 
Apart from recognition, what else does an
award bring for you?
Like most people I strive for
recognition and respond to praise. I see entering select competitions as
a platform to reach a wider audience and an opportunity to spread
awareness of my work. On a practical level awards are also a means for
me to satisfy certain visa
requirements.  When consciously planning and then working on a
photograph, how much does the unconscious come into
play?
The subtext of the unconscious does play an
important role. My pictures are a point of departure into repressed
and unclear areas of my mind. The act
of starting something is what is important and the finished picture
helps me understand that condition. For me the unconscious is like a
muscle that needs to be exercised for the more you stimulate it the
stronger it gets. 
Do your pictures draw from everyday
reality or do they strive to make a point or to comment about it, or do
they correspond to more abstract ideas?
I’m
interested in presenting feelings or sharing experiences I can’t express
in any other form and at the same time I am drawn to exploring the
relationship between reality and representation. For me there is a sense
of wonder embedded in the idea that the world we see in pictures is not
always the world as it is. Getting close to this enigmatic, spectral,
dream-like quality is the reason I take
pictures. 
In your work, the female figures, in a way, lead an
intense existence - why?
The women in my pictures
are beautiful and presented as slightly vulnerable. There is a tension
because of that. I’ve always been interested in spectatorship and how
women are watched, particularly in fashion and film. The female figures
in my work seem to lead an intense existence because my pictures reveal
the presence of a male gaze and reflect back on how the act of looking
is structured. 
Are there themes that you find yourself constantly
returning to as an artist?
Memory, stillness, exile,
desire, spectatorship, conflict, power and powerlessness, the tension
between private and public, the nature of fleetingness and the mystery
of objects glimpsed in a
dream. 
Many of your pictures take
people's hands or feet as their subjects - is this another way to avoid
look at a person's face?
I am a silent storyteller.
Cropping both arouses and frustrates the spectator’s need to complete
the narrative. Eyes may well be a window into the soul but even without a
face the identity of a person can still be discerned, rightly or
wrongly, via hands, feet or
clothing. 
Your pictures seem
to have benefitted from the contribution of a fashion stylist - is this
so, or is it something that you decide upon yourself? And what is the
importance of clothes in your pictures?Occasionally I
have worked with a fashion stylist and when that has been the case
their contribution has always been valuable. Many times though the
choice of clothing is actually something I intuitively feel and decide
myself. Often it seems my images do fall in a place where fashion meets
film, where the introduction of simple props or clothing becomes a
device on which to hang ideas. As such, and in conjunction with other
narrative strategies, I’m attracted to using simple props or garments as
a means of creating psychological tension and
mystery.  
If we asked you to name that
picture of yours that means more to you personally than any other, which
would it be? And what story does it tell?
My
earliest and latest pictures are most interesting for me. Presently I
would choose the image of a sunken model ship from my transference
series; an ongoing series of analog images that use landscapes made of
ice to illustrate gradually melting memories. The picture in question
tells a story of something lost and found, something beautiful and sad,
something familiar yet unsettling. It is an image that reminds me of
chance and accidents. It is an image that causes me wonder and
self-reflection. It speaks of the struggle between modernity and nature.
It speaks of the past, the present, and the future. It is a story of
life and death. julianhibbard.com |
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