interviews

Frans Peter Verheyen talks with Oliver Weber

2010-03-17T06:56:48Z

"I merely drift around amongst the street creating peripatetic postcards."

Frans Peter
Do you consider yourself as a "street" photographer or a portrait photographer who works on the streets?

Oliver
Offhand, I would say neither.
I am especially interested in documenting the totality of the experience of being human. Essentially the "lives of humans". I would like to show with my photographs how they really live. I am interested in telling the personal stories of my subjects with sympathy and understanding.
When I first came to La Gomera, to live and work, I was mainly interested in documenting the natural surroundings of the amazing Canary Islands. Gradually I moved away from scenic natural photography to the photography of the lives of humans.
Well, so actually I'm a portrait photographer of the human condition. On the streets, in the personal environment and in the larger landscape. I am a documenter of people.

Marrakech

Frans Peter
How do you decide on locations & subjects?
And what kind of look do you try and create in your photos?

Oliver
As a general rule, I merely drift around amongst the street creating peripatetic postcards. Images don't come to me at a hectic pace or in a rush. Photography is not actually at the forefront of my consciousness; rather it's about engaging with other humans. The image through the viewfinder creates a sense of eagerness in me, as well as a sense of relaxation at the same time. Everything comes down to a single moment.

Since 2002, I've pursued photography seriously. The "street photography" has arisen through my creating different cycles. It comes to life through spontaneity through feeling and through the recognition of moods and situations. You never know what will happen next. The key is to quickly to grasp the moment and shoot, before the moment is lost.
If the subject moves me, I am inspired to speak through photography. I concentrate upon the motifs that interest me personally.
I seek the feelings, the environments that expose the core of the individual, making my image only when the precise moment has come.
I have chosen to limit the influence of other photographers on my work. . By placing such limits I am more successful at fulfilling my own vision.

Marrakech

Frans Peter
I am intrigued by your Matanza "story". Can you talk me through the process of this ritual.

Oliver
The ritual of slaughtering a pig (Matanza) was once of great importance for the rural populations of Spain. This annual event would ensure the larder was stocked with meat for the coming year, and that the calories needed to carry out all that hard manual farm work were at hand.

Taking place in winter when the cooler weather allows for less haste and less bacteria, the Matanza is a family event with everyone coming together to work and feast together over a number of days. Neighbors will also join together, helping each other out in return for an armful of chorizo or morcilla. The men are responsible for killing and butchering the pig, whilst the women take care of all the preparation.

The animal is killed in a humane way. When the Matanza is dead, the hair is removed with a gas-powered paint remover. Every part of the animal is carefully collected and used, nothing goes to waste. Wooden fires are started up, and huge kettles of water at set upon them to boil. With around 10 people the whole process takes around 5-6 hours. And the reward to all the people who helped is a grand meal.

Matanza

As a long time resident of La Gomera, I have made many good friends and have formed strong relationships with my neighbors. . At least once a year it is customary to slaughter a pig. All the people in the photographs are both my neighbors and good friends.

I feel a great sense of connection with the simple and honest lives of the people here. It's my great pleasure to share through my photographs, the humility and inherent goodness of the people who live in the mountains of La Gomera. Following the work of the pig slaughter, there is music and dance and much drinking of wine
together. I enjoy this time with my friends. I hope to convey through my photographs this close connection to tradition and celebration.

Peninsula

Frans Peter
In all your work you are very "close" to the people you take photos of. Not only in a technical way but also almost as a friend, a part of the group, how do you do this, do you speak Spanish, Arabic, Russian?

Oliver
Again, I merely drift around amongst the street creating photographic postcards.

