“I went into this expecting to come out with a project about what recovery looks like… What I found was not a recovered woman, but someone who was still in the midst of dealing with these disorders”

Last month, one of Russell-Jeffrey’s photographs – from her 2021 photobook You Will Always Be Loved Even When You Feel Alone – was selected for this year’s Portrait of Britain award. The image is of Xanthe, the protagonist of the series and one of Russell-Jeffrey’s closest friends. Growing up, Xanthe struggled with disordered eating. “[Back then,] I didn’t quite understand it with great depth, or interrogate it in any capacity,” the photographer says. 

In 2021, while studying photography at Oxford Brookes University, Russell-Jeffrey decided to move in with Xanthe for two months. She wanted to capture how her friend was healing from adolescent trauma. “Naively, I went into this expecting to come out with a project about what recovery looks like… What I found was not a recovered woman, but someone who was still in the midst of dealing with these disorders,” Russell-Jeffrey says.

The pair spent two months together – day-in, day-out – and Russell-Jeffrey became aware of an “immense loneliness” that consumed Xanthe. This was surprising. “Xanthe is very outspoken, driven, and successful,” Russell-Jeffrey explains. They had grown up together as girls, but this was the first time they had spent a prolonged period of time together as adults. While they were living together, Xanthe experienced a bulimia relapse. “She’s not someone who welcomes pity, but I’d never seen her so defeated,” says Russell-Jeffrey. “I noticed that the problems she grappled with when she was 14 are just as prevalent today.”

The sequencing of You Will Always Be Loved Even When You Feel Alone echoes the reality of living with an eating disorder – moving through periods of binge eating, relapse, and healing. “Then the cycle begins again, of trying to stay in recovery, and this immense fatigue around that, because you’re never entirely free of it,” Russell-Jeffrey reflects. Alongside the images are Xanthe’s handwritten notes as well as letters from her family. Imbued with a striking vulnerability, these notes provide further insight into the complex process of dealing with trauma. 

What emerged was a series not just about recovery, but also friendship, and most crucially, care. Even though Russell-Jeffrey doesn’t appear in the images, her presence is palpable. The series feels like a dialogue of understanding and acceptance between two women that have grappled with many of the same issues. “It was almost a documentation of the small-scale things that you can do, the act of noticing, and not always over-analysing someone’s life but being attentive to it,” she says.

Due to the nature of the work, Russell-Jeffrey had to make certain ethical considerations. Xanthe was involved in every step of the process – while making the images, but also in the editing phases. When the project was finished, the photographer made sure that her friend was aware of all the implications of sharing it on the internet. Most importantly, the door was always left open to take it all down if she wanted to. 

Fortunately, “she loved it,” Russell-Jeffrey says. “It made her very emotional. She’s really proud of it as well, which she never thought she’d be able to feel.” The women have also grown closer through collaboration. “We went from having a friendship that we knew so well, to realising there’s so much we don’t know,” Russell-Jeffrey explains. “This was the first time I got to know her in loneliness, which is a rare thing.”

As an adult, it can be difficult to find the right words, or even the time, to properly care for friends as they experience hardship. Russell-Jeffrey’s project is a reminder that sometimes the best act of care is purely our presence. As she pledges in her introduction: “I shall be here not as a spectator to your pain or recovery like before, but as a hand to hold in the sunshine or on the cold bathroom floor, for you will always be loved even when you feel alone.”

sophie-jeffrey.com

These conceptual musings have led to some of his best-known works. Theaters, for example, emerged out of a “near-hallucinatory vision” – an “internal question-and-answer” beginning with “What if I photographed an entire movie?” The result is a series of more than 100 large format photographs of empty theatres, their architectural details illuminated by gleaming white screens. These images, along with key works from all of the 75-year-old’s major photographic series, will be displayed in his largest retrospective to date, opening this week at London’s Hayward Gallery.

