Emilie Lauwers and the complex simplicity of collaboration

I received Emilie Lauwers' brilliant collaborative book, Er is geen boek ('There is no book') two weeks ago (it's not for sale I'm afraid. Only twenty five copies were made) . It's a collaborative project where Emilie worked with group of initially resistant 18-year-olds in the town of Zelzate in Belgium to create a picture of their town. I am struck by the book's multiple layers, by its complexity. In the visual arts, and photography in particular, sometimes, the complex is a shield for further complexity. You end up with deeper and deeper levels of complexity. Einstein said something about the genius being taking the complex and making it simple.  That's what Lauwers does with the book.

The dilemma for collaborative projects is how do you create something of value while involving those being collaborated with, giving them an authentic voice, and  ending up with something that is actually worthwhile.

The basic model of giving people a camera and asking them to photograph is not enough. It doesn't work unless it's framed in such a way with supporting workshops, ideas, input so you get something out of it at the end that is usable. This is what  Wendy Ewald did with her giving people cameras, creating parallel lives out of children's dreamworlds, memories and imaginatioins.

And then she used collage, paint, text and installation to modify these works so there is a creative input, another layer of collaboration where the work has an impact that ties in with how those elements are framed - which you see again and again in all kinds of wonderful ways.

Again, when it's great it's never random, it doesn't happen by accident, the work is made in conjunction with events and conversations and engagement leading towards a particular end with the idea of a link between the audience and the worlds of those photographed..

If you don't frame it, if you just hand out cameras, then the danger is you end up with a bunch of bad pictures. People take banal pictures already. Give them a camera and you just end up with more banal pictures. It's all very nice, but you know. Bad photography is bad photography and just sticking the word collaborative in front doesn't make it good.

One idea people often have about collaboration is that it's about presenting things positively. It's not. It's about framing things in three dimensions. I remember seeing an exhibition of collaborative work at a musuem featuring people with a particular national background. The intention was to show the positive side of the country. It was text-image, using interviews to expand the works. Every interviewee talked about how the different regions of the country loved each other, how it was one big happy family wherever you went in the world, how there were no problems whatsoever, and if there were they were sorted out honestly and fairly by the elders.

There might have been some truth in that, but it bore no relation whatsoever to how those people saw the place in different circumstances. Somewhere along the line a consensus had been made to present a united smokescreen. This collaboration was a public front, a marketing campaign which was pure propaganda.

The problem, of course, is that sometimes that is part of the deal. I remember Jess Crombie of Save the Children talking about the difficulty posed when people in a refugee camp in Syria were showing fake videos of atrocities. A bigger dilemma than the videos being fake (even if what they represented was not fake) was the problem of how can you tell the story of people being so desperate that they need to show these fake videos, they need to tell their story somehow. And in a cruel and spiteful country like the UK, you simply can't. You need to counter the hate-filled propaganda of the government and mainstream media with something altogether less complex. Complex narratives are not often completely counter-effective. Pictures of crying babies still sell. Pictures of crying babies still raise money.

That being said there are still alternative ways of working and my favourite Patrick Willocq Save the Children Image picture  of Anicet, the Malaria Doctor, which I never tire of looking at is a case in point. It's engaged, it's positive, and it's collaborative but retains the authorship that makes it such a great work. And you know there was a whole process which was incredibly difficult that led to the making of the work. This is what he said about it.

“I wanted to show real children, involve the subjects, listen to them and create a set together staging their lives and desires,” says Willocq. I wanted the resulting photos to be empowering representations of these children while upholding their dignity.”

It's positive, but it's also somehow three-dimensional with a back-story embedded within it, as well as links to possible futures. It doesn't stand alone in other words, and is an example of Save the Children's Report on Putting People in the Picture and consulting the people in the picture with how they are represented. These are the conclusion in the report.


'Invest in more collaborative content. Save the Children will continue to ensure its communications provide a balanced portrayal of the individuals and communities it works with and use first-hand accounts wherever possible. It will also continue to explore and test the potential of more collaborative, contributor-led content for different purposes (including fundraising). Possible approaches include:

• increased use of first-hand accounts and contributor-led narratives

• engaging children and other contributors as spokespeople on issues, as well as in telling their own stories

• image making with the same individuals over time – enabling contributors to take a more active role in their portrayal, and the sharing of stories that show need, support and impact.


Anyway, that brings us back round to Emilie Lauwers collaborative project Er is Geen Boek ('There  is no book'). It's both a classic collaborative project which fits all of the categories above, as well as a form of mapping. It maps out the town of Zeldate in a literal sense, put also provides a place and a geography in which the people Emilie worked with are placed centre stage.

Most interestingly, it's a project that is in part about creating a sense of culture in a town that apparently has none, but is even more about bringing out the culture that is already there. It's a psychogeographic project that rethinks a place on the terms of the people who are living there, in terms of cultures that are suppressed within the institutions, expectations and organisations that are seen to dominate the physical and psychogical landscape. It's multi-layered and it's quite fantastic. It's collaborative but it also has a sense of direction and purpose. It's something to be proud of.

This is what she says about it.

