NAU NUA: JILLIAN EDELSTEIN

Looking for a meaning

Photographer Jillian Edelstein comes from the primary colours light of South Africa. She chose to look for the meaning of existence taking pictures of everything that gives her the germen of a new question. Politics, artists, landscapes, ancestral traditions, photography, cinema...Jillian Edelstein’s work has been published in some of the most important magazines of the world but still there are a lot of questions to answer, a lot of things to portrait. Now, we are going to answer who is Jillian Edelstein.

Why did you choose the light as a way of expression?

I grew up in a colourful society and my mother, in particular, always made me look at it - all of it- in a very definite heightened way - she almost taught me to look - then I began or needed to interpret what I was seeing - marrying the visual , the creative with the political and make sense of that.

You were born in South Africa. Has the light something special there?

Yes it does ...it's bright, primary colours unlike here in the UK where they feel more muted and like pastels - there it's intense and vivid and unforgiving...powerful.

In light, do you prefer intensity or a subtle one?

Subtle is my preference but one has to know how to adapt in either circumstances if we talk literally...

Your earlier days were as a press photographer. What did you learn then?

That I was as good as the last image I took. That being in the moment and getting it and drawing from it and the circumstances were important - it's where I realised how important focus was and how , still, I go into some kind of tunnel vision when I'm concentrating and 'on the job'. It also taught me about connecting and how connecting with who you working with and what you put out is as good as performance.

One of your photo series is called “Truht & lies”. Do you think there’s more truth or more lie in the press world?

Tough question - here today we're watching the story about the News of the World and phone hacking and I think about Iraq today and the US troops going home and China and a village where a terrible story is unfolding and I think that sadly there are more lies but that if we stop telling the stories we'll have no truth and that would be bad.

That series is a black and white one, a powerful image to represente the reality in your own country. Actually, which ones are the lies in South Africa?

I think SA is a feel good story now but ...watching it closely it's a worry because power does corrupt and corruption is an evil that knows no bounds and if I went again and I told that story over again I’d still choose B&W because it did make it more powerful . I recall seeing Claude Lanzman's Shoah and i always pictured the Holocaust in B&W and then I got a shock when i saw that of course it all happened in bright vivid day by day colour - how weird how weird but the world is weird oftentimes.

I know that in SA certain people took the rap for the 'powers that be' who took the amnesty cue and ran for their lives!

In the other hand, your series "Sangoma", is in a deeply intense colour. It's about beliefs in ancestral spirits and other traditions. What were you looking for in that project?

I was looking for meaning - when I started it I was cynical and sceptical - later I stopped being judgemental. I saw how proud, and meaningful their culture is and I felt that in that simplicity there is so much power and meaning - I found it most humbling. I miss them in those mountains and in that landscape.

You moved to London and after your studies your portraits were published in very important publications: The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, Vogue and Interview and very important campaigns. When you look at your career, do you think it’s been a hard one?

I don’t think it's ever easy - it always feels like one is having to challenge oneself and push boundaries. And that never stops.

What about your experience with so popular and very important people like Woody Allen, Nelson Mandela or Jim Jarmusch?

When I see the question it brings a smile to my face ...because the experiences are so intense and vivid in my mind. Each with a little story, a little gem in the memory box - all such extra ordinary people and the meeting ...well....that's the gift.

And which ones are your "Affinities"?

Ok...difficult question - probably ... the amazing editor Liz jobey. Then my former agent and the man who encouraged me to get into film, Simon Crocker - and the actress Jane Horrocks - these are all people who I met through work and then they became great friends as well as colleagues...

Are you working on a film?

Yes ... but early days. I just finished a 'teaser' - we shot in Mallorca and here in London tho ' it's a NY story... So now we got out to get production guys interested as well as talent !

Good!

Yes it feels good.

And, do you think photography, and art in general, also films of course, should be useful for society or just entertainment?

I think there 's place for both aspects of which you allude to , for sure.

Could you imagine the photo of your dreams?

Maybe it would be a dream within a dream - it would be space, and fields and movement and then it would pan to dazzling sunlight on sea water ...and it would pan back to the sound of screeching delighted gulls and then a women with a porcupine headdress would emerge above a cliff and she would be symbolic of hope and dreams and power and love and she'd smile.

JILLIAN EDELSTEIN. A RETROSPECTIVE click here