Sugimoto thinks of himself as a conceptual artist, stating that “I use photography as a tool”. His work, which spans 50 years, meditates on existential themes such as mortality, truth and the passage of time. In Diorama, he photographs displays of stuffed animals in natural history museums, eerily blurring the border between reality and fiction. Seascapes raises metaphysical questions, presenting horizons from around the world. Another major series, Portraits, includes images of wax figures at Madame Tussauds, which invite us to consider our perception of truth, while Lighting Fields is a study of static electricity rooted in his fascination with the history of photography.

Sugimoto’s references are vast, spanning art history, psychology, philosophy, anthropology and physics. “The collection of historical objects is a very important source for me to study the passage of time, the history of human consciousness and how the human mind was born,” he says. Photography is Sugimoto’s “visual statement” – a means to express his ideas. But his preoccupation with ancient objects has also fed into his architectural work, a more recent arm of his practice. In 2008 he co-founded a firm, New Material Research Laboratory, with architect Tomoyuki Sakakida. The name is intentionally ironic; their ethos is reinterpreting forgotten materials and techniques from the Middle Ages and the Early Modern period.

This strand of Sugimoto’s work is interesting because in relation to time, photography and architecture feel inherently different. Photography relies on impermanence, capturing a fragment of time that will never be again. Architecture, on the other hand, does not stop or capture time – rather, time moves around it. How do these two practices align for Sugimoto? “The consciousness of space,” he says. “Designing a space is the same as composition in photography. You need to have a sophisticated sense of space.”

In fact, the passage of time is a key factor in Sugimoto’s conceptualisation of physical spaces too, especially the Odawara Art Foundation, which he describes as “the last piece of my art”. Established in 2009, Sugimoto’s foundation is located around an hour outside Tokyo, nestled in the mountains of Hakone and overlooking Sagami Bay. Parts of the grounds are still under construction (it is due to be finished in around three years) but at its core is the Enoura Observatory, completed in 2017. The complex includes a 100-metre-long gallery, an observation deck, a tea house, and a restored stone gate from the Muromachi period (1338–1573).

“Designing a space is the same as composition in photography. You need to have a sophisticated sense of space”

Sugimoto the photographer is a master of light, and as an architect, he is no different. The gallery is oriented to frame the sun on the summer solstice, while the deck is angled to capture the winter solstice. Sugimoto likes to imagine future alien civilisations stumbling upon these human ruins, and this played an integral role in his design. In the gallery, the optical glass windows will eventually smash, and its roof will crumble. If it all goes to plan, in around 5000 years the complex will be complete – “a beautiful ruin” like a pyramid or the Parthenon.

Sugimoto’s second studio space, a penthouse apartment, is where he keeps sculptures, makes architectural sketches, and develops images. As you would expect, it is spacious, minimalist and pristine. Sugimoto picks up a music box, handmade out of a rusting rice- cracker tin. Winding through an aria from Mozart’s The Magic Flute, he sings jovially, pacing the wooden floors and gazing toward the glittering Tokyo skyline. The scene is surreal, but it is in no way surprising. Sugimoto has spent most of his life cultivating atmospheres with unexpected but insightful references. If it all goes to plan, his insights will endure, passed on to future civilisations who will discover enigmas in the ruins of his art.

Hiroshi Sugimoto is at the Hayward Gallery, London, from 11 October until 7 January 2024

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How did you discover photography?

My dad was a keen amateur photographer, so I used to help him develop films in our kitchen from an early age. I left school and worked in a series of labouring jobs, where my fellow workers encouraged me to find a career. Rather than getting trapped in a cycle of unskilled labour, I bought my first camera and went to art college.

How has Bradford changed over the past 45 years?

The city has struggled with the demise of traditional industry, poor transport links and a lack of investment. It has slowly declined into one of the poorest areas in the UK. Over the last 45 years I have documented this demise of industry in the north, its impact on society, and the closure of the mills, mines and foundries. My work is part of the wider picture on how northern industrial cities have been affected by the political and financial decisions made in Westminster.

