belhaj-Kacem, Elizabeth Peyton, Michel Maffesoli, Jean Baudrillard, Susan Sontag, Merce Cunningham, Joris-Karl Huysmans, Marguerite Yourcenar, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, J.M. Coetzee, Marguerite Duras, Marcel Proust, Walter Benjamin, Alain Badiou.

AUTRE: What do you think about when you look through the viewfinder?

I often am intuitive when I take photos. I can easily get lost in the moment and get into this frenzy of taking one image after another. At times, it could also be this subject gesturing you towards these particular angles I’d find aesthetically pleasing. There’s really no singular thought that comes into my mind each time I look through the viewfinder, it is dependent on my mood, the subject, what’s currently going on.

You can follow Gian Cruz's blog here.  Text by Oliver Maxwell Kupper for Pas Un Autre. 

AUTRE: Who are some of your favorite subjects to photograph?

CRUZ: My friends are often my favourite subjects to photograph. I like taking images of people I am in close terms with because you’d have a way of fashioning how the images would turn out to be that speaks of your relationship with them. That in itself already says a lot of things or would have the potential of taking your photos to some profound elsewhere. It’s like taking pride of being able to see things the way only you would. Often times, my bestfriend Mark Arvin ends up in front my lens and he humorously declares himself as my official muse. Other than my friends, I like taking photos of objects that create narratives of something in lieu of the person. I’m quite the romantic often taking interest in something like a photo of my belongings like the books I’m reading (I seem to even find them more charming when they’ve gained creases or the usual wearing out because I bring them along with me a lot) or the albums I’m listening to, a well worn article of clothing and many other possible objects as being able to tell more about yourself yet not giving everything away in a photograph.

AUTRE: Whats next?

CRUZ: By now, I ought to finish my postgraduate thesis on how death is being represented in contemporary Philippine art, as I am currently an Art Theory and Criticism major at the University of the Philippines-Diliman. Other than that, I ought to pursue photography or fine arts overseas. Perhaps if opportunities come into place an institution in Paris, New York or London or elsewhere would do me good. I like the idea of moving to a new city, which would enable me to grow as an artist. Moreover, there is also this growing concern to find platforms on which to exhibit my photographs, as I’d like to share them to a bigger audience. And if there is some more time, I’d probably be painting self-portraits although a bigger dream project would be to extend my photography into a full-blown film since cinema has always been something I’m passionate about.

No Time For Flowers: The Photography of Andreea Preda

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Andreea Preda is a young photographer based in Madrid.  Her photographs are delicate, intimate, glimpses of her own life. There is a richness in Preda's photographs that owe a lot to a sense of innocence and lightheartedness without the treachery of the mundane or quotidien.  Preda's commitment to the analog process also give a certain cinematic element to her images with a striking palette of colors and shocks of sunshine. Read interview after the jump.

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Would you please introduce yourself?  I was born twenty-one years ago in the south of Romania but I grown up and still live in Madrid, Spain. I’m currently studying literature and I take photographs because it makes me a little happier and fulfills my desire to reveal myself to others without having to use words, which I distrust.

What inspires you the most? I enjoy looking through other photographer’s work, I guess a lot of inspiration comes from that, or at least a clearer idea of what I like to see on a photograph and what I don’t. Films and paintings are also a great source of inspiration. It’s all about images that come to my mind and give me the impulse of wanting to reproduce them in my own context, with whatever I have handy and adding to it my own emotions. Beautiful light is also crucial when it comes to pressing the shutter.

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Can you remember the first photograph you ever took?My father used to take a lot of pictures when I was little so photography was neither a mystery to me nor something I found attractive for a very long time, as I was only playing the model. However, in the midst of my teenage years I started taking self-portraits as a way of expressing myself. I was very shy but still wanted people to know me better, to understand me. So I started taking pictures with shitty digital cameras or even the webcam, anything would do. One day I discovered a very old camera of my father and begin playing around with it. I totally fell in love with the results and since then I had stick to analogue photography. So, no, I can’t remember the first photograph I ever took but this is how it all began.

