British Journal of Photography - July 2016

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Editor’s Introduction Modern Myths

If photography is indexically tied to the present moment, the past presents something of a challenge. Yet the features gathered here this month all draw on ancient customs and legends – from the Ramayana and the Bible to Greek mythology and traditional festivals held in Valencia, Spain, and the city of Chiapa de Corzo in southern Mexico.

What these projects record is not the past but the way in which the past lives on; old narratives that continue to inform lives now also shaped by technology that would once have seemed like science fiction. And these series also show how photographers and their subjects can subvert and evolve these ancient stories, whether by using traditional carnival characters to question modern gender roles in Latin America or Classical statues to consider Western depictions of female nudes. If everything in the present day has evolved from something that went before, photographers can tunnel back through time by carefully selecting what they look at.

How does our front cover fit in? It’s taken from Leslie Moquin’s publication Shanghai Cosmetic Posters, which seems to do just the opposite, focusing in on the present day to reveal the disconnect between the advertising on display in the city and the experience of living in it. But even leaving aside the aesthetic traditions on which the advertisers draw, I’d say it shows that fictions still underpin our lives and our thinking in ways that can be hard to unpick or even discern. Far from abandoning myths or simply updating the old stories, we’re actively engaged in making up new ones.

Diane Smyth Editor of the July issue

Cover Image © Leslie Moquin/ Sergio Valenzuela/The Magnifique Bazar Studio, included in the publication Shanghai Cosmetic Posters.

Introduction: July 2016

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Featured

34 – 43 Eastern Promises Vasantha Yogananthan traces an ancient cornerstone of Hindu literature, the Ramayana, through contemporary India in A Myth of Two Souls – the first section of an ambitious seven-part series he aims to finish in 2019.

52 – 65 Olympic task Camille Vivier’s esoteric photographs address the formal and mystic qualities of the nude by way of Classical sculpture, Brutalist architecture and a collection of fabric samples created on Olympic Boulevard, Los Angeles.

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Featured: July 2016

67 – 74 Fire Sale El Diari Indultat [‘The Pardoned News’] was created by a who’s who of Spanish photographers – then put on a bonfire and torched at Valencia’s traditional Fallas festivities this spring.

76 – 82 Dance of the Chuntás Roberto Molina Tondopó’s series on cross-dressed carnival dancers represents an insight into gender roles in Mexican society and a journey of personal discovery for the photographer who took the images and took part in the celebrations.

Featured: July 2016

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Deadline for entries Monday 20 June 2016 Telling Tales: Vasantha Yogananthan

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Agenda William Eggleston Portraits at London’s NPG Any Answers: Sam Stourdzé The 47th edition of Rencontres d’Arles Cortona On The Move returns to the Italian town Chloe Sells’ photobookpublishing debut Swamp

text and traces its continuing impact on daily life in India Biblical stories and legendary genealogy underpin contemporary Armenian identity, finds photographer Sabine Mirlesse Camille Vivier rethinks the female nude by way of Classical statues, Brutalist architecture and a catalogue of fabric samples How El Diari Indultat, the photobook that was either bought or burned, became Spain’s hottest project in Valencia this spring Roberto Molina Tondopó joined the cross-dressed participants of the Fiesta Grande in Mexico to better understand the event and his place within traditional gender roles

Intelligence 85 Iatã Cannabrava explains the thinking behind his Sao Paolo-based workshop-cumpublisher Estúdio Madalena 88 Creative Brief: Bruno Bayley.

The editor of the UK edition of Vice magazine talks photography and print 90 The two Dutch entrepreneurs out to transform arts funding with their online community We Are Public 92 An authority on data visualisation, Nicholas Felton believes that PhotoViz is currently the hottest trend in the field

Projects 21 Leslie Moquin’s Shanghai Cosmetic contrasts glossy ads and real life 24 Capturing life between two states with Fabrizio Albertini’s Diary of an Italian Borderworker 26 Kyung Nyu Hyun shoots 808 daily meals in the project Nahrungsaufnahme 28 Traditional South African sangoma healers in Tommaso Fisccaletti’s Between Home and Wisdom 30 Jordan Madge’s Red Herring pieces together a missing-girl mystery in Australia

Technology 95 Camera news from Leica, Samyang, Zeiss, Sigma and German manufacturer Batis 97 Elinchrom ELB 400 Hi-Sync To Go pack and EL Skyport Plus transmitter on test 100 Inside Peak Design’s Everyday Messenger bag 102 The best photographic gear from the first half of the year 105 Tech Notes: Julia FullertonBatten on lighting

Features 34 A Myth of Two Souls by Vasantha Yogananthan follows the path of an ancient

Archive 114 A 1985 edition summarises the Cottingley Fairy hoax unmasked by BJP’s editor

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Index: July 2016

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Image © Bart Grietens.

