Starting Small

"Everything that I made afterwards, either good or bad, starts from there, from this film on the River Po."

Michelangelo Antonioni

 

Favourites #3

Most months, some weeks, some days, I acquire a new favourite photographer. There is often something linking the majority of the photographers that I throw myself at like some horny teenager. A left of centre approach to documentary photography is usually the bottom line. An instinct for capturing intimacy, secrecy, moments of shared emotion. This week, my new favourite photographer is Olivia Arthur. Her work, particularly her images taken in Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Georgia, are such a rich and strange insight into worlds that are often hidden behind doors. She is also involved in Fishbar, a pretty incredible photographer's space and small scale publisher. This week, she's got my heart.

Secrets

"Back then, I don’t think I really knew what intimacy was, but during the making of this film, I understood that I didn’t want to steal anything from these people. I wanted to reach a state of intimacy with them that was genuine and to be honest about what I wanted to do. Although neither did I want to completely ruin the magic of discovering things together by explaining too much. The trust and intimacy was a process and the friendships grew as I continued to film with them. We would do creative things together or I would help them out with certain things. It was really special. But saying that reduces the process, somehow, since I’m sure most documentary filmmakers experience that in one way or another. But I think doing those creative things together gave them insight into what I was trying to do, making me less “the enemy behind the camera” who was trying to steal things from them, and more like a collaborator."

image and words:

Alma Har'El on Bombay Beach

Depilation

Earlier today, while I flicked through script pages to rewrite, trying to think of bomb proof solutions, I indulged in a little procastinatory desktop clean up and found some images that I shot during a film that I made a few years back - 'Skin'. It was a brilliant and strange shoot. Over a few weeks we filmed with taxidermists willing to work with human skin, international experts on rare moths, vellum conservators, 18th century botanical academics, funeral directors, yakuza skin preservationists and, of course, the incredible subjects of the film, eX de Medici* and Geoff Ostling. Sometimes this working life is a very strange one. Now, back to it.

 

 

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* eX de Medici: "You need to be a blunt edged instrument. I’ll describe an incident so you understand what I mean. I went to the cinema recently with a friend of mine – I used to go to the cinema a lot but I hadn’t been in a quite a few years. I sat down and they were playing the ads before the main feature. The sound and the vision were incredible like this way and that[waving her arms about] ... and everybody was just sitting there and so I thought ‘geez, this is a blunt edge instrument’. My friend couldn’t hear me but I was yelling in her ear, ‘if this is what people are used to, fuck, we’ll have to change our tactics’. If people are so desensitised to everything then a mild clobbering by me is going to look subtle."