Landing
Featuring Luna Conte Words by Nastasia Khmelnitski
Luna Conte is an emerging French photographer currently living in Paris. Luna worked with Paolo Roversi prior to deciding to study in the Ecal (the university of art and design). Her latest project, Landing, is a book that aims to research topics such as the female gaze, physical and mental cultural boundaries, acceptance as opposed to exclusion in a community.
The book presents photographs shot during her stay in Israel, observing the country’s people, the present tension, the influence of historical and religious background on the narrative that is woven into the present. In our conversation with Luna, we discuss in-depth the conception and realization of the project Landing, which will be exhibited in Paris during November 2020.
Luna Conte focuses on two main genres of photography: fashion and documentary. With her fashion work, she explores femininity through the shapes of the body, the lyrical approach to the atmosphere on set, and portraiture photography, which comes to examine further identity and behavior. In documentary projects, Luna comes close to the subject of research, posing substantial questions and probing the outcome through analysis and visualization of the theme. The narrative is attentively crafted, weighing the unfolding events while balancing out the presentation of the topic through the encounters, architecture, and symbolism to finally attain the knowledge based on personal experience.
‘I tried very hard to create images that required a real technique, when the subject mattered not much to me, to return over the years to the simplicity and to portraiture that animated me the most.’
I Am
How did l’Ecal help you in developing your voice in photography or viewing this profession differently?
These 4 years at Ecal have been very important for me. When I arrived there five years ago, I had no precise intention, I wasn't yet sure I wanted to be a photographer or especially to make my living out of it. I think, above all, it was a question of self-confidence that I didn't have yet. The medium interested and fascinated me, but I was still very far from knowing what I wanted to say and tell through it.
Ecal was a double-edged experience: enriching but also very challenging. In school, in which you are pushed to be a machine: to lead seven or eight projects at the same time, where you simply end up being overwhelmed, it's very hard to add to each of the projects your creativity, sensitivity, and also the reflection you feel is necessary. On the other hand, if I hadn't worked so hard, I don't think I would be where I am now. It's finally by working so much, by being pushed to try different things, I understood gradually where I wanted to go.
I don't think you have to go to school to become a photographer, but I can't deny that Ecal and the experience I had gave me keys, on a personal level, to who I am and how I want to work. I think it's the school that helped me to learn how to assert myself and my work. Aesthetically it's something else. I don't think school should judge your aesthetics, it's something very personal and often very anchored. The way I photograph today, reflects who I am, not my school.
For a long time, I tried things that I fundamentally didn't like. The lack of confidence that I had pushed me in the early years to do things simply because it was in accordance with an aesthetic either proper to the school or a trend. I tried very hard to create images that required a real technique, when the subject mattered not much to me, to return over the years to the simplicity and to portraiture that animated me the most. Technical things are not for me, I admire those who spend hours to realize a perfect and mastered still life. It's not that I don't have the patience, on the contrary, I like to take time to make an image, but I'm too sensitive to work mechanically.
When I was 16 years old, before I went to school, I worked with Paolo Roversi. I think it was a kind of a trigger. I understood with him how an image could be the vector of an emotion, a feeling. I was very sensitive to the nostalgia that inhabits him and his work, I think it's something that often inhabits my images, which I partly kept from him.
‘Whether it's my documentary work or my fashion work, I'm very concerned about the environment that surrounds me. I see it as a setting where there's always something new to tell, nothing to exclude.’
Let's speak about photographing fashion in juxtaposition to documentary shots. What do you think is the main theme of exploration for you when shooting fashion?
I don't dissociate my documentary work from my fashion work. In a way, each borrows codes from the other, which is an ambiguity that I find interesting. My book, Landing, which is a project I realized in Israel, includes very different types of images: portraits of young girls who deliberately posed for me, others that are ‘stolen’ images, taken in an instant. The association of the two ends up blurring the lines, sometimes the image seems to have been constructed, staged, when it wasn't at all. It's this merge of genres that interests me.