Index

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focus on what matters

Telling Tales: Vasantha Yogananthan

image courtesy of Adrian Morris (Mowgli) thisismowgli.com

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Agenda: Photofestival

Exhibitions by more than 50 image-makers along with screenings, discussions, workshops and reviews in the opening week make the 47th Arles a key event in the photography calendar Rencontres d’Arles Words by Diane Smyth

Opposite: Frame 21, Photographs in 3 Acts, 2012 by Ethan Levitas. Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Jean-Kenta Gauthier, Paris.

Below: Early Morning, West Hartlepool, County Durham, 1963. Courtesy of Don McCullin and Hamiltons Gallery, London.

Now in its 47th year, Rencontres d’Arles is the oldest, biggest and most important photography festival in the world. This year it is open from 4 July to 25 September and features exhibitions by more than 50 image-makers, a return for the CosmosArles photobook activities and displays from numerous book awards. In addition, the opening week will include evening events and screenings, curator-led tours, talks, discussions, photography workshops and a portfolio review.

The exhibitions this year are drawn together under the loose theme of Storytellers. It’s a thread that is picked up by festival director Sam Stourdzé in his introduction to the event, in which he notes how photographers can “lead and guide us through the subjects that drive them”.

“Examples include Laia Abril, who, in the first chapter of her chronicle of misogyny, focuses on abortion; João Pina, who spent more than 10 years investigating Operation Condor and the disappearance of 60,000 political prisoners in six South American dictatorships; and Yan Morvan’s imposing encyclopaedia of battlefields,” he writes.

Other exhibitions include a series of solo shows by Sid Grossman, Ethan Levitas and Garry Winogrand, Peter Mitchell, Eamonn

Doyle and Christian Marclay, which are gathered under the title Street and show life on the road all over the world at various points in time. Mitchell’s A New Refutation of the Viking 4 Space Mission, for example, is a restaging of an exhibition shown in the mid-1970s that was originally curated by Val Williams and presented at the Impressions Gallery; the Grossman exhibition, From Document to Revelation features photographs that the FBI-blacklisted communist “subversive” took in mid-century New York along with images shot by his leading students. The Levitas and Winograd show Radical Relation also shows photographs taken in New York, in this case over the last 50 years.

The After War section, meanwhile, features an exhibitions called Nothing But Blue Skies curated by Melanie Belle and Sam Stourdzé, which considers the media representations of the 9/11 terrorist attacks; the Don McCullin exhibition, curated by Tate’s Simon Baker and Shoair Mavlian, shows off the well-known conflict photographer’s work from beyond war zones, including London, Somerset, and the Durham coalfields.

Rencontres d’Arles Photo Folio Review features world-class picture editors, curators and publishers such as Thomas Seelig from the Fotomuseum Winterthur, Peggy Sue Amison from the East Wing gallery, Stefano Stoll from the Festival Images de Vevey, and Tina Schelhorn from Kolga Photo Tbilisi. Sessions must be booked in advance online and cost from €195 for five appointments to €540 for 20 appointments; experts vote for their favourite photographer and the winner is announced at the festival’s closing ceremony at the Théâtre Antique.

The well-established fringe festival Voies Off Arles runs alongside the official programme, with exhibitions on show from 4 July to 25 September and screenings, parties and reviews from 4 to 9 July. Based in the Courtyard of the Archbishop, it’s a great place to discover emerging photographers and has in the past included work by Antoine d’Agata, Charles Freger and Olivier Metzger. Reviews here cost €4 for two meetings a day, and are conducted by international publishers, gallerists, curators and picture editors. rencontres-arles.com voies-off.com

Agenda: Photofestival

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Telling Tales: Vasantha Section ‘eyebrow’: title Yogananthan

Contradictions in Shanghai, the duality in the lives of Italian borderworkers, and the female healers of South Africa’s Xhosa community. Plus visual storytelling in Australia and how we consume digital photography – we present five projects from across the globe.

Interviews by Sophie Wright

Projects

When French photographer Leslie Moquin first visited Shanghai after graduating from the National School of Photography in Arles, she was struck by the frenzied advertising plastered around the city. Noting the surreal atmosphere of this “city of contradictions”, she was fascinated by the contrast between this utopian imagery and the fast-paced lifestyle she saw around her.

