Interview with Jan Smith by GUP Magazine

Sam Nalley Copley of GUP Magazine approached me a couple of weeks ago to include me in the magazine’s coverage of Mexican Photographers (I know, with a name like mine who would believe I am Mexican!).  We spoke about melancholy and what motivates my work. GUP is one of the leading on-line voices in photography.  The conversation was published today and  you can go to their site or read the conversation here.

Jan Smith likes to hang out in places others do not. The Mexican adventurer, celebrated by ghost-town enthusiasts and monochrome photograph appreciators worldwide for his chilling stills of abandoned spaces, is currently in Tokyo promoting his work on Fukushima and Chernobyl. I managed to ask him about his work and the selection criteria for his material.

“- First it must be a place that is abandoned recently—within the span of a generation or two. Secondly, it must have scale. It is not enough to have a couple of buildings—one can find those almost anywhere. Than there should be enough size so that when one walks through the ruins, the history of the place emerges—call it an archaeological tour. There must be a significant social or historical weight attached to that place.  This can be subtle, such as the first place where images of the far side of the Moon, or of Venus where seen. Or it can be enormous, such as being the site of the largest nuclear accident (Chernobyl). But Most importantly; these are places that are pushed to the edge of social memory soon after they are abandoned.” 

Smith’s urge to capture these often-desolate uninhabited cityscapes has not only had him detained and accused of espionage, as happened in both Morocco and Mauritania, but has also led critics to label his work ‘melancholic’. 

“I am always pleased when I hear that feedback because that is how I wished to present the matter. When relating to abandoned places it is because they evoke a tremendous sense of awe and loss for me. It is a bit like looking at the Egyptian or Mayan pyramids and saying, “Wow, how could something so tremendous be lost, left behind, even forgotten?”  The melancholy is my way of mourning for that greatness that I never saw and can only imagine.”

The acceptance of impermanence chimes neatly with an aesthetic principle the Japanese call wabi-sabi, a concept Richard Powell has summarised as, “nothing lasts, nothing is finished and nothing is perfect.” From the rusting beached fishing boats of North Africa to Gunkanjima’s decrepit concrete stairwells, this sadness remains a constant throughout Smith’s work.

“I find the notion of using melancholy as a deliberate device harder, and therefore more intellectually satisfying than developing work that pleases lighter feelings in us. It is more challenging to connect with audiences through melancholy because it is subtle and we tend to turn away from it, but when it happens I think the link is among the most powerful because it evokes both intellectual and emotional responses. Melancholy makes us think like few other emotions do.” 

Jan Smith’s work has recently been exhibited in Cape Town, and is due to be shown in Brazil and New York later this year. Additionally, he has recently been invited to the Atomic Photographers Guild.