WASTELAND - CHILDREN OF THE EVOLUTION
INTERVIEW by CLAYTON MAXWELL for EYEMAZING MAGAZINE
Michel Valentino, the German-French-Arabian photographer and filmmaker has a story to tell, and it’s not just about his diverse background. His latest photographic project, The Wasteland, is visceral commentary on the state of things in Berlin, and the world, today.
Clayton Maxwell: Tell me about yourself, your work.
MV:From 1990 until 2000 I worked as a special effects artist for movies and as film director for commercials and music videos. I had lots of fun with this work. Then I stepped out of it all for two years to collect new ideas all around the world and finally moved to Berlin in 2003. I tried to restart my career, which wasn’t as easy as I thought it would be. So I became more of a visual artist than a classical filmmaker as I was before.
CM: On your older version of your website you said: “If my pictures help some people to see things in a certain way it’s probably to look at serious things non-seriously. Everything’s serious. Everything’s not serious.” Can you explain how that comes through in your photography?
MV: That quotation stands for all of my works, it’s not really about The Wasteland. It’s about my own pull between serious art photography and non-serious commercial works, which I have to do for a living. I like doing commercial campaigns, but I do not like the messages they tell. And that’s what I try to change with my photography and art. That stuff I make for the industries – advertising campaigns and fashion photos – are not even serious at all. They are illusions of fantasy worlds people would like to live in, but they don’t. Like in my photos for Ray Ban, Metropolitan, Katarina Witt, Gucci and so on. Or in music videos I did in my early days for some artists with no deeper goal than to say: “Look at me and my pimping style of life.” But they take themselves very seriously and tell the people it is a goal in life to be worth more than others, by wearing expensive clothes most people can’t afford or driving big cars and blowing gasoline in the air as if they never heard of environmental pollution. Stupidity revolves ever more around itself in our “civilized” society.
CM: In contrast, your images from The Wasteland seem very serious. Can you tell me more about your message here?
MV: In The Wasteland, people live in oxygen masks because of global mass- destruction, they are wounded and dying slowly. They did not analyse the things around them enough. And in the end they eat themselves, like the system we live in – it corrupts and collapses a bit more every day. The oxygen masks also stand for the breathless situation we all are in and the universal shaping of society by fashion.
CM: What inspired The Wasteland project?
MV: Most of all Berlin itself is the inspiration. This city is so fucked up and dirty and poor and trashy like I never have seen or experienced before. I guess it has to do with the Wall coming down 15 years ago. I tell you, another 15 years and Berlin will be the number one real-Mad-Max-end-of-time city of Europe. I hate this town so much, and on the other side, I love it. I never have experienced a more controversial city before, and I’ve lived in a lot of cities. My parents moved and travelled around the world a lot. Here in Berlin everyday young kids steal and fight each other for some Nike sneakers or Gucci handbags or cell phones – the U.S. has this problem as well! America’s advertising psychology, MTV and the big movie industry teaches the young generations how to become hustlers and tells young girls to act like porn stars. Everything seems to fall apart.
In The Wasteland photo story I also tell about the new German patriots – you can see the flag in the background. For all other countries worldwide, it is a normal fact to present the national colours in public, in pictures and so on, but not in Germany. Yet everything changed with the World Cup this year in Berlin. Suddenly people show flags and sing anthems like in the past (in World War II). Berlin is again the capital of Germany, as it was before the war. The World Cup was tinged with the propaganda of the past. It was amazing and frightening at once – a new kind of patriotism. And since then, many people who denied their German origin before, today shout out loud and proud, proud to be German. These days are very strange days, in Berlin right now. So, the flag in Wasteland is a symbol for the new/old History of Germany and its military past and destruction.
CM: Are you in these photographs, or just behind the camera?
MV: My wife and company-partner Dita Cernohlavkova (and some friends) and I are in front of the camera. It was very important to me to create an authentic situation, that’s the reason why I act in the photo story too – to feel the claustrophobic and uncomfortable element of the oxygen masks and the nakedness.
CM: Why did you become a photographer?
MV: I see myself more as a catalyst of the things around me, as a media artist. I collect (mind) pictures and impressions and try to interpret these. I still do commercials and music videos for international industries, which is fun, but that work does not give me much sense, and so I searched for another medium to express my feelings and thoughts better. I am not a rebel or anarchist, and in my work I become a realist. But I still try to have the eye of a child in my way of looking at pictures – like a child of war, who wishes better days and more colour back to the world.
CM: Oxygen masks pop up elsewhere in your work – how did you get interested in using them in your photographs?
MV: You can find oxygen masks all over Berlin. The Russians sell them on the streets like food for a couple euros. Since 9-11 the selling boomed. So we’ve been in contact with them every day. So I though to use them in a shoot, and I tried one on. In that moment, I was so afraid of the idea of living with them for the rest of my days, so the idea of Wasteland struck.
TEXT BY CLAYTON MAXWELL
© All pictures: Michel Valentino
© 2008 Michel Valentino