Who is your work for?

I take photographs for the people – working people, who are often overlooked. I always try to give people a print when I have photographed them, and having a connection with the people I am photographing is at the core of my practice. I also try and keep in contact with many of the people I have photographed. It’s only fair if I am going to exhibit or publish their photo that they should be kept informed.

Could you tell us the story behind the image above?

I took this photo in the late-1970s. I spent days walking the streets of inner-city Bradford photographing children playing street games. This group were playing marbles. Their mother came out to see what I was doing. I told her the purpose of the photos and she was quite happy to chat. The boy at the back with his hands in his pockets got in touch this year after he saw the photo on the BBC. He couldn’t remember me taking it, but he recalls his mum speaking of a strange man with a camera, and how she saw him off with a yard brush. He always wondered if that was true as she had a copy of the photo on her mantelpiece. In October, he came to my exhibition at Salt Mills in Bradford with his family and took pride in showing his grandkids where he used to live.

Life is available to purchase from the Bluecoat Press website

This story is the subject of the latest output from Ritual Inhabitual, an artist duo formed of artists Florencia Grisanti and Tito González García. The work, Oro Verde, is a product of five years of intensive research and collaboration. A patchwork of documentary, archive, still life and staged photographs, it attempts to retrace the history of the uprising – a historic event that was undocumented at the time in order to protect the community. Skirting the border of fact and fiction, the duo rely not just on academic work, but oral histories and memorabilia from the Indigenous community to reimagine the narrative.

Ritual Inhabitual formed in 2013 with the aim to create work around nature and spiritual practices. To date, the duo has completed two long-term bodies of work, including Mapuche, a five-year photographic enquiry into an Indigenous Chilean community fighting to protect its forest from the paper pulp industry. The work was exhibited at last year’s Les Rencontres d’Arles as Geometric Forests, alongside a book published by Actes Sud. But before all of that, neither artist was a working photographer. Grisanti is a trained taxidermist. When they met, she was exhibiting her work at the Museum of Natural History in Paris. González García, a film-maker, had been hired to produce a video about the show. They were both fascinated by the relationship between art, science and nature, and as a friendship formed so did the urge to create work together. Both were visual artists in their own right, but they wanted to experiment with a new medium. “Photography was like a peaceful and new objective land for both of us,” says González García.

“The artists effectively challenge conventional classifications and engender a hybridised form that blurs the boundaries between genres” – Valenzuela Escobedo

The duo was nominated for Ones to Watch by Chilean curator Sergio Valenzuela Escobedo, who has worked with them on Oro Verde and Mapuche. “The artists effectively challenge conventional classifications and engender a hybridised form that blurs the boundaries between genres,” says Valenzuela Escobedo, referring to an approach that the collective defines as ‘mytho-documentary’. When it comes to reimagining history, as experienced by the people who lived it, the idea of an objective truth is impossible. ‘Mytho-documentary’ is informed not just by historical facts, but by aspects of mythology and fiction. “It’s a mistake to try to find the truth, because the truth doesn’t exist,” says González García. Indeed, truth is impossible to capture – not by a photograph or by words. Perhaps this is the closest representation of an objective truth. One that is an amalgamation of memories; a collective reinterpretation of the past.

The 27-year-old’s approach to image-making is instinctive and spontaneous. Her photographs are gentle and delicate, filled with subtle visual symbols that are charged with meaning. The Ugly Duckling, for example, is a series ruminating on self-doubt and fear. “The project was born from the need to externalise an inner conflict,” she explains, referring to a period of her life where she struggled with self-esteem. “I wanted to visualise and analyse this human condition in an objective way.” The project was unplanned, the entirety of it emerging from long sessions of editing. “I had a collection of pictures taken at different times and places as a stream of consciousness,” she explains. “I understood that there was a connection between most of them, so I started to build a narrative.” 

