If historically, photographs have served as our most reliable visual time warp, objects of personal significance have been similarly efficient at condensing affect. Think of denim —when Andy Warhol said that he’d “die with his blue jeans on”, it could well be that he wished to depart the realm of the living metaphorically adorned in years (possibly decades) of crystallised memories.
Film photography carries an increased gravitas over digital photography. Whether it’s the finite number of shots available, the heightened sense of unknown in the outcome, or the more intensive development process — each image earns its promise through a bulging sense of anticipation. With every click of a film camera, the stakes are raised. Photographers develop a devout reverence for the images that come from a medium which frequently offers more challenges than its successor. The texture of the film photography experience is layered on top of the memory of the image itself, creating a far more personalised image.
Cameroonian photographer and film director Arnaud Ele creates images that evoke the texture of bygone techniques. The Berlin-based image-maker looks to express narrative through images that are highly stylised, appearing almost cinematic. The composition of Ele’s images is rarely cluttered, and suggest an understanding of mise-en-scène.
Ele models pieces from Diesel’s FW20 collection, titled Unforgettable Denim, which centres on the creation of memories marked out on your favourite blue jeans. The ubiquity of denim has allowed it to serve as timestamps for different eras and memories — super skinny rockstar jeans defined the 1960s, as flares did in the 1970s and baggy jeans in the 1990s. Via Diesel’s FW20 collection, Ele gives us a snapshot into the memories he’s amassing, both via his imagery and his personal denim collection.
Walk us through your personal experience of quarantine.
I took time to think about myself, and what I would like to create in the future, what I would really like to show people. It has definitely been a hard time, especially for those who have been more directly affected by the pandemic, but on the bright side, I think it may have changed the outlook of many people by forcing them to spend some time alone with themselves. We all wrestle with our own demons, yet talking about them is still taboo, and that causes a lot of inner conflict for people. But it is important to respect our full self, including the ugly parts and the bad feelings. Right now, we all need to recharge, and for me this means meditation, yoga and sports. I ride my bike every morning at 5 am just to have a fresh impression, going out of my house and escaping my own thoughts.
Is there something in particular that you were looking forward to, which got thwarted by the pandemic? What did the lockdown cause you to miss out on?
I had planned two trips: one to the USA in Los Angeles, for an advertising campaign, and another to Cameroon to visit my family. Unfortunately, both were cancelled due to COVID. Overall, it’s not even about the single trips, but rather about the thought of having part of my freedom taken away from me. Without travelling, I feel like I missed out new – possibly exciting – job opportunities as well as possible beautiful encounters. We have been forced into individualism for so long during lockdown, now is the moment to start reconnecting with people and have real conversations. Even here in Berlin, when I walk on the street with the camera in my hand, people sometimes talk to me, and I love it.
I focus on my photography but I also give myself some movements to be happy and relax, maybe going out for a glass of wine.
In spite of the sadness and frustration induced by the uncertainty of the prospects we were faced with, have irony and playfulness had a renaissance as a form of catharsis?
That is the secret! We need to look at this from another perspective, which is also what I try to do with my job. Of course it is important to be aware of the dangers and take them seriously in consideration. What we should avoid is becoming overwhelmed. Instead, we should say: “Ok, we’ve learned a lot from this” and move on with our lives whilst being careful at the same time. It’s all about finding balance. Personally, I’m trying to be safe and at the same time I’m working on establishing – or better re-establishing — a new routine. I focus on my photography but I also give myself some time to relax, and maybe go out for a glass of wine.
The advent of social media has created a general hunger for visual content, which has had to suffer qualitatively due to the limited mobility of quarantine. How has your relationship to social media changed over the past months?
Lockdown may have been the best period for social media platforms. I like the totally democratised sharing, but I also find it dangerous. First of all because not everyone is well-intentioned, and secondly because of the amount of information that’s available. I see social media as an incredibly useful tool of research and source of inspiration, but the excess of content sometimes makes it difficult to distinguish what’s really important and genuine, and what’s just distorted, sugarcoated façades.
How do your preferred photographic mediums – for instance, Polaroid – qualitatively reconcile with the mass proliferation of digital imagery on social media?
I wanted to stop this frenzy. Digital tools can be good to create something different, but analogue photography allows you to delve deeper into emotions and truly seize a moment. With digital there is the risk to waste the moment, as we spend a lot of time curating or framing our aesthetic — analogue allows your intuition to take the reins, and that’s what I enjoy the most about it. Intuition is key in my work.
Scrolling though your feed, it’s easy to feel swept away by a melancholic feeling. But melancholy doesn’t have to be a negative emotion – it can be conducive to introspection, reflectiveness and renewal. Have you managed to repurpose any emotions generally deemed negative?
My approach can seem contradictory. I use the negative sometimes to attain the positive, and vice versa. I don’t believe I can actually even judge what to define as good or bad. What I think is that imagination draws from . Love, frustration, passion: the memento and inner freedom help bringing every emotion out in order to create something new. I don’t think too much about categorising things as positive or negative when translating them into art. I take everything. Sometimes – or even most of the times — the best creative expression comes out of something sad or painful —it’s like the groove in music.
Sometimes you need to stop and question yourself about the sense of what you are doing.
Historically, in the art world, we have come often across the astounding creative potential of deep – and often dark – emotions. Do you have any particular name that comes to mind in relation to this?
Many actually, mainly from film. I’m especially thinking of Expressionism and 1950s Modernism, including Fellini, Hitchcock, Zinnemann. But I like also the French New Wave, starting with Bresson. They didn’t have all the technologies we have today and thinking about this sometimes makes me calm down and relax. I love how the essence of their works is a mixture of elegance, introspection and attitude.
Would you have described yourself as an optimist before lockdown? And in its aftermath?
I’m a super optimistic person. My philosophy, since my childhood back in Cameroon, has been about adapting to the situation and always being open to change. Sometimes you need to stop and question the meaning of what you are doing. Eventually, you will realize it is the moment to cross a line and change the direction of your life. This comes incredibly natural for young generations and older people used to look with sceptical eyes at this, but now they are starting to understand the importance of self-reinvention. It’s what happens when a computer shuts down: you restart it.
Credits
Protagonist & Photographer Arnaud Ele
Agent Cosmopola GmbH
Photographer Julia Lee Goodwin
DOP Sebastian Vellrath
Styling Lorena Maza
Production Jenny Halonen
Assistant Anna Giulia Bevilacqua