Following on from the theme of photographic collaboration that Corwin Hiebert explored in Your Creative Mix I came across an interesting personal project undertaken by two local photographers in Auckland. Jocelen Janon and Bryan Lowe spent several months photographing the rehearsals and opening show of a group of vaudeville performers.

The result was a book published on Blurb under the collaborative name Light Traffic:

Vaudeville

Born in France in the 15th century ‘Vaudeville’ had many changes through its history. Starting as drinking songs, often on the naughty side, it evolved into singing theatre scenes in the 17th century. The Theatre du Vaudeville was created in Paris in 1792.

The Vaudeville theatre presented light comedies based on quid pro quo and burlesque situations. It had a huge success in Paris with authors Georges Courteline, Georges Feydeau and Eugène Labiche, whose plays are still shown nowadays in Paris.

In the 1880s the Vaudeville genre appeared in the USA and Canada after a major change: adopted by most variety theatres it became what we know now as the Music-Hall genre.

Lilly Loca’s Vaudeville Cabaret is possibly the finest representative of this long tradition.

Interview

This interested me so much that I contacted them both and we ending up sitting down over a cup of coffee discussing the project. The conversation moved onto the themes of collaboration and the general state of photography in New Zealand today. I think you’ll find it an interesting read. Here’s the interview:

The project

A: How did you come up with the idea of the vaudeville project?

J: I went to a place where they are doing drawings, and there were some models there, and I engaged with one of the models who was doing some burlesque. I started to speak with her and then I met her and I started to talk to her about why she was doing something like that and we went on like that. She was dancing, and the one organising the show too so we had contacts with other actors and people doing things. A little bit of luck. I pushed the luck too, a little bit.

A: It’s not like you thought, Vaudeville sounds interesting, how can I get access to that? You met the person and then you saw the opportunity.

J: I knew I wanted to do that sort of thing, I didn’t have a specific subject, or stories to speak about. I just kept my ears open and my eyes open. Now we’ve got several projects. Everywhere I go and everywhere Brian goes we open our eyes and take notes and try to make a contact and find the person. I call us witnesses, we are not writing the scenario.

A: How did you gain the trust of Vaudeville performers?

J: Burlesque is getting naked without getting naked on the stage. They have many photographers asking for pictures and they have to be quite careful.

B: To be blunt, there are people out there who just want to take photos of girls with skimpy outfits.

A: I’ve heard a lot of stories like that over the years, which makes it difficult when you have genuine intent.

B: I think personal projects like this it’s quite important to be able to show that as well. You need to have a genuine approach, you do have a genuine background.

A: You can say this is my website, this is some work that I’ve done.

J: Also we’ve spent a lot of time with the people in the project without a camera in our hand. We’ve had coffee somewhere tried to know each other, for a while we’re doing that. We are not coming in, shooting, then saying bye.

A: The very first time that you went to see them, did you take any photos?

J: No. I didn’t even bring my photo bag.

A: So first of all it’s getting to know people, gaining acceptance into their group so that they can see you are genuine?

J: We have to explain what we are taking photos for. In order to use the photos, you need them to sign a model release to say that it’s okay to use the pictures. They are more or less giving their lives to us. After all, I could sell some of the pictures to Playboy, I have the right. They need to trust you.

B: To give you an example, I’ve been dealing with Can-Teen, the adolescent cancer foundation, for about a year now and I’ve been trying to kick-start something with Light Traffic so we document some of these kids. But the whole trust thing is so so important. When I first walked in there and I said I do voluntary work for Can-Teen as a photographer they said okay come on in. It’s been a year and I’ve only just been able to sit down with these guys and have a conversation and actually get to know them. Now I’ve got to bring Jocelen onboard and try and build that trust up again.

 

The process

A: How long have you spend on the Vaudeville project altogether do you think?

B: Four or five months.

A: How often would you be there taking photos?

J: They did only one show, the next one is in September. We followed them through rehearsals and training. It was their first show, so it was perfect for us.