'I was sent to Zelzate in January by an organisation that provides artistic projects to people who usually don't come across artistic projects at all. It was my first experience with people who didn't volunteer to sign up for my classes. 

The kids, aged 18, gave me a lot of resistance from the very start. Alos, I was bound to work with them on the heritage of their region or city. The city of Zelzate is surrounded by factories - a massive
metal factory and another one that makes asphalt. So the future isn't very bright for the teenagers growing up there. There's criminality, poverty, and a lot of frustration. 

The centre that takes care of Flanders heritage had nothing for me to work on. I asked them if I could do any research but they told me there was no book to read (Er is geen boek). 

So I  decided to ask the students to give me all the information I needed about the community they live in. We made scale models of all the important landmarks: the bus stop they love because it takes them far away, the bar they go to on friday nights, and so on.
They also gave me a whole pile of newspaper articles about gangs running their streets, toyshops burning down, bodies found in the park and so on. 

I told them to cut up the articles and re-shape the text into a different content. Meanwhile I visited the places they mentioned and photographed them. 

I would have loved to photograph the kids as well, but they were very sensitive to privacy matters - you'll see that even in the notebooks I gave them todraw themselves. 

All the above is what you'll see on the large pages of the book, along with some images taken on our days out, when I took them to the local museum, or to the control tower of the industrial bridge, or to the place where the giants of their traditional parades are stored. 

On the small pages, they show us some of their own lives. The class was very divided full of tension and concurrence. Whoever opened up with a personal story was lynched directly. It was a very hostile environment to get to creation. So I started to email the students individually and they sent me their stories along with the images printed on the small pages of the book; Kaylyn goes to the shooting club with her dad every snday. She keeps the cards with bullet holes, writing 'first time with a kalashnikov' for example. Chadian loves Disney. She collects all the maps of Disney Worlds around the planet. 

Robin gave me a particularly hard time  - always asking, "Is this compulsory?" or"Why is this necessary?", sitting by the window with his back turned towards me. On one of the last evenings however, he sent me a video of his hands on the piano, playing 'tempesta' by Beethoven. 


See more of Emilie's work here. 

Ban the burkini, the bikini, jeans, anything...

Now then, an overspill from the summer and the harassment of muslim women on French beaches and towns banning the burkini because it's extremist - what was that all about? Because the burkini is a way for women to get out of the house and go to the beach - and actually engage more in the society and world in which they live in.

So it's not about liberating women from the evil strictures of men who are stopping them from being free.

So what is it all about? 

Suite Francaise and Colloboration

Following on from the amazing Auschwitz and After by Charlotte Delbo, I read Suite Francaise by  Irène Némirovsky . Némirovsky was a Jew who then wrote about the German invasion and the responses of different people to the occupation.

It's a compelling book in which one's sympathies are allied to those who preserve their humanity through their daily relationships with both the Germans and their French compatriots. It's deeply critical of bourgeoise France, of those who seek to preserve their privilege and power, culture and wealth using the rhetoric of patriotism and class.

Instead, the real dignity lies with those who live, love, and resist - with the occupying forces and against them. The astonishing thing is the manuscript  was written at the time of the German occupation. And that Nemirovsky was deported to Auschwitz where she died in 1942. As such, the book (which was unfinished with only two out of an intended five volumes completed) is incredibly human and stands in some ways against the post-war rhetoric of collaboration and in particular the scapegoating of women who slept with German soldiers. Maybe that would have changed in the later volumes but you get the feeling that Nemirovsky had priveleged insights into the institutional workings of wartime France (or any other country for that matter).

In Suite Francaise, the people who stay human are the novel's equivalents of the women who had their heads shaved in the picture above  by  Capa. And the ones who are guilty are those who spout the cultural and class rhetoric of the Republic and engage in deep collaboration with the Germans; these themes were to have been developed in further volumes which were outlined but never written.

But then isn't that the point of Capa's picture in the end - that the only people who have any dignity are those who stand in the foreground of the pictures, that however much ideology you spout, to be human you have to be human. And in the picture above, with her love for her child, the shaven-headed woman is the only human being human.

Say Thank You: Ciara Leeming 's Dos and Don'ts

Kindness yesterday, politeness today. Who imagined photographers were such a lovely bunch. Well,that's the general idea of this series of posts; Be lovely and leave the shittiness to the shitty people.

Here is Luca Sage's original dos and don'ts and a great perspective from Anonymous that is a little different. Be lovely, be yourself!

Next up being lovely in the dos and don'ts series is Ciara Leeming. The pictures are from her Roma Project.

As a still relatively new photographer, my experience so far is largely in personal documentary projects. I work in editorial with another hat on – as a freelance newspaper and magazine journalist – and consequently my dealings so far have tended to be with commissioning editors rather than photo editors, of whom I still know very few.

Do look in your own metaphorical backyard for stories. I started on local newspapers but always hoped to work internationally. Sudden redundancy after just two years left me freelance and having to fund all my own work. It costs money to report well from abroad and for many of us in the lower echelons of the industry it would be struggle to pay fixers and other such costs for personal projects. 