Vanelli does not describe her visual approach as documentary, but rather as “evocative”. Her images are the result of an interpretation of a certain memory or a feeling, she says, rather than an objective description. Her nominator for Ones to Watch, curator Giangavino Pazzola, elaborates on this: “Her images have a high evocative potential and are enigmatic to a degree that leads not only to the aesthetic contemplation of the shot but also to the stimulation of immediate connections to the history of art and images.”

“The project was born from the need to externalise an inner conflict… I wanted to visualise and analyse this human condition in an objective way”

The same approach is also applied in her recent work, The Season, which will be published by Witty Books this year. The project is set in a small seaside village in Tuscany, where life is characterised by slowness, tradition and isolation. Vanelli has spent every summer there since she was born, and thinks of the place as her chosen home – “a piece of heaven where days roll into one another”. The images are intentionally unspecific, capturing small, fleeting moments that are universal. The idea is to allude to “the peculiar and strong relationship one person develops with these small realities, whether they are by the sea, in the mountains or in the countryside,” she says. “I almost always start from personal experience, but I try to treat it in a universal way so as to reach more people. I like when other people can ask themselves questions or recognise themselves in my experience through my visual narrative.”

All images © Moe Suzuki.

The average lifespan of a house in Japan is around 30 years. Rather than renovating, homes are torn down and made anew. In her latest project, Suzuki raises questions about the political and economic factors behind the need to scrap

Kyojima is one of Tokyo’s last-remaining old neighbourhoods; an inner-city suburb that survived bombing during the Second World War. Today, traces of old Japan still exist in its narrow alleys, lined with nagaya: traditional wooden houses typical of the Edo era (1603–1867). Moe Suzuki has lived in the area for 10 years, and cycles through Kyojima twice a day on the school run. In recent years, she noticed dramatic changes. New construction sites were pitching up daily; houses covered in scaffolding overnight; whole rows of nagaya demolished and replaced by concrete blocks.

Unlike in other countries, Japanese houses depreciate over time and have an average lifespan of around 20 to 30 years. When a landlord dies or decides to sell, rather than renovating, the houses are torn down and rebuilt. This phenomenon can be traced back to the postwar period. Around 50 per cent of Tokyo was devastated by bombings, generating a surge in demand for low-cost housing. This was followed by building code revisions to improve earthquake resilience. Since then, the housing market has been in a 20-year scrap-and- build cycle – an untenable situation, except for the mortgage lenders and construction companies that cash in. “The construction farm is strong,” says Suzuki. “It has a strong political connection and economic connection. To keep the economy going, they need to scrap.” The cycle explains Tokyo’s ever-evolving urban landscape, despite its 400-year history. The city has become a hotspot for modern architecture, but with that, its history, along with its residents’ collective memory, is being erased.

Suzuki’s grandparents lived in Kyojima, so she became familiar with its streets as a young girl. After residing in London for nine years, she moved to a nearby neighbourhood in 2011. “The townscape is changing so rapidly,” she says. “Once [the houses were] gone, I couldn’t remember what they used to be. I was shocked by how fragile our memories of this landscape were.” She started cycling home through different alleys every day, documenting new demolition sites on her phone camera. Over the course of two years, this daily habit formed into a project: Today’s Island Dismantling.

Typically for Suzuki, the series is mixed media, combining documentary, collage and book-making. Her previous project, Sokohi, layered new and archival images in a tactile book to visualise her father’s experience of losing his sight. “[Photography alone] is never enough. Especially now when there are images everywhere,” she says. In Today’s Island Dismantling, the black-and-white images depict old houses that no longer exist, while the colour images show what is left behind. There are also collages of demolished houses, carefully cut out of the landscape and layered as though they are cascading into a black abyss, “to show inside my mind, how the memories are mixing up and dismantling”. But on reflection, Suzuki did not feel they illustrated the scale of change she was witnessing. Taking another view, she saw an opportunity to use the leftover paper cut-outs to create a book. Stacked together, the images form a limited-edition, hand-bound photobook, published by Ibasho gallery. “I found that this was telling the story better, about a disappearing memory and a disappearing landscape.”

