III. Emma Bäcklund. Teetering between some of the more obscure photographic genres, is the work of Swedish born, London based photographic artist Emma Bäcklund, whose largely black & white catalogue of works and series' has built a reputation for creating gentle, uncanny and demonstrative images surrounding the human experience and beyond...
Dorrell Merritt: Hey Emma!
Emma Backlund: Hi there!
Are you at the Gallery right now? Is it for the Miniature Worlds exhibition, that you mentioned in our previous emails?
Yes, it’s a group show with AETHER, focusing on artists who are interested in astronomy, or the uncanny.
And what has the preparation process been like for that?
It was quite straightforward as I knew I wanted to include images of otherworldly landscapes and spaces beyond the corporeal.
And will it all be new works?
Yes, but not my most recent... a lot has happened since January. While studying, I feel that ideas and thoughts develop in a fast pace as you are constantly working intensively with your practice and theory each week.
As if the ritual and repetition causes you to renew your perspective in a way that’s too critical?
Not necessarily the repetition itself... you are surrounded by other artists making work all the time and conversations move ideas forward and even though I feel they move forward quickly, I am not necessarily abandoning previous ideas. I think it’s less a static process and more a fluid one.
The majority of your photographic work seems to stem from theoretical approaches; namely the psychological and anatomical... was there a specific starting point for approaching work in this way?
Yes, you’re right, I often take photographs based on a thinking process and I am often inspired by philosophy, behaviour, psychology, contemporary dance and neuroscience; how they all affect our idea of reality and what it means to exist in a physical body. These core ideas I constantly go back to are very much rooted in my background in contemporary dance. I am inspired by artists who work with performance and choreography such as Yvonne Rainer and Anna Teresa De Keersmaker etc. Although I am inspired by movement, it is often the still photograph I work with.
It’s funny you mentioned dance because I picked up on the choreographic aspect of your work, in your series Leka (to play), when preparing my questions. How choreographed/pre-meditated were the images within Leka?
I prefer to work as naturally as possible and don’t want to control the image too much when working with people. I like the idea of keeping it open to let things in not planned and to work with the people I photograph. Leka itself, was based on games me and my sister used to play when we were children. The people in the images reenact these games and they got into the games which made them more present and less aware of the camera.
So it’s almost like a visualisation or interpretation of your own memories? To what extent did you explain the rules to them?
I gave them all drawings of the games :)
So what does an average day as Emma Bäcklund consist of?
An average day ideally starts with Yoga, and I usually spend the rest of the day at RCA. I try to go to private views and exhibitions as there are plenty but sometimes I feel it’s better to not take too much in specially when you are working with your own project. I also work in a gallery as you know.
And are you a breakfast person?
Yes, would never skip it. I’m really slow in the morning and need that calm to start the day.
Haha; so what is your go-to choice?
Usually... coffee, juice, muesli and yoghurt.
Would you say that you come from a creative family?
Yes, there was always creativity when I was growing up. Everyone was working with art in one way or another.
Your parents...?
Yeah, my Dad is a part-time painter and my Mom works in an opera house with the costumes. Also, my Sister is a sculptor and my Dad’s wife is a photographer and teacher too.
And do you think that these experiences and interactions with such a contrast of artistic entities, consciously affects your practice?
Yes I think it does, inevitably. I talk to my sister a lot and she gives good advice. I think all these parts affect how you see the world and what you are interested in. The ideas are important, without them I would not do photography. Photography is just a medium that I use to communicate these ideas but I’m also working with sculpture, dance, writing and moving image. Often it is what I cannot explain with words or what I find complex, that I want to explore, and the challenge is to find a visual approach to present it in a way that is simple.
I noticed that Leka appears to the first series in which you work directly and 'explicitly' (not in the literal sense) with human subjects, Was that a welcomed transition for you?
Yes.. I always work in the slippage between the absence and presence of the body. A year ago I worked on another series Phantom Limbs, where I placed myself in front of the camera to create a bodily presence which dissolves in the void of the photograph.
But, did it feel as if you were entering new territory in your artistic development, in going from working in an almost abstract way to something that contained things like facial expressions, gazes, human to human contact...?