This, combined with the frustration of parachuting into situations I understood little on the few foreign jobs I have done, led me to make a conscious choice to find projects on my own beat – on which I can work more slowly. This doesn’t mean you have to be parochial. My work with Roma migrants began a few streets away from my home in Manchester and yet it’s a big international issue. 

Do follow your nose. I believe a journalist’s job is to focus on what they think matters, irrespective of whether or not the masses – or indeed the mainstream media – are interested. I happen to cover issues which are quite niche anyway and my approach is often uncommercial, but I’m happy to do it anyway. 

I’ve covered urban regeneration in the north since 2006 and travelled all over the region to gather audio interviews from more than 30 residents fighting to keep their homes, work which I largely disseminated myself online. I just think it’s important and that is my job – whether anyone else cares or not.

Do find subjects which fascinate you. If you want to work on longer-term projects you need to look for stories you can fall in love with – this passion will shine through to all who see the work.

Don’t worry about making it pay. Of course we all have to make a living, but some work can become a loss leader. My Roma work began as a self-funded MA project produced on a shoestring with the main investment being lots of my time, but it has led directly to other funding and work. 

I successfully applied for an Arts Council grant and a Side Gallery commission off the back of it and The Big Issue in the North’s sister charity sponsored a print run the Blurb book I produced. This in turn brought me a visiting lecturer’s position at a local uni, and led to workshops and talks at various other colleges and universities. I was also employed to lead a participatory project and am working with a new NGO client after they saw this work. This is what I mean about passion for a subject shining through.

Don’t be afraid to get close. Over the past few years I have begun working quite collaboratively with participants in my Roma project, and initially I spent a lot of time worrying about journalistic integrity and whether I was crossing some invisible boundaries by becoming so emotionally invested in their lives. Now, however, I have come to see this as a strength. Yes I’m subjective but I’m also fair, balanced and open about my methods, and the resulting work is far stronger for it.     

Don’t give up when you feel down about your work. All documentary projects have their ups and downs – a friend and I have dubbed this the ‘project rollercoaster’. Everyone experiences doubts and frustrations and lows along the way – I think what sets some people apart is the ability to keep the faith, pick themselves up, find new ways forward and move on. 

Do live and work in the regions. Yes the media industry is based in London, and yes I know being there and knowing people can help freelancers find work and commissions. But there is also life outside the capital, and many stories which desperately need covering. I have lived in Manchester for 14 years and while my journalism career undoubtedly had a slower start than some of my London colleagues, being based here also has many advantages. My costs are much lower and I’m increasingly finding that newspapers and NGOs want locals for certain jobs.     

Don’t wait for the phone to ring. This may be different for editorial photographers but I have found that it’s rare for an editor to contact me with a commission brief. Perhaps it’s just the way I’ve constructed my own career but I have tended to work up my own stories – traveling to places, conducting interviews etc – and then sell the ideas in to newspapers and magazines. In journalism you are only as good as your current ideas, so get out and develop those ideas into something of your own. 

Don’t take it personally when you’re ignored. Editors still ignore me probably at least 85 per cent of the time. I found this very hard to take when I first went freelance as I am quite over-sensitive. Now I’ve learned that they do it to everyone – including often their own staff colleagues on the same publications. Don’t bombard people with repeat emails but do keep contacting them. In print journalism, I find that emails are generally preferred to phone calls. Be persistent but not too pushy.  

Do be polite. I go through phases where I receive a lot of emails from student journalists and photographers and because I know what it’s like to be ignored (see above) I always take the time to respond – and to respond thoughtfully. What infuriates me though is that perhaps nine out of ten of these people don’t even reply to say thank you, even when I’ve spent an hour or more answering their queries. This is not cool – manners and karma will get you far in this industry. 

Don’t worry about awards. I’m not convinced by this foible of the photography industry as I think it simply fosters ego and insecurity – I personally think people should focus on stories.

All pictures above are from  www.theromaproject.com  

and check out Ciara's collaborative book:

http://issuu.com/ciaraleeming/docs/elvira_and_me

Christmas Present #1

Let's just say that Live Through This is a fabulous portrait project. It takes the junkie genre and reinvents it with a collaborative twist that has an almost happy ending.

Pictures come with notes, letters, prescriptions and transcripts of Stephanie's own words. It's beautifully printed and is a fascinating take on both addiction and the personal involvement of the photographer. More on this in the new year.

Buy the book here.

Read more about the project here.

Anthony Luvera's Residency

Another person I interviewed for my BJP article on collaboration (the whole article is in the November issue - or on the ipad version. ) was the ever thoughtful, energetic and talented Anthony Luvera. 

So it seems only natural to follow the previous post - which was essentially about reclaiming art from consumption - with this one where Anthony explains why he is interested in reclaiming photographic representation from the politics of (media) consumption as well as how he showed the work he and others had made on the London Underground. Fabulous!

Anthony Luvera – The Artist

“There is this preconceived notion of a homeless person as a bum or a down-and-out” says photographer and academic Anthony Luvera, “but I’m interested in the experience of homelessness as a transitional thing, as something you experience and then move on from.”

Luvera’s work with  homelessness and changing how it is represented began in December 2001 when he was invited to photograph in London for Crisis, a homeless charity. “I was really interested in the critical writing of people like Abigail Solomon-Godeau, Allan Sekula and A.D. Coleman. They question the context and meaning of documentary photography and how it is represented.”

