WESLEY VERHOEVE. 01

Interviews

Aug 24

“NOTICE” and beyond

AMSTERDAM — NETHERLANDS

He is a renowned editorial and environmental portrait photographer and has shot for the likes of National Geographic, New York Magazine and Apple. Over the course of 4 months, 123 daily photo walks and 1236kms Wesley was unknowingly forming what would become his latest body of work ‘Notice’ . This photo book explores how the intentional slowing down of time can help us be more creative and accomplish bigger goals. Wesley joins us to discuss ‘Notice’ and his journey as a Film Photographer.

Published on 24th August 2021

Tell us a little bit about yourself. Where did the journey of photography and in particular film photography start for you?

Really early on, my father was a photographer. So I grew up just playing with my Legos underneath the desk of the dark room in my house, you know in the red light while my dad was agitating and dodging and burning. And that was just, you know, in the attic of our house and that's basically where the seed was planted. And then of course, as I got older, I started going on photo walks with my dad and the first camera that I used was my dad's Canon 81 which is still a great camera all these years later. Then at some point he bought me my first camera, which was the praktica which is an Eastern German camera. I still have the strap and it says Kodak on it really huge, It's very cool.

I know that you often shoot with a Pentax but what gear are you using currently? Do you have an array of cameras or do you keep it minimal?

Well, I've kept it minimal, In the worst kind of way. I do have quite a few cameras but I've managed to cut down to only one camera - per type of camera. So I have one 6x7, one 6x6, one 6x4.5, one type of 35 mm camera manual focus, one type of 35 mm auto Focus. So like in each bracket I have narrowed it down to one camera but I have multiple copies of some of those cameras just to be able to have backups and stuff like that. Yeah, but my true love Camera wise is the Pentax 6x7. That's my baby.

Can you share your 35mm cameras with us?

I shoot all of my 35mm camera photos pretty much with the Pentax LX, which is a camera that I highly recommend people do not buy because it's a dramatic camera. I love it, it's almost like an abusive relationship. Because they always break I have three of them just to be able to keep two going at the same time. They need repairs quite often, because they have certain electronics that are tricky after all these years. Because they're 40 year old cameras, they have a mirror problem where the mirror starts sticking, which can be fixed. But it's like they're a dream and a nightmare of a camera. So I always tell people if they're curious about exploring a Pentax 35mm, just get an MX. It’s not quite the same but you can shoot all the same glass and it's a great camera.

Have you developed an understanding of how to self process and scan film? Or do you have a close relationship with a film lab?

Well, as a kid I learned how to do all this stuff in the darkroom, including developing, dodging, burning and hand printing. But these days, I work with labs Just to save the time. I think it's such a specific art form - developing and hand printing and even scanning, it’s a real skill. I've decided and I'm lucky to be able to decide to leave that work to experts in that field and focus my energy on being the best photographer that I can be. Not picking up those adjacent skills that are super important and impressive. I'd rather work together with other people that know how to do that really well.

In your time in the darkroom and picking up those skills from a manual perspective, has that shaped the way you see a frame? Do you have a certain perspective that you probably wouldn't have had without the darkroom?

I'm not sure because I did it so long ago but I'm sure it doesn't hurt. Like I said it's a way to get even closer to controlling everything about the image. So I always admire when people do take the time to take it from soup to nuts, as they say. To not only take the photo, but do everything about the developing, do the scanning, do the hand printing. I think it's super cool, I just don't have the time for it. So I don't know if it affects how I shoot necessarily, but I guess it does affect how I I get pretty extensive notes to my labs in terms of how I want things to come out.

And yes, based on colour and contrast really it's based on those two things. But it's also based on “Oh I’ve overexposed the pushing, maybe I'm pulling it, maybe I'm pushing something.” But I'm very specific, it could be like a third of a stop. I’m very particular about how those kinds of things play out to kind of get the result that I want. But most of it is actually not so much about the developing but about the scanning. What I want the scan to look like.

“I had to flip everything upside down, instead of running around a busy center of a city, I was now walking very slowly in a very quiet suburban area. There were no people on the street, and instead of taking portraits, I had to start looking at other things and kind of slow myself down.”

You've just released a new photo book, it's called “Notice”. Why don’t you share with us your journey with this book and how it came to be, because it's an important story.

