#PHOTOGRAPHY Magazine talks to photographer Alexis Clerc - Issue 14
What or who inspired you to become a photographer? What chiefly inspires you when you decide to take a photo? I don’t precisely remember if something or someone got me started doing photography in the first place. Until a few years ago I was just playing with a small digital point and shoot, mostly taking photos of friends and things, not putting too much efforts into it. I think what really brought me in was a certain relationship I had a few years ago. For a few months I was into someone who was doing a bit of photography. It was a very messy time with lots of highs and lows, but being with someone always brings you something, and that’s where I got really hooked on photography. I think I take photos because I have a visual memory. Some people read words and build on the descriptions to paint themselves pictures and visualise landscapes, scenes, moments, and characters. Photography is almost the opposite process. I freeze landscapes, scenes, moments, or characters, and you have to build the narrative around. I really like this way around. Sometimes it’s purely aesthetics, thought. And I like this too - colours, composition, materials, textures, etc. Then, when it comes to the moment where I decide to take photos, I’m generally interested in weirdness, darkness, abnormality, sometimes beauty, and I’m trying to capture these with a light touch of humour. So I try to keep an eye open for these things around me. Then again, I look for things that are interesting, weird, or mysterious enough that the viewer can grow a narrative from.
Is there a particular reason why your work is mainly focused on Japanese culture? Yes, the main reason is practical - I live in Japan at the moment, so I explore what I have before me. But being in Japan isn’t an accident either. I got an opportunity to be here for a while, and although I wasn’t precisely interested in Japanese culture in the first place, I knew it was an interesting place to live. You don’t really get the picture when you are in Japan for a short time. Most visitors tend to project their fantasies of Japanese culture onto what they see and experience, and leave the country with the same flawed understanding of the place and its people. Japanese reality is more complex, a bit like a giant puzzle, and trying to make sense of it through photography is very enjoyable. I also don’t live in a big city, like most photographers - Japanese or foreigners - and I think this puts me in an even more interesting place to look at the country.
Your most recent work, Sado Chado, is shot in black and white opposed to your other work, what drove you to make this decision? I started this series a bit after landing in Japan. Before that I wasn’t really into black and white photography. I seemed to be interested in the things of today, which, to me, were definitely in color. Doing black and white almost felt like cheating, by giving an artificial cue of nostalgia to pictures, by avoiding the constrains of dealing with colors, or by too easily reaching for the overdone iconography of street photography. I knew I was probably wrong, but this is just the way I felt. Then at some point I rediscovered black and white again and realised I generally liked to look at a monochrome photo more than color, while still preferring shooting color. So I wanted to give it a try, and the idea of Sado Chado came along.
Many of the people photographed in Sado Chado are faint or look in despair; did you want to present a decaying image of Japan? In a way, yes. It’s not the only thing I am trying to do through this series, but it is definitely an important part of it. I love Japan and I’m not saying that it is desperate, but rather that everyday reality is less bright than it appears. The first image I had of Japan was that of a modern society that was on its way to perfection. Streets in cities are generally very clean, people are perfectly groomed or made up, they are very polite, and other signs of an ordered and efficient society were countless. But again, I quickly discovered the dichotomy between appearances and reality. There is lots of stress, relationships are difficult, sometimes it feels like people subsidise a lack of confidence with acting and pretending, the working class seems to struggle a lot and doesn’t really have a voice, culture and traditions are increasingly rendered and consumed as entertainment and not really renewed, and so many more aspects of Japanese life are deteriorating in this way. So my intention is not to paint a negative picture, but rather to deconstruct a myth by capturing the small cracks and glitches of the everyday, when things don’t quite work as expected. I’m trying to be provocative and challenge the way people, Japanese or outsiders, understand the country. I see the iconography in Sado Chado as a sort of satirical haiku, or a poetry of misfortune.
In Japanese California, you seem to explore American aspects within Japanese culture. Do you think big Japanese cites will grow even more “Western” in time? i don’t'the know. Or perhaps they’ll grow global. But I think Japanese culture is going to be increasingly difficult to discern. There have been a number of events and dynamics during the twentieth century that deeply affected the evolution of Japanese culture. The outcomes of the Second World War and modernisation policies have led the Japanese to almost alt the natural evolution of their culture, and subsidise it with western lifestyles. Of course they kept a lot, but they haven’t evolved it so much, and there is not enough between old traditions and western modernity. Of course there are constant attempts by writers, intellectuals, architects or designers to re-interpret traditions and history, but the popular side isn’t there so much. I am not being reactionary or conservative, but I think as someone who grew up in Europe, it is unusual to see culture being so deeply shaped by political powers. And this isn’t helping the country to maintain its own singularity.
What other aspects of society are you going to depict in the future? What’s next for your work? I guess I should do something where the critic is going to be more obviously positive. I think I’m generally interested in challenging how things are perceived, so a next project could be to find something that deserves more exposure and consideration. It’s actually what I’ve started doi with my project Island Logitstics, which looks at the an important part of Japan’s population that is little known outside the country - the daily life of fishermen and their families. I am thinking to focus on the islands of the Inland Sea, for practical reason - I can’t afford to do it for the whole country - and because I see some of these places as microcosms of Japanese society. I also have other ideas in mind, but I’m dependent on how much more time I’ll be able to stay here, and right now it looks like not so much time. Let’s see.
Okay, some quick fire questions: A) Digital or Film? B) Favourite photobook? C) What’s the last exhibition you visited? Digital or film? Both! They are two different approaches and I like them both because they give different results, although I prefer film much more. I tend to be more selective when shooting film because it’s expensive.so the photos on my rolls are usually much higher quality on average. But I think being selective isn’t always good and it prevents from taking risks and experimenting. That’s when digital comes in. I don’t really like shooting digital, but I have much more room to play, and sometimes, images I wouldn’t have shot with film come out really nicely with digital. My favourite photobook? I don’t really have one in particular, so here are a few that I think of right now. It might be a bit obvious, but The Last Resort by Martin Parr has long been, and still is, one of the most enjoyable and interesting references for what I’m trying to do as a photographer. I like his empathy, humor, and critical mindset. Issey Suda’s Fragments of Calm (2014 retrospective exhibition, I I think) is also one I really enjoy and learn from every time i flick through. Alec Soth’s LBM Dispatch series, which casts an equivocal light onto societal and anthropological questions. Great eye and mind too. And I haven’t been to many exhibitions recently, and the few I visited were quite disappointing.
Lastly, could you give us a piece of advice for all the aspiring photographers out there? I don’t know… Maybe keep away from comfort zones. Read photobooks, read novels. Forget about gear. Go out.
@hashtagphotomag