 “So when I was told how I could help these people and how amazing everything looked, I wasn’t interested. I could have stayed two weeks and made amazing pictures that people hadn’t seen before. But I wanted to develop relationships with people, to hear the stories that they told and to make those relationships a central part of my practice.”

So Luvera rejected conventional top-down documentaries of the poor and gave the homeless people he met cameras to document the people and places they found  important. He also trained them how to use large format cameras and became an assistant in their making of Assisted Self-Portraits.

“Over the next five years, I worked with 250 people  and ended up with an archive of over 10,000 photographs. When I showed this work on the London Underground, suddenly I started getting these weird requests for images. I got requests from a bible manufacturer and a Hollywood costume designer. This  got me interested in the ethics of archives and what they are for and that’s how I got involved with Belfast Exposed.”

In Belfast, Luvera combined his academic with his photographic practice, the latter of which is collected in his recently published book, Residency.  “I’m interested in identity  because it’s a process that is always in flux. I’m not interested in why people are homeless so much as what they think about being homeless and being represented as homeless.”

“In London, I would ask people to take me to a place that was important. In Belfast that had a whole different resonance. If you’re from Belfast you’re from a particular area that carries economic, religious and political weight. So for the homeless in Belfast, there is a double whammy of exclusion because homeless people find themselves excluded from places both socially and politically.”

“There was also a level of suspicion of me as a photographer that I hadn’t experienced before. As a community, Belfast has been exposed to the polarising gaze of photography. Many people I met had memories of photojournalists being at events – this person parachuting in, taking pictures  and leaving. Then they would see pictures of Belfast represented as a rabid, warring place when the reality was very different.”

Through his work Luvera hopes to change the politics of representation and the relationship between the people and places involved in the production, exhibiting and publication of images.  “In Belfast I wanted to  involve the participants in every part of the process, from the photography to the exhibition where pictures were put at eye-level so the viewer would look them straight in the eye. People are used to looking at homeless people from above.” With his work In Belfast and London, that’s a perspective that Luvera is helping to change.

More images from Residency on SPBH

Anthony Luvera website

Anthony Luvera interviewed by Karen Downey at Belfast Exposed

Chris Capozziello, Collaboration and the BJP

I have a lovely feature on collaboration in this month's BJP portrait special. Included are interviews with


Arlene Gottfried, 
We are the Youth,
Timothy Archibald,
Klaus Pichler,
Tony Fouhse, 
Anthony Luvera
and Chris Capozziello.

It was hard work but fascinating to talk to all the photographers involved. What came across was a lack of certainty about what they were doing, a refreshing questioning not just of what others do in photography but what they were doing as well. Nothing was clear cut and people were extremely eloquent in making their doubts apparent, whilst also being willing to defend their perspectives and their practice.

Everybody had a different take on collabaration with subjects, but Chris Capozziello's project on his brother Nick crystallized when he realised that it was about his relationship with his brother, about his ideas of kinship and suffering.

Below is the interview with Chris.

Chris Capozziello – the Brother

“I sometimes wonder why God put me on this earth the way I am. It feels like he never answers me, but I never get angry at God because if I didn’t have cerebral palsy I wouldn’t be the person I am.”

So says Nick Capoziello Nick has cerebral palsy and suffers from cramps that can suffer for minutes, hours and sometimes days. His brother Chris is a photojournalist who has photographed Nick’s life for the last 11 years.

“I was brought up a Catholic,” says Capozziello. “I remember being a kid and seeing this huge crucifix in the church during Mass and thinking why is there disease in the world, why is there suffering, why did this happen to Nick?”


Faith and suffering haunt Capozziello’s work with Nick, but it took time for Capozziello to allow his own voice and feelings be heard. “I used to have the pictures in my portfolio but I didn’t include text. I didn’t really want to have that conversation with editors. I didn’t want people to feel pity. I couldn’t know why I was making these pictures.”

“Then I was asked to show work at the Look Between Festival last year. I’d been sharing what Nick had been going through after brain surgery last year with colleagues they said the thing about the story was Nick was my twin. That’s what made the story so powerful.”

Capozziello made a multimedia presentation and suddenly  the response to the project changed dramatically. “What really solidified the project for me was when a woman came up to me after the multimedia presentation. She hugged me and told me she was a twin and how she had suffered as a twin. I asked her what she did and she said that she was an editor at National Geographic. I was amazed that she was in a job where she saw pictures every day but could still be touched.”

 “You can be so close to a story but miss the point of it. The point is that Nick is my twin brother and I’m the healthy one. The change in response came partly because of how much I was willing to disclose. When I was ready to talk, not just about what it is like to have cerebral palsy, but also to introduce Nick and myself as human beings, to say this is my twin brother, and question how and why he was born like this. When I could talk about that, everything changed.”

Suffering is also an essential element of the story. “Often when people look at Nick’s story, they feel turned on by him in a way that makes them care about him, and about our relationship. I think it is because they begin to think about their loved ones who suffer or who have suffered. It creates a connection, a bond of solidarity. My aim is not to raise awareness about cerebral palsy. There are organizations that do that now and they do it well. My aim is to tell an honest story, and share it with others.”

