FOTODOK’s talent program Lighthouse offers ten emerging photographers the opportunity to develop and work on new ideas accompanied by a convincing project plan. All ten of are highly motivated and share an interest in and affinity for socially urgent themes. For six months, they will be supported with knowledge by a large group of experts from the field, the FOTODOK team and each other. We are currently approaching the end of our fourth Lighthouse trajectory. Intern Robin Schaap, a student at the Reinwardt Academy, focuses her research on the further development of FOTODOK’s talent programme. For her research she interviews all participants in this edition of Lighthouse. For the third interview we meet Emilia Martin, photographer.
When and how did you find out that you liked photography?
When I was very small I was fascinated with a pocket film camera we had at home. I remember staging images with my toys and pets and photographing them. I was fascinated with the idea of exploring some parallel realities. Perhaps I felt that a camera could allow me to see something that I failed to grasp otherwise? In many ways, I think it did exactly that.
Image making was always present in my life, but I only started acknowledging its importance and potential when I turned twenty – prior to that I dreamed of being a writer.
After I graduated from a BA literature studies I got a job as a cabin crew in the Emirates Airlines. The job was particularly lonely and confusing. I was flying around the world with an ever changing crew, spending time in countries and cities that I knew nothing about. It soon became clear that a camera was not only my tool to document what I saw, but a guide, a tool to process the world around me, an attempt to understand what I came across and ultimately draw connections between things that I chose to notice and photograph, and better understand my position in the world. I soon left the job and pursued education in photography and art.
Image: Emilia Martin by Sebastian Gołkowski
What prompted you to do a degree in photography?
While at first I used a camera extensively and considered myself to be a self taught photographer I felt that something was missing. There was something I couldn’t quite access working on my own, even though I was in love with image making ever since I remember.
What was missing was the criticality that I believe can only be accessed through the community, the collectivity. I am quite a romantic and when I was working with the medium of photography on my own I highly romanticized it, I wanted it to communicate so much. I am not implying that now the romance is gone – it is still there, but mixed with criticality, contextuality, historical awareness. Those were the things that I found in photographic education and now they are the fundamentals of my practice.
How do you like it so far in the workingfield?
As an artist sometimes I find it is almost impossible to distinguish which part is work and which is life. I also no longer consider myself to be strictly a photographer, I now see myself as a storyteller and besides image making I am in love with writing, with sound. The workingfield of photography has given me both beautiful moments that I am grateful for and some heartbreaking ones. There are many worlds within the universe of photography, some of them I found wonderfully refreshing, reflective and hopeful. But there are also stagnant, patriarchal and traditional ones, the ones where I never felt welcomed to as a female, a poet, an Eastern European.
I make a conscious effort of trying to stay away from them and put my energy into places that make me feel hopeful. Every now and then I accidentally find myself in the wrong photographic world, but then I try my best to shake it up a little.
How did you join the Lighthouse programme and what were your reasons for applying?
Ever since I first heard about FOTODOK it has struck me as a place where the discussions around photography are being expanded, cherished, a place that is supportive and takes visual culture and its impact seriously. As a person who dedicated a big part of my life to photography and visual culture this is a dream institution to be associated with. Also, to be a recent graduate in a country that I am not fully familiar with yet can be a confusing place. The Lighthouse program has been a place of guidance, grounding, and a place of monthly return. I am very grateful to be a part of it.
Image: I saw a tree bearing stones in the place of apples and pears (work in progress, 2022 – now)
What would you have liked to have learned during your photography study that they did not teach you?
When I joined Photography & Society MA program at KABK (Royal Academy of the Art, the Hague) I felt like I came home. The discussions we had around photography, visuality and art were exactly what I had hoped for: we were critical, passionate, not afraid of asking difficult or uncomfortable questions. My education prior to my MA was quite technical, much more visual than conceptual or critical. I think that the mixture of both, my previous education and what I experienced in my MA, together gave me exactly the tools I could have hoped for.
I find it difficult to answer the question of what I would have liked to learn that I didn’t. During my more technical education I wished for more criticality and conceptual thinking, and during my critical and conceptual education I hoped for more technicality. I think education can only work when it is a reciprocal process, not “they teach me and I take it”. I see it as an act of exchange, of generosity, of vulnerability. I was lucky to learn in such an environment.
Have there been moments for you when you wanted to quit? Can you describe such a moment and explain what made you want to continue.
Do you mean photography or education? I have never wanted to quit neither of those.
I do feel anger when I see some photographic organizations taking advantage of emerging photographers for example through contests that expect artists to pay if their work is selected, publications that expect artists to pay if their work is published. It sounds bizarre but there are still plenty of those. I disagree with such a reality and I wish it was spoken about more openly when I was younger (it would have surely saved me some money and time).
