Interview • 070 PH

Ben Burgess, Making Magic

Detroit, Michigan, USA

Please introduce yourself: What is your name, where are you from, what do you do?

My name is Ben Burgess, I'm a self-styled anthropologist and creator of things from Melbourne, Australia. After spending the early years of my adulthood floundering through a BFA in Photography, I now find myself working as a carpenter. On a more interesting note, I'm a long distance runner and performer of poetry.

What is your relationship with photography and how did you get into it?

My relationship to photography is like many romantic relationships: turmoltuous. I am constantly falling in and out of love with the medium, yet find myself returning to it as a way to reconnect with people and community. A camera often helps me look more deeply at my surroundings.

In a far less romantic act, I first picked up a camera as a way of getting myself invited to parties. Everyone wanted their 16th birthday's documented and I wanted to go to 16th birthday's (as a 16 year old myself). It was an ugly start to a beautiful creative pursuit.

What do you think triggers you to photograph in a certain moment? Is it planned or solely driven by intuition?

Personal connection to a subject triggers every piece of me, the photograph is simply the bi-product of that interaction. I'd say that my trigger happy moments are equal parts planned and intuitive. My best work comes from placing myself in a scenario that is out of my depth and letting anxious intuition guide my gaze.

What is the story you want your pictures to tell?

Now more than ever, I want my pictures to tell the story of connectedness - Of the connection that people have to place and of my connection to each subject.

Which city would you like to visit the most, and why?

I would love to re-visit Kampala (and I will). Kampala is a city that is bursting with creative energy and beckons everyone to involve themselves in the collective conscious. One cannot be in Uganda without feeling as if they are contributing to something bigger than themselves.

As the African tourism industry dies in the wake of Corona Virus, I urge everyone to visit and support the countries that truly need it on the other side of this pandemic.

What is your personal relationship to cities and how do you perceive them as places in general?

Having always lived on the outskirts of cities, I have a bipolar relationship with them. They will forever be places I'm drawn to and places I'll try to avoid at all costs. When I think of my own city (Melbourne) it represents culture and arts, but it also represents a space that is too far removed from our natural environment.

Regarding your project Making Magic: What was your intention, and how did you come up with the idea?

My intention is to represent the Detroit that I have encountered, as best I can, through collaboration with local people. The idea was born from a desire to assist African American Detroiters in reclaiming the conversation that concerns their city. Providing a platform from which to celebrate the amazing stories and initiatives that are being birthed from this landscape.

Bare in mind that this project in its totality combines my photographs with poems by Detroiters. As a white outsider, I acknowledge that the story of Detroit isn't mine to tell. However, after seeing how often it had been misrepresented by white media, I saw it as my duty to convey a more in-depth look at a city that has taught me so much.

Which project did you never finish?

I never finished this project, and I whole-heartedly hope that I never do. I hope that the city continues to grow and develop and teach. And I hope that I will be there to capture it as it does. Detroit is a city that shouldn't require a reason to visit, but having started this project and having involved people in it means that I will always have a calling card to return.

What is that «one thing» you have never managed to photograph and is now gone for good?

Myself. Specifically my awkward teenage self.

If you could travel back/forth in time, what advice would you give your younger/older self?

I don't have a desire to time-travel within my life span, nor do I feel as if I have any advice that would concern my future self. I am very content just progressing through life as it occurs naturally.

What do you prefer saying: «to take a photograph» or to «make a photograph», and why?

I believe my younger self would «take photographs». Literally «take» them, in the inconspicuous way that a street photographer «takes» the identity of someone without caring to acknowledge who they are. My current self is more interested in «making a photograph» through collaboration; working with the subject, be they human or not, to generate something whole. This is why I'm shooting less, because making takes more time than taking.

What is the most interesting experience you have had while photographing?

In 2019, I was travelling through the Rift Valley of Kenya in an attempt to capture the landscape in which many believe was the birthplace of humanity. Whilst camped on the shore of Lake Naivasha, I woke to a pod of six hippos grazing around my one-man tent. Had I not been so terrified, I may have a photograph to tell the tale.

If it wasn’t for photography, what would you be interested in doing instead?

Thankfully for me, I'm doing it. I'm pursuing the life of a carpenter, in the hope that I eventually have a skill set that assists with building my own slice of paradise.

How would you describe one of your pictures to a blind person?

This is the most puzzling question you've put forward to me: Having not been able to form a response to this all week, I struggle to believe I'd be able to form one in this scenario. My apologies to this theoretical blind person.

What are you currently working on, and—if there is—what is your next project or journey?

I'm currently in the midst of trying to physicalize and exhibit the Making Magic project. Given the state of affairs, Corona Virus and all, this is becoming a tricky pursuit. However being a self-sufficient artist has never been easy. I guess that's the fun of what we do.

Thank you, Ben!

Editorial Notes:

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Photography: Ben Burgess (2020)
Location: Detroit, Michigan, USA

Links: Website, Instagram

Interview • 070 PH

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