Tobias Zielony | Desire for Narratives

Documentation, photo report or concept art? In terms of form and content, Tobias Zielony moves between categories which already haven’t been any for a long time. He portrays young people in California and gangsters in Canada, lowers his gaze on living machines and deserts, observes the social qualities of places off the beaten track. We spoke to the photographer and filmmaker, born in 1973, about how traces of memory surface in photos, where the final frontier is, how photo knowledge circulates and also about control, posing and accidents. The Museum of Photography in Braunschweig is now showing a survey of his works.

You photographed groups of young people in California, Poland and other places. What’s the difference?
The idea came from an observation. When I returned to Leipzig after Great Britain, I noticed how closely the scenes and places resemble one another—not only in terms of architecture and clothing. It also has to do with what the young people do, how they hang out by cars, the places they like going to. Of course, in terms of social, political or economic structures, there are analogies between Newport in Wales, a working-class town where I studied, and Halle or Halle-Neustadt. But what’s interesting is that the people don’t know anything about each other.

At first glance, the Polish youth look a lot like the people in Trona, California.
The people wear the same clothing, watch the same films and TV shows—that has to do with globalization—and the think about it. That’s the level where there are similarities. Not through direct exchange, but facilitated by the media through magazines, films and TV. But there are very big differences between Trona and Poland. In my work, I don’t want to censor or iron out these differences. Trona is in California’s desert. There’s a chemical factory there, which laid off a lot of employees. There’s crystal meth and other drugs there. For me, Trona stands for a lot of cities in impoverished rural America—but at the same time also for the pioneer spirit of the settlers to make this land that’s actually inhospitable farmable. But now they are sitting in their broken wooden huts and don’t have any more work. I’m more interested in these location-specific stories and connections.

Dirt Field, from the series: Trona – Armpit of America, 2008, © Tobias Zielony

Is that why you are taking more photos of landscapes and cityscapes without people?
No, that has been the case since the beginning. Of course, for me, it’s about the people I photograph. But the places and how people interact with these places is just as important. The first series already featured photos without people—of architecture and landscape. At the same time, I am referring to the photo-report tradition. Even if I continue to undermine or question this tradition, there are fragments that continue to surface through today. Firstly, that’s the juxtaposition of very different
photo genres: portraits, group portraits, details, landscape, action. But there are also parallels to film, the various takes, the change from close-ups and overall shots—the notion of a narration, which one offers, but doesn’t necessarily confirm.

You have now shot your second film.
“The Deboard” came into being last year in Winnipeg, Canada. This year we edited it and did the final work. The film was screened in August at the festival in Locarno. (And recently at the Copenhagen Documentary Film Festival – the editor.) But I didn’t at all go to Winnipeg intending to shoot a film, although I think about film a lot and of course really enjoy watching films…

But you don’t just spontaneously shoot a film…
Yes, you do. That was actually relatively spontaneous. I also think it emerged from the desire to not let these stories that I accumulate in my memory, but which aren’t always visible in the photos, be swept under the table. In Winnipeg I met an Indian gangster who told me an incredible prison story. He tried to get out of a gang. To do so, there’s “the deboard” ritual: three people try to kill him by beating him up for five minutes, and if he survives he can leave the gang. Only he was the leader of a gang in prison and so to speak commanded his own people to try to kill him.

13 Ball, from the series: Trona – Armpit of America, 2008, © Tobias Zielony

Did you have a fictional screenplay in mind or is everything a documentary?
It’s definitely a documentary film, because both of the film’s levels are documentary. There’s the narrated level, which is the voice of the Indian telling his story even if he fictionalizes this himself. But it’s not only about the question of whether the story is true or not. And then there’s the visual level, which I mainly filmed in a prison near Winnipeg. But what happened is that the two levels don’t always coincide. They run counter to one another. Sometimes they agree, sometimes they don’t, so you ask yourself which story is being told here and who is telling what. Also questioned are the means you can use to actually tell about something like this deboard ritual. Is there a true, objective version? And what’s my position as a documentary filmmaker when I get involved?

