9 minute read
Joanne Coates discusses her latest work, Lie of the Land
In Focus
Joanne Coates discusses her latest work, Lie of the Land, with Nick Hodgson
All images ©Joanne Coates 2023
Joanne Coates is a working-class visual artist working with the medium of photography. She lives and works across the North East of England. Her work explores rurality, hidden histories and inequalities relating to low income, through photography, installations, and audio. She uses photography to question stories around power, identity, wealth, and poverty. Participation with and working within communities are an important aspect of her work. She has a BA in Photography from the London College of Communication.
In 2022 Coates was the winner of the fourth Jerwood/ Photoworks award. In recent years she has achieved recognition from Magenta Flash Forward, British Journal of Photography, The British Council, Arts Council England, Women Photograph, and Firecracker. In 2021 Joanne was a recipient of Shutterstock ‘Females in Focus’ Award. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including shows at The Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art in Gateshead, Middlesbrough Museum of Modern Art, Belfast Exposed, Somerset House, Royal Albert Hall, Format Photography Festival in Derby, and the Cork Photo Festival.
You are no stranger to Decisive Moment as you were in the May 2020 issue. Since then you seem busier than ever with your project Lie of the Land. What’s happened?
Well, I juggle my life between photography and visual arts, and I am also a farm worker milking dairy herds in my native North Yorkshire, so my life is certainly busy! But photography is my main job. In 2022 I won the fourth Jerwood/Photoworks award which allowed me to make The Lie of the Land, and that has really changed things for me. It gave me the funding, and mentoring from the highly respected David Campany, which has all been invaluable.
What was the driving force behind the Lie of the Land project?
When looking at photography, I think the North East of England, which is my home region, lacks the voice of working-class women. So I really wanted an alternative perspective. I know I’m not the only voice, and it’s also more interesting when it’s a group of voices. I wanted to take risks, so I applied for the Jerwood/Photoworks award, which I didn’t think I’d get, and I was honest and open with my proposal which I was really pleased with – so much so that I was going to make the work anyway. And then of course my submission won. I had this concrete idea and structure and had talked it through with contacts of mine, and with the award bursary I was able to make the work without financial pressures.
The project is about me collaborating with women who identify as working-class, who live and work in rural or agricultural settings, developing with them a series of portraits, landscapes, still images and soundscapes that enable them to reflect on their lived experiences.
Researching and thinking about the subject-matter has been important to me. I was really influenced by two books – Nathalie Olah’s 2019 book Steal As Much As You Can, and Cynthia Cruz’s 2021 book The Melancholia of Class: A Manifesto for the Working Class. Cruz in particular wrote about the detached view that writers, who are not themselves from a working-class background, have when they are commenting on the subject - standing outside the experience that they are depicting or writing about. This can lead to a stereotypical view of the working-class, viewing people fixed in place – and I wanted to tackle the difficult thing of portraying these persons in a nonstereotypical way.
Within all my work I have this gentle approach where I try to avoid the stereotype but I’m also aware of the challenge. Can my photography achieve this? I hope it does, but I’m not able to answer that. But I do
hope that my work has greater authenticity as a result of my background. There is a certain personal knowledge about the local lives and their stories - the regionality of it gives me a deeper understanding as I feel I know how these communities work. I did study in London for five years, so I’ve spent time away, and then I’ve returned to the local area, which has given me the privilege of being able to look inwards but from a slightly more detached, outwards perspective. It’s certainly helped me to better understand the place that I’m from – but I had to leave it to do this.
There’s a definite regionality and understanding to ‘the North’. Up here we are brought up with unspoken rules about the countryside and the rural way of life. Some rules are right, others less so. But it does explain communities. And this helped me to photograph them in a different way, with perfect access. It’s a unique position to be in. But it’s important to be critical, and not just romantic or rose-tinted. I want to see the problems as well as the beauty.
How is the project evolving?
Lie of the Land is an active project and I’m continuing to work on it. I see it is a long-term piece of work because it’s all local to me. I can easily spend just a few hours a day on it as the travel is minimal. The countryside as a place can be seen as a playground, and the working aspects, the life behind the tourism and second homes, is often overlooked. I’m responding to what I see and following a thread of what I interpret. The work I’ve done so far has a set ‘look’, but the challenge is that it is collaborative with the women and because they chose the portrait locations, the ideas are quite free-flowing, playful and at times spontaneous. Whilst I’m usually research-intensive, I think this approach makes for more interesting work, even if I don’t necessarily always have my camera out and ready. I tend to wait, and then I always ask if they have time for me to shoot a portrait. Only then will we both set up the shot.
It feels like you have been working at the intersection of sociallyengaged practice and traditional British documentary photography. What’s the reaction been like?
Very positive, I’m glad to say, although some of the women found it strange to see their images as they’d not been into a photography gallery before - a gallery visit was a new concept to some of them. A few of them wanted to be part of the project but not part of the physical space on the gallery walls. Perhaps it’s because the subject matter is
partly about the quiet act of resistance. One said how much she enjoyed witnessing the reaction of her son seeing her picture on a gallery wall, describing it as a special moment. There’s so much in the images that is hidden - in the portraiture stories, in the landscape history. To some of the women it was really interesting, to others less so. But in all cases I was getting a response.
Initially I did an open-call and then some of my friends asked me why I hadn’t asked them directly to participate! So we had some really interesting conversations, including about the role photography might play, as well as discussing the audio soundscapes I was creating. Sharing the images with them, showing them in a gallery space, led to some in-depth discussions that I’m sure some of them had never had before - but they’ve all been good conversations!
Why the use of both colour and monochrome?
It was a conscious decision. The idea behind shooting the landscapes in colour was me thinking about weaving in the past and the present, how class identity in the area is cyclical, happening and repeating again and again. That’s hard to present online, but so much stronger in a gallery space printed up at a decent size. And they are intentionally ‘big’ landscapes.
As already mentioned, the women’s portraits were collaborative, so we agreed location and perspective, and monochrome works best for me for this type of work. For the still lives I’d ask the women to think about an object that they feel defines their identity. All the objects chosen speak of work, and also of the past – the bugles, for example, are from the former colliery brass bands.
And I gave the women a diary each to write as and when they wanted to, as I was interested in their thoughts about their experiences and challenges. Some wrote a little, others quite a lot. It gave an interesting additional layer to the project for me to think about.
Is this body of work still being exhibited?
The first exhibition was at the Jerwood space in London and then it went to Belfast Exposed Gallery earlier this year. There are lots of plans for a tour in 2024 but I can’t say anything more on this at the moment until it’s 100% confirmed – but I’m very hopeful, so watch this space!
