Exchanging words with Edward Woolley
I spoke to photographer Edward Woolley about his practice, failures, and how he climbs his way out of ruts. Ed is one of the most knowledgeable people I've had the pleasure of confabulating with over the short period that I've known him. Enjoy reading his answers, and if you find yourself gasping for more, head over to his Instagram page @Edwardjfwoolley to see what he produces.
How did you first get into photography?
When asked how I first became interested in photography, I often sight the three documentaries that sparked my interest in the medium. The first of these documentaries, the 2005 Steven Cantor documentary What Remains: The Life and Work of Sally Mann, exposed me to the process orientated approach that characterises Manns photographic work and would eventually become a feature of my own. A little later, I watched the Christian Frei’s film War Photographer, a documentary that shadows the photojournalist James Nachtwey as he documents global conflicts, and Darkness and Light, a retrospective documentary on the work of Richard Avedon. As some one who almost exclusively took an interest in analogue photography, my passion for photography emerged out of a love of the darkroom and a fascination with photographic materials. Print making is still central to my own photographic practise and my knowledge and understanding of photographic materials still underpins my approach, both when I am in the darkroom and behind the camera.
What would you consider your biggest failure/which project or image would you say is among your worst?
An education in photography encourages us to make photographs about something. Yet I’ve always believed that photographs are always photographs of something and not about something. I take pictures of the world around me, what I find, the people I meet and love, the spaces I inhabit and the places I go. My approach to photography may seem naïve. My work is not about love, even when I’m making images of the people I love. My photographs simply capture something of that person and our relationship, but they can’t say anthing more than what they show. Projects that I undertake tend to fail when I forget this doctrine and try to make a body of work about something more than what the images can denote. For example, about twelve months ago I embarked on a project about urban ecology and green spaces in london. I found that there was no way I could communicate anything about these spaces through my images. All my images could do was show these spaces how they were. I couldn’t communicate how I thought they ought to be, how I believed they should be managed. I couldn’t express my opinion through my images. I cared about the subject matter, but I didn’t care about the images I was making. I am very pessimistic about my work. I doubt almost everything that I make and often it is the doubt that becomes my biggest obstacle. Therefor, the making of images is very emotional. If I undertake a project I invests in a subject for the long term. I must care deeply about what I am placing in front of the camera because I can never escape the emotional turmoil and the doubt that comes with making a body of work.
Have you ever had to leave an idea behind because you couldn't make it work?
Most of the ideas I have never come to anything. I often have too many ideas and I don’t always know which to prioritise. If an idea doesn’t become actual, I don’t regard it as a failure, you never know when an idea will influence a later project, or something completely unrelated. I learn as much from ideas that don’t become projects as I do from the ideas that become long and sophisticated bodies of work. There are of course, the ideas that are just impractical or simply to expensive. For example, for the last three years I have wanted to make a series of full body photograms of people. I envisaged reversal processing these photograms and dye toning them. I was excited by the prospect of creating these colourful impressions of human forms (I envisaged these images of human form, appearing almost to be in motion, as if dancing, verging on the edge of abstraction) and by the scale at which I envisaged working. But I couldn’t’, and still can’t, afford the quantity of photographic paper and chemistry needed for such large photograms. It is important not to become disheartened when you realise that most of your ideas, and the best of your ideas, never become actual. From my experience, the creative process is full of dead ends, unfished works and half baked ideas. The key to creativity, I have found, is to keep thinking up new ideas and to always have something new on the go and never give up on an idea. I always keep my ideas and emotions alive – I hang on to things because I believe that anything and everything can be rendered useful when examined creatively. I think its healthy to procrastinate. To think about doing and not get too wrapped up in the doing of things. How can we expect to realise what is worth actually doing if we busy ourselves with the first thing that comes to our head.
I know you had a period where you fell out of love with making images, how did you pull yourself out of that?
At the end of the first year of University I realised that I no longer had a burning desire to make images. I didn’t see the point in making images. I felt as if I was wasting my time and not living up to my own potential. I felt, that summer after my first year, that I had lost so much in that first year. Photography ceased to have any meaning and I simply stopped making images. This made me anxious and unhappy. I couldn’t see my future taking on any shape. Continuing to study photography felt like an unwise and truly daunting prospect. But I did continue. I spent the next academic year grappling, and fighting against, my own crippling creative doubt and lack of purpose. In many ways this struggle made the situation worse. The harder I tried the more burnt out I became. At the end of that academic year I made the decision to actively try and brake the destructive mind set. Over the summer between second and third year I spent nearly two months avoiding the camera. I focused all of my attention and energy on other tasks. I started running everyday and the exercise helped lift my mood, helping me to think clearly about my relationship with photography. I also had a gardening job which allowed me hours alone with my thoughts. I realised, that through the education I had received at university, I had lost touch with my own principles and had lost touch with the emotional drive that had previously underpinned my photographic practise. I also realised that I was trying to make photographs about things and not photographs of things. Within Hemingway’s memoir A Moveable Feast, essential reading for any young creative, there is a paragraph in which he offers the advice – ‘"Do not worry. You have always written before and you will write now. All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know."’ These sentences have become somewhat of a slightly convoluted mantra, but a mantra that has guided me through periods of creative doubt and inertia. So, when I found myself unable to take pictures, when I no longer had any passion for image making, when I had lost my ability to ‘see’ images in the world around me, I reminded myself of this mantra. So, when I fell out of favour with photography I returned to that naïve approach. I wanted to regain the mindset and process orientated approach that had inspired my initial fascination with photography. I took pictures of the world around me with no real intention other than to enjoy the process of making. I brought a new camera and returned to the darkroom, hoping that this may inspire some new found love for the medium of photography. Slowly, over the the last six months, I have begun to rediscover my love for image making, but it’s been difficult to maintain a stubborn attitude.
And finally, everything you've done to get to where you are now - would you do it all again?
Yes! Because it’s helped me realise what is important to me and why I make pictures and that is invaluable.
