S3, E2 - Roland Ramanan

Roland Ramanan is a photographer and musician based in London, England. He's currently working on a couple of projects, and has recently used Kickstarter to help publish a book on Kickstarter which tells the story of a unique public space in East London - Gillett Square. The episode was recorded on the 4 October 2023.

Website: http://rolandramanan.com/
Insta: @rolandramanan, @rolandramanan_skaters

Podcast details:
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Transcript

0:16

Welcome listeners to Artist Tales, the podcast that features and celebrates artists from different walks of life. I'm your host Heather Martin, and in this episode I'm speaking with Roland Ramanan, a London-based photographer and musician. Welcome Roland. Hi Heather, how are you doing? I'm good thank you, how are you doing? I am good. I've straightened my back a little bit, which means a little bit less roller skating than I would like. Ah. But otherwise I am… very well. Good. Very good. And I hope you're back heals quickly. Thanks. So tell me a little bit more about, I mean, I've said you were, you're both a photographer and musician. So tell me a little bit more about both of those and how you got into them. So a musician, I've been a musician for a long time. So I took up the trumpet when I was about 10 years old, I think something like that. So I played the trumpet for a long time. My father was a jazz musician on London jazz scene. His name was Sheik Keane and he played with a musician called Joe Harriot, who was famous in the late 50s and 60s on the London jazz scene. I didn't know him very much as I was growing up because he left to work in Germany, went back to St Vincent in the Caribbean when I was very young, so I didn't know him growing up, but I knew his music. So through my mother I knew his music, I knew his records and his poetry in fact. So I played the trumpet but not as a profession but certainly as a passion. I played a lot of purely improvised music. And the photography came much later. I was always interested, I think, in the visual arts. But I had a job as a, well I did a science degree then I had a job as a teacher. Dabbled in painting as a hobby for a very short time. And then I was travelling to India principally because my mother had spent some time in India when she was young and I wanted to get a decent And that is kind of where it started. And I remembered at the time that, oh, I knew a photographer from a book group that I used to go to in Hackney. And this photographer's name was David Gibson. And he described himself as a street photographer. I had no idea what that was. And then when I came back from India, I looked up his work and I was kind of astonished at his way of looking at the world, how kind of visually quirky and unusual it was. And I'd never thought of doing that before. And I realized I could just walk out the door with my camera. and look for these kind of different views of reality. And it became a kind of obsession. And it was just after the big boom in street photography, that street photography now had been published and street photography on Flickr was massive. And I kind of joined in on that, kind of just after the beginning of that. I wasn't particularly great at street photography, I have to say. you need a certain knack to get a really good street photo for it all to come together. And so I began to drift into another project. I met a great photographer called Mimi Malika who said I needed to get some more content in my work, I had some nice pictures but I needed content. I will not attempt to replicate his Sicilian accent, he will probably kill me. But that set me to thinking about where can I get content from and I... knew of a place in Hackney in London called the Vortex Jazz Club and where it's situated is in this very unusual square, this space which is called Gillett Square and various things go on there. There are studio, there are workshops, there's a jazz club. It's an odd sort of place run by a cooperative but also people hang out there and there were lots of street drinkers, for want of a better word, who were kind of hanging out there. and I started to sit down and talk to them and get to know them and to listen to their stories. And I think it was around the time I was getting more interested in social documentary photography and I think that's what I had at the back of my mind when I started the project. And I kind of started the project without really much idea about where it might go, but it started to develop. This is around sort of 2013, something like that. And again, that sort of took over as my kind of main obsession and my main vehicle for photography and then the street photography melted away and this social documentary project grew and grew. And from hanging out in the square and taking pictures mainly in the square of what was happening, as I started to get to know people better, I would then get invited to events, to parties, to... what are called nine nights, which is a celebration after someone has died in the Caribbean community. Or in one case I was invited to a funeral. So it's this woman and her mother had died and they asked me to take pictures at the funeral. So all sorts of things, kind of going into people's lives, into their homes. I just found it kind of fascinating and humbling and sometimes a bit scary. But yeah, that's kind of where it started. differentiate street