GANGARAM MISHAAL

WHO IS MISHAAL AND WHERE DID YOUR PHOTOGRAPHY JOURNEY BEGIN?

I’m Mishaal Gangaram. My alter-ego that I go by in the art space is called the ‘SON OF MIDAS’ and predominantly work quite heavily in the music space with album covers and press shoots. That’s kind of where a lot of my success has come from and that’s helped me branch into different fields. As a profession I’m an electrical engineer. I studied at UCT and I finished at the end of 2019 and then I needed to express myself more and felt very stuck doing that. I moved to Joburg and I was like I’m gonna give myself 1 year and figure out if I really can do this art stuff. 2020 was a very shaky time. It was COVID and I lived by myself so it made me really focus on my art and made me delve into myself a lot. I kind of found an outlet for my mental health through my art and I started shooting myself in my house with super simple stuff. Then it went to people coming into my little apartment, into my lounge to start shooting and then eventually building a studio space and then getting more and more gigs.

YOU SPEAK OF YOUR CREATIVITY BEING YOUR OUTLET, CAN WE TOUCH ON THAT?

I think for me it’s started in lockdown and one of the core things that I always try to keep and what we carry through in the team is try to tell real stories and just find ways to tell that creatively differently and in ways it hasn’t been done before. For me, during lockdown I think I had to deal with a lot of my mental health and just being alone. I moved to Joburg not knowing what I’m gonna do with my life and trying to figure that out. I think using my work and using the tools that I had and the stories I wanted to tell of myself was really a big outlet. At the time I struggled to talk about my own mental health but using my work I created pieces that spoke on that and then I ended up speaking about the work and in that way started opening up about my own mental health to the people around me. Now I carry the same sentiment about how I approach work and how I approach clients. I really want to tell their story. I think consumers would be more attached to it if it has a real story. I’m also trying to move away from the title of being a photographer and I’m labelling myself more as a visual artist. I dabble in a lot of things such as the arts, directing, creative direction. I think now with building the team I can take a backseat role with photography.

YOU’RE A STORYTELLER / CREATIVE DIRECTOR. CAN WE TALK ABOUT THAT, AND HOW IT ASSISTS YOU IN BRINGING FORTH YOUR WORK THE WAY YOU ENVISION AND CONCEPTUALISE IT?

Telling stories is super important to me, it’s real stuff. The stuff I want to do on a personal level is very much story driven and it comes from a lot of my own experiences with my own mental health and my tradition, my home. One of the biggest things as my artist statement is telling the stories of those who can’t and finding ways to tell them in a disruptive narrative. A lot of my personal work stems from speaking to people and my personal experiences with them and getting their unheard stories and turning them into something visual that they can hold tangible when they look at it. That sentiment is also held through the commercial work and artist work that we do.

IT’S A THING FOR ONE’S CRAFT TO TEAR THEM OPEN WHERE THEY UNRAVEL. HOW DO YOU UNRAVEL THROUGH YOUR CREATIVE PROCESS?

I sit in my head and I sit with my team. When we get put on bigger jobs that’s when the full team is involved. Sometimes it’s smaller jobs and sections of the team where it’s people we think would be best fit for it. Brainstorming and chatting with the person we’re dealing with and getting their perspective. Also, Moodboarding, looking at books for reference, using AI. I’ve got a lot into the AI space and I’m using it to my advantage. So when we’re doing a mood board it’s generating the images we see in our heads and that way showing our clients how it’s going to look like. Also, tying back to my own emotions. Maybe if in a shoot we’re trying to evoke a certain emotion I tend to reflect what that emotion means to me and my own experience with that emotion.

LET’S TOUCH ON SUBJECT MATTER AND COMPOSITION. HOW DO YOU GO ABOUT BRINGING FORTH YOUR SUBJECT MATTER THROUGH YOUR WORK?

Being an engineer it’s made me a super technical person and I’ve always been a maths head. One of my favourite things doing engineering was my research phase when I did my honours. The process of doing that research. I carry the same notion every time we make a treatment. It’s looking into things, it’s researching things. It’s the planning stage that’s even more important than the shoot days sometimes and it’s something we hold closely. A lot of my work is studio photography and studio based because being that technical person I’ve learnt to control my lighting, control my environment, build my scenes and then take it into post.

ANY PHILOSOPHICAL VIEWS/IDEAS/BELIEFS THAT YOU LIVE BY THAT MAY OR MAY INFLUENCE YOUR WORK.

I definitely have a big love for Greek mythology which comes in the name ‘Children of Midas’ and ‘Son of Midas’. So mythology stories. I’m also just a kid at heart. We’re just a bunch of kids and I like to draw references from my inner child and find modern interpretations of that. Taking that and relating it back. So yes, I’m a big fan of mythology and I’m also a super comical nerd. I think I also draw my love for the outworks type of aesthetic from.

CAN WE TALK ABOUT HOW SIGNIFICANT IT CAN BE TO NURTURE AN INNER CHILD?

I think my inner child is super important. I think it’s something we keep reminding ourselves, calling ourselves ‘children’ is a big part of who we are. A lot of my creativity stems from that inner child. Young Mishaal was a super shy kid and a nerd. I think that he never thought this life could be his. I think just remembering that and keeping that energy, playing, being silly and having lighter moments. I’m grateful that I found a team that is just as childish and wants to play just as much as I do and we always make time for that. We try our best to make time to be okay to be silly, be dumb and do what we want to do. That’s why as a team we’ve become very much a family.