Alex Sinclair interviewed me for his great blog, Digital Faun. Thanks Alex!

digitalfaun:

A N   I N T E R V I E W   W I T H   P A U L I N E   M A G N E N A T

This is the second of three interviews with people who applied to the open call I did a while ago. Like most things, I’m behind on posting these but I really like this one and Pauline is awesome so hopefully it was worth the wait. Enjoy!

What made you start your series on missing people’s last known locations?
There’s something about people disappearing, just vanishing that has always interested me. Not in a morbid way, but more figuratively. Of course there is always the thought that SOMEONE KNOWS, obviously no one can disappear like that, just because they want to. In terms of a photographic project, it does make a fantastic starting point. Throughout the realisation of “Missing”, I had a lot of things in mind. The details of the investigation of each case – I never meant for the series to be a documentary essay but I wanted to collect as much information as I could from the start, just because knowing the story behind each disappearance was necessary in order to photograph specific details or places. Later on, I felt it was better for the viewer not to know much about the story, but to focus on looking at the prints.

I did a project on the missing kids database for Ireland for college so I can emphathise with that curiousity. The drawn out narratives you concoct in your head to somehow justify what happened drives you crazy. I can’t imagine what it’s like to lose someone you love under those circumstances. Do you think you could have arranged the project in an effective way with the information too?
I really want to start working on a book of this series in the near future and when I do, I think I’ll include some information about each case. Not necessarily the whole story, but a few details that reinforce the sense of complete loss and despair that you feel when you research that kind of story. Sure enough, losing a kid is the worst that can happen, but when you don’t even know how it happened, if he’s still alive or not … I don’t know, I can’t think of anything worse. Personally for Missing, I think I conceived the project with not only the details of each case in mind, but the interviews and reactions of the parents and anything I had read about their point of view. This influenced the photos a lot more than me thinking “I’ve got to photograph this place because here is where they found his skateboard” or that kind of things. I had the parents’ and friends’ point of view a lot more than I had the investigators’, if you see what I mean. I was not investigating and researching beyond necessary, after I got to the point where I had all the details that I needed, I wandered a lot around and thought about how relatives and friends of each missing person had done the same many times.

The series “Topophilia” unmistakably really feels like one of those warm European countries, can you explain a little about the series and your ethnic background?
I’m originally from Geneva, Switzerland but “Topophilia” was shot in Tuscany, where my grandparents have a family house. They bought it a few years before I was born and as a kid I used to go there about three times a year on holidays, especially in the summer when I would spend almost two months. I don’t know if that answers your question, haha. To be honest I did shoot more landscape there than anywhere else I think. In the summer especially, there is that southern, golden light that I absolutely adore. Geneva has bits of it too but for reasons unknown, I don’t shoot much outside when I’m back home, I tend to focus on portraits.

Is it the novelty of being away from home that helps you approach Tuscany differently?
Actually my work in Tuscany is intrinsically linked to the memories I have of the holidays I spent there, which is sometimes weird. I don’t know how to explain it properly, to me it’s just this very special place where I’ve never lived but where I go three times a year. I never get tired of it, and it was just recently that I really worked on a specific project there, whereas before I would just photograph a bit randomly. So my project Topophilia was born out of this desire to photograph the images and memories that I had always had of this place. Right now I want to start working there again and photograph in a different way, but I’ll have to think about that.

What was your process like for building “Family Archive”?
“Family Archive” is a project that explores how, when it comes to family photographs, the same photographs are made in different generations. At first I intended to work with both my father’s and mother’s side of my family but since I come from a relatively big family. My father has two sisters, my mother has both a sister and a brother and I have two sisters and a brother. I quickly realised the amount of photographs was too big to start with, and I focused on my mother’s side of the family only. From then on, I browsed my mother’s albums that go from 1970 until today and picked the images. I didn’t have anything specific in mind at that time, so I chose images that resonated because of the memories they brought back, but also in terms of pure photographic quality. For the photographs that were made before 1970, I found them in my grandmother’s albums. I remembered a few before browsing her albums but there were also photographs I did not know, and that was even better. After the first selection, I probably had roughly 300 images to work with and from then on, it went rather quickly. I paired the images, but it was a very quick process, I knew the images by heart and editing them as well as building a narrative with archive material was done very quickly. But the project remains unfinished and I intend in starting to work on it again and hopefully – making a small book out of it.

Haha that’s not such a big family. There was fifteen in my Mom’s family. I understand that almost urgency you feel to catalog and archive your family’s past. Mine is such a gargantuan task that I keep putting it off, but of course there’s the problem that the longer you put it off, the more difficult it becomes.
You do interviews yourself for your blog Rocket Science. How does being interviewee compare to the flip side of being the interviewer?
I like doing both, I don’t think that interviewing people really helps me answering questions but it is definitely something that helps me when it comes to thinking about photography, projects etc. And it’s just an excuse to get in touch with people whose work I like. Although I’m soon going to start working on a book with different photographers who were featured on Rocket Science… I’ll tell you more when the time comes!

Why is your series of portraits entitled The Wrong Way?
Because my sister once said to me that she was afraid of posing THE WRONG WAY when I wanted to photograph her. Personally, I love shooting portraits as much as I hate posing for one, and I really admire people for whom it comes naturally.

Do you see yourself undertaking a larger more specific portrait project in the future or do you like keeping it person specific?
I do want to make a project on portraits, something that will be more developped and constructed than just having people pose occasionally. There’s a project I definitely want to make on my 16-year old brother and his group of friends, but I’m having trouble convincing him. Apart from that I’ve started a small, side-project on him and one of my sister, they’re very close, almost like twins and I’m interested in photographing their relationship. We’ll see how this goes!

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Pauline Magnenat currently resides in London, England and can be found online at the following:
Own Site | Flickr | Rocket Science (highly recommended) | Bureau Photo Collective