Interview with LAILA MUBARAK
In a conversation with GUP, Laila Mubarak (b.1979, the Netherlands) talks about portrait photography and her latest series ‘Breathing his Space’, in which she explores the human instinct to fight. Specifically, the point of focus is on mental showdown, intimacy, compassion and surrender.
How did your passion for portrait photography start and what is your inspiration?
I grew up in two cultures: the Dutch and the Indonesian. I experience Dutch culture as free, individualistic, direct. The Indonesian culture is the opposite, in my view. As a small child I tried to adapt to both cultures. I mainly did this by observing. I decided to study psychology and finally winded up with a degree in Gestalt Therapy.
My background allows me to observe more than meets the eye. The artist Arno Nollen (b. 1964) has been an important mentor to me. He taught me to really look and dare to feel, to discover myself through photography.
Primarily, you shoot analogue, is there a specific reason for you to use this photography technique?
I shoot analogue because it gives me the workflow that I need. It's about the whole process of photographing, developing the rolls and then finally seeing the image after it is scanned. I follow what presents itself in that moment and try to record exactly that.
During my education at the art academy (Royal Academy of Arts, The Hague) one of the teachers instructed us to try to photograph with a Hasselblad. I was instantly in love with this machine. The sound the camera makes, the square image, but above all the concentration it requires to get to a result. I can completely immerse myself in the image, as if I caught the portrayed person in my viewfinder.
Your latest project is ‘Breathing his Space’. How did it start and what was your experience photographing in a boxing school?
It started with a couple of questions I asked myself: Why do we watch others who fight? Why do the people who fight choose to fight?
In the world of kickboxing, it just doesn't seem to be about suffering, but about a mental showdown that manifests itself vis-à-vis the other. It touches on what we call intimacy, something that develops between two bodies, something that exists beneath the surface.
'Breathing His Space' is all about giving yourself. Both the subject and I surrender ourselves by stepping into the same space. Not only physically, we are both present in the space of a boxing school, but especially in an almost elusive way, we make an intense contact.
Your subjects are mainly adolescents and young adults. Why so and how do you pick your subjects?
Young people are busy developing their identity, they experiment, they are less fixed in a form or a role, as it is sometimes the case with adults. Everyone changes, only young people seem to be embracing that most explicitly. Moreover, I have adolescents and young adults around me all the time. I teach at a bachelor’s school; I give personal empowerment training. Observing is a big part of my profession. I can look at the young people endlessly – they move me.
I fell in love with the people I photographed, so to speak. I ran into them somewhere and they caught my eye. It can be their look in the eye, a movement, anything. It’s not that I want to make something out of someone or model them in a pose. The only instruction I give in advance is to bring some clothes in which they feel comfortable. And then I let my subjects sit, sometimes stand in front of the camera and wait until they are aware of themselves. It is a moment of introspection. Sometimes it happens quickly, sometimes not immediately and sometimes not at all. It is the dynamics that arise between the two of us. It is like a dance in which I try to move with the flow.