In fashion it's the same, I like that my images look like I shoot quickly, without thinking. Often the images I choose are those where my model isn’t posing, where he/she seems distracted, looking elsewhere, or where a detail that I didn't anticipate appears. Whether it's my documentary work or my fashion work, I'm very concerned about the environment that surrounds me. I see it as a setting where there's always something new to tell, nothing to exclude.
I think I first discovered this with Pasolini in a Notes Towards An African Orestes, which is a work that has marked me. Pasolini takes notes with his camera to prepare his next film: transposition of the Orestes, the Aeschylus tragedy in today's Africa. He relates a movie that is being made and a movie that has never been made. It's a hybrid work that blurs the boundary between fiction and documentary and establishes a complex relationship between history and myth. Pasolini travels to Tanzania, Uganda, in search of faces, bodies, locations, for a future Orestes. This scouting finally becomes an autonomous film. It's a rather fascinating work.
I like to use what's already there to tell something, use the place as it is and write something else over it. I like the idea that an image can be a combination of both real and anchored on the one hand and fiction on the other, of controlled and fabricated elements.
‘And yet, despite the weight of the situation (which is none other than the one of a country in conflict), there is this nostalgia of a country wish - an aspiration to a fruitful future, while keeping a face turned towards the past, legitimising its existence by constantly reaffirming what it once had been.’
Landing
You’ve visited Israel a couple of years ago with the goal to understand the culture, the effect of history on people, the opportunity to attempt and enter the land, the cities, the territories learning something about yourself. What did you reveal during your visit? What stroke you as different from what you’ve imagined?
I have always been extremely sensitive to the history of Jewish people, which accompanied my childhood and teenage years through a part of my family being of this faith. Before my first visit there, Israel had existed for me only through their stories and their own memories. I grew up with a very idealized and utopian image of this country, which they described to me as an exceptional place, a land of hope (their own), but also of the whole people.
I went to Israel for the first time four years ago, wishing to see, to put reality on fictional images that I was making of it. When I arrived there, I found myself faced with a kind of disillusionment, confronted with a certain reality (a reality of the complex territory) realizing how difficult it is to understand this territory without knowing what it had been, what it is today, and what it projects to become - a place where each stone of each wall bears the marks of history.
It didn’t take long to see how fragmented, divided, difficult accessing this land was. A place where notions of borders became the pretext for dividing its lands. A place where the slightest wall, the slightest street separates one community from another, one person from another, making the climate and the atmosphere of this place ever heavier and more divided. And yet, despite the weight of the situation (which is none other than the one of a country in conflict), there is this nostalgia of a country wish - an aspiration to a fruitful future, while keeping a face turned towards the past, legitimising its existence by constantly reaffirming what it once had been.
I have never wished to represent the conflict objectively by directly showing war or violence. I am still convinced that even without seeing it directly, even if I never saw it in the most literal way, the consequences of this conflict are felt and reflected everywhere. It's from this conflict, in my opinion, that the atmosphere, I have been confronted with, derives. This distance between them (the inhabitants of this territory) and myself comes in the suspicion they have for anything that could be foreign, the burden of a tradition that seems to have frozen this territory in time, of this architecture that becomes a border, of these suspicious and at the same time hopeful glances, of those who still believe in the future of their territory.
So, is it legitimate to talk about a territory that is not yours? I don't know. I think that today, above all, we need to be able to open up to what is foreign to us. I think that ignorance or comfort is precisely about being interested only in what affects us closely.’
What does Jewish culture or being a creator coming from a family with a Jewish background mean to you?
I'm not Jewish, although part of my family is very connected to the Jewish religion, and some of them are Jewish. This was the main question: was I allowed to talk about this territory without having a direct connection to it, that is to say, without being Jewish myself? I hesitated a lot before going to Israel for a month. I already knew Israel, I had already started to make some images there before, but this time it was different. I was leaving for a long time without knowing how my ideas or my project would be received.