“There’s also an element of hope to the story. Five years ago there was no hope. Now, after the operation, there is. But hope is dangerous. It makes you think that things can better. And things don’t always get better.”

Below is the  slide show made by Chris, The Distance Between Us..

The Distance Between Us from Christopher Capozziello on Vimeo.

Klaus Pichler's Viennese Allotments

all pictures copyright Klaus Pichler

I have posted previously on Andrew Buurman's lovely book, Allotments. It ties in with my own experience of allotments and growing vegetables and flowers (Cosmos mostly - millions of them, in great big fecking bunches!). 

So it was with some fascination that I saw Klaus Pichler's wonderful series on Viennese allotments - a very different story with dashes of claustrophobia, solitude and paranoia.

It was with that in mind that I asked Klaus a few questions. Below are his excellent answers. 

See also his Urbanautica interview here.


Klaus will be in the November edition of the BJP in an artcile of mine that features 7 different photographers and their collaboration - don't miss it. It's absolutely fascinating. . 

1. Who uses allotments in Austria:

This is a very good question, because in the last few years a major change in the social structures and population in those garden colonies was noticeable. At the moment, there are 26.000 allotments in Vienna (where most of my project took place), which is a quite high amount compared to the population of Vienna (2 million people). Initially the gardens were invented to create space for a subsistence economy and the question of living in the colonies had no relevance or it was forbidden to live there permanently. In the past 15 years the law that regulated the usage of the gardens was changed, and now it is possible to build bigger houses and to live in the colonies throughout the whole year. Before that most of the users came from a working class background, using the gardens for growing vegetables and fruits, and as a retreat from their small flats in community buildings. Within the last 15 to 20 years, the population has changed a lot and the 'old' users now more and more get replaced by younger people or even families who live there throughout the whole year. They combine the two advantages of the gardens – living in 'green'  surroundings within an urban area. Besides that, some of the older people that were using 'their' allotment over the last decades are still there, but now living in compact houses and enjoying their retirement in the gardens. I visited the 'Allotment Fair' in Vienna last year, expecting to see a variety of garden gnome designers and seed producers, but surprisingly instead of that, most of the exhibitors were architects or companies that have something to do with construction – which was an indicator for me that allotments indeed are a market and that a massive change is going on in the usage and population.

2. What are they used for:

As I said above, there was and is a major change in the population, and with that also the usage of the gardens is changing. The spaces for growing vegetables and food, formerly the biggest part of the gardens, have almost disappeared and now there are mostly spaces for recreational purposes or for cultivating flower gardens. I always describe them as some kind of outdoor living rooms (at least in summer), bearing a lot of recreational functions (pool, deck chairs, suites) and a lot of adornment and flowers.   

There are a lot of hedges and boundaries - does this say something about the Austrian psyche?

Haha, maybe, although I don't think that this is a specifically 'Austrian' thing. I think it is some kind of a (not only) human elemental need to set boundaries, to claim a territory as one's 'own'. And since the space of the allotments is limited and people are living really close to each other, the hedges are somehow 'necessary' to feel private.

One strange thing I noticed is that the height of the hedges definitely says something about the personality of the people who live behind it: the higher the hedge, the less the chance to find people behind it who were interested in taking part in my project. And vice versa: if I noticed a garden without high boundaries, I was almost sure that I would meet a person with an open mind.

Why did you choose to photograph allotments?

I have always been fascinated by the somehow surreal and picturesque world of the garden colonies. I originally grew up in a small village in the countryside and always loved being in the woods and enjoying nature. When I moved to Vienna in the mid-90s I began to discover these allotments and was intrigued by them for, in my opinion, being an attempt to create an artificial 'nature' within an urban area. The mixture of cultivated garden idylls, depicting a petty bourgeois ideal of 'green living', and the strange mood of calmness and, somehow, paranoia always caught my attention. Over the years it has always been clear for me that I will make a series about these colonies one time, and in 2010 I felt ready for realizing this idea and to capture allotment life throughout a whole year.

What specific features did you choose to focus on?

There are certainly more series that focus on allotment gardens done by other photographers from other countries, and when I began to prepare my own work there, I noticed that one thing was, in most of the cases, missing: the work and effort it takes to cultivate a garden. So this was a major point for me, to capture the permanent work that has to be done to put nature in her place. This never-ending work sometimes felt like an end in itself to me, like a therapeutic approach to fight against inner unrest. This is maybe also a reason why so many gardens look like outdoor living-rooms, styled and trimmed over the top.

The other thing was a more emotional thing: I noticed that I felt something whenever I entered the gated world of the garden colonies: some feelings of paranoia, reclusiveness, perfectionism and sometimes also loneliness. This didn't fit to the perfect idylls and I began to take these feelings more seriously and to include them in the basic concept of the series. The pictures of the series are to a good amount staged pictures, but not in a way where you notice at first sight that it is a staged picture. I tried to combine the appearance of the allotments, the permanent work of the inhabitants and my personal feelings towards the gardens into the pictures- this all with a little exaggeration to capture the absurdity of garden life. My way of working was to walk through the colonies and to get in contact with people who were working in the gardens. I explained my project to them and, if they were willing to take part in it, we together began to develop ideas for the picture – sometimes the persons came up with their own idea how the picture should look like, sometimes it was my idea, sometimes a cooperation. As soon as it was clear what the picture idea was all about, we realized it together. And, surprisingly, almost everyone who was photographed liked the photo of himself – although the appearances in which the persons are depicted definitely aren't the most flattering ones...

