Interview • 088 PH

Guy Bolongaro

Hastings, United Kingdom

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

My name is Guy Bolongaro, I am a social worker and photographer living in Hastings UK.

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

I came to photography after a period of burn out and ill health. I had been making films as a hobby but found this too involved and laborious so I needed a simple daily creative outlet that wasn’t too cerebral or head-based. Something where I could just respond rather than having to carry a scheme or set of creative aims or anything pre-conceived; something to build new patterns and habits of mind, be more receptive and to quieten the internal monologue.

Unsurprisingly photography was ideal, and it began to be very helpful and therapeutic to wander around with my gaze directed outwards just responding and capturing things that pleased me. I had painted when I was younger, so I really enjoyed this way of making images so quickly.

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

In the past it was intuitive, just responding as I say in quite a non-intellectual way. Responding to colour, form, something vibrant, odd or visually remarkable. Just this constant instinctive producing images I found very satisfying and exciting. More recently I have been concocting things and in a very loose way planning series. As I’m making a book at the moment I have started to think in terms of longer sequences or cycles of images.

What is the story you want your pictures to tell?

Themes and stories do emerge when you look back, but I don’t usually have any intention in terms of narrative. With the book I’m making called ‘Gravity Begins at Home’ I’m telling the story of my family during lockdown and of the process of reinforcing to myself that the nuclear family dynamic can work for us.

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

All the ones I haven’t been to in no particularly order, but I would like to return to Tokyo with my wife who hasn’t been. Such a strange, seductive, hyperreal place full of tension, contradiction and endless possibilities for fun.

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

I’ve always been a city mouse, needing lots of stimulation and variety but I’ve just moved to the coast as city and family life began to become incompatible in a way. I have an ambivalent relationship with cities now and London in particular as it is an increasingly unforgiving place. Absurd affluence side by side with extreme deprivation, a housing crisis, insidious colonisation of public space by private forces, corporate sanitizing of the wilder zones and a neutralizing of alternative energies, to name just some of the toxic forces that infect the city. But of course, it has huge energy and vitality, is incredibly culturally rich and the scope for creativity is endless.

What is the driving force behind creation?

It is different for each person but for me overall it has probably been neurosis! The compulsion to create almost certainly comes from a neurotic energy and then the need to work things out within my psyche. W.H Auden wrote that art was not a means by which an artist necessarily communicates or arouses feelings in others, but a mirror in which the artist and audience become conscious of what their own feelings really are. He saw the proper effect of art as disenchanting, ridding you of your illusions.

This echoes what Freud intended the role of the psychoanalyst to be, to not deliberately arouse or communicate feelings but to act as a mirror in which patients would become conscious of what their own feelings really are. So photography became a therapy in that sense for me. A committed daily, granular, creative process that would support me to work out how I feel or reflect back to me aspects of psyche that I was blinkered from.

Something that would begin to encourage me to expand my field of awareness, take notice of my environment, be more sensitive to the possibilities of the present situation and move towards a healthier engagement.

Which project did you never finish?

Too many to mention. I found it very hard to complete some short film projects I started. Editing was just too torturous, I was not good at editing my own work.

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

I wish I had photographed my wife and our relationship in the early stages before we had kids. Foolishly my attention was often on less interesting things.

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

I would have very detailed instruction for myself at every stage, perhaps even a daily itinerary! Let’s just say to my younger self: GO TO BED!. And then get up early and go and take pictures.

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

Take. Take. Take. I have a been a collector and a thief. Maybe more making in the future.

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

I enjoyed being surrounded by wild horses in Denmark last year. I was buzzing with energy and excitement but felt very content.

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

Probably torturing myself trying to make documentary films or making bad Philip Guston rip offs and boring people at the pub about my attempts.

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

I don’t think I would. Maybe I would describe what attracted me to take the photo.

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

I’m currently working on the final edit of the book I mentioned that will be coming out on HERE press later in the year. Next, I’m not sure but I’ve just bought a Contax G2 so I’m interested to see what I can do with it.

Thank you, Guy!

Editorial Notes:

Guy's book »Gravity Begins At Home« will be published by HERE Press in September 2021. If you have a project that you would like to present on this platform, please feel free to share it using the submission form.

Photography: Guy Bolongaro
Location: Hastings, United Kingdom

Links: Instagram

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