photography and social photography? I mean street photography is all about a single moment. Now it's all about that one picture and that single moment and how everything comes together in that single picture, whether it's to do with the beauty of that moment or the humor or the quirkiness. Street photography covers a whole range and of course you've got people like Henri Cartier-Bresson who were described in one way as as street photographers, but really they're also documentary photographers. If you take a lot of photographs which are usually candid, usually in public or in public places and put them together on a theme, then you get documentary, like Stephen Shaw, for example. So it's kind of a blurry dividing line. But the The kind of photography I started to do was very much to do with engaging with people, so I would be talking to people, listening to them. So for a lot of the time they knew that I was photographing them, so I think that's kind of where the difference is. And with my photography there was always a very specific intent to shine a light on their lives and their story. So it sounds like it's more the relationship and the personalities or the kind of relationship that you have with the people you're photographing? I think so. I mean, you know, when I was doing street photography, I didn't enjoy it, but I think in the end, you know, because I was not, I wasn't kind of, it wasn't kind of satisfying me, you know, maybe because I wasn't winning prizes for the street photography or, you know, I wasn't being kind of lauded for my, you know. street photography which is fair enough. But I also found very quickly when I went out with my camera to do street photography that I actually quite enjoyed engaging with people. I mean I'm a naturally shy type of person. I usually walk out the door and not look to the left or right or say anything to anyone. Typical grumpy old man. But when I'm with my camera it's kind of a different thing. It gives you a license to talk to people and for them... maybe to relax in front of you, unless they really don't want to be photographed, but it also makes you more relaxed with people as well. It makes you more confident, in a sense, to talk to people. So the fact of listening to people's stories and engaging with them was a huge part of it. Definitely is something that I still really enjoy. And even now, if I look at other people's photographs, I find it very hard to be interested if there's no people in the photographs. I need to get a sense of who people are. know, where they come from, what they're about, what's their story to be, you know, to be engaged. That's, you know, that's just me. So it really sounds like the motivation for you is the people, the relationships, people's stories, that sort of thing. So that's kind of what you're drawn to? Definitely. I mean, I think with the Gillett Square work, it was definitely about, you know, trying to kind of delve into people's stories. I mean, you know, in Gillett Square, there's a dark side to people's lives. And I think As a documentarian, often you're drawn to the dark side. You're interested in what has happened to people, why their lives have taken that path. But I think all the time you're doing that in relation to yourself, I think whether you're consciously or not consciously. So if you look at my two major projects, so the Gillett Square documentary work and the one I'm doing now about roller skaters, they're very, very different in their outlook, but they're both about identity. and the more I kind of thought about it, I haven't, this is, you know, kind of only occurring to me recently, but they're about, they're both about identity, but they're also about my identity. So they were about my identity as a black person as well. So if I look back at the people I've been documenting in Domino's, the book is going to be called Domino's, the Gila Square work, drawn to, you know, people from the Afro-Caribbean community, you know, in... in particular. And again, that's probably something to do with my own upbringing or my father not being around and wanting to kind of explore those kind of identities. So that's something which is always lurking there, whether you're aware of it or not, when you kind of look back at who you choose to photograph or you choose to focus on. I think there is an element there that's very important about identity. So it sounds in a way that you're kind of searching out those communities, the Caribbean. I don't want to say Afro-Caribbean because I don't know if that's the correct term, but certainly the Caribbean communities to kind of understand where you came from. Yeah. I mean, certainly, you know, the Black community and within both communities, whether it's Black African or Afro-Caribbean, I don't know whether I kind of seek them out consciously, but that's the way it's happened. So with my kind of project I'm doing at the moment, which is roller skaters and roller skate culture, a lot of that is about the expression of black culture and that's probably why I've stuck with that project and why it's, you know, why it's so interesting for me. So, you know, photographing roller skaters in my, you know, in my local park. Roller skating is a, is kind of a huge culture in itself, you know, takes in lots of, you know, different cultural backgrounds and aspects, but it's... strongest expression in London certainly is within the black community. That's where the