Paco Ulman: "I feel this certain optimism about myself – that I will always be able to evolve."

Tõnis Saadoja (1/2015)

Congratulations on winning! How do you feel about winning this prize? Does it mean anything to you?

Thank you. It's great to receive this kind of recognition. It makes you feel good, like a pat on the shoulder. From time to time I do find myself wondering who I am doing this for.

So the audience is relevant in making art?

Definitely. If you start doing something, you can't be sure what it really is until it's finished. If it is done, you receive feedback, which gradually starts to interpret what you have done, although your own apprehension remains and you remember your initial impulse.

Are you always able to remember the initial impulse during your working process?

If I have an idea, then it has come from somewhere. If I work with it, test it, the idea has to change. In my case, the idea is never the final product. During the working process I usually have hundreds of different ideas, each of which can turn into a work of art. The initial impulse is there to discipline myself – not to move too far away from it.

How often do you skim through the notebooks of your unfinished ideas?

Depends on how old they are. If they are older than three years, then they are too old. I feel this certain optimism about myself – that I will always be able to evolve. That I won't keep doing the same thing over and over again. Even if the form is the same, the focus inevitably shifts.

How do you perceive the shift of your focus compared to when you started taking photographs?

I would say that I've become more critical, which sometimes is a problem. When I made my first exhibition, it was like a medley, a gallery of snapshots in some sense. There were more than a hundred works, and they were selected from ten times the amount of works, which had accumulated over about ten years. They never had any greater connection, or it was rather arbitrary.

When was this show? In 2008?

Yes. Now, if I think about some projects, I think within a very definite framework, be that in form or technically speaking.

If 2008 marked ten years of photographing, then you must have started taking photos in 1998?

I've always taken photos, but it has been for myself, for the drawer, as it were. I had never thought that I should do something with these photographs. My first exhibition took place by chance, I was guided to it.

Let's talk about the very beginning. I think I've never asked you how you came to photography in the first place?

Through my father, he was an amateur photographer. Cameras as such are objects of their own aesthetic value, interesting on their own. That was what started the whole thing. I was probably seven years old when my father gave me my first camera. I used to photograph objects around the house, dogs and such. The interest in photography emerged a long time ago and since then I've always carried a camera in my bag, even now.

You always walk around with the camera?

I think I have three cameras with me at the moment. [Laughs.] Three things that are able to take photographs – a mobile phone, a tablet and a camera. I have the camera with me at all times. It's like an illness, although lately I think I've been using only my phone.

I've quite often felt that thing, here's a photo opportunity, but I don't have the camera with me. My cameras are stacked on a shelf and I take them out only if I remember to, or if I know that I'm going to photograph something. So many photographs have not been taken because I don't have my camera with me.

To comfort you, – even if you have your camera with you, you can't be bothered to take it out. [Laughs.] It's like his even with the camera phone. I don't know if it has something to do with self-criticism or just being too comfortable, but you just don't photograph some things anymore because you know how it will turn out.

Your first exhibition was "City Links", right?

Yes, "City Links".

You walked around with the camera in your bag and when you saw something, you stopped. In the long run you had gathered a few thousand photographs, and then Andreas Trossek came and told you that you should do an exhibition?

Yes, Trossek saw my photographs through a common acquaintance and he wanted to know why I hadn't exhibited them. Perhaps I needed someone to tell me that "hey…!". Because I had taken a lot of photographs, I have an enormous amount of digital files and videos at home. And mostly they become nothing. They just stay there.

Have you thought about a book?

I have. A few years already, actually. It's the first thing in my to-do list.

It seems to me that artbooks are so successful nowadays and make up a separate genre; it would be a good way to show your work. A book is more of a space for looking at art than an exhibition is. Depends on the art, of course, but a photograph suits well in a book.

A photograph suits very well, in a way it is meant to be in a book, to be a copied and used medium.

Can you describe your creative routine? You work as an architect, you go to a bureau in the morning, you come home in the evening. At what time do you deal with your creative questions? Or do you address them silently all the time?

