LIGHT AND LAND

JK – Juliet Klottrup          RL – Rebecca Larkin       RS – Rebecca Scott

RL: What photography equipment do you use?

JK: I have a Medium Format camera, a light metre, and a roll of film. I usually shoot with Kodak Portrait 400. These are with me most of the time when I am shooting.

RL: Do you usually shoot with a tripod?

JK: No, I shoot handheld. I feel like the experience of shooting on medium format, for me, because it is such a large object, it can be a conversation starter, if I’m wandering around in a space, on a fell side, or specifically photographing a group of people or a subject, having the object – although it’s such a big item, it’s kind of unthreatening because there’s an element of curiosity about what you’re holding. I think because my face isn’t concealed, I’m not looking through a view finder, I am looking down. I feel like there is an element of conversation, eye contact, and my face is never hidden, so it doesn’t feel threatening. I think because the kind of person that I am, I never want to seem intimidating or threatening. And I’m always led by conversation and communication before any kind of images are taken.

RS: Do you ever take Polaroids? Some artists take a Polaroid to have an idea before they commit.

JK: I haven’t. I have assisted photographers who do that, but for me, I’m already looking. I’m looking into the lens and I’m already framing up before I make the commitment. But the limitation of 10 images per role, means I am always thinking beforehand.

RL: It slows you down, doesn’t it? Unlike digital photography where you can easily take a thousand images and then spend all you time choosing and editing on the computer. But with film, you’ve really got to process what you’re seeing and how it translates.

JK: I totally agree.

RL: When it comes to the actual composition of your photographs. Do you have a criteria when you go to shoot or is it more spontaneous and you just go with whatever the weather is doing and the lighting. Have you got a specific idea of how you want the image to look?

JK: The environment I am shooting in is always dictated for me, the lighting is always dictated for me, and I have to be flexible and work with what the environment is giving me.

In terms of portraiture specifically, I always try and get the full body. I adore traditional portraiture paintings and family portraits, and looking at my work, they are very posed and there is a full body straight on and centred. Everything seems to be centred. I always try and capture within the frame the environment behind them.

RL: With what I’ve seen when I look at your work, is how the environment adds to the storytelling. And for me a big thing that I think is amazing with your photographs is the subject matter always look so comfortable in the shot, because sometimes, and I’m the same as a lot of people, when you put a camera in front of someone, they go stiff and rigid, but obviously the way you’ve talked to them and had the conversation before and during, it completely relaxes them. I think it gives it a new sort of aspect to the image, where you kind of feel that you are with them in the shot. Especially the one with the gentleman and the horses, I feel like I am stood there watching them because he’s totally in his element and totally comfortable in front of you and that’s a real skill to be able to make the subject matter feel like they are happy for you to take their pictures.

JK: That’s really kind. It really is a collaboration, and the image belongs to me just as much as it does them. Take Joe as an example. When I first met him, I didn’t take his photograph, we just had a chat. We went on a walk; we had a cup of tea. I’m actually doing a short documentary on him at the moment, and I was really mindful that the camera can be a weapon, and I didn’t want to be seen threatening, but equally at the same time, I’m approaching somebody I don’t know anything about, or what they are like, or how they might react.

But for Joe, when I told him what I did, he looked at the camera and was so curious. He was like ‘are you going to take my portrait then?’ and I was like, yes, I’ll come back. With the image it was more like how do you want to be seen? The image will outlive us, and it is a collaboration. I am collaborating with the sun. I’m collaborating with the environment. I’m collaborating with the subject, so as much as I am directing what’s happening, it very much belongs to us all I would say.

RL: So, I’m going to move onto your filmmaking, and I want to know what draws you to an idea, because you’ve got such an amazing array of films that you’ve created, all with different subject matters. But what actually gives you the idea? How do you get to deciding what you want to make a film about?

JK: Largely the films are inspired by the environment that I’m in. I am really interested in preserving this contemporary archive of life in the Northwest, specifically at the moment. Sometimes my approach to filmmaking is very much breathing portraits and the transition between moving image and stills. There’s an element of frustration I find with how much film needs to tell a story narratively and move, whereas I would happily just have a long form – get the camera rolling, and rolling, and rolling just on a person breathing.

But there have been films and projects I’ve been involved in this last year, which are environmental, and it talks about Bolton Fell Moss. Moss of Many Layers  was a project that I did in collaboration with the Place Collective, who are a group of environmental artists based internationally, University of Cumbria and NERC, and that was a really exciting project because I was at ground level with conservationists, scientists, me – as a practitioner, artist, filmmaker and photographer, to make a really important piece of environmental work and portrait essentially of an enormous peat bog in Carlisle, which was a really interesting task.  I’ve always documented landscapes and I’ve always documented people within that. But to look at essentially a square on the map and make something about this huge, industrial peat bog for horticulture, it was mined for horticulture. It was a really exciting challenge.

I’ve deviated a little about what themes I come to, but it is people and their connection to place.

RL: You really capture the sense of the Northwest, and the different sort of people meet around especially with your Appleby Fair photographs and things like that, you can just see the difference, but you’ve captured the spirit and life of people and it shows actually how diverse it is up here, which a lot of people who don’t live up here don’t realise. I think they think we are all a very similar when actually there is a lot of diversity.