Throughout my life, particularly when I lived in Poland where I originally come from, I could see that opportunities within the visual world were not always distributed equally. Often they were given to those who talked the loudest, who fit the image of a photographer best – usually male, performing a certain type of confidence, taking a certain kind of images, interested in certain topics. Those were the only times when I questioned whether there was actually space for me and my voice – I never doubted my desire to tell stories, my desire to create. Thankfully I can see this reality changing right now and it makes me hopeful. We need to hear a full spectrum of stories and perspectives.
Image: I saw a tree bearing stones in the place of apples and pears (work in progress, 2022 – now)
What project are you currently working on?
I am currently in between two projects: “The blue of the far distance”, my MA work that I am now working on publishing in a format of a book, and a new body of work with a working title “I saw a tree bearing stones in the place of apples and pears” about meteorite as a storytelling vessel. I am experimenting a lot, playing with different narratives, researching and learning new mediums.
Image: The blue of the far distance (2020 – 2022)
How did you come up with this idea?
When I was working on “The blue of the far distance” I spent over a year visiting several hand made planetariums and their makers, professional and amateur astronomers. All of the people I met shared with me their stories, their own unique fascinations with space or stargazing. A meteorite was a topic that kept on coming back repeatedly and I was getting more and more intrigued each time.
As a child I was obsessed with stones – I kept on finding and collecting them. It was getting out of hand – I remember that at some point my parents were getting irritated with this evercoming influx of stones. I see a meteorite as a vessel for storytelling. It can be a gray, meaningless rock obstructing the path, a religious object, a precious museum exhibit, all depending on the story we tell, on what we see in the stone. In that sense, the idea of a meteorite is not that different from the idea of photography itself – it also tells different stories depending on its context, depending on the onlooker, depending on what we want to see.
What is the biggest challenge in the project you are currently working on?
It is difficult to think of any challenge at the moment – having graduated I feel very free in my making process, I feel like I can do anything I want, play with any technique or medium I can access.
Maybe this is a challenge? Grounding myself in all the possibilities, not losing myself or the story?
How would you describe your technique and style?
I don’t think that I have a single style or technique. I definitely have certain interests and fascinations, ways of telling the stories and mediums that I have a lot of love for, but styles and techniques depend on the work itself, they are there to communicate something, not to define me.
What fascinates you in life? This could be anything and does not have to be related to your work as an artist.
I was born in post-soviet Poland to economic migrant parents and I grew up in between two very different realities – the industrial coal mining region of Silesia in Western Poland and the rural, distant farm of my grandmother in the East. In Silesia the reality was oppressive, gray, smoggy, very structured, patriarchal. In the East, on my grandmother’s farm, I experienced magic – I remember witnessing the night skies so clear that the milky way could have been seen with a bare eye. The farm life was filled with small rituals and beliefs – while many of them were claimed by christianity, they were fascinating to me. The sound of a cuckoo meant that you needed to be careful with money, the sound of an owl meant something eerie was coming. When I was ill my grandfather was healing me with a syrup he made from a forest tree, and my grandmother had cards with hundreds of different saints that she would prey to depending on the occasion. There was a saint for when you lost an object, a saint for when you were sick, a saint for virgins, a saint for travels.
I believe that growing up in between such different realities has translated into a fascination with the idea of a clash between sublime and ordinary. I am fascinated with the idea that a gray, most average looking stone can become a religious object or a cosmic relic, due to a story we tell. A sound of a bird in one place could serve as a future omen and another one a meaningless background noise. We are surrounded with stories and myths, some of them ancient, some of them new – discovering them keeps me awake at night.
Image: The blue of the far distance (2020 – 2022)
Who do you prefer to go to for advice?
My friends. My partner. My ancestors. The books. And then again, myself.
Which photographer or photographers appeal to you?
The ones that I know in person and admire as humans. I admire image makers who can look at their work and the medium of photography critically, that challenge the dominant narratives, that offer new perspectives.
Ultimately, what is your dream?
I have so many dreams.
Some are small, like swimming in the wild lake or going to an extremely dark place to watch the night sky.
Some are bigger, like ending patriarchy or living on the planet where the ecosystems are not in danger of collapsing and where I don’t need to worry whether my local birds are on the verge of extinction.
Recently I have read an interview with Robin Wall Kimmerer, the author of “Braiding Sweetgrass” for the New York Times Magazine. In the interview Kimmerer suggested an alternative to a current system of news that is focused on reporting violence. “What if we had storytelling mechanisms that said it is important that you know about the well-being of wildlife in your neighborhood?” she asked.
That sounds to me like a great dream.
What are your future goals?
To live up to my current dreams and generate some new, great ones.
Complete the sentence, photography is…….
Photography is a magical act of putting different things into a rectangle box, away from their original contexts, into the new ones.
Photography is a tool for telling stories, hopefully the ones that can help us imagine liveable futures.
Photography is also, at its best, fun.
