mullitover: Interview over at Mullitover
JONATHAN CHERRY: What gets you out of bed in the morning?
JIM COWAN: Not a lot. I love sleep far too much.
JC: Are there any emerging artists inspiring you at the moment?
JC: I love finding new work on Flickr and in blogs that I follow, but it’s generally very different from the work I produce myself. In terms of work I enjoy, it’s artists like Joe Nigel Coleman, the kind that can focus their cameras on their everyday life and capture the feeling that grab my eye.
Work I find inspiring in relation to my own work is generally a bit darker in mood, and often not from emerging artists. I love the deeply dark work of Sally Mann, where she uses wet collodian plates and long exposures to create her haunting portraits and landscapes. Also Bill Viola’s video work has played a big influence recently, with his symbolic references to birth, death and rebirth. It’s tempting me towards trying moving pieces in my next body of work.
JC: What is your current project all about?
JC: I’ve just finished the third chapter in a body of work that explores the relationship between the human form and its mind. I’ve become fascinated with how the two combine after reading Alfred Doblin’s views on the death mask (a cast made of a person’s head after their death). He wrote that in its lines and wrinkles you could see the life journey of the person. It’s a metaphorical view, but it’s true that we create so much of a person’s character just from the way they look.
In my work I focus on recreating the moment when the two merge and separate, the spark of life and the drain of death, the ambiguous instant between.
JC: What draws you to portraiture?
JC: My relationship with portraiture is a love/hate one. I used to avoid portraiture, photographing people was too unpredictable, they were in charge of what was revealed in the photograph, rather than me. But it got to a point where I couldn’t explore my thoughts without using the human form in my work, so I  began using models, but creating my own realities for them. My work is fictional portraiture, with the forms emphasising a greater point, rather than the characteristics of the individual.
JC: What started your photography off?
JC: I’m not sure on the exact moment, but I remember a few things that influenced the progression of my photography. The morning before school when I wore contact lenses for the first time, and saw the branches of our neighbours tree in a detail that I didn’t think existed… That has stuck with me. At the time it didn’t make me grab the first camera I saw, but I think it made me want to capture things that I hadn’t noticed before that point.
The day my friend introduced me to the website DeviantArt, back when I didn’t have much to put on it, it was the push that made me want to photograph more, and to hear people’s views on the pictures I made.
And I think the final marker was for my A-Levels fine art exam, I used some of my photographs as references for my paintings. My teacher hated the paintings and suggested that I use the photographs instead, (this was back when I saw photography and fine art as two separate entities) I think realising that there is no definitive line between the two was an important moment.
JC: Any advice to recent photography graduates?
JC: I fit into this camp myself, so there’s only so much advice I can give. But I’ve had a lot of support from people who have survived the dark days of post graduation, and the emphasis is don’t panic! … Just keep creating the work that you enjoy making, and show it to those who enjoy seeing it, and things will happen.
JC: I’m going to be in the first photographic book over at Show Me Pictures soon. There are a good few interesting photographers and writers involved, so should be well worth a look!
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