Favorite quote to live by? I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, "If this isn't nice, I don't know what is." Kurt Vonnegut said this.Not really a quote to live by, just a sentence I repeat to myself sometimes, when I find it difficult to see any bliss in life.

Whats next?Keep taking pictures and hope that someone will like them.

www.andreeapreda.com

TEXT BY OLIVER MAXWELL KUPPER FOR PAS UN AUTRE

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The World According to KEEFJNAK: An Interview with Alexander Keefe

"Playa Los Yuyos, Lima: una prueba perfecta cont. Ectoplasm enters in the messianic guise of the perfect proof, the ultimate ghost-effect, visual and haptic, a new monstrance at the very edges of the sensorium and its modern prostheses―it exceeds photography (it cannot be properly photographed) it exceeds touch (it can be touched but only with grave danger) — it can barely be seen — emergent like a spider’s web cocooning the medium in a sticky veil, a prophylactic balm to salve the wounds of materialism, Casaubon’s key to all mythologies."

You could say that, unbeknownst to us, some sort of kismetic spirt is colluding with our lives, telling us when to go when we don't exactly know the direction or telling us what to say when the words aren't quite there. You could also say that a certain sense of wanderlust is innate and inexorable–the eternal wondering about magical, faraway places that seem entirely painted by daydreams and travel writers before us. And when you combine these two forces, one more corporeal and the other a tad more phantasmagorical–two forces conceivably as tightly wound as the double helix of our genetic code–it is a catalyst for something else altogether. Tarrah Krajnak, a documentary photographer who was born in Peru in 1979 in an orphanage run by the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart and grew up in Ohio, and Alexander Keefe, an ex-professor who studied Sanskrit and Indian Studies at Harvard Universities, and a freelance writer for publications such as Artforum and Bidoun magazine, crossed paths in Burlington, Vermont and the rest, as they say, was history. Their online travel diary, called Keefjnak–an amalgam of their surnames–is a collaborative effort to document the world around them on their journey in the great tradition of travel documentation.  A great travel writer such as Ernest Hemingway and any scholar of his would admit that his fantastical stories of seafaring adventures and bullfighting would not hold the same weight without his extensive real life adventures. On Keefjnak, Tarrah Krajnak's somber, yet liberating photographs of a dream-like South America are supplanted with Alexander Keefe's brilliant, poetic text and historical minutia to paint a portrait of the same kind seething wanderlust that all great adventurers share in order to remind us that life is happening to us whether we like it or not. 

Barranco, Lima: the perfect proof cont. And so there is always an anxiety about the nature of their evidentiary claims, the proofs offered by photography and recorded sound in the late 19th and early 20th centuries required not just display but performance, hypnosis, and scripting… argument to fend off the lurking potential for disbelief and “ridicule.”

What is the Keefjnak project? Keefjnak is the project that Tarrah and I started as a daily photo/text blog... kind of a shared project while we were traveling around the world for six months working on other stuff. We made a portmanteau of our two last names and thought it sounded cool. We also liked that it was the only Keefjnak on the internet: a tabula rasa to do with whatever we wanted. We weren't really sure what we wanted to do with it, so that was appropriate. We just knew we didn't want to do a typical travel blog...

How did you two meet? We met when our paths crossed in Burlington, Vermont. Neither of us is from there, but Tarrah was living and teaching there at UVM for five years. I spent a couple years there as a kind of break from life in New Delhi, India, where I'd been living and working for several years previously. We hit it off.

Where did your journey start from? It started when we left Omaha where we were staying for a few months while Tarrah did a residency at the Bemis Center.

“Like the radio, it picks up voices from beyond the vibrations of the human senses but unlike the radio, the broadcast comes from a world which is tuned to rarer vibrations than our own, stepped down, or transformed, to us through ether by the agency of this ectoplasmic substance.

