anotherplacemag:
Interview by Iain Sarjeant
Following a bit of a gap with interviews on Another Place, I was delighted to recently have the opportunity to catch up with French photographer Alex
Cretey Systermans.
Based in Paris, Alex splits his time between editorial commissions and longer-term
personal projects.
I’ve been a big
admirer of your work for a few years now Alex, so very much appreciate the
chance to find out a bit about your work, and personal approach to photography.
Many thanks for taking the time to answer some questions.
Can I start by asking
you to give us a little background about yourself and your route into
photography?
May I first thank
you as well for your interest and the opportunity to introduce my work through Another
Place. I really appreciate this, Iain,
and will try to do my best to be not too boring with my answers!
My first
experience with photography was obviously as a kid, using a camera when I was
away from home and always felt the need to bring back pictures to share my
visual experiences with my family. I was really frustrated by the idea of them not seeing what I saw so
photography was initially for that purpose only.
My first
experience as a professional photographer was a summer job when I was 17. I‘d
been hired by the local photographer shop to shoot kids in a summer beach-club
everyday to sell the pictures to their mums. This was how I learned to use my
camera properly, an awesome Olympus OM SLR that I still own, by the way. I was
happy to walk with a bag full of films (I remember I could ‘borrow’ a couple of
rolls, it was already a very valuable merchandise at this time, but sshh, don’t
tell anyone!)
Then I studied art, including photography, in the mid-90’s in a very
conceptual/contemporary oriented Fine Arts school where I got my MFA with
painting/sculpture work mostly, but have always worked with the photography throughout
my artist life.
So I’m a former painter and sculptor, and to be
short, my work was very “picture oriented” and my scope was landscape mainly.
As a painter, I used to paint photo-realistic images of fictional places with
oils and as a sculptor I worked with scale models and other material with the
landscape as subject matter.
Do you think that
your training as a painter as well as a photographer has influenced your
approach and style?
Yes, but It is probably
only my style and approach to image making, not the painting technique. I have
a feeling that it’s more about what kind of picture I was looking for as a
painter and still looking for the same with photography, if that makes sense.
It was all about the image. Anything could be useful to achieve it.
I’m talking about the visual impact of a certain kind of image. As a painter I
was really fascinated by the power of contemplation. I think a beautiful large
scale print, in a given space, can somehow have a similar effect as a painting.
For example I can feel the same fascination looking at a beautiful Richard
Misrach large print as I experience watching a large 19thcentury American
landscape like a great piece of Albert Bierstadt for example. I can spend a
long time looking at a great piece from Jeff Wall, as much as I do looking at a
Manet or a Courbet. Even if it’s very technically different, obviously. I guess
this is a very classical approach to the image and visual art in general. Something
I have always been drawn to.
How do you
approach your personal projects – do you tend to set out with a clear idea from
the outset, or do they tend to develop over time through the process of
instinctive image-making and editing?
Definitely both. I
always have a clear idea in mind of what type of picture I want to hunt for,
and always look for an ideal light and situation, but I often experiment with both
a literal and intellectual, wandering element. To make a good picture I need to
stumble upon an ideal mixture of good light, interesting situation, appealing
location and random whatever to give me the urge to press the button. This
always leads to new ideas that I definitely never planned before. Then I need
to edit these pictures and sometimes new ideas come to the surface while
sequencing and all the very useful constraints that comes with that editing work
frame.
Your personal
work often includes your family and home and to me has quite an autobiographical
feel to it – sharing personal moments from daily life and finding beauty in
quiet details. Do you see your work this way?
Indeed my home and family have become an important subject in some parts of my
work. And I’ve been fascinated by the genre, through the “family” work of so
many photographers such as Mitch Epstein’s, Larry Sultan, Larry Towell, Lorca
di Corcia, Doug Dubois and Rinko Kawauchi, but also any vernacular family
photos, especially the old ones from the archive of my own family. I own a
great collection of 19th century plates from my great grandfather
and grandparents. I’d love to have them scanned and properly archived some day.
Some of these are fascinating.
I’m not sure I want to tell my own story in a classic autobiographical way. My
goal with these pictures is to tell about our relationship to what’s familiar versus
what‘s exotic. And more specifically how it’s connected to the process of
inspiration. And my relatives and familiar surroundings play a role in that. I
don’t want to share my own intimacy but I use it to study how intimacy works
with pictures.
However, I think photography, like writing, always involves the photographer’s
decision. I’m absolutely not into self portrait or self storytelling, and I’ve
always tried to hide myself behind my work but with photography you just can’t.
It’s your vision, not the cameras. It’s always about the photographer’s eye,
however much you want to be transparent, your vision and feelings always re-emerge
at some point.
Your portraits
seem very natural, and are often slightly wider images of people within the
context of, and interacting with, their surroundings. Is this relationship
between person and place important to you?
Yes it is, quite often. I need to contextualize everything, not only with
portraits of people. Even though I find
it more and more interesting to get closer to my subjects face, I try to convey
the psychology of the surrounding place as much as the subject’s itself. Sometimes
this “psychology” becomes the real subject.
You are working
on an ongoing project called ‘The Books of Islands’ which has so far seen you producing
work in France and further afield. Can you explain a little about your thinking
behind this project and what it is that interests you about photographing
islands?
The Books of Islands is a book project. It’s a poetic exploration of a series
of small community islands around the world chosen for their complex history.
Small islands are great places because they are small worlds exacerbated by isolated
island life. From history to
social life, the beauty and the complexities of an entire world put together in
a single small place.
You are a member
of the Strange.rs Collective – can you tell us a bit about the collective and
your involvement with it?
Strange.rs is an
international photographers collective. We are members from different
countries, and while some of us are friends in real life, we have all started
by being total strangers to each other and we all met online first. Shall I say
that it was probably our images doing the introduction job. We have different
styles, different relationship to photography but we share the same taste for
specific aesthetics that tends towards strangeness. Strange.rs has its own
pace. Sometimes it’s pretty intense with real life large scale printed shows
and sometimes we just put together some small series online. If the group is
too dormant, anyone can suddenly take the lead and launch crazy projects waking
up everyone. We have multiple collective ideas and projects but we also have
our own stuff to deal with so there’s no plan or any urgency in it, and I kind
of like this slow pace.
Are there any photographers working today whose work particularly
inspires or interests you?
Of course I owe so much to my personal heroes Joel Sternfeld, Mitch Epstein, Alec
Soth, Paul D’Amato, Mark Steinmetz, Ron Jude and Stefan Ruiz - but I am today very
impressed by the work of my friend Alexi Hobbs, Frederic Brenner, Lindsay
D’Addato, Chloe Dewe Matthews, Laura Pannack, Ola Rindal, Thomas Prior, Henry
Roy, Go Itami, Rinko Kawauchi, Bryan Schutmaat, McNAir Evans …and oh so many more.
And finally, what
are your plans going forward Alex? Have you any other islands in mind to visit,
or any new projects on the horizon?
I need to return to
Sark Island this fall or next winter to finish what I started over there back
in 2014, and I have also a new little island in mind to visit in Japan,
hopefully in 2016.
In the meantime I’ve already started to work on another book, to sort of end an
old project that has been going for a long time - but as you know photography
is also my day job and that takes a lot of a time and energy every day!
Many thanks again for your thoughtful responses to my questions Alex - very much appreciated.
I thoroughly recommend spending some time looking at Alex’s website, and you can keep up-to-date with his new work on twitter and by following his blog.
All images & text © Alex
Cretey Systermans
Many thanks, Iain Sargent !