45. EVA VERMANDEL - A SPACE BETWEEN CALLING AND CAPTURE.
The artist discusses her creative process.
‘I do wonder sometimes whether I’m just a vessel that captures things that get sent to me and need to be caught.’ E.V.
Eva Vermandel, Boy with Pink Aerosol, Stroud Green, 2006. Image courtesy of the artist.
The first time I saw your works, I was immediately amazed at how you communicate emotion - images that are so luminous they can be seen when the eyes are closed - at what point did you know that photography was your way forward?
Thank you so much, emotion is what I try to communicate so it’s incredibly gratifying to hear that that is what you take away from my work, and so intensely.
I was about four-five years old when I first picked up a camera. My father was an amateur photographer and we’d often go for walks together with his camera in tow. He’d occasionally let me take a picture with it. Back then, in the late 70ies/early 80ies, photography was precious and expensive, so this was done sparingly, we were not a rich family. By the time I was a teenager, my dad let me use his Contax to shoot the odd film, and the curious thing is that the pictures I took back then have the same intensity and atmosphere they still have now. So I think it came embedded in me.
Eva Vermandel, Bart, 1988. Image courtesy of the artist.
That said, I’ve often battled with the actual medium of photography, with its directness. The art I get drawn to most is painting. There’s such a freedom to bring the emotion of an experience to the fore in painting, rather than the de facto ‘this is what occurred’ element that often gets represented in photography. The result is that my practice revolves around breaking through the directness that is inherent to photography.
For years I found this directness a restraint, and up until a couple of years ago I did toy with the idea of switching to painting, until I realised that my battle with the directness of the medium is what makes my work so singular. I revel in pushing the camera to its limits, and this often happens not through special effects but simply through intense observation. This can go so deep that I feel that it is me who is being swallowed up through the lens, rather than the other way around.
Over the years I have become aware that I don’t ‘create’ my work, but that I ‘catch’ it. The sharpening of my craft lies in training my instincts to feel these moments brew and trust that whatever it is that needs to be captured will get thrown in my direction. Even on the few occasions that I have worked in a constructed manner, there will still be elements within that constructed setup that guide me rather than me guiding them.
'Boy with Pink Aerosol' seems to be such a pivotal image, how did that portrait come into being?
I personally wouldn’t call it a portrait, rather a state of being. At the core of the image lie the gestures of the arms, which are both engaged with elements you can’t see, and the tilt of the head and neck. There are also details that are so slight that the viewer needs to fill them in. It’s a puzzling work and it requires active looking. I love what Francis Bacon said about art: “the job of the artist is to deepen the mystery”. I fully empathise with that.
It happened upon me in the summer of 2006, when I had gone for a walk with my Mamiya 7 near where I used to live. I came across a group of teenagers spraying graffiti on a section of Parkland Walk, north London. This is a disused railway track that is now a nature reserve and favourite haunt for locals. Several of the leftover structures of the railway get graffiti-ed on a regular basis and that afternoon these boys were having a go at it.
I asked if I could photograph them. I remember that the boy in the photograph is called Phil. He had an elegance about him that drew me to him more than the other two boys. I think he must’ve been around 16 at the time, so he’ll be well in his thirties now. I deliberately underexposed the negative to get the background to drop away and to enable his skin, which was luminous, to become even more radiant.
The post-production of this work was as important as the creation of the work itself. To achieve the depth of the luminosity of the skin, the underexposure of the negative was pretty extreme, about three stops; afterwards I had to rebuild the parts that had nearly disappeared. All in all it took me about five years to get it to a point where it felt right. It’s not the only work that took me years to finish.
I love the fact that it can take me years to get a photograph ready for print. It reinforces the long-time-frame undercurrent of the work. A lot of artists I admire have elements of this in their workflow too: Edvard Munch often reworked his paintings or revisited the same theme/setup he’d painted before. He once said “I don’t paint what I see; I paint what I saw” which resonates with me immensely. He’d spend hours just sitting opposite a person, not touching his canvas to then paint them after they’d gone. The galloping horse he painted in 1910 was done from memory. He must have deeply absorbed what he saw in those split seconds that it was happening to be able to paint it in such a dynamic way afterwards.
Edvard Munch, Galloping Horse, 1910-1912, Oil on canvas, 148 x 120 cm, The Munch Museum, Oslo.
