August 5, 2022

Workshop | Messages and Manifestos: Photography as Activism with Louis Quail

At home in Mortlake, London. Justin’s conditions means he is often feeling depressed. He oscillates between highs and lows; often the lows are attributed to high doses of drugs to control the behaviour associated with the highs. Sometimes however he is just down or exhausted from lack of sleep. He hates taking the drugs complaining they create a “fog” that makes life like “wading through mud”. (Louis Quail, 2018)

A narration of Louis Quail’s Life:

  • Photographed businessmen, he aimed to make a living as a photographer and didn’t think about the potential of how photography can be used as a form of activism.
  • He has photographed for magazines, such as the naked truth about the people next door.
  • Shot for the Wallace and Gromit movie, aka Sunday Herald Magazine
  • Shot for a friend from the UN, right after the Balkin War, he noticed that he had to communicate that would resonate with a broad audience.
  • How can we have an impact in an oversaturated market? He noticed that photos began to be reduced to perpetrators or victims of violence.
  • At the start of his career, his work mainly was humour based.
  • He noticed that the photographer did not empower the photographer victims; they’re still impactful but give the sitter’s no agency for themselves.
  • He photographed Balkin with a softbox, flash and oversaturated colours to imbue his humour-based style to show a different perspective and then interviewed them.
  • He says it’s a privilege to hear these people’s stories and then portray their side of the story to empower them.
  • Ground-breaking approach capturing portraits in the middle of a war zone, he said how you can tell old stories in new ways, which is essential to think about.
  • Take a story that resonates and build your audience around that subject matter.
  • He used a typology, which would draw out a new perspective with every new image, his method of photographing an entire county, and its issues.
  • When you’ve created a style that reflects your style, you can apply that to new activist matters.
  • The Hattian war had become westernised disaster porn, where the violence was on steroids; Quail wanted to show a new perspective. He captured an image of a team of at least 10 photographers photographing a dead body. Fabiana, and Peter Brooke.
  • He wants to keep pushing back against the media machine and return the power to the individual so they can regain some dignity.
  • Captured a modern concept of young women exploring their physical desires in a love hut to find out who is most compatible in the middle of the Cambodian jungle.
  • For one story, he decided to shoot about corporations, a project for himself to explore; the project branched out that all these people working in offices have a shared experience that spans the world.
  • Shared humanity and how globalisation has affected us all, the final output was a 3×3 grid of square documentary portraits of 9 people working in their office space.
  • Find out who we are and what we’re interested in.
  • The question is who are all these people working for and what are they working for, a response to global capitalism.
  • Keep work fresh, make old stories relevant, exercise our skills as photographers, and demand the viewer’s attention.
  • “The easier the photography becomes, the harder it is to be a photographer” – Louis Quail.
  • Photographed a soldier’s friend and scanned an image of the soldier and his friend; as a project about remembrance.
  • Have a good story and pitch; you can get your image published anywhere.
  • He wanted to reframe remembrance from the family’s perspective of those who had lost a loved one to war and conflict, addressing the imbalance – Before They Were Fallen by Louis Quail.
  • He works a lot with text; he feels it makes his work much more impactful, as you can hear directly from the sitter.
  • Interviews by Katie Regan, check out his website to see more.
  • As he continued working, he noticed his work improved as he started getting closer to his brother’s home.
  • He regrets not photographing his mother, who died in 2014, but he got the chance to photograph his brother.
  • He asked for his brother’s permission to photograph him, explained in detail what he was doing and set no time restrictions on how long it would take him to capture this project.
  • He wanted to fight back against the redundant stereotypes portrayed in media, even doctors or police.
  • Justin’s story had to be deep and nuanced since his story is complicated.
  • Celebrate Justin’s achievements and celebrate him as an individual rather than focusing on the problems.
  • It uses all different media types to reveal all the layers of the story, such as medical documents, Justin’s poems and drawings.

Structure:

  • Introduce the characters and the problems.
  • Try to make it, so the viewer didn’t want to leave the page they were on.
  • He tries to interject humour into his work to show Justin’s different sides to his personality.
  • Justin self medicates with his birdwatching as talk therapy isn’t an option for him; it’s what keeps him grounded.
  • A book is a slow drip of communication, whereas a magazine is a smack in the face.
  • The story needs to be publicise to push against the stigma.
  • North Circular, a project captured on film, about the people who lived in that area locally.
  • After his project, Brother, he found a new perspective to tell this story, how do these people live with this shocking amount of pollution?
  • He used the same technique of interjecting layers into the project, having photos affected by pollution.
  • He used a Kickstarter project to fund his work about his brother and used the arts council for his office workers’ project.
  • You spend more time marketing your work for activism than creating it.
  • Measure the depth people are spending on your work.
  • A law: the fewer beds in mental health hospitals, the more murders there are.
  • We need to keep collaborating, the power of an NGO and a great photographer will produce results that keep fighting the stigma.

Feedback from Louis Quail on the Don't Be Negative Series

  • Think about extending from a subject matter that doesn’t involve me but applies my style to that photography.
  • Focus on therapy first, then on my photography – The rest will come.
  • Return to the project and keep developing by creating more and more visual layers.
  • There is an audience for my work, so keep creating work for myself rather than a set audience; a suggestion was to look towards art therapy forums.
  • Reach out to Daniel Regan and visit one of his peer groups to find more empathetic artists to provide constructive feedback and possible collaboration.