In Creative Conversations with James Whiting
We return with our Creative Conversation Series.
We are back with edition three of our Creative Conversation series, a space to learn more about our community, dive into the rituals, creative lives and bathing habits of artists, writers and creatives we admire. This time, we sat down with James Whiting, photographer and artist. James shares his relationship with water and movement and how he uses them to inspire creative thinking.
James Whiting (He/Him) is a photographer and artist based in Naarm (Melbourne), Australia, working in text and art direction too. He has published artist books, exhibited work locally and globally. He also currently co-directs Good Sport Magazine.
SOS: Hey James, wonderful to have you. We love the tender, poetic nature of your work. Where do you do most of your creative thinking, and what do you do to inspire yourself?
Hello! Wonderful to be here. That’s very kind, thank you.
My thinking space for anything creative seems so inconsistent and surprising even, but when I’m out running by myself – that’s always somewhere I can count on to a degree and where things seem to ‘happen’ most. Thinking feels more streamlined and concentrated whilst moving like that. There isn’t really any room to procrastinate there and I think I’m the most direct and honest with myself. After absorbing so much through my day to day, while running I find I can really just cut to the point and figure out what I really mean.
Inspiration has been a bit elusive recently – I think I’ve been quite frustrated in that respect. I feel like I’m seeing so many things that feel tired and obvious, or just not my taste. There are a few milestone artists that I’ll always re-engage with when I’m feeling a bit lost – Broomberg & Chanarin, Miranda July, Mike Mills, Taryn Simon and Geoff McFetridge being some of the names at the top of that list. Looking into Installation and sculpture art, looking at any of the artists represented by Webber, and particularly paying close attention to song lyrics and music really reignites me. The feelings that I get from these things are so unexplainably tangible to me. I think I’m most inspired by anything that just really hits me in the chest. Anything with a degree of tension or unexpected beauty that leaves me with questions to ask, instead of something that just gives you all of the answers.
Photographs by James Whiting, a creative response to the bathhouse
SOS: When did you start using photography as a tool to create art and what led you to it?
It’s kind of funny actually – I was introduced to photography when I was overseas with my family, I was maybe 14, and my Uncle had an early Nikon digital camera which wasn’t like any camera I’d seen before. He let me have a go at taking some pictures on it, but I can’t actually remember how I felt about it at first. He also let my little brother have a go at it too, and everyone seemed to like his pictures way more than mine, which I naively found infuriating, haha. I think that small and self-manufactured sense of competition probably spurred me on to pick up that camera for a second time, and a third, and fourth, until a more pure curiosity of visual investigation overwrote that initial motivation.
After that trip I came home, enrolled in a photography class at high school for the following year and my step-grandfather gave me a Minolta 35mm SLR from 1995 that I started to use religiously, taking it out skating with mates, to DIY shows that my friends and I would organize.. From then on I was in the school darkroom every chance I could get, developing rolls, making prints, nicking rolls of film and probably annoying the heck out of my art teacher.
SOS: It seems that movement of the body is a huge part of your work (and life), we might interpret your work as intimate moments of pause within larger movement or flow. How do you go about creating this? In your work and in your life?
I think that part of my work has to do with attention to detail, and challenging what it is that is given importance through the act of imaging. I often feel that there are so many details, moments, instances, possibilities that fall by the wayside due to expectation or familiarity creating a sort of tunnel vision on what ‘should’ be visualized, or what the ‘hero’ moment is. Often for me to create what I want to create, it calls for a sort of mining or curation of details, to locate something that I see as a touchpoint of an idea or feeling, or an image that forms a foundation where feeling can be injected into or built upon.
Finding that pause in my life is such a different experience, and to be honest probably something that I’ve lost my grip on a little. I feel like, along with a lot of people today, my attention span is shorter than it’s ever been, and my ability to be intentionally un-occupied, has taken a hit too. Most of the time I’m either sitting still and developing some work, with my mind racing, or my body is working hard, and my mind is at its stillest. Between my work and my movement practices, this kind of dichotomy works well for now, but I do hope to regain some ground on my ability to be more still as a whole.