J: In may ways we are not interested in the end result, we are more interested in the process, what they did to arrive there, what they had to do for that. Obviously for the show we are happy to be there shooting backstage, but it the project was more the process, contacting the people, all the work they were doing before.

B: It’s the whole story behind it.

J: The show itself is the end of the story, like the end of the movie.

B: For me, quite often the case is that the final output is secondary for me. I really love just getting in there and having a ball. I love just wrestling. Jocelen knows all about it because I’ve just been talking to him constantly about it.

I’ve just bought a new digital SLR with video function and I’ve been playing around and mixing media and all sorts of stuff. And that’s what I really enjoy about collaboration because it gives me the opportunity to really play.

A: Do projects like this give you the chance to try new techniques that you can use in your commercial work once you’ve mastered them?

B&J: Yes.

J: We are very curious about trying everything, I’ve started to use film again. I would love to have a writer with us, because I’m not a good writer, English is my second language. I would love to have a musician with us, to use music in the project. I don’t want it to be closed, the more people that are involved, the more we all get out of it, the more things we can create out of it.

A: Is photography just like an excuse to be somewhere where you normally wouldn’t get access, to get a glimpse into something that you would otherwise have no idea about?

B: We’ve discussed this before, and for us, it’s about the story, being able to see the story and understand what’s behind it rather than just showing a single image.

J: That’s what happened with the people we photographed for this project. It’s a whole new thing for us. I’ve never been involved in burlesque before. It’s so interesting to see. These people have their own lives too. For example, there’s a school teacher who is also a burlesque performer. The contrast between her normal life and her second life is very interesting.

J: Also you have to understand that if you’re a documentary photographer, you can’t stay on the surface, you have to understand why are they doing that. Most of these people they have regular jobs, so why would they go on stage?

J: I do a lot of one day shooting, Chinese New Year, stuff like that. I have no contact with these people, I just go there and shoot what’s going on. We could do that too with these projects but you don’t reach the depths. If you want to make a story, it takes time. You can’t do a story in one day.

Photography in New Zealand

J: What I find interesting about New Zealand is that New Zealand has an image of being rural, it’s famous for the landscapes. That’s what I call Old Zealand. New Zealand is not like that. Ten percent of the New Zealand population lives in a rural area, and all the rest are living in towns. I find it interesting to distance myself from the image that New Zealand has and work on that.

In Europe, everybody wants to escape from the big towns to go to the country, here they are all trying to escape from their village to the towns. I find that quite interesting.

If you live in a small town in New Zealand, it’s not easy to find a job, it’s very limited. New Zealand has changed a lot in the last ten years.

A: Do you think it’s become more modernised in that time?

J: I don’t know about modernised, but it’s more diverse, culturally diverse. When I arrived here from France, I couldn’t find any French cuisine, and now it’s common. It’s a silly example, but everything is like that. Take the Chinese community, when I arrived ten years ago there were not many Chinese supermarkets and now they’re everywhere.

I’m not sure that New Zealanders are creating that. The immigrants are creating that sort of diversity. My concern about New Zealanders is that they are clinging to their old values, which are slowly disappearing. I’m interested in recording that process.

A: New Zealand is a very beautiful country, and my first instinct was to go out there and take lots of landscape photos. Then after a while it’s like it’s nice, it’s interesting and you get to see some beautiful places but I want to do something more, something with substance.

J: When I first came here I went berserk on landscapes, I spent six weeks travelling around. I always say that photographers in New Zealand are victims of the landscapes. Because, as I did, they are obsessed with the landscape. It’s like chocolate box types of photos. It’s pretty, and you can do postcards with that but that’s as far as I go. It’s not always true, there are some interesting ways to work with the landscape, but you have to dig a bit more. We are blinded by the beauty of the place.

B: I think it’s a matter of perspective. Some people want a perfect landscape with perfect sunshine. It’s a problem with the stages of a photographer. I can’t speak for anywhere else, but in New Zealand people buy a camera, then jump straight into landscapes.

