Interview with the artist

Mitra Tabrizian in conversation with Roberta McGrath, discusses her latest book off screen

 

RM: You have a new book, off screen published by Kerber (2019), as well as your first feature film, Gholam in distribution. The book starts with a series of constructed ‘film stills’, inspired by/based on your feature film, and ends with actual stills from the film. Can you tell us about these images and the idea for the structure?

MT: I wanted to deviate from the usual approach to the concept of ‘film stills’ which are often photographs of the main character(s) taken on or off the set of a film to introduce/publicize the film. Inspired by the feature film Gholam (that I made a couple of years ago) the work uses the real locations of the film yet focuses on the rejected cast, or the extras, or depicts the empty landscapes, with an implication of narrative. In this respect the images also differ from the usual film stills, which are rarely devoid of people.

Throughout the film, the main character (Gholam) remains an enigma. So in these stills, he is not replaced/represented by any of the rejected cast, a strategy used to maintain and enhance the mystery, echoing the film. The only indication is his whereabouts – the places he’s been or heading to – or the hidden danger that await in these deserted landscapes, alluding to the ‘out of the frame’ (what happens beyond the frame).

With regard to the structure, the idea was to show the reworking the concept of ‘film stills’. So the end result is a series of enigmatic images, which leaves the narrative open to interpretation – telling the story differently or even inducing the anti-story! But, as in the film, it portrays a unique image of London, the ‘unseen’ city of migrants, living on the edge.

RM: off-screen is beautifully produced. It covers your photographic work made between 2012 and 2018. Can you tell us a little about some of the images from these recent projects that you’ve made examining the financial crisis, migration and exile?

MT: In addition to the project ‘Film stills’, other projects include Looking back, which is just one large image on the young unemployed, made in 2012, when young people were among the hardest hit by the financial crisis. The participants were either unemployed or despite university education couldn’t get a job in the area of their expertise and had to take any job to survive. So a single portrait, yet no one is looking at the camera – it's more like ‘looking into the void’– into an uncertain future!

I also did a billboard project, commissioned by Art on the Underground, initially as a ‘response’ to the launch of night trains. I focused on night-time workers, mainly those in low paid jobs – 70% are migrants – and did a number of interviews to get a sense of their experience of working at night and the impact on their lives, hence the title You don’t know what nights are like? The billboards were displayed in the city center for two years (2016-18)

Leicestershire (2012) also addresses the ‘under-represented’. After World War II, to tackle the economic crisis, the British Government encouraged immigration. A large number settled in Leicester, then a centre for manufacturing shoes and textiles. Immigrant groups are now nearly half the city's total population. So the project is a historical ‘documentation’ and a tribute to the ex factory workers who helped build what was once a major industrial city, but now living on very low pensions, with their children often jobless.

And From Bahrain (2011), on Bahrainis in exile (an older series), was originally commissioned as a billboard project by The Photographers’ Gallery to coincide with the London 2012 Olympics.

And what links these various projects together is ‘under - represented’ and social divide.

RM: And your book also reverses the usual order of things in photo books: it opens with images and ends with writing. Why?

MT: I thought it would give people the opportunity to have their own reading of the images first without being influenced by the writing! And then the writing, hopefully, could be informative or/and inspirational, in introducing other levels of meanings. Like a film that you may like to see before reading the reviews, forming your own opinion without being guided by the critics – and then the reviews may provide different insights into the film.