I speak Spanish quite well in addition to German, English and Italian. But often it's merely camera and movement. What I want to say is, some situations demand interaction and time and others are merely reaction.
Looking through my view-finder I am filled with an eagerness to create, as well as the clarity that comes from being "in the moment". Capturing that moment perfectly creates something special. My photos reveal the deep insights that come from within the small stories of human lives.
I don't feel like an intruder or an outsider. My compassion for my subjects seems to put the individual at ease. Photography is the universal language. This ability to transcend language barriers is a large part of why I am so passionate about photography. My photography is extremely important to me and I happily spend most of my time engaging in my art.
I shoot photographs because of the final image, because of what I see, and how I feel. I am fascinated to discover what motivates people and how they interact within the street environment and natural environment.

Peninsula

Frans Peter
We all have people that influence us, what are yours? I know cliché
question but still....

Oliver
Well, this is a very difficult question. There are a lot of photographers who have inspired me.

I occasionally feature photographers on my blog whose work I admire.
Most of them are young photographers. Young photographers often have a similar aesthetic and point of view as me.
Recently I have featured work from: Lorenzo Moscia, Christopher Anderson or W. Eugene Smith.
Another excellent photographer is Andy Spyra and his powerful work about Kashmir. And I love the "Country Doctor Story" by W. Eugene Smith. I'm also a doctor and I have a lot of fun with these wonderful pictures.
And of course I'm inspired by the photographers on "Magnum". Here I find the greatest photographers of our time, like a Robert Capa und also many young photographers as Martin Parr.

Frans Peter
I really don't like talking about gear, but can you tell us what camera's lenses and film you use. And do you do all your own darkroom work?

Oliver
35 mm: My big love is my "Konica Hexar" and my little new love is an "Exakta" from Dresden in Germany. Or I take photos with a "Canon 1".
6x4, 5: Usually with my "Fuji GA 645 Pro"
6x6: My new love is here one "Praktisix" also from Dresden.
Films: Kodak TRIX (BW) and Fujicolor Reala (Color)

My favorite lens is a 35 mm focal length.

I make all my prints here in my own darkroom, (my prestigious "loo" darkroom). Photography is a visual language that speaks to every person, everywhere. This makes it valuable as well as inimitable and this is why I love it in such a way.
I take a great deal of time for photography. I am very serious about it. Primarily analogue with different cameras, sometimes in black-and-white or also in color.

The analogue process is obviously more time consuming than digital. This time informs my art and allows me greater objectivity.
A successful photograph lies not superficially in controlling the photography method, but through process. Experimentation through the application of the recording device is important to my growth as an artist.

Marrakech

Frans Peter
What do you see yourself doing in the future?

Oliver
As an amateur photographer and "autodidact" , photography is my passion, an addiction of which I pursue very seriously when my occupation as a doctor gives the time for it. I intend to continue pursuing photography as a passion and engaging hobby.

My vocation as a physician and my passion for photography are a dream combination. There is nothing better than connecting work and hobby. For me personally, there is no end goal. I am content as long as I have ideas in my head and the power to implement the ideas.
Photography has become my elixir of life. It gives me strength, feeds my personal happiness and allows me to share this joy with the world.
My first calling is medicine. I often photograph my patients and their families when I am making house calls here on Gomera. My patients have become my friends and my work has melded with my art.

Several major projects are planned for this year. I'll make one project on Qatar. I intend to publish a new book. And I will present two exhibitions with my "lives of human's" photographs.

Frans Peter
Thank you for your time talking to me Oliver.

Peninsula

Oliver Weber is from Germany but lives and work on La Gomera, Canary Islands, Spain.

Through his 2007 exhibition "Humans" (Galerie Foto 21) in Bredevoort, Netherlands, Oliver Weber became more broadly accessible to an international audience. This occasion also saw the publication by Kulturbuch Verlag of his first book of photographs which was nominated for the German Photo Book Award.

Since 2008 he has been concentrating mainly on traditional analogue photography, a technical approach which has been used to create his current portraits of Brinsley Forde, Peninsula, Marrakech and La Matanza.