J: All the beginners things: pets,landscapes, flowers, (I did that!) Then you to start to move to your wife, kids and then you start to move onto something different. It’s like there’s a rite of passage for photographers. I still do some landscapes from time to time.

B: People who have been doing this for five or ten years stop and ask themselves, well I was doing exactly the same thing ten years ago, what can I do to improve it? And start looking for a story.

J: When I started photography I started in showbiz, shooting rock and roll stuff. We had a stage at the front and a lab at the back and we shot the shows and developed the pictures at night and sold them to the band before they left town in the morning.

So, I went quite quickly from beginner to that, without going through the landscape, flower stage.

A: That’s one of the things that attracted me to your project when I first saw it. I thought I wish I’d thought of this. In New Zealand it seems to me hard to find something to photograph other than the landscape, and in your project, you’ve got the answer. You’ve found something interesting.

B: I think the answers are there, it’s whether the photographers have the nous to just get up and do it. Had I not met Jocelen and discussed these ideas I probably would have let something like that pass as I’m so busy with everything else. I’m glad that we have done it because it’s allowed me to do something personal and the way that I like it, and because we think so similarly, story-wise, it’s worked out really well.

J: The problem you have is that when you look at New Zealand it’s a bit empty when it comes to culture, other than Maori. I have a friend from France who arrived in the country four years ago and he’s bored to death because he’s lacking culture. He’s in the arts too, he lived in Paris and he comes here and there’s nothing. You need to look a bit harder than in a place like London I suppose.

B: It can be difficult to recognise, it could be straight under your nose.

Collaboration

A: How important is collaboration in this project?

B: I think that either one of us could have done this project alone but the reason that we’ve worked so well together is because we offer different viewpoints and bring different things to the table. I think that mix of ideas and creativity works well. It makes it more satisfying, because you have input from a different creative source and don’t have your own narrow blinkers on about how to approach it.

J: We have the same idea about what we want to do but a different approach. We emulate each other and give each other ideas and a different point of view on the same story

There’s a blend of styles in the book. In terms of style I call Brian a clean photographer and myself a dirty photographer and the two work together very well.

B: An example of that is the rehearsal room in the basement, we were both shooting in the same room, we were shooting different details and the same details at the same time, but we got such a different feel from both sets of photographs, but they blended together really well.

A: There’s a mixture of black and white and colour work in the book. Has working in both been an issue?

J: I shoot more black and white, Brian shoots more colour. But it’s also down to the place where we shot. The light was absolutely horrible. We would have orange people, it’s better to work in black and white. Most of the things that I shot in there are in black and white and that’s one of the reasons.

I think colour and black and white work work well together. Take someone like Stephen Dupont. He’s a war correspondent. He has around four cameras and he shoots both colour and black and white.

I don’t think colour and black and white are opposed or fighting against each other, I don’t see that at all. We shoot digital, so everything starts off in colour.

Collaboration is important, in the old days you had photographers competing against each other, hitting each other, blood showing. That’s gone because now with digital photography you have millions of amateur photographers and semi-professionals who can shoot which is killing our market as professionals. Everyone needs to stick together. We need to provide something, and I think collaboration is a way of creating something else.

A: Does collaboration help you on a professional level as well? On one sense you have support, you can discuss problems and issues. Or to encourage each other, if there’s a slow period, you are feeling a bit down, maybe the other person can help.

B: I look at Jocelen’s work and I think how does he do some of the stuff that he does. And I know that I can’t emulate that because that’s not just the way that I think. But I admire the way that he does stuff and talking about the whole professional realm Jocelen’s introduced me to the AIPA stuff and all that sort of thing. It definitely helps to bounce ideas.

J: Tips, or meeting people, contacts. I have my office at home, I want to go out, I’ve had enough, it’s nice to be part of a team, and someone says hey I have a shoot somewhere do you want to come?

A: This is a difference – when you’re working in a place of employment you have social contact all the time. When you’re at home you’re by yourself.

J: There’s Facebook, it works to a certain extent, but social networking is not the same as meeting face to face.