Pierre Bonnard is another example of prolonged-time artists: he’d show up at the opening of his own exhibitions, brush and paints in hand, to add more touches to the works installed on the wall. Or he’d repaint a whole section of a painting years after its initial completion. He’d ask sitters to walk around as he was painting them, which enabled him to shift the focus on the rhythm and colour of the work rather than the ‘likeness’ of it. One of his sitters, Dina Vierny, said that he asked her to walk all the time; to ‘live’ in front of him, trying to forget he was there.
You need time to process what is happening AND life is in constant flux. These two factors combined mean - for me at least - that art needs space to breathe and will never be, neither should be, ‘finished’.
The title of your book, 'Splinter', is fascinating, the idea that elements of a whole can fracture and get underneath your skin - I really feel that within your works. What are the key images that you return to within your collection and what do they tell you?
Thank you, yes, the name Splinter was suitable for the work. It has many ways of interpreting it, which I like. Aside from the splinter as something that gets underneath your skin there’s also the fact that a splinter comes from a tree, a beautiful thing (trees are such a joy!). Then there’s also the feeling of being splintered. And there’s the famous Adorno quote: “The splinter in your eye is the best magnifying glass available”. It’s such a versatile word that can be used in so many different contexts and interpretations.
In terms of what the key images in my work could be: these often change. Over time works that were key get overtaken by other works and then things change all over again. The work is never static, it keeps evolving, within the existing work and in the process of the creation of the work.
This is also why Giorgio Del Buono of Systems Studio, who designed my website - and did so most beautifully and insightfully - created the randomisation of the Selected sections on the site. I love the way that every time the page gets reloaded different images will be thrown together: through this process new elements you - or I for that matter - hadn’t spotted before come out through these randomised juxtapositions.
As to ‘Splinter’ as a book, I now see it more as a collection of early works rather than a ‘project’ or ‘body of work’. I’ve completely stepped away from the ‘project’ approach that is so prevalent in photography. When I put work on display I like to mix up pieces created throughout my whole practice, old and new. New work can add a whole different dimension to older work and vice-versa; there’s always a dialogue: within the work, between the work. I find the idea of a ‘project’ far too constrained and it doesn’t fit with my thinking.
To get back to the point of key works: even though they often change, there are some works that were turning points in my approach to the creative process. One such work is Tree, Stroud Green, 2014, Which came into being because it had to: I could feel it calling me as I was walking down the street I used to live on. I got my point-and-shoot Contax T3 camera ready (which I started using for my artistic practice around that time and always carry with me) and when I turned the corner it was there. I even remember thinking “ha! It was you that was calling out to me!”. I took a couple of shots and walked on. The piece that came out is one I’m very fond of.
Eva Vermandel, Tree, Stroud Green, 2014. Image courtesy of the artist.
At that time I needed to break away from the aesthetically pleasing painterly style I’d mainly been working in up till that point. I needed something harder, something that would be both appealing and repelling. I do not like complacency in art, not as a viewer nor as a creator of art. This need to push boundaries does not come from the perspective of “aaah today I’m going to do something different, something subversive”; it comes because at some point the work calls out that this needs to happen. This image came into being because it had to. It ‘presenced’ itself and I caught it.
I recently made a film in collaboration with the composer Galya Bisengalieva, shot on my iPhone, an old SE. Once again, it was a case of something brewing, an invisible thread that I needed to follow. This came about through Galya’s invitation to create a film for a track on her album Polygon, which, after a couple of weeks of letting the music sink in, led to a first spontaneous piece shot from a double decker bus for the track Degelen. This set things up for further technical explorations on the device I was using and - finally - another ride on the same bus, the 197 between Sydenham and Peckham. It all built towards the film I landed on in the end, shot during that second bus ride, which is uncanny in its timing, composition, eeriness and perfect syncing to the music. It baffled both Galya and me afterwards, how deep the synchronicity is between the film and the music, and I can still barely believe it all came together the way it did.
Galya Bisengalieva - Degelen (Official Music Video)
I do wonder sometimes whether I’m just a vessel that captures things that get sent to me and need to be caught. It’s a funny thing to build a whole practice on chance; on sharpening the intuition to grab things rather than actively setting out to create work from scratch. It requires a leap of faith which I relish.
