POP 812 Friday 27 January 2012

Today's POP is Rachel. Fashion night light.

 
Lightscapes is a series of imagery captured by photographer James Reeve which strips landscapes and time into slivers of time. Choosing to shoot and experiment at that particular point in the evening when the light fades and the flickers of night begin to merge, his latest photo series focuses on capturing artificial light and presenting it in pared down and abstract ways: the brash neons of Las Vegas become soothing panoramas, and the beacons of light detailed on isolated coastlines in Thailand become glints in the distance of an overwhelming evening. 

Designer Dries Van Noten has collaborated with Reeve to present their current exhibition at the Joyce Gallery in Paris at the Palais Royal. The Belgian designer, highly drawn to the graphic forms of his photographs, has adapted Reeve's prints into his Spring/Summer '12 womenswear collection. Dries first encountered Reeve's work at the Hyères International Festival of Fashion & Photography in 2010 where Dries sits as president and Reeve had been presenting his images for the photographic prize. 

As anyone knows, print is an integral component of Dries' collections. Here, alongside original prints and large-scale light boxes, Reeve's lightscapes trail the folds of Van Noten’s garments, expanding over dresses and t-shirts. The tension between past and future inherent in Reeve's work has been re-imagined with skill by Dries and are appropriately presented to the soothing sounds of KCF.

Reeve took some time to speak with POP about the collaboration and his upcoming international exhibitions.

This was the first time that your work has been transformed into a 3-D format. How did the collaboration with Dries develop? Did viewing the final collection alter your perception of your own work at all?  
This collaboration was a first in many ways for me. It felt quite unusual to give someone access to my images, without actually knowing what the end result would be. Dries had agreed not to alter the pictures in any way so I was happy to keep out of the design process and wait to see what the final outcome would look like. The images are very graphic and I like the way Dries has incorporated this into the garments, giving an added depth to my work. 
 
 
In the gallery the effect of your work is amplified through the use of light boxes and surround sound music by KCF playing in the space. Would you consider continuing such a multi-disciplinary approach to presentation in the future?   
I am still very focused on my photography so it’s not something I have thought about doing myself before. It could be an interesting idea to explore through a new collaboration though.

 
There is movement – or an anticipation of movement – conveyed in your work, yet the images also retain an aura of stillness. Does timing play an important role in the way you photograph? 
Always. One of the fundamental elements of any photography is timing. For me this relates to both the moment of the image itself and also the time surrounding it. I experimented a lot with night photography before starting this project but Lightscapes took me in a completely different direction, both visually and also technically. I shoot on film and wanted to produce the visual effect of these images on camera. To do this I had to develop a timing system for the exposures that is quite unique to this project.
 
 
Where did you visit for this photographic series and what did you learn or experience whilst exploring these locations?
This series has taken me to some very contrasting locations: from isolated coastlines in Thailand and secluded villages in Syria and France to the non-stop 24-hour metropolises of downtown Los Angeles and Las Vegas. It has been a very unusual and challenging project to work on as it is very difficult to pre-visualise how a landscape will look at night. And of course every night can be different, depending on whether lights are left on or not. My attention was solely focused on the artificial lights within the environment that I was shooting. Sometimes this was relatively easy to do but filtering out other visual references in dense urban centres required a new approach to the way I had been used to working.

How do you think cities evolve from day to night, and what factors influence your decision to explore the latter?
The moment between day and night is the most magical time of day for me: the brief minutes of twilight when shadows vanish and everything is bathed in soft pastel tones, before swiftly plunging into thick darkness. I had been fascinated by this moment for a long time and it was from there that I started experimenting with photography: in the dead of night. Stripping away conventional visual references is fundamental to this work and that is in essence what the night does to the day. It dramatically inhibits our ability to function normally and for a photographer, presents very unique challenges; something I was interested to explore through the Lightscapes series.



 
Elements of your work are reminiscent of the poetic sensibility conveyed in scenes from Godfrey Reggio's 1982 film Koyaanisqatsi. How do you think viewing cities and fragments of lives in this way works to illicit an emotional response in the viewer?
Light is very emotive and I think that the simple, graphic nature of the way I present light in this series intrigues people who see it. Although there is a strong ambiguity to many of the images – it is not immediately obvious where or even what they are of – at the same time I think they do also feel quite familiar as well, and not just to people who have flown over cities at night window-gazing. For me the web-like patterns of lights in some of the images are reminiscent of a star-filled sky, an unfortunate irony as it is often the abundance of artificial lighting in cities that masks our ability to see the stars. 
 
 
Lastly, what is next for you? 
I have two landscape projects in progress at the moment and a few other ideas brewing as well. One of the projects I am really excited about, although I have not had time to do  enough research yet. I am not even sure if it is technically possible to do, but it will be fun finding out and if it is feasible I think it could be a really strong body of work.  I also have a solo exhibition of Lightscapes at the Hagedorn Gallery in Atlanta opening soon (February 23rd – March 31st).
 

Lightscapes will be shown at the Joyce Gallery at the Palais Royal in Paris until Friday 27th January 2012. (LAST DAY TODAY!)
 
Joyce Gallery Paris, 
168-173 Galerie de Valois 
75001 Paris