Moquin studied literature and international studies before turning to photography, which has fuelled her interest in exploring ideas about society and geopolitical issues; she works in the space between documentary and fine art, and says it is the ambiguity of photography that suits her practice. “Photography seems to me a good way to raise a question whilst leaving space for the thoughts and imagination of the viewer. It is a medium that allows you to read between the lines.”

She began developing Shanghai Cosmetic during a class about creativity and globalisation at the Offshore School in Shanghai, led by educator Paul Devautour.

Offshore encourages projects that experiment

with new ways of thinking about and making art in a globalised economy. “The topic was really relevant in the context of the Shanghai megalopolis, where art and luxury brands walk together and advertising images are everywhere,” says Moquin.

For Shanghai Cosmetic, she decided to hijack the neon language of advertising to convey the contradictory nature of everyday experience in the city. Using bright, kitschy colours and abstract compositions, the series translates the frantic energy of the city into an uncanny mix of still lifes, nightscapes and cropped advertising images.

Reflecting on the way advertising imagery functions in the city, the photographer comments: “In Shanghai, aesthetic phenomena seem to merge fully with production, marketing and communication devices. Images of happiness, beauty and blossoming nature are exhibited in abundance on screens all over.

However, far from these images which saturate everyday life, existence in the city seems to actually be focused on competition, efficiency, mobility, speed and performance.”

Moquin has brought the images together in the form of a magazine, where they cut into each other and disrupt the “artificial world” they represent. In doing so, they create a heady flow of imagery that harnesses the “excesses, exuberance, noises and pollution” she experienced in the city. lesliemoquin.com

Leslie Moquin Projects: Leslie Moquin

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All images © Leslie Moquin.

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Projects: Leslie Moquin

“In Shanghai, aesthetic phenomena seem to merge fully with production, marketing and communication devices. Images of happiness, beauty and blossoming nature are exhibited in abundance on screens all over�

Projects: Leslie Moquin

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Telling Tales: Vasantha Yogananthan

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EASTERN PROMISE

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DRAWING INSPIRATION FROM AN ANCIENT CORNERSTONE OF HINDU LITERATURE, VASANTHA YOGANANTHAN’S AMBITIOUS SERIES DOCUMENTS THE RAMAYANA’S PLACE IN CONTEMPORARY INDIAN SOCIETY THROUGH PHOTOGRAPHY, ILLUSTRATION AND HAND-TINTING. WORDS BY BRENNAVAN SRITHARAN Modern Myths: Vasantha Yogananthan

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Modern Myths: Vasantha Yogananthan

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The Bride (2015)

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Lakshmana Rekha (2014)

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Kaushalya and Young Rama (2015)

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The crossing – 3D version (2015)

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Hanuman Opening His Heart (2014)

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Lovebird (2015)

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Ramayan’s Schooltrip (2014)

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The Golden Deer (2015)

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Rama Combing His Hair (2015)

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Urmila Sleeping For 14 Years (2015)

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Bloody Lanka (2015)

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The Wedding (2014)

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What a Princess Should Wear (2014)

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Guptar Ghat (2014)

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The Messenger (2015)

All images © Vasantha Yogananthan.

Telling Tales: Vasantha Yogananthan

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Telling Tales: Vasantha Yogananthan

“I WAS INTERESTED IN THE WAY THE PHYSICAL WORLD INTERACTS WITH THE FICTIONAL” When Vasantha Yogananthan was a child growing up in France his Sri Lankan father would tell him stories from the Hindu epic poem the Ramayana. Tales of heroism, filial duty and love full of magic, allegory and divinity, these stories were at the time just that – stories. But when Yogananthan first visited India in 2013, he came face-to-face with the pervasiveness of myth and legend on the subcontinent. In a land steeped in ancient history, folklore and veracity are deeply intertwined, and attempting to disentangle the two can be futile. Eventually, Yogananthan decided to stop trying.

Historians and archaeologists estimate the composition of the Ramayana to the 4th century, and it is at once a foundation stone of Indian literature, one of Hinduism’s key texts, and a model for familial relationships.

It follows the journey of Prince Rama, who travels the length of the country to get his wife, Sita, back when she is abducted by the demon Ravana. It’s a complex story, and its characters have become embodiments of virtue and honour in Indian society, but the story touches on universal themes of violence, discrimination and, through whispers, infidelity. This heady mix sparked A Myth of Two Souls, Yogananthan’s epic series documenting the omnipresence of the Ramayana in everyday life in India.

