Hi I'm Ruth Medjber
and welcome to Out of the Darkroom on AdoramaTV. Today I'm in the National
Portrait Gallery in London
and I'm going to be chatting to Laura Pannock, she's a social documentary and portrait
photographer
and at such a young age has won so many prestigious awards
including one here at the Taylor Wessing photographic portrait prize.
AdoramaTV presents, Out of the Darkroom with Ruth Medjber.
Laura thanks so much for joining us
today and taking time out of your, what I assume is an amazingly busy schedule.
You kind of fly around. It's pretend. It's pretend, it is, I know it is, I know it's
extremely busy you're shooting everything
I mean you have so many commissions and then you're up to date with your personal
work and then you've got a
weekly blog and it just seems that you are so productive you're putting
everyone else to shame.
All a facade. Is it? Yeah totally. A very good one, it's extremely good.
A total facade. So do you find a balance between your personal work and your commissions
like it is that important to you to maintain like the amount of workload as you do
is quite equal or
do you have a favourite? Yeah I think like to keep myself sane
I have to keep my personal work going and also
it kind of, your commission work is so, well my commission work
is so like unpredictable so I never really know what's going to happen from one day to the next so.
Like in terms of jobs that come in? Yeah there's no consistency,
whereas with my personal work I'm kind of in control of that consistency so I can
set the date, so I can set
more or less the times when I'm going to dedicate my time to that and actually
like the majority of my personal work is just a research-based
so I'm spending a hell of a lot of time just behind a computer or meeting people
or listening to things or watching things so I can kind of fit those balances
in because I
predominantly shoot with natural lightmso
I can kind of shoot during the day. So when you're doing
say your personal work and you're doing at a hell of a lot of research and stuff like that
how do you normally find what it is that you want to shoot I mean is it just
through web or
how does that come about? I think like everything in photography
its instinct, and then I think it's also
from the instinct comes intriguing curiosity and if I feel like something is
challenging me
and like really challenging me, then I kind of push it further and further
and the irony is is that I am the most impatient person,
I am so bad, but like when it comes to personal work
I just have to be tenacious about it and I have to kind of
find ways around things, and kind of problem solve and be patient and
that's probably because I'm relying on other people for my personal work, I need subjects
within my work.
I'm often exploring subjects that I don't understand so
it would be really ignorant me to turn down a personal project
and not explore something further if I didn't fully understand it and then
through gaining that knowledge and understanding you ultimately do become
more interested in something,
so I mean I don't really kind of like
give up or not give up on ideas it's not like a clear-cut decision,
it's more kind of going through those grey zones like any writer does when you
have writers block and you're kind of pulling at strings and
you go through that very depressing self-deprecating stage of like, oh my god
what am I going to do with my life
and and then you know suddenly you just
you become a little bit inspired by something you can follow that path
then if it leads somewhere, great, and if it doesn't you can find another way.
Basically I'm still exploring, I mean I've been doing it over a year
and I'm still using about five different mediums and exploring you know three
different ways of working.
Really? So yeah, because I think that it's important not to kind of like
be so directive and limit your options and I think that
actually by working in so many different ways there is an opportunity for me to learn new skills
and possibly push my, you know my technique and my approach
and my understanding of photography in a new direction, so
I don't know I kind of, well I think like, I like the people that inspire me
like David Hockney and people like that, they're kind of like, they just, they're
playing and that's what photography is you know it's just kind of like being
creative and having fun.
But yet you have a very defined style I think maybe it is to do with
the natural lighting that you use but I think
like just looking through all your images and I would very clearly know
what one is yours, so
is that something that you shoot with in mind then?
You know, it's something that like people like students often say to me
I'm trying to find my style, and it's like something that is
like completely alien to me because
I guess the like so I came up with this metaphor recently that I
think kind of fits quite well, so I think that
you're style, kind of like your creative style anyway for me it's kind of like
either my handwriting on my voice, it's personal
and it's not really something that I can control it just comes out
and it's a way that I communicate, it's a way that I express myself and I can alter it, and I
can kind of learn new ways of speaking and learn new ways of writing
but ultimately its my signature and it's kind of like,
and you know it's just a method, it's just a tool of communicating and just
a way of expressing yourself and I don't think that
there should be limits on that either you know. How about people though, you know
if you were to just kind of, sit in front the person and it's
either a commission or a personal project to go and take their portrait,
how much of them then you know, changes the way that you're shooting them?
Hugely. Hugely, so like do you listen to them how does that happen because
what I'm thinking of in particular is the images that you have of
the young boys and there is no inhibitions there with those boys and
normally when you go
photographing adolescent men, they are so nervous and a bit
gawky and they don't really want to be in front of your camera, but there's none of
that your shots they are so
relaxed in front of your lens, that you see that straight away
how do you almost disarm someone and then
let their character come through, what's your process? I don't think theres kind of like
a tool or secret checker of a way of
working but I do think that like empathy and vulnerability is a huge part of my work
and I think that by allowing yourself as a photographer to be the more vulnerable
one you're empowering the person that you're photographing
so if that person kind of feels in control or they feel particularly confident
even if they don't necessarily feel that way most of the time
you know you're allowing that space and that opportunity for them to kind of
collaborate with you and make that image, because you can't take a portrait on your own
do you know what I mean, you need that other person.
But a lot of it is direction thats the thing, you know I wished that I could kind of like
just you know say to people, do whatever you want just, you know you
be whoever, and a lot of the time you know as a creative you can like, yeah
I really like that light... You're the one with the style and you're the one with the camera so you
have to so you would direct people in a certain way.
Yeah, I think theres like, what I've discovered recently is going back to
earlier work that I kind of have two methods of working,
and one of them is, comes I guess from more of a documentary background where you're
observing and then selecting your moments or seeing things that inspire
you and then kind of go, wow, I need to grab that
and then the other ones are the very very predefined kind of images where
you know I'll wake up in the middle of the night, because I've had a dream and I'll be like
oh my gosh
and sketch that and I've got you know hundreds of notebooks under my bed just of stupid
crap drawings of things that I want to do, and I'm like, right I want this light, I want
this subject I want it in this country I want them wearing this I want...you know what I mean,
know and I don't really want kind of like just take one path or the other because I think
it's quite refreshing for a viewer,
to kind of see that in your work and you have kind of like those two processes.
So you amalgamate both of them and shoot from there.
Tell me then maybe a bit about your camera and what you use
I mean do you shoot film or do you shoot digital or what is your game?
Well I mean it goes back again to the idea
of personal work and commissions, I mean I'm very lucky like weirdly
I've grown up we film because my dad is a photographer
so I kind of spent my childhood in the darkrooms, in studios
and my education thankfully was all on analog as well
so I left with a pure passion for analog and I still have it and I'm like
analog until I die, but then again you know the advancement of digital is amazing
I'll never ever let go of analog, it's definitely my preferred way of shooting
but economically it's just not possible and it's also just risk
you know, I embrace that risk and I love the fact that mistakes equal beauty
but a client necessarily wants... A client won't want you taking that risk
when they've spent maybe you know, a couple of thousand setting up a location.
As soon as I picked up a camera like I totally knew, I was just like
I want to die doing this, I was like, I just
I totally fell like head over heels for it and thats really lucky,
not many people kind of like just know what they want to do, so
I guess the advice that I can only give would just be to
not isolate yourself like
I think that actually like, the majority
of ways in which my photography is developed and how I've grown up as a person
have been down to my influences, my inspiration
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