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Charles Emerson // Interview // Photographer
Image by Christopher Field
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“ I can’t help but give you a crap answer which is just I’m into what I’m working on at the moment, ahaha. But having said that - its difficult, there’s different things I like about different projects. My first project was neat exposures and print sales - my flowers project. Which was flowers submerged in a fish tank with different inks and dyes and they were quite paintily looking and they were lovely to make. In the studio - which at the time was just my bedroom - you’d have the radio on and tea whenever you liked, you know it was just a kind of nice and comfy working environment but then I also really enjoyed my mountain project and that’s not just me in my bedroom, that’s me going to Romania or Japan or wherever and it was awesome to be able to travel with work and see places and see the mountains. I don’t know that I can pick a favourite between those two things. Each one was so good. I think my favourite thing is that you can try and have a lot of variety. There’s definitely my favourite images form projects that stand out for me as moments when, for instance, in my first flowers project I did some research and I went to Auschwitz with a photographer and we were documenting the site, which obviously was an incredibly powerful experience. And I was doing this flowers project and there were these roses everywhere that people had left, that had been left in the snow”.
They were all frozen and I asked the art director if he thought it would be okay for me to take one and take it back home and to shoot it my tank and he was happy with that and I donated a print to the Auschwitz foundation. But I remember distinctly making that image and feeling that it was so good, I almost couldn’t sleep for two nights I was so excited, and in a really naive kind of way I calculated how much I would get if I sold one print for this much then I would get this much if I sold this many prints and I remember I woke up my girlfriend at the time and was like we’re gonna be millionaires! I was like that’s it I’ve done it! Sadly it didn’t quite work like that ahah. But still I really like that image and I still feel like it was a real moment for me with my work. I guess there was another image like that in my mountains project. One image that I took in Scotland and had family links to in the west highlands - that image got me onto the project of mountains. The art director that commissioned me for the BLM work saw that mountain picture and asked if I could do a project photographing mountains. So there’s definitely stand out images across my work but I don’t think I could pick a favourite one. Whatever I’m working on at that time is what I’m most interested in for sure. I get very tired very quickly. I like to be moving on”. ”
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