innovation lies, kind of the greatest sort of physical expression, expression of music if you like. So that's what I'm drawn to. That's what I'm, you know, personally I'm kind of interested in. LARISA Yeah, and I don't know much about roller skating myself. I only came across them as I was kind of reading a little bit about you before this interview. So, I mean, is it kind of a subculture? I mean, I know there's, you know, roller skating and not roller skating, the skaters, you know, the skateboarders, sorry. That's what I was thinking. And that I'm probably a bit more familiar with because certainly in London, you know, there's on the South Bank, you know, they're quite prominent. They have a little area that they have. Roller skating, you know, it's at least for me being a white person, it's not as visible. And I'm just wondering. What is the cult? You've mentioned music and that sort of thing. So I'm just a bit more interested to learn a bit more about it. Yeah. I mean, it wasn't visible to me either, but it's one of those things that once you see it, you see it everywhere. Now, to some extent, that's because it really took off in the pandemic because it was something that people could do outside. But for those people that have been doing it for a long time, for example, there's a Friday night skate and a Sunday skate that go from Hyde Park every week and it's going to skate through London. mainly people on rollerblades, but it also includes, you know, quad skaters. So I'm interested in photographing people who are on, you know, the old-fashioned four wheels on each foot, the quad skates. So I live in Hackney in London and there's a park there called Victoria Park, and I would be doing my daily exercise, my walk around the park during the pandemic, and I saw people on roller skates. But they were in one corner and they were mainly dancing, so they were what? which is usually turned jam skating or rhythm skating. And I had just never seen this. I had just never seen that before. Obviously I knew what roller skating was, but I never knew anyone who roller skated. So I thought this was really cool. And I started to chat to them. And I had the idea of taking a few pictures just as a kind of a pastime, just to kind of keep my hand in kind of thing. And... The more I got into it, the more I realized this was a fascinating culture. I mean, I'm not sure I would use the word subculture, but it's a culture. And the roller skaters, you know, particularly during the pandemic, they found all sorts of spaces, you know, often car parks, supermarket car parks, or they'd be street skating as well as roller rinks, roller discos. So they would use those, you know, those ad hoc spaces as their stage, if you like, and they're kind of in a way of expressing themselves, whether that was weaving through crowds or, you know. straight skating in the street or you know practicing moves in the car park. So I discovered a whole culture, dance skating you know was influenced strongly by roller skate culture in the United States for example and that's you know still a massive influence for London skaters. So I would find myself you know up in a car park where people were practicing till three o'clock in the morning going all over London and I started finding out about you know who were the kind of older statesmen, states people. of the roller skating world and I would be interviewing them and doing portraits of them and all sorts of things like this. I created my own separate Instagram account for the skating project and that really worked very well because the roller skaters, they live on Instagram so I actually get a lot more engagement through that Instagram account than I do for my main photography one. So yes, I'm very well known now within the roller skate culture. in the roller skate scene in London anyway. They've embraced me and it's been fascinating and that I would definitely like to also to make into a book. I need to get the Dominoes to Killett Square one done first but the roller skate one is definitely worthy of a book I think and I have lots of material on it. So yes, again, identity and culture is a strong kind of part of that. But you know, I would say that roller skating in London is incredibly inclusive. That's the great thing about it. So, you know, whatever race, gender, sexual orientation you are, it's, you know, it's very, very inclusive, you know, which is, which is fantastic. Very, you know, kind of very welcoming, which is something that I wanted to, you know, to really emphasize in my, you know, in my work as well. And the roller skaters, they were asking me, you know, when are you going to learn to roller skate? And I said, there is no way you are gonna get me on roller skates. That is not happening because I have no background whatsoever in skateboarding or well, kind of like any sport whatsoever basically. But they wore me down and they said, you've at least got to try it. This is typical of roller skaters. It's a family, you've got to give it a go. Can't just sit on the sidelines. So last year around May time, I gave it a go, started to do it. and I have to say it is pretty addictive. So I am really enjoying it. So I try to skate most days if I can. I'm not that great, but you know, at least I'm kind of beyond being a beginner. So I can, you know, skate around, stop, turn, stuff like that, which is great. But I don't, I'm not yet brilliant at photographing and skating at