10 Questions with Theo Zeal

Theo Zeal is a British photographer whose work moves between portraiture, landscape and the overlooked spaces in between. Working predominantly in black and white, his photographs bring together people, places and objects in ways that suggest narratives without necessarily explaining them.

His recent photobook, Adam, began with photographs of a childhood friend foraging on the Isle of Mull, before evolving into something altogether more personal. Combining images from different locations and embracing unconventional darkroom processes, Zeal constructs a world somewhere between documentation and fiction.

For the latest instalment of 10 Questions, we discuss photography's relationship with literature, developing film with coffee, finding treasure in rubbish, the importance of physical objects and why sometimes the best thing a photographer can do is stop thinking.

1. 

You discovered photography at a young age, but studied literature and philosophy before finding your way back to it. Has your interest in philosophy, particularly the relationship between perception and reality, changed the way you understand what a photograph can be?

Definitely, in fact I would say that studying literature has been even more instructive than philosophy. What first drew me to literature was that I was able to interpret and make sense of a story, in any way that I wanted, so long as I could back it up of course. The work was in the making sense of patterns, symbols, styles etc all against a historical backdrop that dictated the parameters available to the writers at the time. So understanding narrative and how to construct meaning has been incredibly important to how I approach making images, especially in the context of book making. The sequence has to follow like a story, even if it's in my own head and nobody else follows, the important thing for me is that it’s routed in a story.

2. 

Your project Adam began with something deeply personal -  spending time with a childhood friend on the Isle of Mull while navigating illness. At what point did those experiences begin to feel like the beginnings of a photographic project rather than simply a way of making sense of what was happening to you?

I first went to visit and thought you know what this would make a nice little project, following my best friend as he foraged, super straightforward. The last thing I wanted to do was address or try and portray in any way my illness, I just thought that would be really boring and because I was ill at the time did not want to get bogged down into it any further. Also at the time I was desperate to figure out what I was doing, I wasn’t satisfied with just following Adam, it wasn’t enough of a story on its own. So it was only after I had made a sequence, accidentally, with prints from another project that It started to make sense. From that point on it was much easier. But to be honest, it was only in explaining the project to people once it was finished that I realised it was all a way of processing my illness. So despite my best efforts I couldn’t escape it!

3.

In Adam, photographs of the Scottish landscape sit alongside images of industrial wasteland much closer to home, creating a fictional geography. Are you more interested in what a photograph records, or what happens when photographs are brought together and begin to suggest something that never actually existed?

Oh yeah definitely. A picture whose only function is to point is never going to be as interesting as the endless possibilities of interpretation that a story can provide. Like Anselm Kiefer said, "pictures are only interesting if they are manipulated or organised." The documentary nature of photography is a hang up from when it was the sole technology capable of portraying the world exactly as we see it. But that definitely isn’t the case anymore, nothing is real anymore, so why should photography be solely understood as a factual document. Also the need for documentary has shifted, we live in a world where a 6 year old has probably seen more images than their grandparents did in a lifetime. So for me, the game is making a narrative using images that I’ve taken. Rather than showing you something that is in the world as an absolute.

4.

You've spoken about developing film using instant coffee and printing on expired or imperfect photographic paper. There's something wonderfully resourceful about that approach. Is the unpredictability of the process something you've deliberately cultivated, or did necessity eventually become part of your visual language?

The coffee developer and expired paper both came from not wanting to spend money! Having said that, I love making things myself, I’m self-sufficient to a fault probably. At the time I do remember thinking that it was quite funny that I was developing these negatives using coffee, as if I was in some way trying to imbue some energy into the images that I didn’t have due to illness. And yeah darkroom paper is ridiculously expensive for the nice stuff so I was, and still am, scouring the internet for bargains. But yes I do like the fact that there is something out of my control, it makes it all the more euphoric when it works. Like striking gold.

5. 

You describe wanting Adam to feel like a found object - something your friend might have discovered while foraging. How important is the physical experience of a photograph or book to the meaning of the work itself?

For me it’s really important, the project has to be holistic if you see what I mean. It all has to come from the same world. With Adam, I kept thinking how I would love to stumble across a book of photographs with no text or explanation. A complete mystery. So that’s what I wanted to create. 

6.

You originally explored documentary filmmaking before discovering that you were more interested in the visual possibilities of individual frames than the explanatory nature of documentary. Do you think photography becomes more interesting when it stops trying to tell us exactly what we're looking at?

Absolutely, photography is at its best when it’s closer to poetry than to documentary. 

7.

There's an interesting parallel in Adam between your friend searching for plants and roots and you searching for photographs. Do you think making pictures is ultimately a form of collecting, or are you searching for something that can't necessarily be identified beforehand?

Yes I guess it is a form of collecting. Like a collector who has no idea what he’s collecting for or why. I think photographers will often have an idea of what they want an image to be like, but more often than not it’s the unexpected images that become the most interesting, the ones we couldn’t foresee. 

8.

Your work often finds beauty and ambiguity in overlooked places - brownfield sites, discarded materials and apparently unremarkable landscapes. What draws you towards these environments rather than places that might be considered conventionally beautiful?

I couldn’t tell you why exactly, but I get excited by these places and I love trying to find something that I can make my own. Maybe less a collector more a treasure hunter. But in my case the treasure is rubbish. The funny thing is I would always set out to these places thinking I’d find people to photograph, but of course there were never any people at all. So maybe it’s that I’m avoiding people. 

9.

Photography has become increasingly immediate, frictionless and easy to reproduce. Your practice seems to move in almost the opposite direction, embracing slow processes, physical materials and uncertainty. What do you think is gained by making the process of producing an image more difficult?

Taking an element of control away is a great way to find something unexpected. So I guess if you bake that into every step of the process it leaves a lot to chance, which is ultimately a good thing. On the other hand it's also because I’m trying to control each step of the process, so maybe it's a distrust of other processes too.

10.

After spending years developing such a personal relationship with photography, what are you trying to become less interested in as a photographer?

I’m definitely trying to approach my practice with less ideas, less plans and less end product in mind. All of those things can become a burden or cripple your ability to create freely. Instinct is interesting, but as soon as you think about it, it loses its potency so you have to just act. It’s all too easy to think your way out of taking a picture. I’m trying to avoid that.