Marysa Dowling

It’s a real pleasure and honour for us to be able to feature Marysa Dowling’s Blue Bag (2007-18). Her portraits speak to us and reveal the collaborative nature of Dowling’s work. From country to country Marysa engaged with her subjects armed with a blue bag, a camera and a honest disposition to engage with the many people she encountered. With references to plastic pollution and the idea of a global community Dowling’s coherent set of images managed over the years to maintain its relevance and freshness. The individuals portrayed seem comfortable to use Marysa’s stage to express themselves, their dreams and their vision.

Disposable plastic bags became in recent years the negative symbol of the pollution that affects our planet and yet Marysa gracefully managed to turn such object into an excuse to unite and build something together. In her photographs we see irony, empathic complicity, and generous openness to the others. We can all learn from Dowling’s humble attitude to photography and her relation with her subjects. Simplicity can indeed be a genius to share and replenish. 

PHOTO MEET & NORTHERN NARRATIVES asked Dowling about her experience and process.

Your series Blue Bag is an intriguing set of pictures. Talk us through the background to the work? 

Blue Bag took place between 2007-18. The simple premise being the passing of the most ordinary and perhaps banal of objects; a blue plastic bag, from one person to the next within the same city. I asked participants to select a specific location as a backdrop to their image and to consider how they would use the blue bag in their portrait. We would meet, spend time talking through ideas then make the portrait. Blue Bag is about an exchange of ideas, creativity, communication and storytelling. It is about the multi layered connections that exist in cities, how we are all connected, how the object is passed and what we both share and is unique to us as individuals and communities. 

Chris Townsend wrote of Blue Bag ‘The group formed by this process is not a collective community that shares an identity or common culture but a new community that transcends political and social boundaries, existing only because of a collective involvement in the project.’ Initially commissioned by The Photographers’ Gallery to be a contained project with people in London. I knew soon after beginning I wanted to connect with people in other cities to see their responses.

Frustration with my process left me wanting deeper connections and interaction with my subjects. Leading with their choices in deciding the location, performance and reinterpretation of the blue bag, become influential in how the project evolved and moved, most importantly in how participants represented themselves. 

I am fascinated with each unique gesture and use of the blue plastic bag as a prop. Collectively my portraits collate and organise these performative acts for the camera into a broad body of work to illustrate choice, variation and personal interpretation of the use and manipulation of an object.

In London my invitation and instructions were written, mostly passed by post and physically, taking several months for the project to move between 30 people. In other cities the instructions became verbal. In Beirut and Havana, it moved much faster. People would walk or drive me to the person they have invited to be the next subject. The conversations we had were as important as the portraits we made together. Although I never recorded or include these with the images as I want the viewer to bring their own emotions and interpretations to what they see. 

Interestingly some of the images now have various other possibly readings due to our current crisis. And of course, the plastic bag has a very different meaning from when I first began Blue Bag 2007 when environmental issues were not at the forefront of our minds.

 You’re known for you social engaged practice and your work is predominately collaborative how did that way of making work evolve for you?  

My practice has always been about people. I’m interested in human behaviour and interaction, maybe being an only child of a single parent has made me particularly curious about the dynamics of relationships and interaction. Photography gives me the opportunity and permission to explore many aspects of life and humanity. Working in a socially engaged, sometimes collaborative way developed organically over the last 15 years. As I mentioned above, there was a time where my frustrations with portraiture changed my approach to developing projects. My personal projects and socially engaged projects overlap. Working with others to find ways to make work about the everyday and bigger subjects is where the energy of making work lies for me.

What are your plans for the Blue Bag series beyond this year, and for your other series of work? 

In some ways I wanted to keep going with this project but needed to finalise it to move on with other ideas. Recently I’ve been working with Stuart Smith of SMITH Design on the edit (down from 450 portraits to 60 took some doing) and design for the book of Blue Bag. We were due to launch a Kickstarter around now, but of course this had to be postponed. 

It’s frustrating to push things back further but it seems to me Blue Bag resonates in new ways at this specific moment in time. While we are Isolating and the virus is affecting the whole planet, our commonalities, actions, interactions and simple gestures are being intensely highlighted. 

With regard to other projects, in the short term I’m starting to find new ways to continue working with various organisations and communities online, already I can see this will change and push my practice. My main focus is The Conversation, a project with women in the UK and Mexico using portraiture and gesture as a way to begin conversations with each other. As it’s in the early stages, I’m considering different means of making portraits with the women and how to use text, ways to share and exchange, both online and physically. Luckily, I have some support from All Change in London and ITESO University in Mexico (where I’ve worked on various other projects the last 7 years). My trip later this month to both teach and continue The Conversation has of course been postponed, hopefully it may happen later in the year. 

See more from Marysa Dowling web IG