You mentioned that you post your photos and Alex posts his writing without consultation, is it safe to say that your photos and his text are a representation of how a visited place affected you both? Actually there is some consultation... But it is pretty low-key and usually takes the form of a quick editorial suggestion. Sometimes I'll show her a text that I'm considering and say "should I cut that part out?" She almost always says "yes" to that question for some reason... Ha! But I like it. I think of the texts for Keefjnak as the product of a kind of reductive rather than additive process. As for the photos, if she's stuck on deciding between a couple of them, she asks which I think is better for the blog. As for the question of representation, I don't know if that is really what the text and photos are doing. The photos are taken onsite in the various places we go so at least on some level they have to be tied to place. But I think that in the same way that my texts and Tarrah's photos sometimes converge and seem to speak directly to each other, and sometimes diverge and seem to operate independently, that our trip and itinerary works the same way. That is to say, sometimes our location and trip enter into dialogue with the texts and photo in a direct or explicit way, other times not at all. We always wanted the Keefjnak project to be not-obvious and kind of dry, stingy and austere, even cold. We don't want the text, photo and trip to be engaged in some big long group-hug and we don't want people viewing/reading the blog to feel that way either!

Any harrowing stories thus far from your travels or a experience that stands out the most? Tarrah got food-poisoning from a salad in Wisconsin and then ended up getting an upgrade on a flight from Chicago to Mexico City to first class so she could be closer to the bathroom and puke in luxurious comfort while I sat alone in the back of the plane wondering what was going on. At one point in my ambien-fogged semi-sleep I heard a flight attendant ask over the intercom "Is there a doctor on the plane?" I was worried. Then it turned out it was for someone else.

What's next? Well we are in Lima until late January working on a couple projects: Tarrah is shooting portraits of elderly nuns from the Catholic order called the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart. They are German and have lived here in Lima at a convent in the back of a hospital for some 50 years. They also happen to run the orphanage that Tarrah was adopted from, which is how she got interested in the project. Some related work that she did in Reading, Pennsylvania at a retirement home for the missionary nuns is on her website: really affecting portraiture, some of it pretty harrowing, some more beatific. I'm working on writing an article on early video art for Bidoun magazine, a long-term writing project of mine that is being funded by Creative Capital and the Warhol Foundation. After Peru, we're making our way to India to work collaboratively on a project related to video art and the Indian space program in the 70s. I'm preparing by collecting stamps related to Indian telecommunications satellites.

Stay tuned to Keefjnak to follow Tarrah Krajnak and Alexander Keefe's journey. Text by Oliver Maxwell Kupper & Abbey Meaker for Pas Un Autre. All photos and captions Copyright © 2011 Tarrah Krajnak and Alexander Keefe.  

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“There is an age-long and invisible force, termed ectoplasm, re-discovered by modern science, which has met with ridicule from every walk of life."

Dreams Are Gone: An Interview with The Kloaks

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"Welcome to hell," beckons the song Dreams Are Gone, a demo track by a new, promising act called The Kloaks. Consciousness derailed and youth lost – the Kloaks belong to that brand of the disenfranchised by-product of suburban, societal disillusionment....the outcast strangled to death by the zeitgeist and bled out by the scythe of artistic angst.  With satanic overtones, the Kloaks' sound is a cacophony of gothic melodies that paints the dim portrait of a smoky basement dripping with black candle wax and pentagrams and their demo Dreams Are Gone sounds like the kind of song left on the record player after your mom finds you swinging from the rafters.  I was eager to learn more about The Kloaks so I emailed the band and Darren Hanson (guitar and vocals) wrote back with some enlightening answers to a few of my questions. Read the interview and listen to Dreams Are Gone after the jump.

Who are The Kloaks?  We are Darren Hanson from San Francisco on guitar and vocals, Michael Vincent Patrick from New York City on bass and vocals, and Ben Lee from Taipei on drums.

How would you describe your sound? It's like frost on rough concrete in the morning light.

How did The Kloaks come to be?I knew Michael because he was a record producer so I sent him some music and he liked it so much that he wanted to collaborate on the project ideas as a band. We share a similar aesthetic for music so collaborating works really well.

Inspirations and influences? Sex, death, love, sorrow, rejoice. We talk about a lot of the darkness behind closed doors.

Any plans for a full album? We are working on an album now. Our first two singles should be out in early 2012, just in time for the apocalypse.

Whats next? Well, I was thinking about sleeping but I can't because of the drugs.

TEXT BY OLIVER MAXWELL KUPPER FOR PAS UN AUTRE