Clare Strand's crisp and chilling photographs confront us with evidence of our fears, loneliness, decay, frailty and death. She photographs what philosopher Julia Kristeva refers to as "the abject," or "what we permanently thrust aside in order to live."
For her 1994 series 'The Mortuary,' Stand photographed post-mortem devices. Her radiant images of shiny, cold-looking, metal objects used to pull us apart and splice us back together mock any sentimental fear of death. By the same token, a 1995 photograph of a banal and benign waste-bin overflowing with torn pink paper turns horrific when it is coupled with the title, 'Shredded tax bills used to fill body cavities.'
In 1997, Strand created portraits of awkward, average-looking teenage girls standing before red cloth backdrops, like the hangings used for school pictures, for her "Spots and All" series. As part of this series, she included a quartette of isolated portraits of English girls, aged ten to twelve, posing as the four Spice Girls. Falling far short of the band's simplistic "Girl Power" jargon and persona, these preteens pressing close to Strand's camera and preening in tawdry approximations of the Spice Girl's costumes appear insecure, vulnerable, feral and precociously jaded in their prematurely provocative yet unflattering poses. In contrasting her young subjects with the stereotyped range of femininity embodied by their role models; Strand highlights how beauty, not 'personality' or individuality pre-determine viewers' sympathies and projections for the girls' futures. 'Sporty Spice: Katie Murphy, aged 10 years,' a pixyish, big-eyed brunette leaning in aggressively towards the camera, possesses unassailable star-power and appears genuinely 'empowered' by adopting her pop-star role-model's image, while 'Baby Spice: Charlotte Evans aged 10 years, 1997' a chubby red-head puckering her lips and squeezing her round shoulders tight to push-up non-existent cleavage, just seems foolish and deluded.
As an artist in residence in 2002, Strand created 'Gone Astray' a project inspired by Clerkenwell, the southern most part of the London Borough of Islington where Dickens set scenes for Oliver Twist. To represent this historically rich area, she wrote a series of fragmented stories and constructed a cryptic narrative read by her and Gordon McDonald, her partner, to accompany portraits she took of distressed, damaged and disheveled subjects (such as a pretty office worker with a conspicuous run in her tights) standing against backdrops decorated with Arcadian landscapes. She writes, '"Gone Astray" is the product of research looking at City commentators from Baudelaire to Jarvis Cocker as well as being a personal diary of observation and experience.'
Strand returned to depicting death in 2002 when she was commissioned by Fotonet South to build a website devoted to a New Town of Crawley, located in South England between her hometown of South Croydon and her current home in Brighton. The resulting 2-minute slide-show, set to a eerie repetitive tingling soundtrack, was titled 'Signs Of A Struggle' and juxtaposed images of the sites where various murders had occurred in the area from 1965 through 2001 with fabricated text describing each murder taken from "News From Somewhere." Strand's work illuminates Kristeva's insight that, "there is no imagination that is not, overtly or secretly, melancholy."
Strand's work is featured in Vitamin Ph, Phaidon Press's international survey of the best of contemporary photography.
ANA FINEL HONIGMAN: Are the unsettling aspects of your images inspired by the conventions of horror imagery in popular culture?
CLARE STRAND: Not precisely, but like most teenagers I watched a lot of horror films and I think whatever you hits you during your adolescence stays close to your core forever. During those teenage years I was watching a lot of films like The Entity, Carrie, The Exorcist, Amityville etc. I also started a long-time affair with true crime literature and accompanying forensic images, as well as reading books on unexplained phenomena such as ectoplasmic mediums and telekinetic teenagers. I think these interests became reinforced by my upbringing in a suburban cul-de-sac as well as attending school in the middle of woods and downs - both of which, for me, held strong associations with hidden intrigue. These themes mentioned are, at times, more or less apparent in my work - but are always lurking in the background.
AFH: Are you just creating the illusion of suspense in your images, or do you really harbour the suspicion that banal realities often contain sinister subtexts?
CS: I'm most certainly suspicious of the everyday from discarded black bin bags to harmless‚ suburban cul-de-sacs. When I am in detective mode everything and everyone can potentially become a compelling source of intrigue and distrust.
AFH: Is photography primarily an expressive tool for you?
CS: Photography clearly has an important role in my work but its application is determined by my subject matter. If you look back on my work, I have no one photographic style. I tend to manipulate the process to directly respond to the subject. Throughout my work I have appropriated existing photographic conventions to suit and embellish the subject. The majority of the conventions that I 'borrow' are sourced from the utilitarian applications of photography.
AFH: Do you start with a specific narrative or are you drawn to atmosphere and then later construct possible stories to explain or contextualise your images?
CS: When I start to make work it is totally subject driven and then I look around to see what business photography has with it - it never happens the other way round. Narratives sometimes emerge as part of this process, but they are always a bi-product, never a starting concern. My passion for photography is driven by utilitarian photography, which, in my opinion, is the source of some of the most visually rich photographic imagery - at its best offering baffling yet compelling visual-narrative possibilities. The appropriation of the utilitarian is evident through out my photography - in the conventions of 19th-century street/city portraiture shown in 'Gone Astray', and in the forensic applications in 'Signs of a Struggle'; from the constructs of industrial Time and Motion photography in 'The Betterment Room' - Devices For Measuring Achievement' to, most recently, the Aura photograph of the paranormal/spiritualist. This template of subject matter dictating photographic application continues throughout my work.
AFH: Do you think the narratives you constructed for your images supersede whatever story the viewer composes to fit the image, or do you want to leave your works open to all possible interpretations?
