Point of View // Ben Pobjoy
02.04.08 - Chris Barton - photography, point of view
PHOTOGRAPHY – Ben Pobjoy
NOWNOW – Where are you and what are you doing?
BEN POBJOY – I’m in Montreal, Quebec sitting at my desk in my work/loft space. I’m eating a banana and listening to Suicide before starting my workday.
NN – How did you start taking photos?
BP – In 1998, when I was 16 years old I picked up a Polaroid camera and began to document my life. I was touring America quite a bit with my band at the time and was friends with a bunch of shitfuckers and I felt compelled to photograph my travels and the mischievous tendencies of this group of friends. I meticulously documented my life with my Polaroid camera for the next nine years shooting over 2000 Polaroids (each of which is accompanied by a hand written anecdote) and now it’s 2008 and I’ve ended up with nine Polaroid journals on my bookshelf. Nine years of living compressed into less than 2 cubic feet of space.
Since I was constantly photographing my friends, and it was their actions that inspired me, I felt it was only fair to let them leaf through my journals. Ryan Foerster and Eva Michon, two outstanding photographers who were living in the Toronto area at the time were two of my good friends that I’d let look through the journals. Both of them were established photographers in Toronto and they pushed me to pick up a 35mm camera. They both photographed with point-and-shoot cameras and the ‘ease of use’ of their cameras spoke to me given that I was photographing with Polaroids. Because of their ‘push’ I bought my first point-and-shoot camera in 2005 and I’ve been shooting with a range of point-and-shoot cameras ever since.
NN – What is the most important aspect of (your) photography to you?
BP –I’m concerned with capturing essence and I try to shoot subjects in different environments over long spans of time as series so that their essence can triumph the ‘constructed image.’ My photography, in this capacity, is an exercise in suppressing my ego and personal mythology in order to capture people as they are, not as what I want them to be. Truthfully, it’s an exercise that can never be mastered since photography is a subjective medium.
NN – Who is your favourite photographer?
BP –I don’t think I have a favorite photographer per se. I am, as mentioned, a big fan of both Ryan Foerster and Eva Michon. I know both of them quite well and, because of this, I have a genuine appreciation for their work. I find that the photographers that I like the most are the photographers that I know intimately. Knowing a photographer seems to positively affect my perception of their work. Off the top of my head, I’m also a fan of Boogie, Agnes Thor and Robin Schwartz. I like the way they photograph the world or the worlds they create and thereafter photograph.
NN – Do you see photography as a part of a bigger creative urge/scene/force?
BP –In a Jungian sense photography, to me at least, satiates the need for a personal mythology. I believe that many photographers photograph to document the world. However, the world, when viewed through their lens, inadvertently becomes their representation of the world. So, even though they may not be photographing themselves, they’re photographing as themself. Their work, regardless of the subject matter, I believe, is inseparable from their self and is therefore part of their personal mythology, a personal mythology that is continually deepened with every photograph that is taken.
NN – What could you look at for the rest of your life?
BP – People and animals.
