The Beautiful Abandoned: An interview with Andrew Emond

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. 

Andrew Emond’s Instagram page

Five Questions for... Malte Brandenburg

Photo: Malte Brandenburg

By Sara Bellini

Malte Brandenburg is a photographer based in Copenhagen. In his creative practice he looks for simplicity and symmetry and in the past he has often found them in Berlin buildings. Housing spaces are explored both in their aesthetics as well as their urbanistic context and social value. After the pandemic changed his travelling plans, Malte is now finalising some projects while exploring the familiar streets of Copenhagen with his camera. 

What does home mean to you?

That is a tricky question for me as I left my home town Berlin almost thirteen years ago and moved to Copenhagen. I still feel attached to Berlin, but at the same time the city becomes more and more foreign to me. And vice versa Copenhagen was for a number of years just a city I lived in, without the feeling that this is my home. It was somewhat in between, which was strange. However, after a while I found the right corner here for me and finally clicked with Copenhagen. Strangely though, I also feel more independent from where I am, as long as I'm with my family, it's difficult to describe. I guess they are my own little biotope :-).

Which place do you have a special connection to?

I have a very special connection to a place in Berlin called Gropiusstadt, a settlement of various tower blocks designed by Walter Gropius in the south of Berlin. I grew up nearby and had a couple of friends there and also had to pass through to get to the local swimming pool, which is why I spent quite a bit of time between these tower blocks. It always felt like a very surreal place to me, because of the sheer amount of concrete reaching into the sky.

Photo: Malte Brandenburg

I could not fathom that almost 50 000 people lived there. Also from a sociological point of view it's a quite interesting place and how it has changed within a relatively short period of time. This place was one of the first topics I was drawn to when I started to focus my photography more and more on urban architecture. I still return to Gropiusstadt on a regular basis.

What is beyond your front door?

Beyond my front door there are friends, a nice park and the beach, which I appreciate a lot. About 40 meters away there is also one of the best bakeries in town with shelves of sourdough bread!

What place would you most like to visit?

I would like to travel through Eastern Europe, all the way to Russia. I am fascinated by the culture and especially the food.

What are you reading / watching / listening to right now?

I am currently reading Agent to the Stars, a novel by John Scalzi about an alien race on earth that hires a PR agent in order to manage the revelation of their presence to humanity - it's hilarious! I also just finished The Last Dance, the Michael Jordan documentary. One of the best documentaries I have seen. I might be biased though, as he was a bit of a childhood idol. In terms of music, I listen a lot to Moi Caprice these days, a Danish band I discovered by accident, because the lead singer's daughter goes into the same class as my son.  

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Find out more about Malte Brandenburg on his website and Instagram.

Memories of Elsewhere: River Ogmore, by Tim Cooke

Photo: Dan Wood

In these times when many of us are staying very close to home, we have invited Elsewhere contributors to reflect on those places that we cannot reach and yet which occupy our minds…

By Tim Cooke:

If I try to think of my hometown objectively, images spring to mind one after another like a series of postcards. I see the old stone bridge, from which the town takes its name; I see the derelict bingo hall, a husk that was once a cinema, now a car park; I see the estate, much maligned but not so long ago an architectural vision of hope; I see the playing fields, the site of my worst childhood nightmares; and the dunes, where Lawrence of Arabia was filmed. I see the castle, the woods, the supermarket, the dual-carriageway, the standing stones, and the recreation centre. 

Of course, I cannot think of these places without making connections, fitting them together and applying my own stories and others I’ve encountered; experience flows through each scene, as does the River Ogmore. 

The water rises at Craig Ogwr, in the Ogmore Valley, and runs down through Blackmill, Brynmenyn, Aberkenfig, Wildmill, Bridgend Town, Merthyr Mawr, Ogmore by Sea, and out into the Bristol Channel – I love the sounds these places make. There are parts I know intimately – from childhood and my teenage years – and those I’ve visited once or twice, like on school trips. There are huge sections I’ve not been anywhere near, which I find somehow exhilarating. The more I think about the river, the more I contemplate journeys I might make in the future, or should have made in the past, when I was there. 

My first experience of the river – in terms of place, not time (it runs from north to south and I track it geographically) – takes me all the way back to its starting point, up in the valley. At primary school, we spent a whole term on local waterways. We studied maps and diagrams, drew pictures and trekked out into the field. I recall a coach journey to the source, near Nant-y-moel, eating sweets and crisps and feeling sick. We stopped at a bend in the road, flanked by scarp and crag. Water poured from the mountaintop and slid away to our left, worksheets killing the mood. I did something wrong and was made to stand metres apart, listening alone to the babble and the noise of rolling pebbles.