What are the difficulties of photographing allotments?

I maybe say nothing new, since this is probably the major issue with all photo series that focus on people, but: the main difficulty was to find people who were willing to take part in the project. I didn't contact any of the community administrations in advance, because I wanted to find people at work, unprepared and out of their everyday life to work with. This was a tricky situation, because it was hard to convince people that I didn't want to see their Sunday dress, but to capture them in their everyday actions. Of course, there were plenty of people I met who were not interested at all, some telling me about that in a quite harsh way, but on average around 15% of the people asked were interested. One thing that made work difficult was that there are lots of housebreakings and I was more than once mistaken for a burglar. This led to sometimes quite annoying situations where I got threatened and treated not so well.

One other thing was that getting in contact with the inhabitants was not so easy because of the amount of hedges and other boundaries – I just heard that there was someone behind the boundaries, but I didn't see anyone. I didn't want to seem obtrusive, so I just contacted people I was seeing and didn't ring any bell or open any door to get in contact, so this was kind of inherent to the concept.

All in all it was a really interesting experience to spend so much time in the gardens, meeting some nice people as well as some really strange or nasty ones (which was an experience for itself), getting to know a lot about everyday needs in garden life and, sometimes, also being a substitute (kitchen) psychologist for some of the people I have met there.

Arlene Gottfried's Midnight

 

So I'm writing about all these fantastic collaborative projects for the BJP and Simon Bainbridge, the editor suggests I add Arlene Gottfried and her work on Midnight - a dancer who was afflicted with schizophrenia. Here are some of the pictures from the book. You can view and buy the book here. This is the website of the wonderful Arlene Gottfried - and this is her new book, Bacalaitos and Fireworks. Amazing work that should be much better known.  

 

All her galleries are here.

Steve Davis's Collaborative project

Steve Davis works with prisoners in the United States. One of his projects featured pinhole photography taken by the girls of Remann Hall, in Tacoma, Washington

What is your day job?

I'm the Coordinator of Photography and adjunct faculty member at the Evergreen State College, in Olympia, WA

How did you get involved in this collaborative project?
 

I had been working with a nonprofit group called The Experimental Gallery that brought artists into juvenile sites of incarceration.  This work came from working with incarcerated girls to construct a museum installation, which was to contain some of their photography.  It was more difficult than other similar projects, because this place was not a long term facility, so the participants changed almost weekly.

How did you gain access to the people in the project?
 

I was asked by the coordinator of the Experimental Gallery to both document the arts project and lead a group into their own photographic work, which were the pinhole images.  So, the girls were basically screened and selected by people other than myself.

Is there anything you could not gain access to?
 

Faces, for the most part.  They were off limits for this project.  This limitation had a lot to do with me wanting to give them pinhole cameras.  The long exposures and lack of detail pretty much eliminated any possibility of identification.

What were the problems with photographing this subject?
 

Shooting and giving cameras to the incarcerated is generally  full of problems.  Cameras are confiscated, seemingly benign subjects are off limits, things like that.  And as I mentioned, my group was a revolving door, so the mission had to be simple.

What did you hope to achieve by doing this project?
 

In addition to my own portraiture, I was excited about this work because the girls were not asked to "document" life behind bars.  As their camera exposures would be as high as 15 minutes, the kids had to plan, conceptualize, and essentially perform for the cameras.  It was more theatrical, emotional, and far less literal.  Previously, I worked with incarcerated boys who were given relatively decent 35mm cameras, and they created fairly literal snapshots.   The cheap pinhole cameras that the girls used freed them from the clichés, I think.

Were there any assumptions you had made before the project that you realised did not apply?
 

I assumed I would have a tighter group to work with.  Working with a new set of kids every visit made "teaching" a different experience from what I'm used to.  Other than that, I pretty much knew what to expect, based on my previous experiences with photography and incarcerated youth.

Were there any assumptions you made before starting the project that you realised did apply?
 

I assumed they would be very hungry for attention, and very willing to express themselves visually.  That was certainly true.

How did you fund this project?
 

I didn't.  Money came from grants and museum support, through the Experimental Gallery.

What constituted success for this project?
 

The larger project-- the museum installation was extraordinary, but the photographs that were transferred to the wall surfaces were almost invisible.  So in that respect the photography didn't see much of an audience.  I think it was successful to the girls to create and express themselves.  Eventually, Pete Brook of Prison Photography noticed them, and I think they have since received a fairly large audience.

Collaboration 3: Gemma-Rose Turnbull and The Red Light Dark Room

  

Gemma-Rose Turnbull is an Australian photographer working with sex workers in St Kilda in The Red Light Dark Room.

What is your day job?