Yes perhaps one could say that. My series Phantom Limbs was challenging for me, as I let go of the control of making the image but had control of the body that was in it. Now I am working with the reverse, in control of the image but not of the bodies. I think it is a shift and I like it and would like to work with it more, as a collaboration between me and the persons performing the bodily act which may also take form in moving image.
Would you say that working without colour imagery is intrinsic to your practice; and if so, why?
I would say that, but I also don’t want to limit myself. It could always change. At the moment though, I am working with black and white. The reason for this is partly because it takes an image out of context further than it already does. It removes it from what would be ‘real’ for the eye, as we do not experience the world in black and white. Another main reason for this is because l often emphasise on form(s) without context or surrounding and colour does not really have a meaning to exist within that. Colour also symbolises a lot in the image that I would perhaps not want to be communicated. I also like printing black and white and the various choices of paper and techniques one can use. This can change the image completely and it becomes more of an object and a bodily act in the process of making.
And I also noticed that you write poetry. What was the last poem you worked on?
Yes, I started to write in relation to my dissertation that I recently began. I like playing with rhythm in the text and to write almost... fragmented. They are not thought through but mostly written intuitively. The last one I worked on was called “Bread Crumbles and Concrete Floor”.
Oh yeah I saw that one; I liked the "Crumbles" in the title; makes it seem innocent and almost detached at the same time. I have a theoretical question prepared; let’s see how it fares... If you lost consciousness and when you woke up, could only remember the complete works of one poet for the rest of your life, who would it be?
Wow (haha), let me think. I really like Jean-Luc Nancy, but he is more a writer theorist writing poetically. I like his book “The Fall of Sleep” (it’s very short). It’s about presence and absence and how sleep is an absence which reverses itself, and makes us truly present in our own self, so maybe he’d be my choice.
Changing the subject slightly, I was re-reading a conversation between Hans Ulrich Obrist and Wolfgang Tillmans from 2007, and Hans remarked on Tillman’s ability to not only be one of the few of his generation to see himself as an artist, but also to use the magazine and commercial photography as much as an equal medium/path of sharing work, as say, a Gallery. Do you feel that nearly ten years on, as an artist, that there is still the opportunity to make a transition from art to more commercial or editorial worlds in photography?
He pushes established ideas of beauty and revalued the everyday and overlooked. He also bends platforms for where art should exist. Artists are merging art and commercial now as well vice versa, but it has become a norm or trend. I think that there are even more doors open to this way of working now, disciplines are becoming blurred. With internet and virtual platforms new spaces emerge for artists that becomes more accessible to use and to perceive. Sharing art and new technology affects notions of perception and duration. But freedom comes with limitations, a saturation of images and art online almost makes it transparent. When Tillmans first crossed disciplines of fine art and commercial it was not as acceptable as it is now. Why his work is so influential is because he is open to various contexts for it to exist within, from the use of recent poster works in relation to the EU campaign to his installations in National Museums of Art blended with old paintings.
I sometimes feel as if there is a genre that has emerged and has been standardised, of non-commercial, commercial photography, which was born from his era and from his works. So would you lend your style to say... a fashion campaign, if asked?
I think the non-staged look is nice, and like the feel of the everyday within fashion photography. I don’t really work like this though. I think that if I did a fashion campaign I would definitely want to use the forms and shapes of bodies or a body to push the image and the way we are used to seeing clothes on a body in a fashion campaign.
I think it would be an interesting outcome; with the subtly and gentleness of your style. So what would you say is your most accomplished image or series?
Oh I can’t tell! I feel that every project was somehow important, but as all other ideas have influenced where I am now I suppose the project I am working on now is the most interesting for me, although it has not been formed yet. Perhaps that’s what I like about it, still yet to come.
Finding 50p in your pocket is most likely to end up being spent on ____?
Chocolate / Given away.
Will we find intelligent life in the universe, or will it find us first?
(sorry, have a visitor in the gallery... just a sec...)
I can’t imagine any of it. It seems that we are too eager to find ourselves elsewhere, in unexplored yet unvisited places.
What one Swedish dish do you miss the most?
It’s not a dish but I wish I could eat salt liquorice more often.