Your images evoke so many senses and yet you are known for creating photography, have you expressed your instinct through other media?
Oh yes, see above. I sometimes paint, mostly in watercolours. I recently did an audio-piece for an exhibition I had in Amsterdam in April 2023, and am working on another one for a future exhibition, and I’ve done three films up till now. As with everything, these things came about because they presented themselves to me in some way or other.
The three films I’ve done were shot using completely different tools: 35mm film, a Nikon D800 and my iPhone SE.
The first one, The Sea Is Always Fluid, with Aidan Gillen, was shot on 35mm. It had cinematographer Rachel Clark on camera and was one of Rachel's first films as a cinematographer back in 2011 (she now shoots feature films, among which I Am Ruth with Kate Winslet and her daughter Mia Threapleton last year). It came about because Panavision had offered Rachel a whole 35mm kit rent-free and she was looking for an opportunity to use it. I’d known Aidan for a long time (we used to see each other) and felt I’d never been able to capture him as I’d wanted to in a still. I especially wanted to capture his connection with the sea. I’d just had a good year financially so could afford the costs involved in a production like this (despite the camera kit being free, there was the insurance, transport, accommodation, processing etc to pay for still).
I had plans for what I was going to film, because when working in a setting like this, with all the cost involved and a whole team (Aidan, Rachel and the two camera assistants Tim Allen and Alejandra Fernandez) giving their time for free, you can’t go “ooh I think I’ll just see what happens and improvise on the spot!”. It was - of course - the spontaneous, everything-falling-into-place footage that we shot right at the end of the day that became the piece. The sun was setting, the sea had pulled back and formed a mirror on the shore. Aidan lay down onto that mirror, and as we were using the very the final piece of film, the flash of light you get when the celluloid is cut off, became part of the piece.
The second film I made is Blood Orange, shot on a Sunday afternoon in January 2018, in the living room of my former house. It came about through a prism of restlessness combined with boredom and an underlying emotional current, an avalanche that was heading my way which I wasn’t aware of yet at that point. It sat on my hard drive until earlier this year, post-avalanche, when the aforementioned exhibition I had in Amsterdam, with its theme of Transition/Transformation, created the perfect platform for its first outing.
The most recent film I made is Degelen in collaboration with Galya Bisengalieva, shot on my phone, which I spoke about earlier.
The audio piece I did for Amsterdam consists of readings of very brief excerpts of short stories by DH Lawrence, whose writing has had a major impact on me. This work was partly created to make visitors to the exhibition aware of the view onto the bay from the windows where this piece was installed. You can see bits of that view and hear these audio pieces on my Instagram account.
So to cap it all off, the space in which I exhibit becomes a work in itself too, with the same principles of fluke that apply to all my other works.
I realised while putting the new issue of M-A (A SPACE BETWEEN) together that I was also searching for myself within the works collected, which was an extraordinary realisation, can you share any thoughts about searching for answers within your practice?
That gives me enormous pleasure to hear. The last thing I want to do is force my thoughts and feelings onto the viewer, instead I love it when the work functions as a mirror that people can project their own thoughts and feelings onto.
I search all the time, but it isn’t answers that I’m looking for. I want to figure out what it is that I am searching for, which aspects of life I’m trying to explore and why. I don’t think there are any answers in life or art. Life is about openness and exploration - the more you open up to the world and the people around you, the more it enriches you.
With the current wave of self-obsession that came in the wake of social media and a higher level of affluence, people seem to have lost the ability to look outside of their own heads. It doesn’t do anyone any good - the more you navel-gaze the more you end up in a spiral that can lead to mental ill-health. The consumer society we live in thrives on this: the more unhappy we are the more we consume; happy people don’t tend to have this urge to consume. So the big corporations have all to gain from keeping us self-obsessed and miserable, and that counts even more for the tech giants, who need our eyeballs for their data scraping, than the classic, pre-internet corporations.
I’ve gotten to a point now where just looking at, interacting with and being in the world, brings me deep happiness and creates an urge to relay this which is irrepressible. I live in a perpetual state of wonder.
Eva Vermandel, ‘The Sky over the Southbank’, London, 2021. Image courtesy of the artist.
A selection of images by Eva Vermandel are published within issue 3 of M-A (A SPACE BETWEEN).