Yann Gross (b. 1981, Switzerland) is a remarkable photographer of the generation. Awarded with a special prize in prestigious photography festival Photo España (2008), he was invited to hold a solo exhibition of the world’s most famous photography festival in Arles in 2011. Yann Gross creates photo-stories revealing unusual and hitherto undiscovered places around the world – a province of Switzerland with it’s inhabitants immersed into an imaginary American dream or skateboarders subculture in Uganda.
Being a guest in “Photography week” which took place on beginning of December, 2011 in Vilnius, he gave a speech sharing his attitude and ways of working. Art critic Gintarė Matulaitytė speaks with Yann Gross reconsidering these issues once again.
What is your approach as an artist?
I am interested in the experience, and the result is something that comes later. While travelling in Uganda I have been looking for a place where I could skate. I met then those kids and decided to stay longer which has since turned into a project: we’re working to establish a skateboarding community, build a larger skate park. We also want to be an education centre as most kids cannot attend school. I am helping them by doing the best I can — photograph. I have a tool which allows me to represent them to a broader audience somehow.
Photojournalists do this for profit which I hate. They see their work as: you go somewhere, spend two weeks, take pictures very fast, then leave and never go back. In the end they’re the only ones to take advantage of it. People whose images you took — their daily lives don’t change although they might be on a cover of New York Times — they might not even know that. It is something terrifying that I would relate to neocolonialism in terms of exploiting people, their image, their story.
I was talking to a photojournalist who spent some time in China. And he wasn’t really fascinated by Chineseculture — he just said China is trendy and he had a lot of work. So he takes pictures there and moves somewhere else. He said: “Next time I will go to Indonesia because there are so many unexploited things that can be found.” And this is what some photography is about. It’s about exploitation — he said the word — but he thought he revealed things, new, crazy topics. I’m not interested in this, I collaborate with people I photograph and if anything comes up — they know what is going on. Some savings earned from publications I invest in the project because it is their story and if I can be an ambassador — I’m glad to.
So you are trying to create more human to human relation?
Totally.
And you are not using it as a strategy?
You could say some of these are somehow staged but I never really ask people to dress up or lie about who they are. Sometimes I have to use light and but not for a faster result. I don’t arrive and leave immediately. While working with the Avalanche I had to go a long way through and become friends with mountain guides. It is a very responsible work so only after some time they started to trust me. It is always about collaboration.
I can relate to your views on the identity. There is this history of Europeans coming to Africa only out of curiosity and a lot of artists play with the “exotic”.
Yes, of course. I think the problem about exoticism is that Europeans think others are worse if they are different. But they don’t see themselves as different, and if you stay there, you start to understand it. It may be better to wait and don’t shoot at all. In Kitintale I decided to take pictures in the very end and only because it is not the Africa we’re used to seeing — it is positive. The problem was that after I published the pictures a lot of journalists wanted to go there and it was almost to become a kind of mediated zoo. Why? Because: “Wow, so cool, African skateboarders — it is crazy — they do like us.” So we banned taking pictures but if somebody comes — they’re welcome to skate.
When you take pictures you have to ask yourself: What if I show this to people who live here — are they going to see their life in a different way, learn something? Or are they going to say: Yes, and so what? This is my garden and why is it so special to you? If they start seeing it differently — then I got it. For example, when I shot Horizonville and showed it in Switzerland, people were shocked and amazed because they didn’t know such subculture exists next to their home.
I think it’s still very much in European culture to look at others as not equal to theirs.
Yes, and the whole economics is based on this. Here again, in my photography I try to be as honest as possible, to change people’s perception, but in the end I just bring more journalists. CNN called me and told they saw my photos and would like to shoot a short film there and show my pictures on their website. They told they don’t have any budget but my work will be seen by 20m people. Even a few hundred bucks to support our project. I mean this is rude. Popularity doesn’t mean support here. MTV contacted me as well and wanted to publish the pictures.
You have to be careful because they think you just need publicity when you’re young. Unfortunately many young artists accept these kinds of rules because they’re inexperienced and they think that it is going to be a chance of their lives. In this way you can keep on working for the biggest companies in the world for free (and they actually don’t really care about what you’re doing) and that doesn’t make any sense. It’s sad but it’s like this. You have to appreciate your work and do it for the ones who really care. That’s why I decline the magazine requests more and more often. It’s just peanuts and you don’t get anything in the end.
Do you mean publishing?
Yes, I have many stories to tell. Nowadays press industry is in crisis. Less and less people buy newspapers and magazines and that means you get paid less. There’s a crisis but that doesn’t mean that you being an artist should work for free. So far I have been making my living from photography but if it happens that I don’t any longer, there are other ways to earn, not running after the peanuts. In the end you can do commercial stuff, earn and do your projects after. Of course you can sell it as well if you agree with conditions.
And regarding documentaries… If you are an artist who works with installations or doing abstract stuff and your work is interesting because it’s a piece of art and not because you tell a story or because there is a documentary interest in it, then of course it’s good to publish even if it’s for free. Because then people are not going to look at the story, at Uganda skateboarders, or at Swiss Americans — they are going to look at this installation of the artist which is pointed towards the artist. It makes a huge difference because then you only talk about your personal work and there is no one else involved… You see where I am pointing to. There’s a difference between a project that is interesting to a magazine for its creative reasons and the one interesting for its documentary reasons.
Do you think how you photograph people? In most of the portraits people stand and look straight to the camera.
There are a few things. I want people to get involved, I want them to be part of a project and that they agree… I always ask. And the other thing is people themselves are interesting enough for me. I don’t need to show them in action, because this way it becomes photojournalism, it becomes really descriptive, for example, this guy is supposed to be a butcher and cut the meat. But I don’t need to see him cutting the meat. I’d rather show him belonging to the community or in relation to the environment using symbols and composition. The image is more powerful than the action itself.
Photographs from “Kitintale” and “Horizonville” series by Yann Gross.