Dutch photographer Dana Lixenberg has documented a Los Angeles Afro-American community from 1993 to the present day. In 1993, she travelled to South Central Los Angeles for a Dutch magazine story on the riots that erupted following the verdict in the Rodney King trial. Over the following 22 years, she has returned countless times to the Imperial Courts housing project in Watts with her 4×5 camera, gradually creating a collaborative portrait of the changing face of this community. Over the years, people have been killed, or disappeared while others, once children in early photographs, grew up and had children of their own. Imperial Courts constitutes a complex and moving document of the passage of time in a forgotten community while exploring the degrees of change that can be recorded by the camera. Using a large format camera, Lixenberg pursues long-term personal projects with a primary focus on individuals and communities on the margins of society. This includes her series Jeffersonville, Indiana, a collection of landscapes and portraits of the small town’s homeless population, and The Last Days of Shishmaref, which documents an Inupiat community on an eroding island off the coast of Alaska.
Imperial courts is exhibited for the first time in France at the The Centre Photographique of Rouen until January 28th, 2018, with a book published by Roma Publications, and exhibited at the Aperture Foundation in New York until January 11th, 2018. The Eye of Photography spoke with Dana Lixenberg.
Imperial Courts was one of the first series you photographed in America. Was it your intention to come back from the beginning?
No absolutely not. I was sent by the Dutch magazine Vrij Nederland in a very particular context just after the Rodney King riot in Watts, during the retrial of the four officers. There was a lot of media attention on South Central LA, specifically the Imperial Courts and Nixon Gardens but my approach ran counter to that used by the media to depict the afro-american community. I had a show in Holland and a large portfolio in Vibe, an American music magazine founded by Quincy Jones that was a prescriber in terms of visual culture at that time. When I came back in L.A 6 years later with a Dutch television which was making a film on me, a few people had died, including the man who brought me into the Imperial Courts and the photographs had become an important document for the people there. In 1993 I was interested in making individual portraits. I barely knew anyone. When I started coming back their response became more intense, and they asked me, “Are you going to do more pictures?” It really drove home the fact that the connections between all the people living there were important to tell the whole story and It awakened in me an impulse to spend more time there.
In almost all your projects from Jeffersonville to the Last Days of Shishmaref, the commitment to the community and the subjects your photographs seems to be at the center of your preoccupations and somehow determines the shape of your work. Was it obvious from the start?
Imperial Courts is the only project that kept me such a long time. I’ve never developed such a deep intimacy with a community and I’ll probably never will. Over the years, I have seen people aging and they have seen me grow old too. When I think about other subjects I’ve been able to achieve I’ve always felt a sense of failure. In Jeffersonville I met people at the time they were homeless through the local family shelter. Most of them were in a transitional period and did not stay too long at the same place. It was difficult to maintain strong ties. In 24 years people have had time to reflect on their lives. Few photographers are willing to stay with a project that long. Nicolas Nixon’s work on his wife and sisters is one of the rare example of this kind of follow up even if the project’s dynamic is quite different. When I first met, Tony Bogart, the leader of the PJ Watts group through whom I had access to the community, he asked me “What are we going to get out of this?” And to be honest I am still not sure of the answer. The project has been presented two years ago at Huis Marseille in Amsterdam, the book has been released the same year. but life’s there is not improving. There’s still no access to good education and all I have done will not change anything. But to make visible what would otherwise be invisible, is this not the very essence of photography? And it does not matter if the subject has been treated so many times before, it’s really about the choices you made and how you show it.
Looking at all these portraits, on can feel a certain pride and at the same time an underlying vulnerability as if you just allowed people to be what they are. How do you choose your subjects? How do you connect with them?
It’s hard to describe. There’s clearly a process but it’s not a trick. Rather, it is a question of accepting to see the person as she is, of letting down any judgment or preconceived idea. I do not really think about the relationship I set up with my subjects, I step into the situation. I’m just trying to treat them with care and affection. It could be challenging sometimes but I always try to capture the sincerity of the subject without projecting my own considerations. When I photograph people I don’t take lightly that they open up to me. It’s a magical exchange and it’s worth the time each of us has invested. I force nothing even if I happen to give some indications to my subjects. Working with a large format camera requires a lot of concentration and can take time. There’s an awareness of the camera and because of the formality of the process people realize that something different is going on. If I perceive tensions then I start again and I wait for the moment when the subject relax.
You don’t want to confront the viewer with spectacular, dramatic photos. There’s no voyeurism of human suffering but rather empathy and compassion. Is it the best way you found to address important issues like racism and poverty through pure image?
My work is somehow about the inevitable consequences of capitalism but I don’t consider myself as an activist. The more important the issues seems to me, the more it motivates me to work deeper and longer. I was sent to Jeffersonville on assignment otherwise I would probably never have heard about this place. People living in Haven House shelter were not identifiable as homeless and I found this interesting because all the image we see of the homeless are always dramatic. I wanted to bring the issue in a more nuanced way and make it accessible to a wider audience. I’m interested in social injustice while I have no expectation that I can influence anything or that I can ever make an impact with my photographs. I do feel that it’s important to give people you photograph a presence in a different reality. I don’t do a lot a research before I start working. I just show up and I spend time with people. At some point I’ve noticed that the lack of preparation I saw as a weakness became my strength.
How has the project developed over the years, as it became less political and more personal?