Photographs by James Whiting, a creative response to the bathhouse
SOS: What’s your relationship with bathing? How has water, the ocean, the river, the rain, had an impact on your life?
I thought about this a lot when I visited Sense of Self for the first time. For the majority of this year, my relationship with bathing was purely performance driven. I was rehabilitating some injuries and went straight into building towards the Gold Coast marathon, and as I have done for any training block in the past, I was frequently using pools, ice baths and saunas. Bathing in this sense becomes a very strategic, goal and time-based activity – which I absolutely love – but in turn it can also become quite rigid. I actually found it to be a real challenge to switch out of that mindset when visiting the bath house for the first time. It was a nice push to leave any agenda behind and just relax into the space.
In general, water has been this funny sort of contradiction in my life.
I have always been way too scared to go on a lot of high flying theme-park rides and rollercoasters, but if any ride includes a water component, I’m in. Similarly when it comes to the ocean, I’ve had a strong fear of not being able to breathe, and consequently a fear of drowning, since I was quite young, yet any body of water seems to still get this strange free pass. Rain however always just meant that I couldn’t go skateboarding, haha.
SOS: Traditionally, the bathhouse is about communion. Is this something you had previously considered before visiting the bathhouse and, does knowing this shift how you may use the bathhouse or approach bathing in the future?
I’ve never really used or even considered the word communion until right now, but thinking more about it, it applies to so many instances of shared experience that I care deeply for. It’s really interesting to apply this to the bathhouse and the bathing experience in general. Especially coming from or out of my previous bathing experiences in training and recovery, which in nature and structure is very singular and self-focused, it’s enlightening to view the bathhouse through this new lens, as a much more shared and community-minded practice.
Photograph by James Whiting, a creative response to the bathhouse
SOS: Working as a creative can sometimes feel a little like an individual pursuit. How do you build togetherness and connection in your work/ life?
It really can, which feels quite disillusioning. I think one main thing that comes to mind is just communicating and being transparent with peers. A lot of little things like that really make a difference. When I was first starting out in the freelance world and working mostly as an assistant, there were a few instances where some photographers would say that they’re there to help and to be transparent, but when I’d ask about certain things like process and finances, what I was really asking about would remain hidden.
In contrast, between assistants – everyone really looks out for each other which has always meant a lot and is a value that I want to always hold on to. At the end of the day everyone is working hard to just pay their rent and make better and better work when they can.
Another thing as well is to just listen to people’s input, whoever they are. Still to this day, when I’m assisting, there are some sets I’m on where I have an idea or feedback but I have to bite my tongue to a degree because I know the photographer just wants their assistant to get the coffees, do all the heavy lifting and clean up. I can’t say that that’s ‘wrong’, but it’s not at all how I want to work. I love it when the talent says ‘Oh, what about this..’ or if an assistant says to me ‘It could be really cool if instead we..’. There are obviously some asterisks to where and when it’s possible to engage with this fully, but for the most part, that degree of openness is something I really strive to maintain. And I think those core values are mirrored in the greater world of life too. Whether it’s in training, playing music, interpersonally – just being generous, honest and supportive is such a simple catalyst for togetherness.
SOS: Lastly, tell us your dream body of water to shoot/bathe
About two years ago I was in Marseille, staying at a strange hostel, rooming with a 73 year-old man from America called Gene, who was amazed by my massage gun. In the bar downstairs on my first night, after watching an NBA game with Gene, I was hoping to meet some more people staying at the hostel and luckily, due to a bar crawl that had been canceled, the entire hostel was spread throughout the space. I interrupted some sort of game that revolved around loose change and an extremely strong Romanian liquor. After chatting for a while someone asked if I wanted to come with them the next day out to Les Calanques – a national park near Cassis. We took two trains, missed a bus and walked for what felt like forever before finally arriving at Calanque d’En-vau. We spent all day climbing around the gorge and jumping down into the bluest water I’ve ever seen. It was what I dreamt of when I first got on the plane overseas, and at the same time more perfect than I could have dreamt of. I could have flown home that night.
Photographs by James Whiting, a creative response to the bathhouse
Past Conversations
In Creative Conversation with Allee Richards
In Creative Conversation with Maria Angelico
In Creative Conversation with Katherine Brabon