Interview with Despina Kyriacou
Despina, your career began with a commission to photograph the Northeast Yorkshire coast in 1986. Can you share what drew you to this particular landscape and how it influenced your approach?
I was drawn to these areas, in Yorkshire, where I was a student, finding inspiration as source material for my painting and sculpture at the time. The more I observed I began to feel an affinity with nature and the complexities of urban environments. This duality of influence began to shape my vision using a camera and photography as an artistic expression on its own, rather than through other means such as painting and sculpture.
Over the years, you’ve shown a strong preference for using a large format view camera and 5x4 colour transparency film. What do you believe this method adds to your work compared to digital techniques?
Yes, you are right, I have shown a strong preference for using a large format view camera as opposed to purely digital. This technique, involving colour 5x4 transparency sheet film converted into high-resolution digital files, ensures the preservation of the original image’s sharpness and clarity.
Your work often explores the abstraction of nature and landscapes, creating a sense of ambiguity and uneasiness. Could you elaborate on your process of selecting and framing your subjects to achieve this effect?
This is very true, it was a departure from the romanticism often depicted in numerous images around us, especially in advertising. Seeming to be a perfect unaffected view of the world that we live in, especially in nature. I am aiming to depict a different perspective through my vision, a kind of distortion of this almost plastic vision often depicted, (plastic surgery of the landscape). I am not doing this, instead, I am inviting viewers to think about nature, into a world where nature is not enhanced by overuse of filtration and heavy use of photoshop of a hyperreal world.
My vision can sometimes take an abstract quality, playing on the illusion of two dimensions and highlighting the interplay of light on surface textures. These elements combine to create a visual language, where perspective ambiguity and the fluidity of light and colour blend, inviting the spectator into another visual dimension that is abstract, to look deeper into elements of our world and question our relationship and co-existence with it.
Having participated in numerous exhibitions and art fairs, including solo shows and group exhibits across London, how do you feel your work has evolved over the years, and what have been some pivotal moments in your career?
I have participated in numerous exhibitions and art fairs, this is true, including solo shows and group exhibits across London. My work is always changing, in subtle ways, I am delving deeper into my exploration of time, space and humanity’s relationship with these concepts.
In terms of pivotal moments in my career, I feel I am still striving for these, if they ever happen, I am always in search of ways of presenting my work, whether in a gallery, book form or digital gallery format. By any means is relevant as a form of presentation.
Your artist statement mentions a focus on the “ambivalent connection to nature” in your compositions. How do you hope your audience interprets this theme, and what conversations do you aim to provoke with your work?
The statement, “ambivalent connection to nature”, is not really meant as a negative connotation, it is only meant to question our co-existence with it and question how nature is changing through human technology that can be detrimental to it and in today’s world is showing through climate change throughout the world. Also, our overuse of nature’s resources, are questions for us to contemplate. By composing my images in this abstracted and two-dimensional way, the viewer can see an ambiguity that can seem uneasy as a question to our relationship to the world we live in.
Reflecting on your exhibition at the Impressions Gallery of Photography early in your career, how did this experience shape your path as a photographer and artist?
In my youth and early career, of course, it was an exciting time to have had an exhibition. The experience certainly motivated me to explore possibilities with continuing to follow a path as a photographer and artist. I started to use a large format camera to enhance the detail within my compositions in my subject matter. To look closer and deeper with a philosophical inquiry about the way I see and my view on the world. My vision started to change and became more intimate to my subject matter selections. For example, my influences to focus on urbanization, recycling and urban environment and nature. An eclectic mix of influences to shape how I see my surroundings, to a work that is personal and hopefully, universally resonant.
With the transition of your work into high resolution digital files for exhibition prints, how do you maintain the integrity and quality of the original film images during scanning and printing process?
This is a good question. I must put my faith into the high-resolution scanning process to ensure the image is as close to sharp as when the images were taken, and to maintain as much of the colour rendering during the photographic process in the field, to be colour matched as close as possible for when converted to a digital format. Usually, it is a good result.
You have consistently participated in art fairs and exhibitions, such as Art Now: The Artists Fair London and Brick Lane Art Fair. How important do you find these events for networking and showcasing your work to a wider audience?
During these events, there are a wide range of audiences who attend to see varied types of art. When a spectator spends time to gaze at an image of mine with intrigue and fascination, then the effect of a piece is doing its job and is an example of visually stimulating and affecting an audience.
Networking is not always easy, as one must be on standby, at the gallery space and people come by. Occasionally, a gallery owner or curator may show some interest.
Throughout your career, how have you navigated the challenges of being a fine art photographer in the digital age, especially considering your preference for traditional film and printing techniques?
In a way, I have gradually evolved into the practices of the digital world by converting my 5x4 colour transparencies into high resolution digital files. Also, I have a digital back that can now be attached to the 5x4 Linhof Technikarden Large Format camera that I use. An analogue lens can now be used in conjunction with a digital back. Therefore, a fusion of the two.
Looking to the future, are there themes or techniques you are interested in exploring within your photography? How do you see your work evolving in the next few years?
Looking towards the future, I would like to delve deeper into my exploration of time, space and humanity’s relationship with these concepts. I would like to dedicate significant time to capturing various landscapes across the United Kingdom, intending to create a series of images that reflect on these themes. A project envisioned to culminate in a gallery exhibition or a book to represent the next chapter in my artistic journey. It’s a journey that promises to continue challenging and engaging viewers, as I use a perspective with skills to blur the lines between art and philosophy, reality and abstraction.