*

I’m looking at a gallery online and the first image in the sequence is of that exact same spot. The grass is greener than I remember it, and the water is whiter. My first impression is that the photograph speaks more clearly of Wales than my recollections do. Maybe it’s in the detail, like the damp weather, or the colour of the soil – I’m not so sure. I move on. Next is a woman dressed in a dark-green coat, speckled with rain. Her expression is one of awe and wonder, or perhaps she’s been caught mid-sentence by the camera. Regardless, she’s part of the story now. 

I continue through pictures of two men on a bridge, a Welsh-flag towel pinned to a washing line, rows of almost identical flats, a war grave, a post-it note scribbled with ‘Donald Trump’, a swastika carved into a tree, and a schoolboy leaning on a wall with his arm in a pink cast, names signed in black pen. There’s a car, too, parked between lockups, a convertible BMW I think, that appears to have been pulled from the flow, the white paint covered in what looks like algae – a modern sort of river monster. It makes me think of the team of volunteers who dragged two-hundred tyres, five trollies, umpteen traffic cones and wheelbarrows, a large gas canister and a road barrier from the river one Saturday, plus fifty bags of smaller items – detritus dumped in the drift.

I keep going and, minutes later, stop to linger in a car park overlooking the bus station on the opposite side. The sun is about to disappear behind the hills in the distance. I walked not far from here, once, with the photographer, making a film about creativity in Bridgend; it was my response to the international press coverage of the spate of suicides that dubbed it ‘The Suicide Town’. As a child, I spent successive afternoons smoking cigarettes underneath a bridge just down from here, then hopped along a series of concrete platforms jutting out from the artificial banks. I have countless similar memories – I don’t know why I’ve chosen this one. 

*

Back in 1999, this stretch of river was central to a high-profile police investigation, into the murder of a young woman, who enjoyed writing songs and poetry. It was said there was no forensic evidence available, as the fast-flowing water had washed it away, but a hammer was discovered in a clump of trees a hundred yards from the cash and carry. Mud found in the boot of a car was thought to match that of the riverbank. 

*

I follow the river’s course through town, below the subway where, at fifteen, I spent a freezing cold night in a sleeping bag, and along the dirt track I’d take home after too many pints in the pub. I pass the recreation centre, where I played five-aside football and hung out with my first proper girlfriend. I can still smell the chlorine leaking from the vents that warmed our backs on winter evenings. There are no photos of these locations; in their place are images of redbrick housing, a man I vaguely know and a pile of chopped wood below broken glass – all effective in their way. I stop to linger on the sand at the bend in the river, referred to locally as just that, where I caught countless eels and my brother a sewin that tasted like shit. I lost a salmon once, I swear; that flash of iridescent silver.  

Across the rugby pitch, beyond the standing stones, I can see the steps. I was sixteen or so when three hooded figures asked for a fight. One of them was screaming at the top of his voice, as he paced back and forth. We ran and they chased us along the path by the playground, shrieking: Let’s drown them in the river. I was terrified, but they gave up pretty soon. That was the year I started bunking off school, spending hours in the strip of woodland that slopes down to the water’s edge. To get there you had to cross the huge metal pipe like a bridge, a post-apocalyptic leviathan, coated in graffiti and rust. I read a while back that a medieval pilgrimage route cut through this landscape. 

When I was twelve, my older brother and some friends made a raft out of tyres, which they strapped together with rolls of duct tape. I was the only one light enough not to sink and so sailed alone. I was basking in the glory of it, enjoying the scenery, until one of the boys began to hurl rocks from a thin bay of shingle. He had a crazed look in his eye. Dodging the missiles, I pleaded with him to stop. It was only when one struck my knee that I was given the time to disembark and sprint home.

*

One of the last pictures in the sequence is of a repeated curve not far from the estuary. The clouds are low above the ridge, and the river is a murky grey. There are thousands of shades of green and plenty of textures to explore. I see myself in a blue raincoat skimming stones, or trudging along the sand with friends after a beach party in the middle of the night. I’m jogging at the foot of the dunes. I twist my ankle and have to walk miles back to the car.

I’ve written about this place before, in a work of weird fiction based on real events. A child is fishing with his father. He’s being taught to hook ragworm, but is disturbed by their form, the writhe and slither. Shivering, he picks the least obscene specimen he can find from the parcel of paper, wrapped like a bag of chips, and holds it out in front of him, watching it curl around his thumb, turning itself inside out. Following his father’s instructions, he pinches it taut and presses the steel tip down until the skin punctures, or pops. At this point, the creature screams. The boy looks up to see a woman thrashing in the mist on the banking opposite. She’s a version of Jenny Greenteeth, or Wicked Jenny, a river hag from folktales who drags children to their deaths.

There’s a girl crouching on the shore, replaced in the following image by a large splash. There’s a coach parked by a bench on the cliff, and a person stares out to sea.

