Recently I attended a photo exhibition and a talk(1) of Leah Gordon’s latest work—Kanaval. A lot of Leah Gordon’s work is shot in black and white. I have a visceral reaction to her work as it truly induces poetry and I don’t say that lightly. She is both an eloquent speaker and brilliant raconteur. She is a photographer, filmmaker and curator. Her work is representational of boundaries between art, religion, anthropology, post-colonialism and folk history. Using an old entirely manual medium format camera, she invites a collaborative relationship between photographer and sitter, evoking a sense of ‘performed ethnography’ and yet, it is always art. Originally from the UK, she has travelled to Haiti since 1991 --- perhaps it is the collaborative work and Haiti’s untiring fight to tie of art and history and bound it into their identity, that, plus her obvious affection, that has Leah Gordon returning and working on such projects as the Ghetto Biennale besides her photography.
NB: What camera do you use?
LG: Roleiicord twin lens reflex over 50 years old
NB: What is your favourite filmstock?
LG: It used to be Agfa pan 100 now I use ilford fp4
NB: For the photos submitted, why are they your favourite?
LG: These are images I like but no more than others really...the Burry Man as through him I understood the true dynamic of traditional performance in binding a neighbourhood, the tailor as this is part of a project about lost skill (which worries me in the rest of the world as well as photography), kanpe as I took this photograph in one of the small villages that Arcade Fire's project Kanpe http://www.kanpe.org/home.html
works in and is very precious to me.
Finally this is one of my favourites in my Kanaval series as I have never seen them since and can only guess at the meaning of their costume.
NB: Your work is representational of the boundaries between history, art, and religion. It brings up the complex nature of the photographic message and its interpretation within (anthropology) in a way that is as relevant to modern material as it is to the historical. Do you use photography as a research method?
LG: I’m drawn to the boundaries between art, religion and anthropology. These borderlands have a historical, and often uncomfortable, relationship with photography. A suspicion that photography has observed and policed, but never taken part. Photography has rarely been embraced as a form of representation by religions. It is as if photography,
with its indelible relationship to the material, could only serve to disprove the divine. (Although when one reflects on its alchemical past it seems rooted inmagical process).
Mixing Hierophany, the visible manifestation of the divine, with photography one encounters a prickly and complicated terrain. Much of my photography is an exploration of this, often surreal, territory. My Kanaval project was an exploration of the porous boundaries between history, performance and the imaginary.
NB: I love your work, especially regarding Haiti, because not only do your photographs illustrate what they were; they also show us what they still have the potential to be…which leads to me to ask about the Ghetto Biennale, how did that come about ?
LG: I have been working with Atis Rezistans since 2006 when I commissioned them to create a monumental sculpture for the Liverpool International Museum of Slavery. They were producing art that reflected a heightened, Gibsonesque, Sci-Fi, dystopian view of their society, culture and religion. Celeur Jean Herard , Andre Eugène and Guyodo were at the core of the movement, which contains seven or eight other younger artists, all producing powerful sculptural works. Their work has opened entirely new vistas into the creative possibilities of the Vodou-inspired arts of Haiti. Their muscular sculptural collages of engine manifolds, computer entrails, TV sets, medical debris, skulls and discarded lumber transforms the detritus of a failing economy into deranged, post-apocalyptic totems.
But their work is not just dealing with the re-appropriation of junk and Haitian culture. Another important part of their practice is the re-appropriation of the bourgeois art world institutions. Andre Eugène talks about this in the film(2) when he talks about calling his yard a Museum.
It was this habit of appropriating art institutions that was one of the factors that led to the Ghetto Biennale. The idea also came from conversations in mid-2008 between myself and the Grand Rue artists about issues of immobility and exclusion for Haitian artists. In the past Eugène and Celeur have not been able to attend private views in the US of their own works due to visa refusal. This is no longer the case, but the past experience became the basis of the conversation. Then there is the question of the globalised international Biennale circuit. They had noticed how class, rather than race or nationality, seemed to be a barrier to entry to the so-called 'globalised' international art circuit. The two or three Haitian artists that seem to repeatedly represent Haiti in Venice, Johannesburg and Sao Paulo are all from the middle to upper class of Haitian society. These were the discussions that led to the almost primarily humorous idea of co-joining these two unlikely words. Ghetto and Biennale. Then through a conversation between myself and Eugène, on the phone between London and Haiti, we decided why not? Like the mountain and Mohammed...basically if the Haitian artists can't get to the Biennales let's bring the Biennale to them. Over a period of seven months we discussed what form it could take, how we could organise it and wrote a core statement.
The jist of which is summed up by our byline:
What happens when first world art rubs up against third world art? Does it bleed?
Ghetto Biennale; A Salon des Refusés for the 21st century
And lastly,
Dominique Fontaine, a curator who mediated the talk at the Phi-Centre, asked :
Given your vast experience as a photographer and lecturer, have you considered launching a photography training space in Port-au-Prince on the model of the Market Photo Workshop in Johannesburg (South Africa) ?
And Leah Gordon’s response :
No I am not interested in giving some kind of master classes in photography in Haiti...all my favourite artists do not have the need of a lens...and I have no interest in changing that dynamic.
Please see her work if you can.