CS: It would be foolish for me to suppose an audience control over the reading of my images ¬ and in some ways an audience 'getting it' doesn't interest me too much. I think this stems from how I enjoy art as I'm not such a fan of work that can be clearly read, that ticks all the boxes, that offers a beginning middle and an end. I much prefer opened ended work that resonates with the viewer - work that you can take home in your head and mull over. If, when re-looking at a piece of my own work, I can sustain a certain belief that I haven't made it, then it works for me. If I look at it and don't completely understand it then it is even better. I think that sometimes the problem, with photography as a medium, is that, with both makers and audiences, there is expectancy for photography to explain or be immediately understood. This isn't to say that I make my work purposely oblique. There are clues to the reading - usually in the title - but the audience has to put some work in ¬this is up to them and I certainly don't mind if they don't. My main hope for an audience is that they find my images seductively curious. If that then leads people to further engage with the layers within the work then that is a bonus.
AFH: How much research into the history and philosophy of each subject do you do before starting to shoot a series?
CS: Photography is a great passport into other people's worlds - as well as offering me a compromise to feelings of missed vocations. There is a definite process of obsessive 'detection' (which could also be termed research) that is essential to my work and, on the whole, is the most fulfilling part of the process for me . As a fan of conspiracy theories, it is the obsessive sometimes absurd piecing-together of information that fulfils my true interests rather than any clear outcome. I undertake quite a substantial amount of sleuthing during each project which all helps determine the final outcome.
AFH: What is the starting point of your research?
CS:. Research for me is not really sitting in a basement leafing through dusty volumes, but more about looking out to the world and saying 'what have you got to offer me on this?' Some of my research is quite fanciful and relies, to an extent, on serendipity but is always relevant and never a task. The whole process reminds me a little of the bubble gum machine in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - in that it's a big machine that has a lot of actions and makes a lot of spluttering noises which, in the end, churns out a rather small, perhaps anticlimactic stick of gum. However, Violet gives it a chew and suddenly a three-course dinner starts to reveal itself. Recently I have begun to address this element of my working practice by experimenting with exhibiting my 'investigative research work' in cabinets alongside the photographic work - finding a middle ground between information and installation.
AFH: Mostly your field of interest appears to be literary.
CS: Literary references are here and there is my work. They make an appearance in the work 'Gone Astray' (a title taken from a Dickens text about getting lost in London) primarily because I was given a commission to make a body of work in Clerkenwell and I knew that I wanted to think about street characters and it felt right (and polite) to go straight to Dickens. Again, in the series 'Signs of A Struggle' (a commission to celebrate the 50th anniversary of New Towns) I used Eugene Inessco's play The Killer Without Reward as a starting point. It deals with a utopian town that, at glance, is perfect but, in truth, there is a murderer slowly killing off its inhabitants. As I have said, I work with subject matter and eventually the appropriate photographic application makes its self known to me - 'Gone Astray' portraits adopted the 19th-century convention of street photography with painted backdrops and static poses. 'Signs of a Struggle' became a series of crime photographs coupled with text, and directly borrowed from the aesthetics and conventions of forensic photography.
AFH: Recently your imagery updates and played with certain 19th-century notions of the paranormal and pseudo-science.
CS: Currently I am making a series of work based on the assumption that young women - particularly around puberty - have alleged susceptibility, and are attractive to, poltergeist entities. I've always been interested in this area - mostly, I think, due to when, at around 14, a big vein in my arm burst for no apparent reason and I was told it had happened because I had too much energy pulsing around my body. I think this was probably what triggered me to read about cases such as The Enfield haunting and accounts of the experiences of young women such as Eleanor Zugen, Florence Cook, The Fox sisters and of course Frances Griffiths and Elsie Wright. I also read about young woman such as Lizzie Borden and Mary Bell. I briefly touched on this subject area when I made the 'Spice Girl' series in 1995 but now I am expanding on this theme by analyzing young women through spirit/aura photography.
AFH: Explain "Aura" photography. Is this similar to the Sprit photographs believed to prove the existence of ghosts at the turn of the last century?
CS: Aura photography is another utilitarian photographic application that claims to capture the aura/essence/emanation of a person. The image is then read by a 'trained reader', who determines someone's character and strength. What is of constant interest to me through all my work is to look at and challenge how photography is used as a tool of truth and aura and spirit photography are a perfect example of this.
AFH: Do you feel you collaborate with your subjects or are you controlling the process and the direction of the shoots?
CS: I am totally in control of the process and direction of making a piece of work. I have an idea of what I want from the work and move towards it. There is of course an element of experimentation and I will listen to ideas. But in general - in all projects up to now - I am in control. Though what is in control of me I'm not sure.
AFH: How do you meet your models?
CS: The models I use find there way to me to in a number of ways. For the 'Gone Astray' portraits I used friends and myself. I knew that I would prop and dress each subject to assume a character - so in some ways I felt the projects success was down to the styling and photograph making rather than choosing the right subject. For 'Gone Astray Details' I mostly used my husband and myself. For 'The Betterment Rooms' I worked with a group of very nice students who I was teaching at the time. The group of girls I'm working with at the moment all come from a local drama group that my stepson attends. I like using the people around me ¬ not only does it give each project a further autobiographical layer, but I also enjoy playing the randomness of friends as sitters against the randomness of finding the perfect subject. I have at times been compelled to run across a supermarket floor to ask if I can photograph someone, but this is happening less and less.
Gone Astray Detail
Gone Astray Portrait
Sign of a Struggle
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