It’s an utterly ambitious project, comprising seven books (corresponding to the seven books of the Ramayana) to be published over three years. Early Times is just the first chapter, and in it Yogananthan uses a combination of colour and monochrome photography, illustration and vernacular material, as well as – most intriguingly – hand-tinting. For the latter he shot large format black-and-white portraits, then had them coloured by a local Indian painter trained in the technically meticulous art; working without colour references, the painter added an extra layer of interpretation to a project already well-aware of the opacity of myth. The colours, creamy and diffuse, match Yogananthan’s palette, but some details seem a little off – oversaturated tones, purple skies, and luminous shades of skin. The unearthly sensation this creates intensifies the sense of invention, the blurring of the line between fabulation and realism.

This method, developed in the 19th century before the advent of colour film, hints at a kind of temporal rupture and the type of dialogue between eras that Yogananthan hoped to create. “When I started the project one of my main interests was the concept of a journey through time,” he explains. “I had that feeling, looking at such an old story, but in 2016, and in India. There is this feeling of going back and forth in time, different histories meeting together and mixing into a big masala.”

The project blends dreamy, evocative landscapes with staged portraits of passersby acting out scenes from the saga. “During my third trip I got the idea of asking the locals, and the project shifted,” Yogananthan says, adding that hand-tinted images also fed into this thinking. Poring over historical collections of such pictures, he noted they were all taken in photography studios, typically the preserve of the wealthy.

Yogananthan says he decided to cast from the street, encountering his “actors” outside the hand-painter’s studio. “I thought, ‘What if the studio is the street? What if I take all the pictures outside, and the people I shoot come from every caste?’ I decided to move the practice from the studio to the real world, with real people.”

In doing so he discovered that, when it came to the Ramayana, there were multiple interpretations of both the text itself and the extent to which it is myth. “I have this question that I ask the people I photograph: ‘Is the Ramayana a true story?’” he says. “People say very different things. The story occurs in real places – Ayodhya, Hampi, Adam’s Bridge – and I was interested in the way the physical world interacts with the fictional.”

The Ramayana travels down the spine of India from its northernmost parts to the southern coast and the northern tip of Sri Lanka. Yogananthan is retracing these steps and has made five trips so far, taking in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu. He plans to go five more times by 2019, when he’ll finish the seventh chapter and publish his final book. “This story has been rewritten so often; in each place there was a different interpretation,” he says.

Yogananthan started his project in Ayodhya, the birthplace of the epic’s

protagonist, Rama, and a city awash with temples, shrines and paintings alluding to the myth. “It’s like going back hundreds of years,” he says. “People live inside crumbling former temples and they still talk about it. Being in the city that’s supposed to be the kingdom of Rama, and hearing people talk about how the tale still impacts on their everyday lives, was the moment I understood I had a story.”

In Bihar, the supposed home state of Rama’s wife Sita, another story unfolds. Her role alternates between an object of desire, a passive character and a women of agency; in her birthplace the female role is more nuanced than Yoganantha expected. “I met a lot of different women and the way they see Sita in Bihar is very particular. I met very strong women who chose to not even marry, in a very conservative and patriarchal state.”

The multiple retellings of the stories in popular culture also provide idiosyncratic re-readings, from AK Ramanujan’s influential essay Three Hundred Ramayanas to Nina Paley’s animated film Sita Sings the Blues and Samhita Arni’s novel Sita’s Ramayana. They all provided inspiration for Yogananthan, especially the modernised versions riffing on the saga’s role in the Indian literary canon.

“I got in touch with those writers, and I’m going to commission a different Indian writer for each chapter,” he says. “The text I’m using isn’t the traditional verse by Valmiki or an old version, it’s completely contemporary. So far I’m working with three different women from different generations, giving the female perspective on what can be quite a macho narrative that puts women in the shadows.”

In Yogananthan’s hands, the Ramayana story becomes a palimpsest, a document to be recycled, retooled and portrayed in exciting new ways. The binary between truth and falsehood falls away, leaving behind a creative space in which to make new work. “I realised the distinction between truth and falsehood wasn’t important,” says Yogananthan. “This was an important discovery for me, that this is where my photographs should lie – in this inbetween world between physical reality and the imagined.”

Early Times, the first book from the series A Myth of Two Souls, is published by Chose Commune. chosecommune.com vasantha.fr

Modern Myths: Vasantha Yogananthan

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Next issue August 2016 Look and learn: we focus on photography education, featuring some of the world’s most inspiring teachers and academic programmes from London to Dhaka. “Teaching is a process that is truly altruistic and truly selfish without contradiction,” says Stephen Shore – high-school dropout, world-renowned artist and director of the photography programme at Bard College.

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Portrait of Stephen Shore for British Journal of Photography. © Michael Grieve.

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Telling Tales: Vasantha Yogananthan