Since 2009, Clarissa Bonet has been wandering alone in the city, trying to capture the order and disorder in which many of us are living. Although referring to the tradition of street photography, her City Space project is made up of constructed scenes from her own experience or situations she witnessed. The anonymous city she has been photographing becomes a stage where ordinary urban life resonates as an internal space, sometimes surrealist, overwhelming, or poetic. Her most recent photographic Series, Stray Light, defines the urban landscape as a cosmos, in which each window opens on a distant individual life that we will probably never encounter. Through Clarissa’s eye, the city, a familiar environment, is in fact a great unknown.
Agathe Cancellieri : Did your practice change when you came to Chicago? How did this city influence you?
Clarissa Bonet: When I moved from the suburban area of Florida to Chicago, everything I thought I knew about life—the comfort of home, the routine—seemed to be turned upside down. It was almost like relearning how to operate in a foreign landscape: the way I bought groceries, the way I commuted, the way I did my laundry. Everything was different and it was the smallest differences that I found intriguing, bizarre but also very beautiful if you allow yourself to experience it. It was also a much more isolated life. Not to say suburban areas are not isolating, but it is a little bit more profound here in Chicago because you are seeing so many people with whom you are sharing your space but you will never meet or know them.
A.C.: So you started City Space as a kind of catharsis, to try to understand this new space and adapt yourself to it?
C.B.: When I started the City Space project, my experience with living in the city was so different that I just started making pictures about this experience. I felt really invisible as if nobody knew I existed. It was very overwhelming. So this feeling was the beginning of this project. This picture, Spilt Milk, happened to me. Not so long after moving here, I took the train to get groceries and ended up buying too much and being unable physically to hold it. I got to the train, got off at my stop but the bag broke. It was extremely embarrassing. Afterwards I wanted to make a photograph about this experience and I ended up making two other versions of the image before making this one. The first two were unsuccessful because they were merely descriptions of the event and did not visualize the feeling of the moment. In Spilt Milk, I use light to create a spotlight that references the tenor of the moment- isolating, embarrassing, as if all eyes were on me.
A.C.: Most of your pictures are taken in downtown Chicago although they are very quiet. How do you explain this?
C.B.: One reason is because the project is routed in the perspective of the pedestrian, which is a very isolating and solitary act for me. Wandering alone in the city is part of my practice, and is how I get most of the inspiration for the work. The last time I was out, I was very curious about how long I could go without having to say a word to another person. And I think I went about two hours before having to talk to another individual.
A.C.: At the same time, your photographic space includes a lot of human figures. How are you involving pedestrians? What are their functions in your urban imaginary?
C.B.: The project I did before City Space was a series of self-portraits and I knew starting this project I did not want to be in front of the camera again. So I started photographing others but I see them as standing for myself and my personal experience. Occasionally, I use pedestrians and the crowd as a way to challenge myself or to create games in order to experience the city and then make an image from the experience. For example, I would walk toward the Metra station downtown in the morning when hundreds of people are flowing out of the station all at the same time, going against the flow. Just to feel people coming at me and to see how long I can remember the face of a person in a crowd before it’s replaced by another. The image In the Crowd was inspired by this experience.
Other times the presence of individuals is made apparent through the traces and marks they leave behind in the city: people’s trash, gum on the sidewalk, scratches in the subway, or graffiti. I always have been fascinated by the fact that we are constantly going through an environment shared with unknown people who leave traces of themselves behind.
A.C.: City Space is all made up of constructed scenes. How do you proceed to create these photographs? Are you creating them from observing reality or from your own imagination?
C.B.: Some of the scenes depicted are from direct experiences. Others are made up of different visual experiences that I encounter while walking in the city. I always leave my apartment with my phone, which I use as a camera, and a sketchbook. Anytime I see the gesture of a person, a perspective, a specific way the light hits a building, I take a snapshot; either it is going to be a part of the photograph or about that. Then, and it can take a long time, when a photograph is visually and conceptually complete in my mind, I plan a shoot.
A.C.: So you have a library of snapshots that you can use whenever you are ready to realize a photograph.
C.B.: Yes. Some pictures stay in me for a long time. One reason is that the work needs to be made at a very specific time of the year, of the day, at a certain hour and when the weather is cooperative. I plan everything in advance and I pretty much know each time what I want to do. Some photographs are also a collage of different scenes. The image where you see the man sweeping a sidewalk full of gum is a combination of two snapshots. One day, fascinated by urban traces, I took a picture of a sidewalk marked by gum. The man came from another walk that I was on a year earlier. I was wandering around downtown, I believe it was a Tuesday around 10:30 a.m. and I heard someone sweeping. All was silent, there were no sounds from cars or people, all I could hear was the sound of someone sweeping. It was a janitor sweeping the sidewalk in front of this tall office building. It was a really beautiful moment. It was just he and I. That is why I put him in this isolated area.
A.C.: How do you navigate in the city? Are you following an itinerary?
C.B.: I just try to let the city kind of push me in different directions. Nevertheless, based on my experience, you have to make decisions in terms of your paths and direction. When you take the subway, you have four options (NW-NE-SE-SW) to get out. To create this photograph, Facing the Day,I took almost every stop on the red and blue lines that ran below ground, trying each exit randomly. Each time I was emerging from the darkness, I had to orient myself. Sometimes it was a stop I had never been to, sometimes it was very familiar. It took me a day or so to find a spot where there were no elements to obstruct the view—like a tree or a pole. After I made this picture they closed that particular exit for almost a year for construction and it no longer exists in the state I photographed it . I sometimes go back to the locations I have photographed to revisit them and I often find that I could no longer make the same image there today. The city is a transitional space, constantly changing.
A.C.: Would you define yourself as a street photographer?