A: Do you think it helps you fill your time, a project like that? For example, if work is a bit slow, it gives you a reason to go out and shoot.

J. Well, Brian’s always busy but I’m in that situation where one week I have too much work then another week nothing. I don’t have time to go work on one of our projects this week, but next week I will and it fills one of my days.

J: You can try new things when you’re going out and when you don’t have a customer, telling you what he wants, you can be much more creative too. You can try some new stuff and if anything doesn’t work it doesn’t matter.

Other projects

M: Is this project your first? What other stuff are you working on?

J: It’s the first we’ve finished. We are working on several others.

B: We’ve got so much on the table in terms of trying to sort out and narrow down but one of our current projects is following a grass roots fashion family. They’ve recently come into their own and started to win some awards and things and we’re right at the breaking point at the moment where they’re becoming know for their fashion. It’s an interesting time for us to be involved.

From a photographer’s point of view, from the photojournalist’s point of view, we’ve got the time where we’ve hit the nail right on the head.

J: Fashion week is coming in August, and they’re putting a collection together, and it’s an interesting. They are a Maori family working together in their house, it’s an interesting mix.

B: So many differences…

J: Cultural environment, furniture etc.

A: From what I’ve seen, I think there’s quite a big separation between Maori and European New Zealanders.

B: Yes and no. I think there’s a certain section of society that says yes, there’s a massive difference, and a certain section which will happily blend the two quite well. As far as this fashion group is concerned, they’ll quite happy mix whatever they’ve got, plus they have their own cultural background as well.

J: You can see the influence in what they are doing, the clothes, their drawings.

The reaction

A: Have you had much reaction to it yet? Because you’ve only just recently put the photos out there haven’t you?

J: First of all, we have a private page on Facebook, which all the actors and performers can see, which is reserved for them, we wouldn’t let anyone else join. A lot of good reactions from the guys on stage.

I’ve added some photos on Behance and Flickr, stuff like that.

B: We’ve had the odd enquiry about what we can do for other people’s shows, but as Jocelen and I have discussed, we’ve been pretty selective about what we do because we feel that we have to have buy into the project, we feel that we have to have interest in what we do because otherwise it turns into another job.

J: We’ve been contacted by people in that profession but we’ve decided that if it’s a freebie they want then the answer’s going to be no. We have done the project already. Obviously if they want to pay us then we will do the job for them.

I think because it’s our first project, we are still learning a little bit.

J: The problem is that that sort of work is not what people think of as New Zealand. They have to realise that this is New Zealand too, it’s not only sheep and rugby.

B: These are the humdrum things that are happening in everyday life and to me that’s far more interesting than what’s happening in these mainstream stories.

J: In New Zealand the main challenge that I have with what we are doing is not so much finding projects and taking pictures, but what to do with the photos I take.

As professionals, you want to show you pictures. Part of being a professional is showing your pictures, we don’t want to keep the photos in a box.

How in the future are we going to do that? We are exploring, books, exhibitions, articles in the magazines, contacting editors. That is the main challenge for me.

One day everyone’s going to have a 5D Mark II and be making videos, although that’s a bit away. Another ways is books. I think that books are in the future of what we are doing.

A: I suppose that can help you professionally too. If you successfully contact a magazine editor, for example, not only do you get the exposure but you’ve created a contact who may commission work from you in the future.

B: I think projects like this certainly open up doors, just from the meeting with different people and all the networking. For the Vaudeville project, I’ve got to meet a whole bunch of people who I probably wouldn’t have associated with before. It’s such a wonderful group of people.

Links

Vaudeville book on Blurb

Light Traffic

Light Traffic on Facebook

Bryan Lowe’s website

Bryan Lowe on Facebook

Jocelen Janon’s website

Jocelen Janon on Facebook

Jocelen Janon’s blog

Jocelen Janon on Behance

Photo Gallery

More photos from the Vaudeville project:

Jocelen Janon

Byran Lowe

All photos copyright Jocelen Janon and Bryan Lowe. Please contact the photographers for permission to use in any way.