I guess they are always part of my parallel worlds. Right now I can concentrate more on my art practice, because I am the master of my own time, I have my own enterprise. During my daily work I don't think about the art, the time for that is in the evenings, and weekends. It has this tag on it that it's not 24h of my free time.

Would you prefer to be totally freelance?

I don't think so. I like restrictions. You have to be very disciplined to work effectively as a freelancer. I've noticed that things tend to fall apart then. It might look like there is time for all these ideas, but actually there isn't. You need to focus.

What is the purpose of art – to organize the world or rather make it disordered?

If you ask me as an architect, then my obvious answer is that organizing is our most important job. Some concepts can be transmitted between different disciplines, but you can't compare all the common parts. One idea contains multiple very small ideas, thoughts and connections, and what an artist is looking for inside of this is organizing, it's a natural process.

Sorting out the strongest of all of the ideas?

Yes. Not in the sense of sterilizing, or making it clinically clean, but rather looking for a textured space, where the thought is the sweetest or the most interesting; where there's a connection.

I understand the idea of organizing very well – it's nurturing one idea, sticking to it – but art experience has to offer some sort of difference from the everyday background. Architecture needs to be applicable, there are physical parameters that can't be denied, because otherwise the house won't stand up and you can't add features to it. Visual art seems to lack this kind of a practical function, but there has to be something else. Therefore, does the experience from a work of art or its magnitude originate rather from its organizing or its differentiating nature…? Probably there are both origins…

Yes.

But how do you perceive the relationship between the two?

At some point I felt I was cleaning too much, becoming even too formal. That the object I'm photographing is always in the middle of the frame, always under the certain rules of composition and lighting. But these are searches in form, there is something else behind it. When formerly art used to be instructive or exhorting to morality, or a narrative function, then nowadays art is something completely else. If we talk about the organizing nature of art, then this is one person's idea of some issues, however complex they are. In the end you can't point out what is inside of art. There are a lot of issues.

Is formulation important to you in the creative process? If you have many branching ideas, do you formulate the reasons to yourself for choosing only one?

There are several levels. At times I feel like I can clearly write down the reasons for my train of thought, what led to what, to create a certain evolution. But why and if they are important, I cannot say. In the end I can say that, f***, I'm doing this only for myself! [Laughs.] But if I publicly display my work, then I expect feedback.

Would you continue working, if in the future you wouldn't have the chance to show your work? I've asked artists, if they would continue with their creative work if they would be on a stranded island where they could have anything they need, except for an audience. It would be possible to create anything, but the artist would be forever alone with it.

I think that even those who say that they would definitely continue have a small hope that their work would be revealed one day. I think my answer would be the same. I would continue as before. You can't close that channel. Or otherwise you might be like an alcoholic who quits drinking and becomes angry – you close up something in you and then it reveals itself in the form of an illnesses, and who knows what. I don't think that people can switch these kinds of things off.

Do you experience the work of other artists, and how?

I would like to experience more. I constantly discover that I'm missing out on things. Each time you experience something, even if it's a bad experience, you take something with you. Even negative inspiration is good in some way – you look at a bad movie, but you like some detail in it, some nuance, one moment. That one you will take with you.

If a work speaks to you, then is this recognition similar to when you recognize something inside of yourself or do you rather get an experience from something that is different from you?

I rather like different things; things that are alien, because they seem to look further and see with different eyes. I used to take it very personally if things were somehow similar to me. I was even a little offended by them, they made me depressed. Now I have become more tolerant.

Is originality important to you? With both yourself and what you experience?

Not that much anymore. I used to be very self-critical – if my work bore a resemblance to something I had seen before, I quit immediately. Now my attitude is not so black and white, but that doesn't mean that I would be willing to copy other people's ideas or borrow and rework them. I would just like to do things that make me feel that I've come to them by myself. I can't work with someone else's ideas. Although visually and formally it is hard not to resemble someone nowadays.

What annoys you about the art scene if you look around?

