David Abrahams KYUSHU
H.A.B. presents David Abrahams’ KYUSHU
Opening hours:
31st August - 8th September
10:00 PM - 17:00 PM
65 Dalston Lane, London E8 2NG
We sat down with our Artist in residence, David Abrahams, to dive a little deeper into the inspiration and process behind ‘Kyushu’.
H.A.B: Hi, David. It's lovely to chat with you. Please introduce yourself.
David: Hi, I'm David Abrahams and I’m a photographer.
H.A.B: So when did you start your journey as a photographer and how has it been up until now?
David: Yeah, good! I guess I’ve always kind of been in quite a creative family. I mean, ironically I have this photo of me as a five year old kid with a toy camera in my hand. But photography for me really started when I inherited some cameras from my grandfather at age 13. And then after that it was at Art College that I started doing it properly. After my first module there, my tutor was like, “I've never seen photography like this from someone your age, you should go to uni and do it, these are amazing”. And so I decided to go to uni for it, worked in e-commerce, slowly transitioned to being freelance and this is now finally my first show 14 years on.
H.A.B: How did Kyushu come to life?
David: So I was shooting a commission for Wall Street Journal and the project was actually more to do with artisans and portraits. There were some landscapes in there. But ultimately, I did an edit and it was a commercial commission for a magazine. I stayed there for 10 days, and I shot I think it was like 98 rolls of film? For the camera geeks out there, it’s 645, so that's like 15/16 shots per roll. Essentially, there was a hell of a lot of imagery, and I thought it was a shame not to do anything with them.
Then you guys at Have A Butchers asked me if I was interested in doing something, so I decided to revisit this project, as a way to go back and reimagine its structure. I've taken out all the portraits and it's more of a landscape focused project. But yeah revisiting / coming back to something is what’s driven the project forward by choosing my own edit, creating tension between different colours and different objects, creating a body of work that's outside the confines of someone else's edit, and essentially someone else's control.
H.A.B: What's been your favourite part of this process?
David: Well, I mean obviously shooting Japan, going into Japan and being in Japan was incredible so the shooting aspect of it was an amazing experience, but part of it was also quite solitary. I hired a car and went off for a good two thirds of the project. I was trying to make the most of the opportunity, so in a way I sort of burnt out a little bit trying to constantly be shooting, getting up really early, I even ended up with calluses in my hands as I was shooting day and night. I went to some festivals at night too, so it was quite a long slog.So I’d say shooting it would be my favourite part of the process, but I also really enjoyed hand printing it as well, as you get to reimagine the imagery when printing it. When I was re-approaching this project, I was trying to remember what these places were and felt like to me and then I stopped and realised, well, actually, if it's a memory, why does it have to be approached as a documentation of the thing in itself, you know, it doesn't have to be technically correct, it could be a bit more of like a dream or a lost memory?
H.A.B: I’ve noticed most of your work is shot on film. Do you have a preference for this or do you balance yourself between digital and film?
David: Yes, I would say I shoot mostly on film. Partly because it's not as stable and correct as digital. For clients, I mostly have to set up digitally. I feel digital setups have become quite the norm. But I shoot primarily on film as I have my own darkroom, which makes things a little easier and more affordable to print.
With film, you get to really play with the colours which makes it feel a lot more believable. Whereas with digital you can feel quite limited because you can only push a file so much before you start getting banding or breakages in the actual image. With film you just don't really get that.
I think the process of standing in a dark room, developing the images and physically making it is very special. Again, I used to do a lot of things digitally, but as you can do things so quickly that way you kind of lose this sort of delayed gratification that you get slowly printing will film, and personally I get from hand printing my own work. It's a tactile process and there is a lot of learning from the labour.
H.A.B: Who would you say is your biggest inspiration / muse for your work?
David: Good question, I have no clue. I guess it's been a sort of process because, you know, when I was really little, at the age of 13, all I knew was Martin Parr and Tom Wood. What drew me in was their street documentary style, which was really funny and amazing. So a lot of the first things I photographed were inspired by, and ultimately, emulated their work, but you kind of learn the process and your own ways through doing it yourself.
There was another photographer, Ray Moore, that my aunty had a few prints of on her wall that I was obsessed with. Really interesting abstract incidentals of northern countryside towns and landscapes.
I watched a lot of really great documentaries when I was a kid and at uni that inspired me in a way. For example, the documentary called “Genius of Photography” came out, which was a six part sort of exploratory TV show, essentially looking at lots of different photographers. I remember that there was Joel Meyerowitz, Stephen Shore, and William Eggleston in which they were essentially, aimlessly wandering down streets and following their gut intuition to shoot. And I guess, especially for this project, that's kind of how I've created the imagery. I instinctively followed the geography of the landscape and let myself create from my gut. So again, I don't know if there was necessarily one photographer that's been feeding my inspiration, but it's kind of seeing and then enacting how I’ve learnt things, and then ultimately producing sort of what I want and the processes I’ve chosen to get there.