C.B.: Although my practice is rooted in street photography, I don’t consider myself as a street photographer. I adopt this tradition for my own purposes. It is not about creating a document of the moment but making an image that references the feeling or mood of that moment. I’m altering constantly what I see in constructing and deconstructing scenes in order to make it surreal and closer to my perception. I don’t see photographs as being precious and pure things. For me photography is more about transforming what is before the lens into something else. For me photography isn’t a singular untouchable moment, and this is the disconnection I have with street photography: I feel the need to orchestrate the moment to fit my own ideas of the urban space.
A.C.: Would you say that Chicago has its own specificities in terms of space and aesthetics compare to other big American cities?
C.B.: In my photographs, Chicago is a landscape not different from others. I am not trying to make my photographs look like Chicago, so I don’t include street signs and I stay away from iconic architecture. That is also why I choose a neutral title for this Series, City Space. My photographs are a reflection of how I feel about the urban space in general.
A.C.: In Chicago, there is a tradition of photographing the city in terms of forms and lines, almost as if the city was an abstract space with isolated figures living in it. I’m thinking obviously of Ray K. Metzker and his Series My Camera & The Loop but also of Harry Callahan, his teacher at the Institute of Design of Chicago. How do you relate to this tradition?
C.B.: When researching for the project I started to look for photographers that were not photographing the city in an indexical way. What I like about Metzker’s work is the way he captures light and shadow and not necessarily in a formalist way. He uses it to create a psychological space within the photographs. Saul Leiter’s work also caught my eye. What I found the most fascinating about Leiter’s work was his choice of camera placement; he often stood behind obstacles when photographing, windows, poles, car doors, awnings etc. He was this curious observer of life in flux around him placing the viewer in space by his choice of camera angle.
A.C.:In The Clouds makes me think of a René Magritte’s painting. Can you explain further your relationship with painting?
C.B.: I kind of see myself as a frustrated painter. I always wanted to paint but couldn’t create images with my own hands. The process of making the work is similar to that of a painter – gathering inspiration from life and making sketches in preparation for the final image. After the research and preparation is done I create these small performances on the street using my camera to document them. Instead of the gesture of a paintbrush I use light and line as an act of mark making by choosing precisely the right time of day and location for each photograph.
A.C.: How did you evolve from the City Space project to Stray Light?
C.B.: Stray light started to take form in 2012. I wanted to work outside of this very directorial way of making pictures, as I was doing with City Space. I wanted to make images in a less complicated, preproduction way. City Space demands a lot of time and energy to find the locations, people, the right time of day, and the right weather all before I got a chance to even photograph. I wanted to work on a project in which I would be freed from that process.
A.C.: In this series it is almost like the city, its buildings, its windows are becoming stars, constellations, part of the universe. Is it your intention?
C.B.: This project started to take form in my last year of grad school. It was inspired by my drive home at night. I would always take the same way home down Lake Shore Drive. On this road there is a bridge you must go over where the river joins Lake Michigan. As soon as you hit the bridge you are level with the city and it opens up before your eyes. It feels as if you are standing on the edge of the city looking in as it begins to engulf you. This drive has become one of my favorite things to do at night. The city at night elicits a very similar feeling as if I was looking up at the night sky. Light emanating from each window references a world unknown, evoking a sense of mystery and awe.
A.C.: By the scale too, Stray Light is different from your City Space Series. Your photographs give the impression of facing large abstract paintings.
C.B.: Contrary to City Space, here people are represented by slivers of light emanating from the windows that dot the landscape. It is not so much about the architecture but about the fact that we are surrounded by thousands of people without seeing them. I wanted the viewer to get this overwhelming feeling by printing the photographs large. There is also the idea of disconnection in this project, one that is inherently urban. Humans always have been drawn to the cosmos but we are losing this connection because of the light pollution; we can no longer see the stars above us. We may not be able to look up but we can look out. The city has become a new kind of cosmos.
A.C.: How do you technically give this feeling of infinity in your photographs? Are they a combination of several photographic shots?
With Stray Light I am working within the genre of collage. The most complex image in the series is made up of 97 individual photographs. Most of the time though, I use between 20 and 40 photographs to create a singular image. When going out into the field to photograph, I am collecting data in the form of stray light – light that emanates in the landscape from the thousands of windows that dot the night sky. After I have collected a significant amount of imagery I then pull from my archive to create the final piece.
A.C.: Is photographing the city helping you to push further your reflection on the medium of photography itself?
C.B.: Both of my projects have shaped the way I think about photography as a medium. With City Space, I work within the genre of street photography; withStray Light, I work within the genre of collage. Both projects push against the genre they are referencing. When I first started making Stray Light, the images existed in a very different form, as straight photographs. But as the project progressed, I started moving away from the straight photograph and started making digital collages. As I was doing this I almost had a crisis : I had always constructed images but this was on a whole new level. I briefly questioned my process – should I be selecting and cutting photographic images digitally? As images started to take form I knew that I was going in the right direction and I abandoned notions of the photographs as singular. I believe photography is this kind of malleable medium that can be adapted, and shaped to fit an artist’s needs; especially as technology grows.
Clarissa Bonet (b. 1986 Tampa Florida) lives and works in Chicago. She received her M.F.A. in photography from Columbia College Chicago in 2012, and her B.S. in Photography from the University of Central Florida. Her work has been exhibited nationally, internationally, and resides in the collections of The Museum of Contemporary Photography’s MPP collection, The South East Museum of Photography, and The Haggerty Museum. She has received recognition and support for her work from the Albert P Weisman Foundation and the Individual Artist Program Grant from the City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs & Special Events. Most recently she was chosen as one of PDN’s 30 2015 new and emerging photographers to watch. She is represented by Catherine Edelman Gallery, Chicago.
