The Beautiful Abandoned: An interview with Andrew Emond
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Photo: Andrew Emond
A few weeks ago we presented the work of photographer Andrew Emond in an essay by William Carroll. We follow up with a conversation between William and Andrew as a companion to the earlier piece.
William Carroll: I was first shown your instagram page by a friend, and was of course immediately struck by your style and subject matter. How important has this kind of word-of-mouth publicity been to the growth of your page and profile?
Andrew Emond: I’d say it’s been pretty essential. I haven't really gone out of my way to promote the work in any significant way so the growth of my account has happened fairly organically. I'm a bit stubborn when it comes to just letting things evolve that way-- and hopefully having people respond favourably to the work. I’m sure there are faster ways to grow an instagram account, but taking the slow and steady approach is more my style and seems to be working fairly well so far.
WC: I remember when I first contacted you I asked about the tagline in your bio which reads 'Messages from the Interior'. Having studied the American photographer Walker Evans, I asked you if this was a direct homage to Evans to which you assented. How important has Evans been, and indeed other American photographers, to the development of your style?
AE: I didn’t study photography in school so I wasn’t really aware of Evans’ work beyond his most iconic images. I started taking photographs of abandoned spaces in 2004 and for about four years I was just doing my own thing, working in a creative vacuum and staying pretty naive when it came to the history of photography in general. Coming across Evans, and in particular his treatment of vernacular interiors was enlightening and encouraging. It’s been this way with other photographers whose work I’ve discovered along the way, ilike John Divola or Lynne Cohen.
When I find similarities in other bodies of work, I don’t get discouraged because it’s been done before, but try to use it as something I can springboard off of or respond to. What I love about Evans’ book Message From the Interior is its sense of mystery. The whole thing, even its title (what’s the message?) is a riddle. It’s also a bit of a fuck-you to the the perception that he was a social documentary photographer or even a documentary photographer to begin with.
WC: You're based in Toronto and so the majority of your photography is informed by the city. Do you look for the same kinds of abandoned/disused spaces when you're travelling? Do you have any intentions of long-term projects outside of Toronto?
AE: I tend to treat travelling as a way to take a break from what I’m usually photographing in Toronto or sometimes photography in general. I’ll shoot in a different style and generally be less concerned about projects or themes. I haven’t considered working on anything outside of Toronto in a very long time. I can’t imagine it happening unless I had the opportunity to spend an extended period of time in one particular location. It’s pretty hard-wired in me to look for neglected places at this point, so if I do visit them outside of Toronto, it’s more for the experience than anything.
I also feel like slipping in interiors from other places is a bit like cheating. My photographs aren’t intended to be a record of Toronto. I’m not really interested in making any particular statement about this city or even the nature of the spaces themselves. These photos are often more about me than anything else. I want the places to be anonymous, but at the same time I want them to be located here. There’s a logistical reason in that I usually don’t have more than a few hours a week to shoot, but I also get a sense of satisfaction and accomplishment by producing this body of work using what I have around me.
Photo: Andrew Emond
WC: What other media informs your work? I'd be really interested to hear what films, literature, and even music inspire you? I often find that creatives have myriad interests, and your work conjures up quite a few in my case. I find it hard not to hear Godspeed You! Black Emperor when studying your work...
AE: Painting, sculpture, and installation art are often my biggest influences. Sometimes I’ll walk into a space and the arrangement of objects reminds me of particular works in modern or contemporary art. There’s also sometimes a fair amount of staging and intervention that takes place in my photos so I often find myself taking cues from those mediums.
Then there are other things, like the novel Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino, Stalker by Tarkovsky, certain songs like It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue by Dylan, R.E.M.’s Chronic Town EP, that wonderfully strange room at the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey. I’m drawn to things that have subtle elements of surrealism. Godspeed is a little too moody for me, but the way they sway between tranquility and chaos is certainly something I try to bring into my own work.
WC: Lastly, I guess I just want to focus a bit on the state of things in 2020. Your work has taken on an eerie prescience given the current climate, which I reference in the companion article. Do you feel an unsettling clairvoyance in your work? Did you envisage these spaces becoming semi-normalised, all those years ago, when you started photographing them?
AE: I’m not sure anyone could have predicted vacancy becoming semi-normalized even a few months ago. Toronto is like a lot of other cities around the world right now, with shuttered businesses and empty workplaces as employees are now working from home. I’m sure there are many scenes inside buildings right now that resemble ones found in my photos, but I’m resistant to creating a commentary on this current situation.
Years ago, I was keen on making a statement about deindustrialization and the loss of jobs happening during that particular era, but these days my hope is that this body of work is a bit more timeless and open-ended. I’m still very much conscientious of the fact that some of the places I visit are the way they are due to economic or personal misfortune-- some of it may even be COVID-19 related, but those sorts of backstories add a layer of real-world context that I try to avoid.