I think it's just a question of not leaving ignorant, not leaving without knowing where you're going - that's something I find quite inconceivable. For my part, I had stories, histories, and knowledge that I felt was stable enough to be able to leave and understand the territory once I got there. I knew that not being Jewish, I would need it. I read a lot about Israel for a year before I left. My readings, I am thinking in particular about a book written by Uri Eisenzweig that accompanied the conception of Landing, really helped me to understand the territory I was going to be confronted with.
So, is it legitimate to talk about a territory that is not yours? I don't know. I think that today, above all, we need to be able to open up to what is foreign to us. I think that ignorance or comfort is precisely about being interested only in what affects us closely.
My experience has been, I think, all the richer for not being Jewish. You are an outsider, yet you are immersed in the heart of a tradition, a tension, which is omnipresent in this territory. You are a foreigner, and you arrive with your camera. You completely interfere in people's lives, in a territory, where religion and tradition push people to remain private. It's very complex, I admit. Sometimes you have the impression you're braving the forbidden without knowing what really is.
On a territory so divided, geographically, ideologically... It really becomes up to you to position yourself and to judge what must be shown, told. But you are very detached, which gives you a certain distance to form your own vision, your own opinion. The most important thing for me was not to carry out a project that is politically engaging, to denounce or to state general truths, but above all, to elaborate and bring to the best of my ability a vision of this territory that, although, it reveals flaws, important points, it also speaks about religion and conflict, and remains a subjective, personal vision of this land.
Animate and inanimate objects are the main themes you concentrate on in the Landing project. Contrasting walls, gates, the undone buildings, as a background to the clash of cultures, religious women, young female soldiers, girls. What are the strongest feelings you have looking back at the photographs, remembering the moments before turning those to frames?
Each image has a meaning in this project and carries something strong. All of them remind me of a specific moment and trajectory. I was fascinated by the atmosphere that surrounds this territory. When I look today at the faces of people I photographed, alongside these very empty and dehumanized spaces, I think I have the same feeling I had when I was there: always a certain distance, suspicion, and a hovering nostalgia. I don't think of war or violence when I look at these images, and I think that's what makes them stronger and more meaningful. Each, in its own way, speaks indirectly of this conflict.
The book and the way in which the images follow each other are constructed in such a way as to tell and describe what I felt as I crossed this territory. The architecture that I photographed, and so many borders, so many barriers that constantly prevent us from seeing the horizon, it's like as many walls that we cross, pages after pages. And there are these glances, fleeing from us, keeping us at a certain distance and the space of a moment confronting us, taking us to one side.
There are these moments in life that remind us that behind these places, where the absence seems to have taken the lead over humanity, life exists and goes on. My gaze has mainly focused on women and children. Since conflict is often associated with male gender, women and children are often excluded from it. It's through them that I wanted to tell this story. As a woman, looking at them was also a way of thinking about my own projection on this territory.
‘The book ends with the image of the wall on which this afternoon light falls. It's like a clue reminding us that even though the crossing of this territory happened, it remains an area that I have walked through without ever being able to completely enter it.’
It was important for me to bring to the images and to the project in its entirety that notion of temporality, which is unavoidable when talking about Israel. At first, I wanted the spectator to feel this inaccessibility, a place to which it's difficult to enter, a place which is not immediately accessible, always with a certain latency. The first people we see turn their backs on us, flee my gaze. Their faces, their bodies are turned towards what precedes them, towards the beginning of the book, or towards the past. Slowly these faces confront us and for a moment hold our glance.
Then these moments of life arrive. They are like moments of transition, those that illustrate youth and life in the making to which the image of territory under construction is added, freezing it in a kind of a transitional phase that of the territory still unaccomplished. Gradually glances change, looking to the future, and the youth disappears, while the day seems to decline. It's these older women who with a certain distance contemplate their territories while we never see what they are looking at. The book ends with the image of the wall on which this afternoon light falls. It's like a clue reminding us that even though the crossing of this territory happened, it remains an area that I have walked through without ever being able to completely enter it.
