Interview with Gilad Baram
Milla Tarabanova: Did you find more of your own style in the process of making Koudelka Shooting Holy Land, or was it more about adopting the way of seeing from the master and teacher?
Gilad Baram: It’s difficult for me to say where the line crosses. Maybe it would be better and easier for other people to say. I think that in any such relationship between master and assistant or apprentice throughout history, there is always an element of imitation and learning through imitation. But at the same time and I don’t think it is paradoxical, I think, seeking for one’s own voice. For me I definitely found a path to my own voice. When working with someone of the magnitude of Koudelka, all the time you need to negotiate between the seeking for independence and one’s self-definition, yet my pre-disposition was as his assistant. I could not tear myself apart from this position because it was the reason I was there from the beginning, so there were these negotiations which were not at all easy, especially as a young photographer. I met Josef when I was in the third year in Art Academy in Jerusalem at that time. I had gone as far away as you can imagine from what Koudelka’s photography represents and my work done after that – I’m putting the film aside – explores a completely different world. I explore things that Josef cannot relate to in any way.
I don’t know if you have seen any of the things I did. I did a few series. They are very much introspective, connected to photography as a medium, connected to the entrance of the digital era, the internet era but very much connected to me and my generation. My interests, my conflicts, my difficulties – for example, how do you deal with such a saturated world when it comes to photography. How many millions of images produced per day, how many billions and billions of images are stored in image banks and all the photography done throughout the centuries – how do you find yourself in that. That was also a certain rebellion I think against my school, my teachers and so on. I think documentary photography, straight photography, direct photography is photography that relates to reality in a very pure sense – I really diverted from it and left it aside in a way.
Yet the film is a different story. I think that now in retrospective I can say that the film is a kind of tribute because in many ways it is not part of this rebellion that I was expressing in my photographic practice. Now I slowly start understanding what I was doing then. First, I was reacting to something that was happening in my life and second, it embodies a conflict that I have: before meeting Koudelka, I admired Koudelka and he was this iconic figure for me, and the first time I saw Josef Koudelka’s photographs, I wanted to be Josef Koudelka. It happens to a lot of photographers……this adventurous character, this nomad figure that goes around and takes photographs, doesn’t need too much, meets people and does this amazing photography. As I grew apart from that and then met Josef and grew to learn more and more about him, I think… you know, you hit reality. But what he represents is something that I appreciate very much, even if I do go my own way. And I think this film was made out of respect for him, for his generation, for what they represent. When I was a student I was kind of mocking this idea of truth. This idea that photography can really represent something – something, which for me is a broken piece, but I do still appreciate it, I can still see the beauty in it, in this way of thinking.
Speaking of forging your own path, you’re currently working on three films. What are they about?
The first one that I am working on together with a friend, a lovely artist called Adam Caplan. We are working on this documentary about a film that was censored. And we are thinking about it as a film that you need to put things in definitions. We call it experimental documentary. An artistic way of looking at it. For us the most interesting element in this story is the fact that there is a visual piece with all the cargo that goes with a visual piece: the energy put into it, the intention and so on, but had never had the chance to basically fulfill itself – to be seen and this absence is what interests us. Then when thinking about this film we realized that we cannot show this film. It is still censored. So when we’re talking about an absence, let’s show that absence. How do you show absence? Basically the film is mostly a black screen. We’re working a lot with audio media and it’s basically a piece on the junction between film, an audio piece or a pod-cast or a story-telling through audio and an installation because all of this is happening in a cinema hall. The cinema hall is an important element in the whole happening – let’s call it that. So just as an example, this is kind of a film, but it’s not exactly a film. And the thought about what an image is and the lack of an image and so continues in this piece as well.
You know, I cannot separate myself from the photographer in me. Koudelka Shooting Holy Land is very clear that it is about a photographer making a film about a photographer. It’s very clear that photography is the main protagonist, not Koudelka. It’s the photographic practice, the photographic process. That is really my main interest.I also think that is what you see in the film. I’m a photographer and I will probably continue being a photographer when I make films.
I noticed that in Israeli press words like scandalous were used to refer to the project of photographing the wall. What is your opinion?
I was having some arguments with some friends of mine in Israel because indeed it was not taken so well in Israel, especially from the artistic and photographic community. Not for the reason you would think – the people didn’t think the wall is less brutal than what is shown. I think the main criticism towards this project was the fact, and I think it happens in many places around the world, that people feel offended when you have a group of outsiders that come and look at your place, draw conclusions, get out of the place and tell the earth their conclusions. The claim, and I think it is not only in Israel, that it is much more complex than what you can perceive, even if you are given one year to live in Israel or in Palestine. But I think there is a value to the outsider’s look and I think it can reveal to the locals, the ones immersed in this situation, the ones that have preconceived all their ideas and grew up into it – it can give them a wider perspective. It is as simple as that. A lot of Israeli photographers claimed that it didn’t, that it fell into all the clichйs. In some of the projects – I would agree, in others not. Josef’s project, even if in the beginning it seems as if he is falling into the clichй because almost every photographer wanted to photograph the wall, especially if they are documentarians, journalists and because it is iconic, it is symbolic, beautiful or powerful in its visual representation, but somehow he did convince me in the way he was looking at it. I think he did manage to look at it out of the very non-paradigm of this side and that side, wrong or right, who started this whole conflict. Maybe because he looked at it in a certain, in a more naпve way. It is not really naпve, but it is in a way as if looking at land, a landscape, a terrain, looking at people through their actions and not looking at people directly. Looking at them in an indirect way reveals to you something that might be much more powerful than looking directly, eye to eye at them. He did manage to do that and in a kind of honest way because he chose to stay. This project, whether in an indirect, subconscious way, connected to him and his life’s story. That is what makes it a piece of art, what he does – that it is honest. Because he feels it. It comes out of an urge that is connected to an inner feeling. I do agree that there were a lot of problems with this project and there is something very pretentious anyway in trying to do it. But I think there were some pieces there – this will probably be judged by history – that are very piercing and exact observations about that place.