I am an Australian photographer, who specialises in photographing the lives of women. I studied documentary photography at the Queensland College of Art, graduating in 2005. I have worked as a newspaper photographer, a freelance photojournlist, a Photojournalism lecturer and a photographer since graduating. 

How did you get involved in this collaborative project?

In early 2010 I was awarded an Australia Council for the Arts Connections Residency to do a residency with non-profit organisation St Kilda Gatehouse to teach, photograph and interview the marginalised women who use their services. More than 250 rolls of film were shot by nine women to produce a hardcover book, which is a combination of their photographs, my photographs, interviews and stories.

I conceived the project after spending two days at St Kilda Gatehouse in November 2009. I was profoundly effected by the service they offered, and on very little money. They are completely donor funded, and I was determined to find a way to use my skills to help raise money for them. We are aiming to sell 1,000 books and raise $50,000 for them.  

           
How did you gain access to the people in the project?

Street sex work, which involves the trading of sexual services for money or drugs at the street level, is a particularly hazardous and stressful occupation. Those engaged in street sex work tend to be the most marginalised, oppressed, and stigmatised. These women face many daily challenges, including physical and sexual assaults, ill treatment by the public, housing instability, incarcerations and continued financial difficulties.

Because of these things it is hard to build trust with and engage women who work in the profession, however working with St Kilda Gatehouse allowed me to build on the trust they had already established. This allowed the project to come about much more quickly than it otherwise would have.

Is there anything you cannot gain access to?

The reality is there are lots of places a camera can’t go with this project. It can’t walk with me into the Children’s Court where I spend a day sitting with one of the women, keeping her company while she fights for custody of her three-week-old daughter, nor can I take it into loiterer’s court. I can’t document the woman I visit in the high dependency unit in the psych ward. I can’t go into a police interview room with it. And I can’t take the image of a woman left diminished in her prison uniform, sitting in jail; a shaky lip and arms carved with scars and tattoos, the visible remnants of her outside life.

What are the problems with photographing this subject?

Photographing people whose permission is compromised by their vulnerability, or by their life controlling drug addiction is an ethical minefield. I have been very careful to not intrude on their lives too much, and have mostly stepped back and allowed them to photograph to their level of comfort.

What do you hope to achieve by doing this project?

The three main outcomes I am hoping to achieve are to engage the women in something meaningful, that in some way gives them a sense of achievement. To raise money to support the organisation that continues to support them, and to produce a body of work that helps humanise the women who work as street sex workers in St Kilda.






Were there any assumptions you had made before the project that you realised did not apply?

I assumed that I would photograph much more than I actually did. The lack of photographing was about gaining trust. It took me a long time to get the women comfortable in my presence, let alone in front of my gaze. They disappear if I pull it out too soon, or push it too far. And I can understand. They are a group of people who are among the most victimised and vilified in our society. Identity is one of the only, very small, powers they can wield. And before they hand their visage over to me, they need to trust I am going to honour that gift.

I feel very reconciled with that though, it’s a collaborative project, and together we have made a whole body of work.

Were there any assumptions you made before starting the project that you realised did apply?

There is always some basis in stereotypes. The images we see of street sex workers are based in accuracy; the majority of them are drug affected, many come from abusive domestic backgrounds and situations and homelessness. But they are, of course, far more than those stereotypes. 

How do you fund this project?

I was supported by grants from The Australia Arts Council, and the Helen Macpherson Smith Trust.


What constitutes success for this project?

Success is measure in tiny incremental goals along the way. It’s someone discovering how to focus a camera, or someone being excited by the photographs they have taken. Someone relishing the opportunity to share their story. For me it’s taking time to get to know and care about the people I am working with, rather than running through their lives and taking their images from them for my own personal gain. 

Collaboration 2: Tony Fouhse and Stephanie

"Ok Tony, did you start this project to get attention on your blog or did you do it to actually help me?"


That is the starting point of Stephanie's interview with Tony Fouhse.
Tony is a photographer, Stephanie is a woman who is a heroin addict. Tony is trying to work with Stephanie to document her addiction and hopefully her recovery. You can read all about it on Drool (with a dedicated website/blog coming later).



What is your day job?

I'm an editorial and commercial photographer.


How did you get involved in this collaborative project?

I have a history, in my personal projects, of collaborating with the people I photograph. In some projects (American States, for instance) that collaboration is fleeting.  In other projects I'll return to the same place and people over the course of 2 or 3 or 4 years.

How did you gain access to the people in the project?

I met Stephanie (who is a heroin addict) last summer while I was shooting USER (which, itself, was a 4 year collaboration with a group of crack addicts).  Of all the addicts I met on that corner there was just something about her that I was really, really drawn to. Her openness and honesty and her ability to get in touch with her emotions, show them to me and allow me to photograph them.  I asked her if I could help her in some way and she asked me to help her get into a rehab program.  She didn't have even one piece of ID so we set about getting her paperwork in order and we are just now beginning to make appointments (to make further appointments) to find her some help.  The Canadian health care system is overburdened and 

everything seems to take a long time.

Is there anything you cannot gain access to?