Perhaps excessive professionalism. Maybe it's because I have never thought of myself as a professional, not on any of the fields that I'm working on. My things have always been a little amateurish. I get perturbed by the kind of professionalism that treats art as projects. It is something that has started to annoy me in my own work, the fact that I think of my works as projects, they are not one fluid unit anymore. Maybe it's a question of format. You think out a specific exhibition, you write an application to the gallery, then you have a year to make it, you apply for money from foundations to print the photographs, then you write the press release, etc. It's not that fluid anymore, the thing.

In the beginning you just took photographs?

I do miss a bit that I can't photograph without any criticism, that a professional cretinism has emerged. I love amateurishness – it has will in it. No matter how long it takes or how much it costs, you want to do it; there is enthusiasm, an inner flame. I respect people who actually always do certain things, move on their own trajectory. I guess each artist has their own reoccurring subjects and it's interesting to observe how they develop in the long run. I think of how my vector has developed, what I do, how my thoughts move, as well. This can't be defined with the accuracy of a year or six months, this is more complex. That is why I think that an artist always evolves, moves.

What are you working on at the moment? What kinds of ideas are you developing?

Right now I'm looking through some old things for an album – what I could use, what do I have to add. I have a subject on which I would like to publish an album, so that is what I've been working on.

You mentioned that you like amateurishness. Do you feel that technical possibilities rather restrict you or do you create your concepts according to the possibilities?

I've learned to have a positive attitude towards any restrictions. The restrictions are not a problem, but part of the solution. Constraints give you the minimum and the maximum. They leave a trace in the work. They don't let you go too far, they are necessary – the frames, the borders.

You don't drive yourself mad by always needing a better camera, a bigger studio, better lightning and a faster car to get to everywhere?

No. Then you should start thinking about the purpose – why does it have to be bigger, more expensive, better? I don't think that technical quality alone is the saviour. But photography is technical – one part of it is still some sort of a machine that captures light and can turns it into an image. This should be enough, there is no sense in thinking about the maximum. That would be a waste of time.

What is your absolute minimum?

When talking about technical tools then I have tried everything, from all kinds of rubbish cameras to very expensive cameras, but the golden mean exists somewhere in between them. It depends on the project. I used to shoot film, and then it was really important which camera and which film to use. Now I've felt that a camera just has to be sufficiently capable of shooting fast and well, to not to break the process.

Are pencil and paper also considerable arsenal for you or you can't imagine yourself like that?

I would be an unhappy person if I wasn’t be able to draw. I like drawing a lot.

Really, you draw as well? [Laughs.]

I draw a lot. I suppose it's something in between drawing and scribbling, but it's still a spirited activity, an exercise of discipline. One kind of drawing is when you outline ideas or schemes: another thing is when you start with some graphical idea, when you want to draw a line until the end of the sheet or make perfect squares. These are the kinds of experiments I do all the time.

Do you draw down the composition of your photographs?

From time to time I make schemes. With photographs I often make try-outs. I have ideas, but at some point you need to put things on paper. I use drawing more in my professional work, where it is actually very important. This is one of the reasons I like working as an architect – I can draw.

Do you draw with pencil on paper or with computer?

With everything. From pencil to tablet and digital pen. The other thing I always carry around is a notebook.

You write your thoughts down?

No, I draw. Drawing is a liberating activity. It is brainwork. I always try to use the notebook because I will keep the notebook – it's a nice document to look through. If you are working on something, you see the train of thought in it after you have drawn something over a hundred times.

I rather write in a notebook, I never draw by heart.

Drawing has somehow grown into me. It is never a precise activity, but rather always a quick sketch. As a result I have around 50 notebooks at home, all in different colours and sizes.

How did you make your last exhibition ("Mememe" at Hobusepea Gallery 19.II–3.III 2014. – Ed.)? To be honest I was struggling as a viewer, because I couldn't identify your work process.

These were 3D objects created through photographs. At first I took around 70 frames of each object, trying to capture even all the hidden sides. Then with the help of photogrammetry I created a 3D model of the frames, which I then printed with a 3D printer. For me it was important that, for example, the wrinkles in fabrics, which are impossible to imitate, would transfer to the printed model.