It was not planned, and it was not intentional. So what happened was, I was in the middle of traveling across the globe pre pandemic. I was living in different cities for three months at a time. In Tokyo, Berlin, and then got to Vancouver, Canada. I was supposed to be there for three months, but then about one month in the whole country locked down because the pandemic happened. I was kind of stuck there, technically I could have left but going back to New York at that point in time was not a good idea. That's when New York was kind of the worst part of it all. So I ended up being there in Vancouver for about five months in a suburban neighborhood.

My general practice of photography is being in busy city centres. Running around, noticing people stopping them, having a chat, taking their portrait, writing their information down and just kind of getting to know a city that way. Of course during the pandemic, in lockdown everything was closed. No one was on the street plus I was in a suburb, which is not a place that I would have chosen for myself. But in hindsight, I'm very glad I was.

What happened was, I had to flip everything upside down, instead of running around a busy center of a city, I was now walking very slowly in a very quiet suburban area. There were no people on the street, and instead of taking portraits, I had to start looking at other things and kind of slow myself down.

It became a daily photowalk habit, it became a kind of anchoring meditation. We were living in this unsure world and all my jobs got canceled. I couldn't really go anywhere and this became kind of a daily routine for me - same time, same time of day and the same camera. I would just walk around and for about two -three hours a day and slow myself down to notice specific bits of beauty around myself I would have usually run right past because I was focussed on other things. In this case I had to just do the opposite. I had to slow down and look for beautiful little things that are typically maybe mundane, but are actually super beautiful. I discovered that this “boring” suburb was actually a universe full of little bits of beauty. I started photographing those bits of beauty and then like I said, it just started as a daily habit.

After a couple of weeks, I was like, well, this is kind of interesting. My photography is kind of changing. This is an interesting approach. I enjoy it and maybe I can make some prints because like I said, my jobs were cancelled. I was trying to figure out another way of bringing income in with photography. So I was like, Well, some of these are pretty good. Maybe I can make some prints. Then a couple more weeks went by and I was like, well, maybe it could be zine and then a couple more weeks went by and I wonder if I have enough for a book - that would be really cool.

I did 123 days in a row of these walks which ended up being more than 1200 kms of walking just in that one neighborhood. And if you would have told me beforehand “for your next project, you have to walk 1200 kms in the same neighborhood” I would have probably been like “Yeah, I don't think that's happening.” That's one of the main lessons for me from this project. If you do something every day, if you take small steps every day towards a certain goal, even if you don't necessarily know what that goal is beforehand, it really adds up. I could have never predicted that I would ever walk that much in one neighborhood. But because I only did it one day at a time, two or three hours at a time, It just ended up compounding into this body of work of about 35,000 photos and that became this book.

What is your mindset on learning how to see, or how can others take from the approach that you have and glean off of it?

I think it's definitely unique to each person. So the way I see is not is not how you see, it's not how anyone sees. But we all have our unique points of view. And they're all worthy and interesting. I think we can all get better at seeing our own way. Practise seeing and practise noticing not trying to see like other people. But honing in on what you notice. Because you might notice something super beautiful and I'll see the photo and be like “Oh, I would not have approached it that way I would have not seen that part”. Maybe I would have stepped one meter to the right and took a picture of that other thing there. That's so cool about photography, that it's our point of view and I think it's really fun and worthwhile to try to develop our own point of view. And always be noticing things, always be practicing even if we don't have our camera on us.

What was your favourite aspect of making “Notice”?

Being a photographer can be quite a solitary profession, or even as a hobby, really. And that's one of the things I love so much about the analog community, that it's so easy to meet nice people that have similar interests. One of my favourite parts about making the book is I can't make this book on my own. This is a very high end product that involves so many crafts, people of various kinds that do things that I can't do and do them really well. And so, this is a collaborative project.

Dan Rubin designed it, Craig Mod wrote an essay for it, Jessica Hische designed a logo mark for it. I did zooms with 20 of my photography friends, including Willem who you mentioned earlier, to go through my selections. Because, after you go through 35,000 images it's very difficult to bring ‘em down to 84 images, and have a proper perspective still. So once I brought it down to 300 images, I started to setting up these zoom calls. I would do a screen share, and go through the images and look at what they reacted to, and that was really fun and a great way to curate the selection. So I think my favourite part was all of the collaborations with all the wonderful people that were part of this project.

Order your copy of the photo book Notice whilst they’re available

Co-founder of The Observers, Verhoeve has interviewed over 50 visionary photographers about their favourite photo books.

Wesley also publishes a newsletter every Sunday called Process, about photography and finding your voice.

website: http://wesley.co
Instagram: @wesley

Interview by Stuart Henry of Shoot Film Magazine

Full length Video interview coming soon to Youtube