To what extent do you immerse yourself in the groups you photograph?
That really varies. In my new work in Naples, it’s almost only about architecture. “The Deboard” is about a person and Indian gangs in general. Sometimes I work with groups and sometimes I don’t. Sometimes I spend a long time someplace and get to know the people, and sometimes, like in Poland, I just spend a few days there, but very intensively.

Is it hard to establish contacts?
Actually, no. Of course, there are things that are difficult like getting into a prison or getting in touch with Indian gangs—that’s not easy. That often takes a long time, and of course you have to be clear about who you actually are and what you’d like. But it’s mainly the case that people have so to speak waited for someone to come who’s interested in them. Perhaps also because many young people know about the way photos circulate and would like to be in on that.

Me, from the series: Trona–- Armpit of America, 2008, © Tobias Zielony

Do you direct it or is it more that people direct themselves?
Of course, it’s about enacting things, but it’s not so easy to say: this is directed and this isn’t. It’s a lot more complex. Something already happens simply because I turn up with my camera. Then the people I photograph think about what could result. Perhaps they assume poses they have previously already assumed and think: What type of a photo could that be? If you show the people the finished photos, there is of course also communication about it. But it’s not the case that I have very fixed images in mind. But I also don’t think there’s a photo that’s not in some way enacted. Maybe there even are photos like that, but that doesn’t interest me. I think the image world, which I and the people I photograph have in mind, is also part of this reality I deal with or react to in my work. I also work with chance events or wait for accidents and, unlike a director, I don’t plan everything in advance down to the tiniest details to—the moment I take the picture—try to approximate the image of the idea I had.

What are you currently working on in Naples?
The series isn’t completely done yet. It’s about a high-rise neighborhood in northern Naples, which you can now also see in the movie “Gomorrah.” I have been working in this terrace high-rise for a year. The housing complex was built in the 1970s as a futuristic neighborhood, as a new city on the edge of the city with all the hopes and utopias associated with it at the time. Construction of the complex was never actually completed. Families illegally moved in very quickly, who perhaps don’t pay rent, are perhaps involved with the Camorra, and now the city is trying to get the residents out. It is simply the biggest drug-trading center in Naples or probably the whole of Italy, but it is also a very special type of architecture, an icon for the power of the Camorra in Naples. Almost no one goes there. It’s actually a black hole in this urban space—a very dangerous place.

How does your approach change when you photograph people or landscapes and architecture?
The connection is interesting, democratically dealing with the various genres.

But isn’t it always about the social factor too?
Yes, I think so. Of course, it’s also about the places and how that’s connected. But it’s actually always about the people.

How is that apparent in landscape?
For example, there’s a photo of a wave in the ocean. In Los Angeles I wanted to photograph the ocean the whole time and never found any photos until I took this nighttime noir photo. And now, for me, that’s not only the ocean, but the ocean, on the one hand, as the promise for all the people who moved west—after all it’s in Los Angeles—and the squatters or homeless who make it through the winter there. They all come to this promised land on the Pacific and every night they also gather on the beach and watch the sunset—I always did that too. But at the same time, the ocean is also a limit, which says: Things don’t go any further. We have reached this place here. Things don’t go any further west. We would now actually have to turn around and look: What’s actually going on in Los Angeles? What are we actually doing with our life? To that extent, the photo is already a classic sea piece—but within a story about the homeless and gangsters. So it takes on a very different meaning in LA’s urban space.

Text > Interview > Marcus Woeller

All images > Tobias Zielony

First Picture >Ramshackle, from the series: Trona – Armpit of America, 2008, © Tobias Zielony
21.11.2008 – 25.01.2009
Tobias Zielony, “Story/No Story”
Museum für Photographie
Helmstedter Straße 1
Braunschweig

www.photomuseum.de
The catalog „Story/No Story“ is to be published by Hatje Cantz

www.hatjecantz.de

Das könnte dich auch interessieren

1. Tobias Zielony | Sehnsucht nach Erzählungen
2. Ad Attack | Radical Advertising
3. Eija-Liisa Ahtila | On thin ice
4. Oscar Niemeyer | DVD-Verlosung
5. South Tyrol

Diesen Artikel auf Twitter posten!