In Conversation With... Annelie Bruijn and Barnaby Irish
Red Giant by Barnaby Irish
Red by Annelie Bruijn
In the ongoing series ‘In Conversations With…’ Elliott Gallery speaks with photographers—represented by the gallery—about their work, inspiration and future plans.
Annelie Bruijn and Barnaby Irish talk about their latest work, their collaboration, their inspiration and future plans.
1. The music video for ‘Mesoglea’ by Jasmine Karimova is your latest work. A mesmerising piece of art, in which you both fused your personal artistic vision. How was it for you working in the same project and how do you feel about the result?
The collaboration happened all quite naturally. Annelie had the idea to make a film with Jasmine during the first lockdown, Jasmine sent some music she was working on, and we decided we'd both like to work with the song Mesoglea, which wasn't completely finished, but developed during the period of filming and editing based on what Jasmine had seen of the film.
We did about three filming sessions and after this we asked Barnaby to step in and edit the filmed material together, and he also gave his own vision to our story, so in the end it was a collaboration between the three of us.
2. What makes videography an interesting artistic medium for you?
Both of our work involves images layered on top of each other. The creative process of experimenting with these layers adds an unexpected kind of mystery in the ambiguity. With film we can take this to another level, fluidly blending different filmed or photographic elements together, with the editing process providing unexpected combinations. We try a lot of things together and keep in the bits which work best.
3. How did the current pandemic situation affect your creativity, current projects or future plans?
Annelie: It's been a good time to experiment with new things, so you can develop yourself creatively. It almost feels like a reset.
Barnaby: It has provided a lot of time and space to consider the next steps in my work. Also I have been spending a lot of time editing different films, so this is definitely an aspect which will influence my future work.
4. What is the main source of your inspiration?
Annelie: I am inspired by nature, colours, art and fashion. I also love the layering, transparency, mystery, something hidden, the light that changes constantly. I also have an obsession with certain colours, like skin colours, pastels, orange and yellow.
Barnaby: I tend to get obsessed with certain images, found in books, articles or on the internet. Then I really go deep down the rabbit hole of Google Image Search and all the different variations of the images it throws up, saving everything which jumps out at me and reading up on the sources of the images. These form the basis for my inspiration, and are also tied in with themes and general ideas which fascinate me. Current obsessions are comparison diagrams of the structure of Covid-19 and a scanning electron microscopy image of an ovarian follicle. Both of these really jumped out at me before I even knew what I was looking at.
5. What are you currently working on and what are your plans for the future?
We're working on a new film at the moment featuring our son, which was already shot in the first lockdown. We also have some new ideas, but then we need the weather to get better so we can start to film outside again.
Interview by Eirini Alexandrou (Elliott Gallery) March 2021
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