And I’ll say one more thing about it because many people keep saying that the situation is so complex and how could an outsider understand it? We don’t see it as just as Israelis and Palestinians. It goes way back 100, 200, 1000 years ago. It is very complex, but then I think what happens when a person like Koudelka comes, as an outsider who carries his own cargo and I’m saying it in a very positive way, in a very insightful way – he simplifies things. Sometimes these very complex situations need simplification. They need to become naked in order for you to really see them so you need to peel all these layers that history has put upon them. Just by saying in the film something so bengine, stupid and clever (in my eyes) like “What an absurdity!” at the phrase “God gave us this land” read in the newspaper and his comment that followed: “How can someone even say that? God also said other things. God said that you shouldn’t steal.” Some people would say “Wow, what a simple guy!”, but I think there is something there. It is as simple as that, sometimes. It’s just like that and why do you need to put all the layers. And I know why – because you want to hide something. You want to hide a certain truth.
You now live in Berlin as well. How has living in Germany influenced your perspective on the issues you explore and your choice of project subjects?
All the pieces that I have done, including the film about Koudelka, are connected to me. If we talk about everything that I have done about search engines and so on, it was something that was burning in me. The theme about making the transition from analogue to digital and how computers have suddenly become a major part of our life.
Another was about my long-distance relationship through skype and I started making a series about skype around the world and the chat communication, video chat communication – they all come from the situations in my life and the curiosity or the frustrations that they arouse in me.
The same is happening to me while I am in Germany. The more I learn about German society – I have a close group of friends that are German and we have lots of conversations. There is also this phenomenon of Israeli people moving to Berlin and an exceptionally large community of Israelis there which has been discussed a lot in German and Israeli media. Things come out of that and I become very curious about them. So I say to myself, Maybe this is my next project and I start investigating it.
That is how I discovered that I am living in a time of major change in German society. If things have been going in a straight line in history for the last 20 years, I would say. Now there is a certain change that is happening and, of course, changes are almost impossible to detect when they are happening. It is always in retrospective that you are able to understand that something has changed but I think that I am living in such a time and I am very curious about this change, so I start looking into it.
Because your projects are becoming increasingly politically and historically engaged.
Maybe it’s an observation that you can make better than I can.
Do you think film is now a more effective and influential medium than photography in your view?
It depends on what you mean by effective. From my short experience, I think film has the ability to get to many more people. Maybe it’s connected to my status as a young photographer. My work in still photography did not get out as my work at the moment in film. It is very much connected to the fact that I have made a film about Josef Koudelka. You know, if I made a film about somebody else, then maybe it wouldn’t have been as popular. But it is a fact and probably affects me in a certain way because I am able to get myself out there. I get what I do out there in a much more effective way. I am not sure I can answer that question because for me sometimes when I see photography that is wonderful, I think the effect that it has on me is incredible. It’s shaking and it can be much more than film, sometimes exactly the opposite. But definitely I don’t see any contradiction between them. I think they will continue to exist side by side or together or to infuse each other. Because now everybody is asking me: So now you’re doing film? No, no, I’m doing photography as well. And I’m doing film. It’s all there, it’s a mixture and I don’t have any desire to separate the use of mediums.
Yes, because when you see films made by photographers, you see the photography in the film. There is this tendency and it is impossible not to ask.
There’s no other way. You know, when I think about it and this is an embodiment of it – I was doing film with a still’s camera, a DSLR. The mediums are already incorporated into each other even when you talk about the apparatus. It’s there.
All the reviews written about your film talk about the imposing silence. Is it connected to the idea of objectivity?
It’s actually a clear choice we made to leave the sound. The complete silence is when the photographs appear, except for that there is always sound of the location that you are seeing.
When I watch a film I usually like to be respected as a viewer. Meaning that I enjoy the films that allow me to make my mind up and not to dictate what I should think and how I should think and I try to create the same experience here. So I think that much of the manipulation that is made in films – documentaries especially – is being done through soundtrack. In that sense we wanted to keep it as honest as possible. The decision not to put any sound in the photographs was actually quite a frightening one for me. I was debating a lot about it with my editor and co-writer, Eliza. She insisted that the photographs be completely silent. I thought we should maybe add something to it. In the end I was convinced because a photograph is silent. What happens in the film is that the combination between the duration and the silence allows you to just watch. I mean your senses become reduced and you can watch that photograph. You are confronted by it. You have no escape, in a way. Тhat wаs something worthwhile doing for this film. To give you as a viewer the chance to be with the photograph and to make your mind up and take it as it is without giving you helping wheels behind the bicycle.
Gilad Baram, Josef Koudelka on Mt. Bracha overlooking Nablus (2018)