***

Tim Cooke is a teacher, freelance writer and creative writing PhD student. His work has been published by the Guardian, Little White Lies, The Quietus, 3:AM Magazine, New Welsh Review and Ernest Journal. His creative work has appeared in various literary journals and magazines, including The Shadow Booth, Black Static, New Welsh Review, Foxhole Magazine, Prole, Porridge Magazine, The Nightwatchman, The Lampeter Review, Storgy, Litro Magazine and MIR Online. He recently had a piece of creative nonfiction published in a Dunlin Press anthology on the theme of ports and is currently working on a collection of short stories. You can follow him on Twitter @cooketim2

Dan Wood is a documentary and portrait photographer based in Bridgend. His work has been exhibited nationally and internationally and he has featured in a wide range of publications. His books Suicide Machine and Gap in the Hedge are available with Another Place Press. He is currently working on a new book about the River Ogmore and was kind enough to share his current edit for this piece.

Am I Alone In Dreaming Of Rubble

By David Lewis:

I am walking through a blunt triangle of empty terraced streets, dominated by a long low red brick church, closed and boarded up; a hole in the boards allows local children to once again play in the church porch.  It is starting to get dark.

Twenty years ago, in a period of deep, isolated research, I began to have dreams about Liverpool.  I was studying the city’s churches, curious about how they define the city; how their spires contribute to the roofline, how their architecture dominates a street, how the city is changed on the date of their demolition.  I worked alone, spending weeks in the city’s Records Office poring over memoirs and old street plans.   Days were spent immersed in the stark and beautiful photographs of Liverpool in its Victorian prime, and in the dark and destructive 1960s when many of the city’s older churches were demolished.  I took many long journeys to find the sooty, bruised survivors, only to discover that this destruction was ongoing.  In some cases I arrived only days after the final clearance, to a raw slash in the urban landscape, a sense of wounded stone and dust settling.  I began to see all buildings as temporary, as part of a rolling history of the fabric of the city.  Lines began to blur. 

And I started to dream.  Carl Jung famously dreamed of the city; mine were more prosaic. They have always been short and in black and white, and fall into two categories.  In the first, I can see small details of the city - street corners, ruined walls, unnamed streets reduced to fields of rubble.  Some districts appear time and again; Edge Hill, Toxteth, Netherfield Road, places that have been in a radical process of decay and regeneration since the 1960s. I started to record the dreams as accurately as I could, in a staccato, notebook style.  Sometimes they help me remember more detail; in other cases they are all that is left of the dream. 

Unknown derelict dockland streets, ironwork, weeds, tall closed warehouses.  A steep cobbled street called St George’s Place, behind a railway station. Early morning. 

The dreams were fuelled by the photographs, but I came to realise that they were also reviving memories.  The Liverpool of my childhood was a city partly in ruins, and blitz-memories were still strong.  Older people talked of evacuation to north Wales, of nights in air-raid shelters, of bombers over the city.  The destruction continued after the war, when in a spurt of self-loathing the city demolished with a frenzy, and on car journeys to visit relatives in the northern reaches of the city I saw miles of cleared terraced streets.  In those days all gaps in the landscape were known as ‘bommies’, a word which meant bomb sites but also bonfires; urban folk memory overlapped urban function.  I had a recurring dream of a large square black building in the middle of a demolished city, a composite view of the boarded-up churches and barely-open pubs I saw on the disappearing streets of north Liverpool. 

In the other dreams, I see residential areas associated with my grandfather’s family.  Vincent Lewis was born in 1904, and grew up surrounded by family in the working-class streets of Liverpool 8.   As a child I knew many of the streets with family connections, and as an adult it was these places that began to appear in different dreams; sometimes in ruins, sometimes full of people, sometimes just streets of alleyways and tall brick walls. 

Cockburn Street in the early morning.  There are no cars and the street is deserted but I can see down another cleared street to the Mersey below me, gleaming silver.  Tall walls behind me. 

I came to realise that all these dreams, these blurrings of old photograph and old memory, are a creative response to the demolition of my grandfather’s city.  The books I have written on Liverpool are an attempt to understand and articulate the Victorian city that is gradually disappearing.  Yet the pace of urban evolution is so quick that one day all our familiar places will have gone or been radically changed and everyday memories, however commonplace, will have become history.  I still walk the vulnerable city as often as I can, exploring and recording amputated streets, stretches of cobble and redundant warehouses.  Often after these long walks I dream once more of the city in ruins, feeling now that our rubble dreams tell us more than we know.      

David Lewis has written five books of history/landscape/psychogeography about his native Liverpool and Merseyside.  He posts urban/rural images on Instagram - davidlewis4168 and mutters about the world on Twitter - @dlewiswriter