I would not say that my work became less political through the years. I know much more now on America that I did in 1993. When I went for the first time the whole city feared that other riots could arise. I had created a document at a particular time of its history. And I considered the work finished but over the time the series has become a documentation of personal histories and familial connection It took me fifteen years to arrive at the point where I felt compelled to return with my camera at imperial courts. In 2008 there was a public interest for South Central and I knew that another fifteen years later portraits series would not be sufficient. Even if the portraits I was doing were powerful they didn’t have the same specialness as the previous ones and I understood that if wanted my new images to carry a certain weight I had to open up the project to new people, new generations. As I started recording people telling their own stories in 2009 I became in a way more aware of the importance of photography as a tool to capture history. I also realized how it will be hard to match the clarity and the visual depth of the photographs from 1993 and I didn’t want to compete with myself. I’ve started to focus on landscapes and group portraits and in 2012 I made my first videos with a small digital camera less invasive to show daily life scenes within the projects.
Your work has been compared to David Goldblatt’s. Talking about the people he photographed during the apartheid he said ´ I wanted to hear their stories not as a journalist or a reformer but simply as the curious recipient of whatever they wanted to tell me of their life ª. Do you recognize yourself in that statement?
I recognize myself to a certain degree. When you live in such an unacceptable situation you have to take a stand. The choice of the subject is already in itself a political act but on the other hand personal factors play an equally important role. I’m very engaged as a citizen and I can be really upset when I see what’s going on in the American society but I don’t like using people to make a statement about something. During the past two years working on my project I’ve learned a lot on how the justice system is structured and how devastating it is for Afro-American communities. Insecurity and injustice put a huge strain on society but I don’t directly address this issue. My work is less frontally politicized than that of David Goldblatt.
There is in your approach a constant will to record the stigmata of the passage of time. That requires a slowness without which nothing of this could be possible. This may seem a little bit anachronistic at the time of the social networks. To what extent the choice of using a large format camera shape the form of your project?
Portraits are really about slowing down, cutting all the noise and taking the time to look at the world around. I’m really inspired by details and I like being on the edge of reality. Some of my images may seem boring because there is nothing going on, but I am more inspired by non-dramatic settings. The large format camera allows you to be more attentive to the composition and the richness of the negative offers a deeper reading of the image. I’m convinced that by working this way I can make things visible that no one else would pay attention to. The. Smartphone represents a fantastic revolution. People can document their own lives. There are organizations like Witness who provide citizens with small digital cameras across the US in order to protect and defend human right but I’m still in a way committed to the power of the individual image.
When came up the idea of the web doc? Did you feel you had exhausted all the possibilities offered by the still image?
The webdocumentary is the most problematic element of the whole project. The prints, the book, the video installation are more controlled. The idea behind the interactive site was to allow the members of the community to upload pictures by themselves, to complete the family trees, to share stories and memories of the loved ones who died but it’s not happening. I’d love to use part of the money of the Deutsche Borse to organize workshops and to work more on the contents with the community. It’s still a work in progress.
The Book, the video installation, the prints are very complementary. How is the project articulated between those different mediums?
Each medium has his inherent set of possibilities and I try to take the best out of each one. Certain aspects of life I’ve experienced couldn’t be expressed in photographs. I started to record conversations because there was a genuine form of poetry in how people use language which I found interesting to show. Video has the capacity to document life in real time. It helped me capture the subtle hidden dynamics of daily life. Each medium has contributed to reflect the complexity of the subject by offering the viewer several levels of understanding.
How will the project continue to grow now?
During the course of the project lots of people passed away or had raised childrens. Both my parents died. I’ve discovered my language as a photographer with this work and I built my photographic practice partly on the back of the first pictures I made there in 1993. I have grown extremely attached to the community. It has become a place of reference and the lives and changes that I have witnessed there have helped me to reflect on my own life, on my relationship with my work and on the value, that photographs might have. When people ask about my motivation I still struggle to come up with a well-defined justification. I can only see theses photographs as a testament to my relationship to the community. In 2014 it occurred to me that I was reaching a point where I had gathered enough material to finish the work. I had the feeling that we had all reached the end of an era. However, I can’t entertain the idea that this book marks the end of my relationship with the community. I hope these images will continue to be of some value to the people living there. What do photographs give to people outside, the opportunity to remember their past and those they might otherwise forget?
Documentary photography has generally been regarded as a vehicle for factual information but the possibilities for richer, more nuanced forms of storytelling are ever present. How do you envision your practice?
I think documentary photography is a very broad concept. One can claim he’s an artist and document what is happening in our society. I identify myself as a documentary photographer but I do not distinguish between my editorial work and my personal work. I really got to know the country through my assignments. It has been an important part of my practice for so many years. It allowed me to position myself, to make my mark on a public discourse, to present things the way I saw them. And at the same produce a more complete body of work. I find it very interesting that I have had the chance to have a foot in all these different worlds. Entertainment culture, sports, all different parts of society, and ultimately of the fragility of life.
Interview by Cathy Remy
Cathy Rémy has been a journalist with Le Monde since 2008 where she is dedicated to discovering the work of young photographers and emerging visual artists. Since 2011, she has been a contributor to M Le Monde, Camera and Aperture.
Dana Lixenberg, Imperial Courts 1993-2015
From October 14th to 2017 to January 28th 2018
Centre photographique, Rouen Normandie
15 rue de la Chaîne
76100 Rouen
France
http://www.poleimagehn.com/photographie
Imperial Courts 1993-2015 by Dana Lixenberg
Book published by ROMA Publications
60€
http://www.orderromapublications.org/
Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize 2017
November 16, 2017 – January 11, 2018
Aperture Foundation
4th Floor, 547 West 27th Street
New York, NY 10001
USA