Hessischer Rundfunk (11th February 2008) reviews the photographer and his work:

"What characterises all of Oliver Weber´s work is the incredible calm and serenity captured in his photographs and in how he takes them. They communicate affection, dedication, and, most of all, a sense of time. (...) His pictures tell stories revealing deep insights into individual human lives, in different situations, and capturing an essence which unfolds in one´s viewing. This is exactly what good photography can and should achieve and for which Oliver Weber has a penetrating eye."

A lot more of his work on his website.

photographs:
COPYRIGHT NOTICE
Copyright ©Oliver Weber, All rights reserved. This photo is not to be used as free stock.
Use without written consent by the author (Oliver Weber) is illegal and punishable by law.

Frans Peter Verheyen is the THIAPS publisher
Edited by Lori Andrews

This is the first interview in a series about various photographic styles.

Urs Bernhard talks with Sonia Marin

2008-12-22T08:17:18Z

Sonia Marin is an Italian photographer, dividing her time between her commercial and editorial jobs and her very personal work.

She has exhibited widely in Italy and abroad ( too many to be mentioned here), with a recent show in Moscow.
We know each other for more than 10 years - a fact which, by the way, makes an interview not easier, especially not over a distance, whereas we are used to seeing each other from time to time and having a talk in person.
A recent evening we both had open our lines via Skype, she sitting in Milan, where she lives and works, me in front of my computer at home in Sweden.

Previous to the interview I stumbled over a quoted sentence of hers, in which she said that she is grateful for the great gift she inherited from her grandmother and mother: „the wish of dreams". An expression I did not necessarily expect from her. So with my first question I confronted her with this.

Sonia Marin:
you want to know what I intended ? (laughing). Seeing the great strength in their life struggle and how they dealt with big obstacles while believing in something better I myself had built up a strong belief of being able to make up something beyond of what I'm seeing which might remain, with all my efforts and with all I'm doing, with my photography at foremost.

Urs Bernhard:
but why the word „dream" ? Do you mean something unreal, something what does not really exist, or

Sonia:
no,no,not at all. I'm a person on one hand detached from reality - as you know - and on the other hand nicely grounded, with „my feet on the carpet". Or in other words, trying to do something very touchable and real with my work and my abilities and in the same time to do a kind of expiation, of personal elevation beyond reality; to fully express myself with a recognizable success. This I intended with „dream". To express myself „al massimo", but recognizable and readable for everybody.

Urs:
Looking at your photographs, they have a great poetic feel but they are extremely straight and raw as well.

Sonia:
That's me (she laughs). I photograph objects, things from our daily surroundings, things we all know, and they might be poetic because they express a part of me, an inner part of me; romantic in a way, but sometimes even very „masculine" if you want.

Urs:
Something extraordinary happen when I look at your pictures: I see a thing like I have seen it as a child, through the glasses of childhood.

Sonia:
I'm not „living in real times" when I photograph.

Urs:
you picture things from our every day world, as you said, but I see them in the light of the loving interest children have towards such „minor objects".

Sonia:
I'm very nostalgic (she laughs).

Urs:
Is „memory" a keyword to your work? Are your photographs charged up with memories?

Sonia:
I guess so, but not only with my personal memories, somehow with everybody's memories I hope.
(she pauses) I speak with myself every time when I make a photograph.
You cannot imagine how much I'm alone in those moments, mamma mia! Nothing else exists around me. When I see something through the camera I explain it, I tell it so carefully to myself, I ( she pauses to search for the appropriate word) - I assure myself of it, of this photograph I'm making, because it is a confirmation of my existence.

Urs:
Isn't that the magic of photography, it reveals something about the photographer?

Sonia:
sure!

Urs:
As a viewer I add as well all my life-experience, my memories, my feelings and thinking into the photograph I look at ?

Sonia:
That's beautiful, if it is like you say.It makes me happy, because I'm very isolated while I make a photo. That's an important point why I like things: I can be alone with them.

Urs:
One of your projects was picturing the body, or better body parts. Was that because of isolation, of being alone, or did you have another goal with it, revealing „the feminine" e.g. ?