 

Paco Ulman
From the series "mememe"
2014
pigment photo
Courtesy of the artist

 

 

What initiated the idea?

Experimenting, I had had this idea for a few years already. I started doing simple digital models. You get a new tool, you try it out. For example, I asked a friend to lie down on the grass, I walked a few circles around him, took photographs and created a model of the friend melting into the ground. Or I took photographs of my bed and clothes, which resulted in rather uncanny 3D models.

Does a new tool or a technical situation contribute to creating new work? If you are, figuratively speaking, fiddling with some new machinery, then you just look and see where it takes your thoughts?

The most interesting things occur when open-minded people get their hands on some machine and manage to use it to create something strange. In the history of photography there have been many moments, when a technical innovation has drastically changed the development of some field; for example, the case of Leica and street photography. Suddenly cameras could be taken along without a tripod and it was possible to quickly react to what was happening on the streets. Technical development is very connected to photography and in that sense my last exhibition is also an experiment – objects from reality get round to reality, although in the form of small models.

It seems to me that the surreal undertone is quite present in your work. You use rather naturalistic visual language, your photographs have a rather natural effect, yet there are also some nuances that are very uncommon. Even in your old cityscapes there is something uncanny, some extraordinary situations. As if you had hovered around real objects until they grew an unreal aura, and your images don't hover perfectly around the object that is being depicted, but instead create a somewhat irregular trajectory.

The good thing with a photograph is that people believe it. If you take a look at a photograph then already at first glance you believe it – no matter what is on it. Your brain tells you that it's a photograph, then it tells you that this all really happened, and then, when the critical sense finally emerges, you start to analyse. A photograph has the necessary force to deal with such subtleties. In this digital age when photographic manipulation is programmed into every camera, people are visually sensitive and actually understand when something is off. A photograph in itself is an illusion, a simulacrum of reality. If you have been in a room that someone has photographed, then you know that the photograph distorts. So there is the border of believing and not believing, but behind it there are many other layers, the whole world of meanings and connections which emerges by itself. If the photograph is good then they are in it. The connections are in it. The things that are interesting are always the ones that remind us of something else, which seem like something else. Things that want to be what they are, are boring.

Recently I heard about molecularly engineered food – that there is a boiled egg in the shape of bread, or roe that looks like green onions, and I found myself wondering why is this necessary. But then I understood that I paint after photographs, which is the same trick with different tools! [Laughs.] I suspect that some things are so ingrown, that inside of one's own field you are very sensitive to it, and then in other fields, which you are not in direct contact with, for example cookery, the same idea seems completely pointless. This is scary, because opinions should expand to the whole world…

Yes. To my own surprise, I have noticed that people that I think well of, smart and intelligent people, especially in their own field, don't know practically anything about other fields, or are prejudiced and boorish. Maybe it's the result of lack of interest.

But I think that the context does matter. Whether something is or isn't pointless, is related to the emergence of a higher symbol or metaphor – in one case, playing (with food) might be just playing, in another case it acquires a generalising dimension. Can you say, in general, which dimension you are working with? What is most important for you?

I've thought a lot about what I do and why I do it. Perhaps I just want to be in these worlds that I create? I don't know the answer, and I think this question is present in all of my works.

 

Tõnis Saadoja is a painter dedicated to photorealism, he lives and works in Tallinn.

CV
Paco Ulman (born 1980) is a photographic artist and an architect, and lives and works in Tallinn. His first exhibition "City Links" took place in Tallinn at Rävala pst 8 (former House of the Architects), in 2008. His most important solo exhibitions include "In Tallinn" at Hobusepea Gallery in 2009, "Tallinn-Helsinki-Stockholm" at Tallinn City Gallery in 2011, and "mememe" at Hobusepea Gallery in 2014. In 2012 he took part in the III Artishok biennale at Contemporary Art Museum of Estonia (EKKM).

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