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Interviews

Vicente Paredes' hard-hitting Pony Congo goes on show at Espace Images Vevey

Contrasting images of children shot in Congo and in Spain, Vicente Paredes questions perceptions of wealth and happiness, freedom and self-consciousness. Pony Congo is now going on show at Espace Images Vevey; this is an update of a BJP interview first published in 2016. “You have to bear in mind that the kids in my book will never meet in real life. It is the viewer who must imagine what would happen if they were to meet. Ideas such as colonialism, misery, pity and mistrust are in our minds, not in the pictures themselves.”

16 November 2017

"The feeling for light" – Paolo Roversi on photography

“The first time my American agent came here, she said ‘I can’t believe you do all these pictures in this little room’,” laughs Paolo Roversi as he looks around the modest space he’s used as his studio for more than three decades. The Italian remains one of the world’s most sought-after fashion photographers, having forged his reputation during the mid-1980s shooting inspired catalogues for designers such as Comme des Garçons and Yohji Yamamoto, in an age when creatives were given unparalleled freedom of expression. Yet his studio is just a room in an unremarkable building in a nondescript arrondissement of southern Paris, furnished with battered chairs and old blankets. He wouldn’t have it any other way.

15 November 2017

César Dezfuli on his Taylor Wessing-winning portrait of Amadou

“This image documents a transcendental fact in the life of the person portrayed: Amadou had just been rescued from the sea by a European vessel,” says Dezfuli. “Apparently his dream is fulfilled. However, fear, mistrust and uncertainty are present, as well as determination and strength.” For his series, Passengers, photographer Cesar Dezfuli took a sequence of 118 photographs in 120 minutes as a boat load of refugees were rescued just off the coast of Libya. These people had journeyed from different countries looking for a better future in Europe.

14 November 2017

Dan Wilton is getting away from it all with Crane

Dan Wilton wants to slow down. That’s all. The London-based photographer is best known for his intimate portraits, having shot world-famous musicians and recording artists from Stormzy to James Blake over the years. In 2015, he travelled to Los Angeles’ Runyon Canyon with writer Josh Jones to photograph and interview the characters they found there, turning the result into a book. But for his new publication Crane, he wanted to rein it back, taking a step away from the lives of others and creating something more distant, quiet and reflective.

14 November 2017

Lewis Bush's Shadows of the State visualises secret radio signals

“Really, it was only in the Snowden revelations that we realised how often these agencies don’t act in our best interest,” says Lewis Bush. “In some ways I hope that a project like this can make people think about how these abstract but very powerful forces in the world can be visualised when you find the right strategy.” He’s talking about his new project, Shadow of the State, a new photobook that investigates and exposes mysterious broadcasts dating back to the Cold War. Bush has spent the past two years seeking out the sources of these broadcasts, covert sites across the globe from North Korea and Russia to Washington and Cuba.

13 November 2017

Paris Photo and more, open for business until 12 November

With so much to see condensed into one city over the course of five days during Paris Photo (09-12 November), you’d be tempted to skip round the 149 galleries lining the elegant, glass-topped halls of the Grand Palais in a couple of hours, or even miss the main event altogether, as many do. That would be a mistake. You won’t get a better snapshot of what constitutes saleable photography in 2017, from the blue-chip North American dealers such as Gagosian, Pace MacGill and Howard Greenberg, to the work of younger artists championed by the likes of Project 2.0, Trapéz and Taik Persons. And eavesdropping on the sales patter can be a real an eye-opener.

10 November 2017

Mahtab Hussain's You Get Me?

“When 9/11 happened, I was four, so obviously I didn’t really know what was going on. But in terms of now, of how Muslims are portrayed in the media, I think it’s a very one-sided story. We’re all terrorists, evil, who want to take over this country. I mean, thinking back now, I was only four, so all I’ve experienced is that this country hates me.” So says one of the sitters in Mahtab Hussain’s You Get Me?, a series of portraits shot over nine years in Birmingham, Nottingham and London. It shows young, working class, British Asian men, a group which has been negatively depicted in the media since 9/11 but which Hussain hopes to portray in a more nuanced way.

10 November 2017

In Paris: Nothing's In Vain in Senegal for Emmanuelle Andrianjafy

Born in 1983, Emmanuelle Andrianjafy grew up in Madagascar and worked as an engineer in France before moving to Dakar in 2011. Relocation to Senegal proved quite a shock. “It’s very energetic, very hectic, very loud,” she told BJP for the June Ones to Watch issue. “It’s very different to where I’ve lived before. It’s by the sea but it’s not peaceful; the landscape is harsh and dry. I was tempted to not deal with it and just stay at home.”

10 November 2017

In Paris: Colin Pantall shakes up "the mythology of the family"

Colin Pantall began photographing his daughter, Isabel, in the delivery room moments after she was born. From then on, “it was just constant”, he says. Previously, the pictures he took were architectural, environmental, sometimes historical; but becoming a father re-oriented him entirely. The transition wasn’t effortless. In the early days his experience of fatherhood was spiked with feelings of claustrophobia and intense anxiety – fear of Isabel’s death, fear of his own. A sense that he could easily become obsolete.

9 November 2017