H.A.B: Are there any recurring themes that you like to pursue in your practice?
David: Hmmm no. I feel this one is a tricky one to answer. I guess I’ve done so many types of shoots already and they are all so different it’s hard to find a recurring theme between them all, except the way I create and finish images.This travel story in particular though, it feels familiar to me in the way I've shot travel and documentary in a number of places. By doing them you start to really learn how to position yourself without people seeing you or, you know, if you want to ask for a portrait, how's the best way to do it. You start to learn the pattern of how you create, I guess. I'm not really sure if there's an intentional theme necessarily to this.
One of the intentions for the layout of the book and exhibition is to have every image different in colour and in content. So every image is kind of entertaining in its own way, and every image is kind of always moving to something else. There's always something new and if, for instance, the colour changes or the content changes, the whole thing becomes of itself. Instead of everything being a sort of one tone, one subject matter. Life isn't one linear thing and I love dark foggy images so how would you edit that if you're only choosing warm golden images. Life is a multitude of moods and atmospheres and we should embrace them all.
H.A.B: I'm aware this is your first solo exhibition, congratulations! How is Kyushu different from your previous projects, and what does it mean to you?
David: I think there's definitely an element to this project about actually just doing something and getting it over the finish line. I think one of the things that, as a creative, is quite hard to do is actually to finish a project you know, and not let yourself be questioning it too much and what people might think of it. You guys asked me to do this in May, I think, and then come June we are in the darkroom printing everything. It's actually just been really nice to do something and get going because it's quite hard to find the time to actually finish projects sometimes.
I think what Kyushu means to me is actually about doing, and moving away from several aspects of my life. I guess especially after COVID, I quit from a very respectable agency, so for me, this project it's kind of me choosing my own edit and creating my own work. Because for the past years I've been heavily working for brands or magazines. And, don’t get me wrong, that's done me really well and I don't mean to throw any shade or anything in their direction. But I think for me, now, it's kind of an element of being able to understand what I actually like, and how I actually want to deliver something. For example, when you’re shooting for a client, you're always trying to mindread what they might want, versus how you want to do it.
I think it's actually really important for artists to create work for themselves, just so you can actually really test the parameters of how you create, what you create, what your crop is, and how you orchestrate things. I think that confidence kind of builds over time. And, you know, again, I've done very well from a commercial perspective, but I think this only really strengthens you by doing personal work. So hopefully you get work commissioned to be similar to this and I think it’s always quite a nice way to sidestep or move towards other projects.
I believe it’s actually genuinely quite good for people to do some sort of self-expression, whether it’s through their profession or as a hobby. To actually learn about themselves and figure out how they see the world, what's important to them and how you then represent yourself. This also draws you to things and mundane aspects that other people might not see. We are all living on the planet synthesising our everyday, and artistic pursuits help you to understand who you are on your own path.
H.A.B: What can we expect from David Abraham's next?
David: Well, I think I'm gonna try and do a lot more exhibitions now.
For years people have been asking for some sort of still life book of my work as I guess that's the area of work where I have made a bit of a name for myself. It's interesting because I don't really see myself as a still life photographer. And maybe that's why I'm not too precious about it. A lot of people have commented on the fact that I wear several hats in the photography world. Sometimes people find it quite hard to understand that I can do a lot of different things. I mean I paint as well.
I had a whole respectable early fashion career before that and then I ended up deleting my work and starting again (on purpose of course) and then redoing a lot of work. At that time, I was preferring to move onto making imagery that had a feeling rather than a sort of product or whatever. And then yeah, at the time, I had a studio and I was freelance, I had a bit of time and I ended up making these little mini sculpture kind of welds on a tabletop and some of it really was actually just as simple as dead sunflowers. Then, over the years, this became quite a natural space for me to create work. I have a white table top that's become synonymous with my work. Like it's sort of my work bench or my atelier.
And so, I've decided I'm going to do a still life project! I've already shot quite a lot of new work for it. I'm going to try and maybe do this for December.
I don’t like keeping it for a couple of years in my mind because then things don't get done. When you work commercially you get so used to shooting very quickly. Sometimes projects are in and out and done in like a week, which is pretty ridiculous, really. So why can't I try and apply the same sort of deadlines and pressure to myself to create my own personal work? So yeah, I guess you only live once so you might as well just get going and get doing!
Visit David and his work at Have A Butchers, from August 31st to September 8th our gallery, 10PM to 5PM.
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