the same time. I kind of, I leave that to the experts. And within, you know, You should do some interviews with roller skaters because roller skaters are incredibly talented people. So many of them are artists in their own right or photographers, videographers, yoga practitioners. It really does attract people who are, you know, who are very creative, very talented, a very positive mindset. It's very interesting, very interesting. I'll definitely look into that. So thanks for the suggestion. So I'm just, you know, listening to it's just really fascinating. You know, and certainly I'm conscious with kind of documentary photography, the social photography. There's a very fine line between being really sensitive to, you know, the subject matter and particularly thinking of is it Jalit Square, that the stuff you're doing there, but probably even with the roller skating, you know, being, you know, sensitive to the subjects and slipping into being a bit voyeur or a bit exploitative. So how do you manage that? The Domino's book based in Gillett Square, I'm dealing with people who have mental health issues. Some of them are drug addicts, some of them are passed away, some of them are deeply alcoholic. So they are issue affected people and some of them are very vulnerable. So you just have to be constantly asking yourself those questions and you have to be open to being challenged on those questions and try and do the best you can. One advantage for me is I'm kind of doing the project in my spare time over a long period of time. So I'm getting to know people over 10 years. So I can be much more sure that they know me, they trust me, they have an idea of what it is that I'm trying to do and trying to achieve. So I'm showing them a lot of the work as I'm going along. I think you also have to be honest with yourself that for this type of work... you have to be honest with yourself, the type of work that I'm doing. So there's kind of two parts to it. One part is your ongoing engagement with the people. And that for me has involved things like giving them prints, giving them, you know, kind of snapshots of them and their loved ones, talking to them, listening to them, kind of, you know, helping them. So there's that. aspect of participation and engagement over a long period of time. And then there's a, you know, there may be some kind of product, which is photographs which are in print or a book. So although I'm talking about the book, the book is that in a sense, it's just a tiny part of it. It's a kind of an end product. And you have to be honest with yourself that for a book like that, you are the final author, the final arbiter. So yes, there's a degree of participation with the subjects, but in the end, you're the one making the editorial decisions and you have to be responsible with that. So there are photographs that were in the final edit that even now it's up for discussion between me and the person involved and my book designer and publisher as to whether they'll be in or not because there might be a danger of exploitation or... the impression of exploitation, or just simply I've caught up with someone and be able to show them the, I've been a book dummy, show them the dummy, and they're not happy. They're not happy with certain pictures being in there, and I absolutely have to respect that. So yeah, so I think there is no easy answer, but you have to be honest that the power dynamic always favours you, the photographer, in that situation, and that's a responsibility that you have to take seriously. Obviously other projects... lean much more towards mutual participation. And I also think there's a kind of a sliding scale. So for example, you could be doing a project where, you're not taking any photographs at all. You're enabling other people to take photographs and you're giving, you're helping them to organize their own exhibition. So my work is not that, although I really admire people that do that. So you have to be honest with yourself. I think if you are gonna be the final author and you are the ones making decisions. about which pictures are going to be put out there and think about what will the effect be on that person, on their family, or if there are children, you know, how they're going to view those pictures in later years. At the same time, you want to highlight some really serious issues, at least I do anyway, and you can't do that unless you show some serious pictures. So I've always took my inspiration from that, from a photographer called Eugene probably one of the greatest social documentary photographers from the United States. So yeah, a big inspiration for me. LARISSA So it sounds like your process leans more heavily on the collaborative dialogue engagement and as you see over a period of time rather than a bang going in for a short period of time, bang, taking a whole lot of pictures and then heading off. do both. He managed to go in for a very short time and, you know, engage very deeply with people. But I think, you know, he's a uniquely talented individual. But yeah, I was kind of lucky in the sense that I wasn't, you know, commissioned to do it for a very short period of time. I could do it in my own time and take a long time about it. So I think, you know, that it was a massive advantage in terms of being able to grow that trust and, you know, in kind of engagement, if you like. projects. Do you have any other projects you might be thinking of or