Benjamin Petit is a New York based Photojournalist that contributes to The New York Times and is emerging as a documentarian photographer with a clear and precise view of how his work can document our complex political times. He has exhibited at the ICP in New York, Club 7 Gallery in Paris and Rencontres Internationales de la Photographie in Arles. Benjamin Petit began as a Conceptual Art Photographer, was previously questioning of the conditioning we all receive by the influences around us and so experimented in the best way: By teaming up with Edouard Vander Gucht and  creating several  black and white photo series to denounce, attract, repulse and research existence.  

 

In relation to the work within the Edouard – Benjamin site which features your conceptual photography work, you’ve said that you wanted to raise questions. What were those questions?

Benjamin Petit) There were a lot of questions that I wanted to raise. One of those was the relationship between form and content, how it influences the reading of a piece and how you understand it. So it was really to do with how repulsion and attraction work together, that’s what we see in the first two series: Plasticine and the dinner scene referencing old Dutch paintings that if you look closely it is about repulsion but presented in a manner that appears very sleek and shiny and ‘proper’ and clean. So there was a lot of integration of ideas, to do with the way we perceive things.

 

Why did you choose the ideas of Repulsion and Attraction as themes?

BP) It’s a good question, I think at that point Edouard and I were entering step by step in different  worlds, him in graphic design and me within photographic work and we were questioning a lot the mediums that we were using . In a way we chose to question the Art markets, to ask ‘How do you define what is valuable?’  So it was a way to place a shiny envelope over the things that are twisted. But this at first was very intuitive, it was organic but we didn’t think we would continue as a collaboration. We chose the idea of attraction and repulsion because of our background, the music background that we had, the electronic music that I liked and it was a way to express the confrontation that we felt.

 

 

 

You’ve switched from Conceptual Art Photography to Photojournalism, that is normally the other way around how did that happen?

BP) I never really thought about it, I think it was a time where we were experimenting a lot, with Edouard I was experimenting a lot within the world of photography and it’s something that we wanted to express. Following my studies I found another way of questioning the world, through documentarian work and through another way of expressing myself. But I don’t think that one is better than the other, there are different ways of approaching and representing the world, but to me both can complete each other and depending on time I could definitely do a conceptual project on the side of my documentarian projects. Because in a way, what I do through documentarian journalism, it feeds me and helps me to construct my representations of the world. So then I can render my ideas through either documentarian or through my personal projects. So at that time we had questions and we tried to answer those questions. Now I’m working as a photojournalist but I’m still feeding my imagination and my vision and so, tomorrow I may still want to render my ideas through Conceptual Art again. This project with Edouard had freedom in it for me, so the photojournalism work is closer to the freedom I had when doing that work with Edouard. You have to find a balance between what you are doing and with expressing yourself without the filters.

The Plasticine project is a reminder of the classical Greek Medusa head reworked, tell us more.

BP) We wanted to play with something very abstract, painting with a brush, a projection on a white board, we wanted to create something that has a complex form that would look like a painting, like something flat. It was really the beginning of our collaboration, it was the first time to try something very provocative and to play with regular objects and to transform them into something more than what they appear. It was something vivid and a life on its own, that would end up being a black hole that would absorb everything.

Why a black hole?

BP) It’s the primitive questioning of existing and being here on earth. It’s not something that you look at directly but the way you interact with the world, how it perverts its surroundings. So with Plasticine it is in a way, a big black magma that you don’t really understand, but when you get closer you recognise forms and you begin to understand. It is a loop a research of your own existence.

Tell me more about the Disposable Christ project because that really does stand out.

BP) There are different themes within that whole period of work in general, but this was to do with replacing religious icons with the idea of successfulness, our obsessions with success so using icons such as The Boxer or The Sports personality to symbolise the way our goals are just to do with fame and being recognised, so it was a way to denounce this society that is based on those values. And then of course it was inspired by the religious paintings that we have and  to use the high contrast of what attracts the eye. The picture was made to question the audience and then once you are looking at it you can make it your own.

You’ve used the word denounce and you use it to denounce the notion of having icons, the way in which as a society we create icons. So why did you want to do that?

BP) As anyone you feel the pressure of society to become something or someone that you don’t want to be. Most of the time you succumb to that pressure, all of those things that influence us and adds that pressure to do with: What you have to be and Who you are. So we were both questioning all of that and this was a response to it. For example, do we have to listen to this society? To all of those influences, or do we want to step aside, to produce our own way of seeing the world and to produce our own interpretation of what it is to live it.

What was the pressure for you?

BP) It’s hard to put a finger on it. This work was a reaction to what we were going through in life and the pressure that can be from parenthood or friends or the information we receive from the media and so it was just that, at some point we were feeling that all those inputs were having a huge influence on us and were trying to dictate what we should do. How we should think. So with all that commercial media too it was a reaction to that too. We didn’t want to be sheep that just follow that leader. We were trying to develop our own way of thinking and to interact with each other and to re-create our new rules for communication,  that is still unsolved. It was an attempt to step out of the classic conditioning. It was a way to crucify that idea of what we should be because we didn’t believe in that. I then found other ways to fill this need, through photojournalism.

 

 

What you talk about is a reminder of what British Film Director Ben Charles Edwards also said that ‘Whenever you feel like being fearless or making those kinds of statements it means there is an anger there’ There is a sense of anger within the Conceptual Art projects: Disposable Christ and Plasticine and We Are Gemenies.

BP) It is for sure, it was a time in our life when we were living really separately and in a  singular way. Apart from what we did before and what we would do after, it was a very singular time for many reasons. I think we didn’t know what would become of us the next day, which path we were about to take. But most of the time we didn’t over think it, it was very spontaneous. We’d spend the night photographing a project and in the morning it was done.

 

Interviewee: Photojournalist Benjamin Petit

Interview By: MK

Photography: Edouard Vander Gucht/ Benjamin Petit