Interview #1: Paul Rowland (2020)
For over a decade, Paul Rowland has been living in Tokyo where he teaches English literature and film studies at an international high-school. Last year he has started using his phone to capture intriguing textures that often go unnoticed, revealing some of the hidden art found in the suburbs of the Japanese megapolis. Here’s our interview with him.
MS／How has your relation to photography evolved throughout the years?
PR／Apart from some trick photos of my little brother standing on my mother’s palm, I was never interested in photography — to the extent that I was convinced it would weaken my visual memory — and I have never owned a professional camera (I take all my photos on my iPhone 11 Pro). However, a few years ago, I started noticing details in my environment that reminded me of the abstract expressionist works I loved so much, and one day I saw an image that I had an urge to capture, so I snapped a picture of a cracked road marking with my phone. But I wasn’t converted yet. It wasn’t until much later (last year, in fact) that I realized I could actually take a photo that was something beautiful in itself, rather than simply a photo of something beautiful.
MS／What initially sparked your interest in abstract photography?
PR／I began to take photographs of urban decay and the interaction of the weather and the city, which were more evocative than any poem I could write; although I have written three books of poetry, recently I have become somewhat fatigued and suspicious of language, and increasingly I want to explore alternative means of expression. I have since become addicted to the immediacy of photography with its ability to communicate an image directly from my eye to your eye. Having said that, I don’t think of myself as a photographer (I am an impostor, a hypocrite!), but a curator of the city: looking for and finding art that is already there.
MS／What’s your process of finding new photographic material like?
PR／I used to only take photos as I walked to and from work and to the shops, but I gradually expanded my territory and started riding my bike further and further away from my house, purposely getting lost for hours, and then travelling to different stations in Tokyo. As I ride slowly or amble along, I trust my eyes to pick out interesting details: colours, textures, shapes — whatever makes me turn my head and stops me in my tracks. I love being surprised by stumbling on unexpected, unintentional, accidental beauty which almost everyone passes by. The slower I go, the more I see; and more often than not, when I stop to take a photo, I notice something else I wouldn’t have seen otherwise.
MS／What are you trying to express with your work, and how do you achieve that purpose?
PR／I want to transform what is considered ‘ugly’ into something ‘beautiful’ through the alchemy of photography, and thereby question our understanding of beauty and how we see the world around us. I do this by isolating elements: framing a patch of pavement so that you suddenly see the ground as the figure. Although my photos are usually of quite small areas, they frequently resemble something else much bigger, such as a mountain, a coastline, or even a galaxy. This urban exploration is the most enjoyable part of the process for me, as well as the longest: once I have discovered and taken the image, I crop it slightly, increase the contrast and saturation using the Instagram editing tools, sometimes playing with the structure, and then post.
MS／How has your relation with Instagram been like with regards to your photography?
PR／After quitting all social media four and a half years ago, when my son was born, I honestly didn’t think I would ever use it again, but when I started taking photos in earnest last year I felt the desire to share them with people, so I set myself the challenge of creating a purely artistic social media presence — with no selfies, photos of food, or holiday pics. As I explored the platform for the first time, I was delighted to find that there were other strange people like me, which made me feel more confident about what I was trying to do. I have corresponded with many creative and talented people on Instagram, and I am grateful to the various hubs that feature images for providing opportunities to connect with other like-minded people.
MS／What do you enjoy most about this kind of platform, and what kind of interactions have you been having on it?
PR／I really appreciate all the comments I receive, because people seem to understand and like what I am doing, and I enjoy being able to respond directly with my own comments. I am sometimes anxious that I don’t spend long enough looking at individual pictures, and that social media encourages this kind of rapid and superficial consumption, but I always pause to consider and comment on something I find remarkable. Despite the inevitable and inherent flaws of a commercial venture like Instagram, I have become convinced that you can have a healthy relationship with social media, and that it is definitely possible to cultivate an environment that fosters a sense of friendly competition, admiration, and inspiration.
MS／What works have had an impact on you and influenced your approach to art?
PR／My earliest influences were poets: Sylvia Plath, Ted Hughes, Seamus Heaney. I would root and sniff like a truffle pig in their poems for original, startling, and delicious metaphors. A little later, I came across the painterly brushwork, impasto, and scumbling of Rembrandt and Bacon, and then Pollock with the possibility of images detached from a literal meaning. At university, I was entranced by the symphonies of Mahler and adopted his principle of continuous variation, which I then attempted to emulate in my writing, and now in my photos. Duchamp’s found or accidental art — not so much the urinal as the threads — introduced me to a different idea of an artist as someone collaborating with the unseen forces all around us. Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities is a touchstone for me, because it reminds me that we can see the city — and anythingin an infinity of ways — that its meaning is not fixed by anyone. The visual aesthetic of Tarkovksy’s films was very formative, as were his Polaroids, which convinced me squares were cool, and demonstrated how much could be done with so little. Alan Watts’ description of Taoist principles influenced my desire to interfere as little as possible with what I see. I seek a purity of interaction with the absolute minimum of editing. More recently, Wang Yang Cheng, Robert Rauschenberg, and Olafur Eliasson have all shown me how much is possible, and encouraged me to see how everything is connected.
For over a decade, Paul Rowland has been living in Tokyo where he teaches English literature and film studies at an international high-school. Last year he has started using his phone to capture intriguing textures that often go unnoticed, revealing some of the hidden art found in the suburbs of the Japanese megapolis.
Interviewed by M. Solav.