Sonia:
No,no it was more the challenge of picturing the body, which on one hand I never did before; on the other hand, you know I was 8 month handicapped by a heavy accident on my right arm, so it was a challenge nevertheless to work with my 4x5-camera. And I wanted to photograph the body, with all its imperfections and defects; something I felt strongly at that time. And I wanted to prove my abilities to do good work with all those restrictions these days. Then while shooting I have found a simplicity and the instant gratification by using Polaroid.

Urs:
Polaroid is another question. A big part of your personal work was done with Polaroid, almost a trademark of yours. What are you doing now, without Polaroid?

Sonia:
Oh, what a sad story! With Polaroid I discovered the colour in my work.

Urs:
Polaroid is a very special tool, that's true. It brings a rendition other then „normal film", surreal sometimes.

Sonia:
its magic! When I open a Polaroid I see always a photo the closest possible to what I have seen before on the ground glass, how I have seen „my photograph".
It is a kind of grief at death, definitely. What can I do? I will go on using my analogue cameras and film-at least- hoping that someday will be a resurrection of Polaroid or a similar material. What else can I do?
But, to say it again, it is a great loss, because it was almost always helping to close the resting tiny gap of the circle. It was bringing up what I had in mind exactly and to a max. Polaroid was able to mirroring back my intentions, magically.

Urs:
Other material and other tools?

Sonia:
No, not at all, impossible, absolutely impossible!

Urs:
Let's talk again about „being alone". Tell me how it goes, when you decide to photograph something? Can you describe this process?

Sonia:
I depart from a perception I have at a specific moment in my life and of which I ask myself why not to tell about it. When things start talking to me.

Urs:
When you perceive a situation, an object, or better: when a thing looks at you, what's next? Do you immediately take the camera or do you arrange or rearrange, stage it?

Sonia:
It depends, it goes spontaneously. The faucet in the green bathroom - this was during a location-search for a job when I discovered it. I had the camera with me, and , instead of shooting mainly for my job, I started making a Polaroid of this faucet for me, first.
Otherwise I have a series for which I have collected small things of my liking and then, in an house of a friend, which seemed appropriate for staging these things, I arranged a surrounding atmosphere for them.
But most of the times I do not go back to a place where I had „my chat" with something. In case of not having my camera with me I make a photograph with my eyes, as I would do with my camera. Then the picture is only in my mind. It is always a sad moment though.

Urs:
So, is it right to say that you are not doing conceptual projects, taking over a certain time span the pictures needed for the project, then close it and move to the next project?

Sonia:
No, not at all. It is necessary to feel and see the image with the inner eye. Only when you see the image clearly inside yourself you are able to improvise, to respond to what you find and to what is in front of your camera.
My photos are largely improvised, but with a great consciousness of what I'm wanting to tell.

Urs:
What do you want to tell?

Sonia:
(she laughs) - That I am - I guess -mhm-

Urs:
The things are a mirror of you?

Sonia:
Things are mirroring a complexity in their simplicity; and I like things since the day I can remember, I liked the formality of their appearance, their beauty, I always did. And, you know, I learned that I could charge things with feelings and memories. Things allow you to be surrounded by them, but alone.
Looking at things makes me aware of my existence.

Urs:
Normally, at the end of an interview the question goes: what is the next project. But this question is in your case not possible to ask; Sonia Marin, the photographer, is a constant, ongoing photographic project herself -

Sonia:
- but I have a dream: to finally finish my long time planned book.

Urs:
Sonia, ti ringrazio tantissimo, e alla prossima, a Milano, ciao.

Sonja Marin's Web site
Urs Bernhard is Managing Editor for Thiaps

photographs:
COPYRIGHT NOTICE
Copyright ©Sonja Marin, All rights reserved. This photo is not to be used as free stock.
Use without written consent by the author (Sonja Marin) is illegal and punishable by law.