In Conversation with Ana Escobar

Ana Escobar is the winner of the 2016 London College of Communication Parallax Photographic Award.

We were charmed by Ana’s use of performance, video, and photography to explore the “magic potentials” of the photographic medium. It was a work that stood out to us for its originality and unique approach to traditional photographic processes. So we spoke to Ana to find out more about her work, this project and how she found studying for her MA.

Let’s start this conversation with the basics. Tell us a bit about yourself and your background in relation to art and photography?

I could say I have an MA and a BA in Photography as well as an ABC Diploma and a degree in Spacial Design, or that my work was once a finalist for the Sony World Photography Award Conceptual category, although none of these is what I consider my background in art photography. I would say my background with photography and art is more like being an eight year old and helping my brother to develop and print photographs in his room, and the smell of the chemicals, or hanging around my uncle’s photography shop, or carrying a big bag of photos of the people I loved the most (and this used to get edited every September) since the age of nine. Years later, while visiting a Nan Goldin show in Madrid while crying my soul out and thinking ‘what is this? This is breaking my heart’, I decided to leave everything behind and to come to London to learn about Photography.

You have just graduated from your MA Photography course at LCC. Why did you decide to study there?

It is photography with a capital ‘P’ I am interested in. The MA at LCC has a reputation for exploring photography in a very tight way when it comes to contextual studies, as well as in a very free and innovative way when it comes to practice. It is the thinking I am interested in, not the mechanical side of the medium. Also, the fact you develop one single project along the course. It obviously changes and mutates from day one until the end. I think this way of exploring the creative process is a very beneficial one for the student in order to understand how your mind works and develops.

Did you enjoy the course? How would you say it has benefited your work?

The course has been a fascinating journey on all levels for me. My work has moved from photographic to live performance, sculpture and moving image. None of this was expected when I got started. My practice has expanded grandly due to the courage and risk-taking practices that tutors lead you to explore.

We really enjoyed your project Developing Photographs. Could you tell us more about the ideas behind the work?

My original project had to do with issues of representing the unconscious in photography. Not as much as with using technical or digital tools to create images, but with ways to liberate the unconscious through photography. Developing Photographs is a comment on photography theory regarding the family album and vernacular photography. I decided to set an experiment: to develop photographs using the unconscious as the dark room. If I were to develop my family album using the Vast Unknown as a photo lab, what would come up? I thought of the different stages it could take to develop art theory into art practice.

I started creating and playing with rituals that incorporate old processes and practices; from witchery to alchemy and shamanism. In the end, they were seven stages, which became videos of live performances. They are:

I The Curse of Theory (6’28”), II The Art Teacher (22’ 13”), III Memory Power (19’ 32”), IV Grafting Incantations (15’ 32”), V The Sacrifice (7’ 09”), VI Essence of the Eye (18’ 11”) and VII The Restoration of Intuition  (live performance in gallery)

In the end, Developing Photographs became a multi-media installation with performances. I would say it has fluid boundaries between deep seriousness and the exuberant. It asks viewers to restore intuition as a valid tool to understand, critique and consume photography.

You reference “shamanic imagination”, “alchemistic symbolism”, “mythologies”,  and “witchcraft tradition”. This feeling really pervades your work. What is the connection you feel between these ideas and the traditional photographic process?

Well, if we unlabelled these terms of magical content we see processes which use chemicals, which are done in the darkness while shaking pots around while imagining what will come out of them once they are brought to the light.  Photography, as magic and folklore, also starts with urgency from a belly hunch, followed by an intuition of what is that you want to photograph: sometimes fulfilling, maybe some other times denying your own family’s myths? Photography is undeniably linked to magical thinking, intuition and the unconscious.

Even though your work is centred on photography, you adopt multiple mediums to express your ideas. You use performance and video as well as photography. Can you tell us a bit about why you chose to approach photography in this way?

Developing Photographs is a piece that focuses on photography itself. At some point, I felt I could use anything in order to talk about it. It is not a photographic piece, but a piece on the photographic. The day I discovered I had to introduce live performance was a very hard one for me. I dislike very much being recorded or the centre of attention. Yet, after several experiments performing and recording it was the most successful way to express my ideas about photographic theory and the family album.

So what is next for you. You have just finished your MA, do you have any plans for future work?

The ending of the MA has been both painful and pleasurable. The year has started with plenty of possibilities, from forming a collective with female performers to putting my ideas of photography and magic on public programmes, as well as keeping on showing Developing Photographs in the UK and China. I am already researching for a new idea linking photography and the myth of the Lost Fawn (or the loss of innocence). This time I aim to use the photo lab in order to develop my unconscious. Somehow the reversal process of Developing Photographs I guess!

And finally, could you just tell us your favourite thing about photography?

It’s like dreaming while awake.

Explore

News • Guides • Community • Film Reviews • Film Developing Times • Choose Your Film