have you done other projects in the past? Yeah, so I've done, you know, got a bit some pieces of things in the past, one of which was collaborating with a group called 24 Photography. Now they are a group of 24 photographers who are doing a 24-year project. So every New Year's Eve, they document the first 24 hours of the new year. So... Each photographer is allocated one hour of the 24 hour clock in that very first day of the new year and they have to photograph, they have to get out there and photograph something which they think represents the new year at that time but only strictly during that one hour window. So they have been doing that and I'm trying to remember what year they're up to. There must be around something like around year 19, something like that. So I was only in it for a short time, only two or three years. But that was a great, you know, kind of project to do. And the last time I was doing it was kind of in the pandemic. So sometimes I was shooting through neighbors windows or, you know, doing it inside the house or kind of whatever. One year I was in India, which was actually great because it gave me a much better time window because the hour you're allocated has to be in Greenwich Mean Time. So I think I was given three o'clock in the morning, which was, you know, like nine o'clock in the morning, you know, where I was in India, which was great. So that was kind of a lot of fun. and they have an exhibition in Soho Square every February, so that was kind of lovely to do. And I was also involved with another 24-hour project with two other colleagues. And what we did was we took a theme and basically took pictures for every hour of the 24-hour clock, but it didn't have to be within one day, it could be spread over weeks. So the first one was a 24-hour bagel shop. So we were there photographing, maybe we had photographs at one o'clock in the morning, two o'clock in the morning, all the way around the 24 hour clock, which was so interesting to see who comes into the bagel shop in Brick Lane at three o'clock in the morning. Families, construction workers, all sorts of people. We also did the metro, the underground, when it started to go 24 hours at the weekend. That was a lot of fun. It was like one big party down in the underground. So yeah, various things like that. And of course, the street photography. But in a sense, I tend to stick with one main thing at a time. So it's been the Gillett Square Domino's work, and now it's the roller skaters, which is all consuming. So trying to expand that project by taking some of them into the studio, which has been very interesting. So to do work which is completely different, taking some skaters into the studio to do black and white portraits and interviewing them. about challenges that they've had to overcome in their lives or how roller skating has kind of helped them. So that's, yeah, been very interesting to kind of expand the project in that way and also sort of, you know, stretch my skills, if you like. Now, going back to some of the discussion at the beginning of this episode, I mean, I did mention you're a musician and you mentioned that you played the trumpet and that you kind of have done other art stuff as well. How much of that? has influenced you in terms of your photography? Oh, that is a really good question. I mean, I wouldn't, yeah. Sorry, I feel like I put you in the spot. No, no, it's a very good question. I think it's tied together in the sense that the music that I love or that I hold dearest is jazz and improvised music. And again, that is also partly bound up with identity. But it also links in with aspects of black culture. So, particularly culture that comes to us from the United States as well, in terms of how we view jazz musicians and our kind of interest in that culture. And in a way that also, in your mind's eye, you kind of picture these black and white photographs of these jazz musicians and it sort of strikes a visual chord as well. So if you think of the incredible black and white photography of the Blue Note records, for example, so there is a kind of a tie in terms of that style and that kind of cultural milieu, I think, which is kind of linked together. And the other aspect that comes, that kind of touches on it is the kind of fantastical and mystical nature some aspects of jazz. If you think of Sun Ra or John Coltrane or people like that, there's, you know, for want of a better word, there's going to be an Afro-futurist or spiritual, you know, kind of aspect to it. And I think that comes into the photography. And I think I've certainly noticed it in some of the roller skate photography. Again, that's not something I'm consciously trying to do. It's just something I notice when I look at it. So I kind of look at some of the pictures that I gravitate. to that I've taken in roller rinks where you have these, you know, incredible sort of lights and sometimes lasers and these incredible performances and costumes. And I think, oh, wow, that really kind of reminds me of a sort of Afro futuristic, you know, kind of style. So I think, you know, these things are kind of linked if only kind of, you know, indirectly. So. being interested in that type of music means you're interested in improvisation, in making things up with your own kind of resources, doing things in your own way. So, and that applies to visual culture as well, I think. Lyle And what other influences have you had on your