JK: I couldn’t agree more, and I feel like you know, you look at Cumbria and you’ve got the industrial coastline from Barrow and then you’ve got life in the deep northern fells and that lived experience is incredibly diverse. Socially, economically, politically, I feel like this areas is vast and the experience of life it quite vast. I think diversity shows itself and represents itself very differently in a place like this and also within that you’ve just got a huge chunk of landform that separates us all.

RL: So, when you, same with the filmmaking but also the photography do you go and scout the location beforehand, especially with your landscape photography? Do you look at the environment beforehand or have you got a general idea of ‘I’m just going to go and see what happens’. Because you’ve photographed some really beautiful landscapes that I’ve not necessarily seen before which I really love. Obviously when you think of the Lake District, you’ve got the beautiful lakes and everything else, but your photos show a more rugged landscape and it’s a lot of places that people may not have necessarily been to.

So how do you approach photographing them? Do you actually go and walk up in the hills and think, yes, this is the right place, or do you just do it spontaneously?

JK: I’ve taken great advantage of the £2 bus fare that’s on at the moment and a linear walk is very satisfying. I will take my camera with me and do a linear walk. And you know these aren’t specific Wainwright’s walks by any means. It’s like getting the OS map and working out where I can land and how much light I’ve got. Again, collaborating with the light and the land. But the moment you kind of get past where the tourists and the traffic, I guess nobody’s there, and it is very difficult to describe.

So, I think that is why I make images about it, through photography, through painting, because even the photographs can’t quite capture what it feels like to be so far away from everything and I really do find beauty in the simplest of forms, but what you have up there is vast and so enormous, it’s very difficult to articulate.

RL: It’s hard to capture the silence as well of being up there and as a photographer myself, you get drawn into the images, so I know how quiet that place would have been. So, the lighting makes a big  difference I think with capturing the noise and the essence of the place as well.

I think your landscapes are absolutely stunning and I think choosing to capture them on Medium Format also makes it more special. I think, digital film is amazing but there’s just a quality to film that I think adds texture and layers to the images, so building it all up together, you kind of do feel like you’re in the image when you are looking at it.

JK: Thank you, and I will wait and wait and wait until the sun breaks and I’ll be there in torrential wet rain and looking at my watch working out how much time I’ve got to get back down, and I will wait until the light moves in a certain way. It’s a challenge, but a pleasure to be waiting for the light, I mean, what a task that I’ve set myself. You know, that’s really kind, it feels like the truest way to archive by distilling everything into a certain negative, although that’s a precious object and I’ll have to make sure they’re in a fireproof case at some point.

RL: Is there a reason you chose colour film as to black and white?

JK: For me I need more. I need as much information, as much truth as I can get. I feel like, when I have actually developed some of the images in black and white, although it may seem more timeless and archival to choose black and white, I have the option of colour. And you can capture the season more accurately, I feel like especially on the tops, the colour does change and also the sky, there’s so much information in the sky and you would lose a bit of that with black and white.

RL: How did you begin painting, what was the process. How did you move on from photography to painting?

JK: Well, I think the painting came first because I studied illustration, and I picked up a camera during that time because I felt like I could more quickly articulate myself with images. Yeah, painting came first, and it was because of lockdown and being stuck and not able to go anywhere where I could photograph. I was like, how do I get out of my head and how do I translate all these experiences into an art form? And, I had more time, so I kind of fell back into the process of painting. And then as the world opened up and I was back photographing again, I felt that going back to painting felt like I could articulate where the negatives ended, and the paintings began.

RL: Do you paint from your photographs or is it a bit of an amalgamation of what’s in your mind as well as what you’ve seen?

JK: Exactly, and at moments I have colour picked from the photographs, but it is very much the space between the two.

RS: Going back to what we were saying about black and white photography against colour photography. Black and white becomes more of a fiction. It’s more of a construct because we don’t see in black and white, we see in colour. So that’s interesting that you’ve kind of particularly used colour and it’s extraordinary when you go up there and you’re in the landscape. Black and white becomes more artsy.

RL: Especially when you are photographing landscapes that have a lot of muted colours. I think when you take away the colour and you just show black and white, you actually lose a lot of the image because they can all blend into one another and, whilst that works for documentary/street photography, I think when you are photographing something as beautiful as the Lake District, you need to be able to capture the colour of the seasons.

RS: You’re right, the colours are so subtle, and the sky is so subtle. And I think the nature of photography and painting is totally different. Photography, you just capture one second and that’s the nature of photography and then the paintings are enlarging that experience of one second that is the photograph, and the paintings is the essence of what you’re feeling out there or the landscape and the sky. It is more physical in a way. So I’m thinking that’s kind of compensating for the lack of photography, photography just gives you one instant and the interesting thing is the painting is making that moment larger.

JK: That is, it exactly. I think that I found it quite difficult to articulate that when I’m talking about my practice because I do think that photography largely in my body of work is an element of truth and when I’m photographing people, I try and represent what is true and real. And then for me, there’s an element of me and my spirit and the play and emotion that I take from the landscape into something that’s more abstract and that is more personal and less of a collaboration with people, but more of my personal collaboration with the environment, I guess.