Hello and welcome to 'Out of the Darkroom' on AdoramaTV. I'm Ruth Medjber
and joining me on the show today is photographic artist Jean Curran.
We're going to be chatting about her
latest project from both sides, in which she uses a rather unusual technique of
combining photographic prints and paint.
AdoramaTV presents 'Out of the Darkroom' with Ruth Medjber.
Jean, thank you so much for joining me on the show today, it's
my pleasure to have you here. Maybe you could tell us a little bit of how you got into photography?'
'I was quite late getting into photography. I left school, I didn't know what I wanted to do
so I went travelling for maybe two and a half years and came home
I did a two-year diploma in advertising and marketing and then I was
like, I don't want to do that, and then my sister actually told me a story about a
refugee and it was from her telling me the story about this man that she had become friends
with who left the Congo and he was a barrister and how difficult he was finding life in Ireland
and there was something about it, something went off in me and i was just
like you know I'm going to do photography that's what I'm going to do but I
was interested in the image, I was always interested in imagery.'
'So that light that went off for photography, was it more so that you could tell people stories?'
'Yeah, there was something very much, or I wanted to know about people's stories and we live in
a world where we're kind of like fed mass representations where you really
have to like sift through a lot of it to get down to, ok well what's actually really
happening? Things are kind of like groups and there was something inside me that just felt
yeah, go off and explore and find out for yourself.
Find out what the truth is, you know, and there was a lot of that. Just because you
see it in the newspaper, you've seen a photograph of it doesn't mean that it's
really, really like that. So just go off and find out for yourself and that's how we used to think about it.'
'Maybe you could tell me a little bit more about 'From Both Sides.'
'From Both Sides' is a suite of in the final edit of eighteen images and each
image is of a different soldier that was present at the ISAF headquarters in
Kabul two weeks after the war was officially declared over in January of this
year. The soldiers are all taken on black and white film on 6x7.'
'You went to Afghanistan for how long?'
'I went to Afghanistan for three days on military imbed.'
'So three days? And you set up a portrait studio?'
'Yeah they had little studio there and I was basically just up this flight of stairs in the studio and they just
kind of left me there so I'd run back down and you know there's a lot of military there
and it's a busy place so I would run down on what was like the street and I would just
be like 'Hey, you! Come and have your photo taken.'
'Grabbing soldiers off the streets?'
'Grabbing soldiers off the streets. So I flew
Afghanistan to Dubai where I was using a dark room, but I knew, I had a feeling that some of
the film may have been damaged coming into Kabul. There's a really old x-ray
machine there that everybody talks about. And it's used for explosive devices and everything has to
go through it and some of the film did get a bit foggy and some were just
destroyed going through that so I was when I got into the darkroom in Dubai, I had to
work very hard to make clear prints from kind of foggy negatives and yeah, I got a series of prints together then
went to fly back to Afghanistan.
When I first had this idea in 2011, I began researching hand painted portraits in Afghanistan
and there was a particular portrait of this man that stood out to me and the person who had
taken that portrait, I believed, really understood photography and really
understood art and there was something about this portrait that stood out to me
above all other portraits and so I had a name of a studio, Taken Studios. I decided that I
was going to go to Mazar-i-Sharif in the North of Afghanistan and try and find the
person that painted that and get him to paint the portraits instead.'
'So you found your painter, did you?'
'Yeah, by absolute chance and it turned out that the artists we went to meet, it wasn't him.
and then he sent us to somebody else and that wasn't him and then he to somebody else and then the
driver looked over my shoulder and I had saved that portrait on my phone and I had carried
that portrait with me for the last four or five years on my phone and I was showing it to people
going, you know, painted portraits like the photographs and he looked over my shoulder and he was like
"is that a photograph"? And I said yes. And he went, "I know somebody. Come on."
So we got in the car and we drove along and we saw this man sitting
on the side of the road, outside this tiny little camera shop, a really old
camera shop and I knew when I saw him I went, oh, there's something really nice about
his face and then I started to get really nervous and he sat into the car
and the fixer started to explain to him about what was happening and he was I like yes I can do that, yes, yes,
no problem. And I was kind of going, does he understand what we're talking about?
and so I took the phone and I went, you know, pictures like this.
And he was like, "those are my pictures."
'Oh, you found him!'
'Yes, it was amazing.'
'It sounds really amazing! Just completely stumbled upon him!'
'Yeah, but also when I met Karim and he agreed to do this, he was like OK I'm
going to go home and I'm going to get my paints and I'll come and I'll meet you at your
hotel and can we work there? And I was like, yeah we'll get somewhere to work there
and so he went home and he brought back his paints and he opens this really old box and he starts
taking everything out and Karim starts explaining that he hasn't used these
paints in over 30 years and he's wondering, you know, can he still use them and he had a small
pane of glass and he started mixing them and he was like, oh yeah it's going to be fine and straight away
he was like looking at the prints and said OK, I'm going to start with this one.'
'So, basically the work is a collaboration. This body of work 'From Both Sides' is a
proper collaboration between you and this Afghan artist.'
'Yeah and I said it to him. I was there going, you know,
I really just feel like I'm a facilitator, I feel like I
kind of went on this journey where my job is almost like handing you prints so that you
can paint them and then I'll just take them away and this is it, and you know it
turned out the guy in the photograph was his brother. This guy's photograph that I
kind of followed up to meet Karim was also a great artist and
photographer who had been killed by the Mujahideen, thirty five years beforehand so we kind of
had this conversation and he was going, you know, talking about how his
brother would have, you know, this experience of having somebody come in
at the time when there would have been no art, and to finally get to
take out your paints again and paint and talk about art and to experience it and
how powerful art is.
"Oh my Gosh, you must have given him so much that day it must have just been so emotional.'
'He gave me so much! Yeah, he gave me so much.'
'You have this beautiful collection of work. What do you hope to do with it now?'
'I really hope that now it will be taken into a museum into a permanent collection because while it is
recognizing the history of art and artists in Afghanistan, it is also quite a
political piece that talks about photojournalism and photography, the unequal
exchange within photography and it also talks about the narrowing vision
of conflict and about how it's a really controlled narrative now, you know, when the
system of imbedding was first created, the military said, you know, part of
winning a war is also information warfare. And this helps us control that and so
without it being overtly very political, it is political.'
' I mean there's a crosscultural reference there. I mean, you're Irish, you're a photojournalist travelling the world you
meet Karim who has so much cultural background from Afghanistan that we
don't normally hear of up but then you've also got the soldiers I mean what nationality were they?'
'They were from many places. There's American, there's German, there's Macedonian,
Romanian, French, Italian.'
'Wow, it's like a global collaboration going on in one piece '
'Yeah, Australians.'
'But I'm glad you have such a passion for it, such a desire to expose these cultures that
would never normally be there. I'm really glad to chat to you.
I can't wait to see more of what you do. Thanks a milion!'
'Cheers, thank you.'
'Well that's it for this episode, I hope you've enjoyed the show. If you feel like
starting the conversation, just leave me a comment below. I do appreciate the feedback.
A big thank you to the Gallery of Photography for helping out with this show.
If you want to learn more about photographic skills visit the
Adorama Learning Center. You're gonna find some tips, tricks, workshops from all sorts of
professional photographers. Also don't forget to subscribe to the Adorama
YouTube channel because I'm going to be bringing you back some more videos.
'Thanks and I'll see you again soon.'
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