While the project is about the erasure of memory, it also poses political and economic questions. Suzuki suspects that emerging out of the pandemic, banks, construction companies and homebuilders are playing catch-up. Another factor is disaster prevention. Kyojima’s narrow alleys and wooden houses make the area more vulnerable to fires and earthquakes. But Suzuki is sceptical. After all, many of these buildings have already survived two major events: the 1923 Great Kantō earthquake, and the 2011 Great Tōhoku earthquake.

Towards the end of 2022, Suzuki stopped making pictures. “I was overwhelmed by how much construction was going on. [The neighbourhood] has changed so much, and I felt like I was not able to follow everything.” The photographer moved into her current home five years ago. Out of her window, she can spot four new houses. “The view has completely changed,” she says. “I feel sad that the old houses are gone. And at the same time I’m sad that I cannot remember the Kyojima I used to come to, to visit my grandparents with my mum. The kind of atmosphere; the smell. It’s fading gradually.”

To live in Tokyo is to live in a constant state of renewal. But as humans, we form attachments to places. When these places no longer exist, what do we have to remember them by? For Suzuki, photography is a great preserver of memory, but equally, it is a sobering reminder of how easily we forget.

Today’s Island Dismantling by Moe Suzuki is self published

*Correction: In Issue 7913 Money & Power, it was stated that Today’s Island Dismantling was published by IBASHO Gallery. This statement was made in error. The book is self-published by Moe Suzuki.

“In Japan, when you are a child, you sort of live in a golden age. But when you become an adult, you are confronted with a completely different world”

Capitán sought out teenagers from different social groups, approaching students and skaters hanging out along the Kamo river, as well as Maiko (geishas in training), and young Buddhist monks. With help from Kyotographie, the photographer was also able to gain access to a school and, as she got to know the teenagers, noticed many differences between growing up in Spain and Japan. One struck her most: “In Japan, when you are a child, you sort of live in a golden age,” she says. “But when you become an adult, you are confronted with a completely different world.” 

Compared to other cultures, in Japan social and familial pressures – to study, work, marry, and have a family – are high. But as anywhere, these pressures can be positive, negative, or both. Capitán’s images do not comment on or criticise these customs. Rather, the photographer saw her role as an observer: “I wanted to see how different it was to my own experience of growing into an adult,” she says.

Based in London, the artist is known for her mixed media approach, incorporating handwritten text with photography, painting and installation. Ookini is perhaps her most photography-focused series yet, and she used three types of cameras to make it – 35mm, medium format, and large format. “I’m very much into analogue processes, I print pretty much everything myself,” says Capitán. “The dark room is a very important place for me. It’s where I spend many hours going through my negatives and doing my selections.” She also invited her subjects to join her in the image-making, as seen in an image of two girls’ legs peeking out from under the cloak of a large format camera. 

Capitán’s show at Kyotographie is vast, occupying three venues across the city. Images of Seitarō are exhibited in his family gallery, Onishi Seiwemon Museum; photographs of young monks in training are shown at Kyomo-in Zen Temple; and the rest are spread across two floors at ASPHODEL gallery. Prints are pinned up over the walls, with glass cabinets displaying different iterations of images and giving the sense of an insight into Capitán’s working process. And that’s important, because for the artist this series is still in progress. “This body of work is so wide; there are so many images,” she says. “For me, making a book will be the ultimate goal, because that’s how I can really build my story.”

Ookini by Coco Capitán is on show at Kyotographie International Photo Festival until 14 May

The festival’s 10 core shows are exhibited in the Cloisters of San Pietro, a 16th-century monastic complex in the city centre. The grand structure houses works such as Mónica de Miranda’s project The Island, which contemplates the experience of the African diaspora in Portugal, speaking to the land and its colonial histories. Jean-Marc Caimi & Valentina Piccinni exhibit a personal account of the dramatic gentrification taking place in Istanbul, while French-Caribbean photographer Cédrine Scheidig presents two series in conversation – one made in Paris, the other in Martinique – contemplating the complex identity of the Black diaspora while reflecting on colonial past and migration.