photography? Richard So, I mean, the photography, I talked about street photography, which is, you know, which is my first love in photography. And there was a book called Street Photography Now, which was kind of my bible for a while. And although I've, you know, drifted away from street photography, it's street photography that introduced me to a lot of, you know, photographers like Elliot Erwitt or, you know, Cartier Bresson, you know, Stephen Shaw and so on. As I got more into social documentary photography, it was probably Eugene Richard, which was the really the kind of the standout influence for me. So books like you know, just absolutely fascinated by the, you know, the way that he combined a visual language with a, yeah, a kind of soulfulness, you know, which is something I kind of still strive for. Learning about people like Gordon Parks, for example, you know, one of the kind of really first great African-American photographers, and I'm still exploring the range and the depth of the work that he produced is quite incredible. Also photographers like Dawood Bay as well. looking at his work in terms of portraiture and community in the States. Favourites and influences, you know, sometimes it just tends to be what I'm looking at most recently. So, closer to home for people in London, I don't know if it's still on, but they can go to the Photographers' Gallery and see work by a photographer called Johnny Pitts. Johnny Pitts did a book called Home is Not a Place, where he joined forces with a poet who went round the coast of the UK looking at his... impressions of black communities as he went round the coast of the United Kingdom. And both the combination of the poetry and the photography is really inspiring. It's really soulful and atmospheric and sort of subtly subversive as well. So that's great. That's something that, you know, a book I've kind of looked at very carefully and really lovely photographs. He did another book called, what's it called, it's called Afropeans, I think, where he was kind of looking... traveling around Europe and looking at black culture through his own unique lens and reflecting his own background. So he's kind of a big favorite at the moment. And where, I mean, it might be difficult to kind of answer this because I know you're starting, or I don't know if starting is the right word, but you're progressing certainly with the Domino's book, but also with the roller skating. Where do you think that might take you? So, well, With Domino's and Gillett Square work, it's hard to see beyond the fact that I'm doing a Kickstarter to raise funds for the book and to get it published. So it's difficult to see beyond that. It would be great to think that recognition for doing the Domino's book would lead to other work in that vein, in that kind of genre. So socially responsible photography or... working with community groups maybe or working with issue affected groups possibly or doing workshops you know kind of around those themes you know would be great but I realize that the you know the landscape for you know being paid to do photography at the moment is you know is very difficult so we shall you know we shall see but I think you know what I will have is a book I can be proud of and also I can be proud to show to the participants as well because they want to see their you know their story. reflected, not the whole story, but as part of their story. So yeah, and the roller skate project, I'd like to make that into a book. I mean, hopefully if the Domino's project goes well, that will make it more likely that I can get the roller skate book done. My ambition with the roller skate book is to break even. I definitely won't break even with the Domino's, but I might break even with the roller skate book. So, and obviously that's a more kind of celebratory and joyous subject matter. So. So again, that might lead possibly to some commissioned work that's related to that, which would be nice, but we shall see. Well, thank you, Roland. It's been really quite fascinating to hear you speak about your projects and what you're doing and also how you got into photography as well. So thank you. Thank you. Yeah, it's been a pleasure. It's been a really interesting chat. Lovely. Thanks for listening to this episode with Roland. I hope you enjoyed listening to it. More information about Roland, including his social media handles, is in the podcast notes. I'd really appreciate it if you could rate and review the podcast and the podcast apps. In the next episode, I speak with Neula O'Sullivan, who is a Film Festival director and runs the Women Over 50 Film Festival. Here is a clip of her conversation. I wrote a short film. And it was the experience of, because I was also the producer of that short film, which is called Microscope, and my job was to try and find festivals that we could enter the film into. And then I started going to more film festivals and it was there that I saw, or rather I didn't see representations of me either on screen or in the room. and I am now 61 years old. And at the time when I was doing that, I was in my early 50s, I can't remember, 51, 52. So it was really my first experience of the invisibility of the older woman, the middle-aged woman. And I thought, actually, I want to do something about that. I want to create a festival where people aren't being made to feel marginalized or ignored. I look forward to you joining us in the next episode.