Lots.  The risk-reduction house (run by a religious organization) where Stephanie lives won't allow me into her room, nor may I photograph the workers there. Some of the government and hospital locations we go to won't allow photography, either. There are also some aspects of Stephanie's life that are out of bounds

What are the problems with photographing this subject?

Stephanie is, despite her openness and participation in this project, also a reserved, private person. There are aspects of her life that she won't give me access to. As well, there are aspects of her life that I'm not interested in photographing. This was never conceived as a "documentary" project.  I'm a portrait photographer and, while there are some "documentary" aspects to what we're doing together, by far the majority of the images are setup, lit portraits. One other problem (if you want to call it that) is that Steph often (about half the time) 

doesn't show up. When she does show up, about half the time she is so fucked up that I spend all my energy dealing with that, trying to help and comfort her, rather than thinking about, or taking, photos.

What do you hope to achieve by doing this project?

Primarily, I want to see Stephanie get into a good rehab program and get straight.  I also hope to get a series of portraits of her that show that trip.

Were there any assumptions you had made before the project that you realised did not apply?

Yes. I (stupidly) thought that her concerns might have a certain overlap with mine.  Of course, other than the trying-to-get-into-rehab-and-get-straight thing, her concerns are totally different from mine.


Were there any assumptions you made before starting the project that you realised did apply?

I thought that I might be able to maintain enough distance to remain, if not untouched, at least slightly removed.  This hasn't happened.....I've been swept up.

How do you fund this project?

I use the money I make shooting for magazines, ad agencies and corporations.


What constitutes success for this project?

See answer to what I hope to achieve with this project.

Collaboration 1: We are the Youth

This week, I have a series of interviews about collaborative work.

First up are Laurel Golio and Diana Scholl at We are the Youth ( a photographic journalism project chronicling the individual stories of LGBT youth in the United States). The above pictures are of Quincy, Trevor and Staci - their stories are on the blog and are simple but amazing - a mix of race, religion and sexuality.

What is your day job?

Laurel works as a studio manager for the Brooklyn photographer, Emiliano Granado. Diana works as a freelance journalist for various publications including New York Magazine, Westchester Magazine, City Limits and POZ. 

How did you get involved in this collaborative project?

I had been interested in documenting and photographing queer youth last year and had looked into getting permission to photograph a Gay Prom in NY. Diana and I were talking one day soon after that about how cool it would be to include interviews with the photographs and really turn it into a photojournalism project. So we both went to the Gay Prom, met 200 amazing kids and the project was born!

How did you gain access to the people in the project?

We gain access to the youth we profile in a variety of ways. A lot of social networking (Facebook, Twitter, etc) and a ton of emails to different organizations who then put us in touch with local groups that focus on queer youth. From there, everything kind of builds upon itself -- youth put us in touch with their friends or suggest we go to a certain meet- ups or groups. 

Is there anything you cannot gain access to?

We've been pretty lucky in terms of gaining access to the places and people we've wanted to connect with. We're looking to travel in the upcoming months and hoping to meet queer youth in more remote places where it might not be so okay to be out. We're assuming it will be harder to find queer youth in those areas but we'll have to see how that plays out.

What are the problems with photographing this subject?

We haven't had too many problems finding, photographing and interviewing queer youth, but one issue that comes up is the issue of privacy and how much people realize or don't realize they are sharing. We make it very clear to everyone we profile that if they're not comfortable with something in the interview, they need to let us know and we'll make the appropriate edits before publishing on the website. 

What do you hope to achieve by doing this project?

Our goal for the next year is to widen the demographic of the youth that we're profiling -- we're interested in traveling to more remote areas in the States, maybe the Great Plains and trying to find queer youth in those areas. Long term, we hope to achieve a change in how people view queer youth and the queer community in general. By widening the demographic of the youth that we're profiling we hope to say, "queer people are from all different places, they look all sorts of different ways and act different ways and are interested in all sorts of different things." We hope to fight the stigma attached to being queer by challenging stereotypes and do our best to create a full and encompassing portrait of the queer youth community.  

Were there any assumptions you had made before the project that you realised did not apply?

I'm not sure if this was an assumption per say, but I don't think we realized the extent of the youth organizing and activism that's going on today. We're constantly amazed at the people we meet and the way in which they network with each other. The queer youth community, in some ways, seems smaller than ever, mostly because of the Internet. Everyone knows everyone and queer youth are able to reach out to other youth and create change like never before. Sounds pretty obvious in this Internet-crazy age, but that's something that's really blown our minds! 

Were there any assumptions you made before starting the project that you realised did apply?

Teenagers are hard to track down!

How do you fund this project?

We've been funded by a grant from DoSomething.org, a great organization that funds projects started by young people. We've also done a lot of fundraising -- we did a huge drive through Kickstarter.com a few months ago and have gotten independent donations from strangers, friends and family. 

What constitutes success for this project?

I think success for us happens on a lot of different levels. Being published would definitely mean a certain level of success, but ultimately, just getting the stories out there and reaching a large audience is what we're aiming for. We want queer youth to feel good about telling their story and be proud of who they are. Having kids tell us how much the project means to them -- that's always really awesome and in a way, that's the biggest measure of success, just being able to impact people in a positive way.