Simon Roberts exhibits a series of landscape studies taken around the UK. Beginning in 2007, the series Merrie Albion documents national character and identity as the nation crept towards the Brexit referendum. Elsewhere, there is work by the late Sabine Weiss, Alessia Rollo, Samuel Gratacap, Yelena Yemchuk, Geoffroy Mathieu, and work collected by The Archive of Public Protests: an initiative documenting the growing protest movements in Poland.

Aside from the 10 central shows there are a further 10 exhibitions presented by partner institutions, alongside exhibitions by this year’s two open-call winners – all within walking distance. “You’ve got all the great ingredients,” says Clark, “good weather, good wine, and a beautiful city.”

Located in the wealthy Emilia Romagna region, Reggio Emilia has a long history of fighting against social inequality. The city is also the birthplace of the Reggio Emilia approach – a pioneering form of early education that prioritises intuitive learning – and was home to Luigi Ghirri until his death in 1992, with a gallery dedicated to his work and year-round photography exhibitions. All of this makes for a “sophisticated audience for photography,” says Clark.

As Italy’s new far-right government threatens the foundations the region is built on, it feels timely to reflect on questions of history, democracy, community and belonging in the wider continent. “[The festival is] in its own way trying to make a statement about the importance of openness and inclusivity,” says Clark.

Fotografia Europea festival takes place at various venues around Reggio Emilia until 11 June

Can you describe your editorial tone and visual identity? 

Our style is irreverent and organic. We didn’t want a clean, uniform aesthetic because we mostly feature people who work in the coffee industry or are adjacent to it – covering their passions, musings and more – and we want that human element to come through in our storytelling. In the magazine and on our website, you’ll find handwritten pieces, a lot of film photography, and sometimes out-of-focus and off-kilter images. It’s never too perfect, often quirky, and always expressive.

What are your main considerations when choosing photographers?

We commission stories around the world and want our roster of photographers to reflect that diversity. We aim to hire local talent because we rely on our contributors’ knowledge of the places and communities that they’re documenting. We don’t treat subcultures or people as objects of fascination with a sense of remove; we want the magazine to feel intimate and bring a grounded perspective, and that means working with contributors who we can learn from and collaborate with on shaping stories.

Is there a standout editorial piece that you have worked on, where you feel the images married particularly well with the story?

Las Traileras by photographer Mallika Vora and writer Madeleine Wattenbarger is the kind of creative collaboration we aspire to. The story took us on the road with a woman who is a long-haul truck driver in Tijuana. It gave us a way to cover a profession where workers rely on coffee, while also touching upon labour, gender politics and international trade. It’s a story where the images and text work in concert, and it expands expectations of what covering the coffee community looks like.

“Our style is irreverent and organic. We didn’t want a clean, uniform aesthetic because we mostly feature people who work in the coffee industry”

Hey Barista is funded by Oatly. How much does that influence the running of the magazine?

Oatly provides a tremendous amount of support in the development and distribution of Hey Barista, but they also know that the magazine isn’t about them; they created it for the coffee community. So we’ve been given a refreshing amount of editorial freedom to pursue the stories that we think will resonate with that community as well as readers at coffee shops. 

What is your advice to photographers who may be looking for commissions?

Don’t pitch us stories about coffee, as we rarely cover coffee itself. We’re more interested in human-centred stories about people. If you’re a creative person who’s also a barista, or if you know someone in the coffee industry who has an interesting hobby or subculture that they’d like to share, please reach out to info.heybarista@oatly.com. Or if you’re a photographer who’s interested in working with us, drop us a line introducing yourself and the kind of subjects that you’re most interested in.

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