PM. You spent around eight years working on Over.State. Was it a conscious decision to make this a long-term project or did it just evolve? How did you decide when you were finished?
IG. I definitely did not think at the beginning that this would be such a long project, almost nine years. It was a slow process - a kind of strange loop. You make prints and then you make more pictures - for me I never feel I have done enough. A pivotal moment was deciding that I wanted to put the work into a book. Then I knew that the work would have to come to end. The book gives the pictures a home for ever, but you have to stop, to let the book exist in its own time and space. As your life changes over the years the work changes with it. It started to become obvious to me that the work was slowly evolving into something else, becoming something slightly different. It came to the point both with the work and in my personal life where I felt I needed to move forward and make something of the pictures made over that period.
How did the images change from the first images to the last ones?
The pictures at the end were different to those at the beginning of the work. This has a lot do with the personal space and time that this work is about. When my life changed the pictures changed. Among the first pictures I made for Over.State were the couple kissing and the triptych of the woman. These were pivotal moments for me as I clearly remember a strong feeling of being connected to somebody and something while experiencing those encounters. This is something I really wanted to feel - to be connected and to express that.
One of the last pictures was the polar bear - it was right on the very sensitive and fragile margin between Over.State and my next body of work, Vialattea. It was bit like the sun coming out after it has been raining for a long time. This is when I decided that maybe it was time to move forward.
You say on your website that Over.State is ‘a story of a young and lost person trying to feel free and find love’. I guess that person is you. Are the people in your photographs real or are they fictional characters to help you tell your story?
Yes, this is definitely me, but I feel the need to put small imaginary gaps between me, the pictures and the viewer. All of the people are very close friends or life-partners I met during the creation of the work. As I said before, it was very important to me to feel connected, to find love and freedom. All those people, by sharing with me their own stories and experiences, represented (and they still do - through the pictures) the essence of this notion and the importance of it at that time.
Did this series constitute an intervention in a personal struggle and perhaps help to resolve it, or was it a record of events?
It was a combination both things. On the one hand I was documenting my agony, but telling the story helped me to get his feeling out of me. For me the only way to achieve healing was by expressing the story. I believe, that, in my case, there is no other way to heal than telling the story-the whole story.
Among the images are contact sheets which give the impression of a story line. Were you referencing movies, creating an implied story line?
There are two things I like to experiment with. One is to make mistakes in every step of the process of taking and developing pictures. I really love mistakes and accidents. Secondly in Over.State I liked the notion of creating a constant “movement” inside the pictures, something that could eventually enclose what I felt, something that could try to escape the two- dimensional by creating an implosion (or explosion) and reach a certain depth (or altitude). In a way, something that could eventually give a sense of time alternation - a curvature - with an impact that has its origins into sensitive memories and on an intuition yet mysterious, but also familiar.
Your highly contrasted black and white images speak to us with an explosive immediacy conveyed by what seems like analogue noise and texture, just like a good old vinyl record. Could you tell us more about your creative and photographic process?
When I was making the work, I didn’t have any money to buy expensive equipment but I wanted to experiment. I had a very old printer which could scan documents and I tried to experiment with it. That is how some of the contact sheets were made for example. I was using very basic equipment and I tried to do as much damage as possible to the images. Mostly I was intervening on the negatives - I like holding the physical images and interacting with them.
It was not a conscious decision in the beginning to deface the images, but as I worked with the pictures I realised that wanted this damage inside the pictures, I didn’t want them to be clear. I wanted them to convey an idea of fragility, matching my own fragility. The pictures echo the way I felt.
What do the hand-written notes contribute to the work?
The written notes are an important part of the work. In the same way that I was compulsively scratching the negatives, I was writing down words in the same way, over and over again. I used to write a long time before I started taking photographs. When I started making pictures, I began writing notes which had some connection with the people in the work and the pictures I made of them. When I met someone and we had a strong moment together I would go home with the experience in my head and write down words as part of the healing process. The words are not meant to make anything clear or to apply to any particular picture - I want the viewer to make their own connections.
This work was about a period pf personal trauma for you, and producing the work helped you to move beyond that. Do you think there are any lessons for all of us experiencing a global trauma at the moment?
This experience that I lived through I like to call ‘existential agony’. I think that every human being in one way or another experiences this agony sooner or later. When you start to realise that you are a mortal stranger in this world, you need to find a way to be present in life and create your own time and space. Over.State is a story that follows this direction. If everybody can come to terms with their own place in life and realise the beauty and the drama that is enclosed in our condition humaine, perhaps the world will become a better place.
