S3, E4 - Frankie McAllister

Frankie McAllister is a Northern Irish photographer based in London and is a member of London Independent Photography. She currently is working on a project about the impact of the Northern Irish protocol on the borderlands of Ireland, using the landscape as metaphor (Dividing Lines), a book of the project is on it's way. Frankie is also a founder member of FIKA book & zine, a new photography book collective. She has exhibited both nationally and internationally. The episode was recorded on the 24 October 2023. 

Website: www.frankiemcallister.com
Insta: @frankie.mcallister, @permitted_exercise

London Independent Photography: www.londonphotography.org.uk

Podcast details:
Podcast email: artiststalespodcast@gmail.com
Website: www.artiststales.net
Instagram: @artists_tales_podcast
Threads: @artists_tales_podcast

Transcript

0:16

Welcome to Artist Tales, a podcast that features and celebrates artists from different walks of life. In this episode, I'm speaking with Frankie McAllister, a Northern Irish photographer based in London. Welcome, Frankie. Well, thank you, Heather. Thank you for inviting me. It's really good to have you on the podcast, so I'm glad you're here. So tell me a little bit about your background and how you got into photography. Well, as you mentioned, I'm... an Irish photographer based in London and my Irish father was actually quite an accomplished oil painter although that was never his career and I think I got my visual eye and my creative instinct from him and also my love of landscape which is my primary subject as a photographer. So I haven't had a formal arts education and I've never even worked in the arts but I'd say about 15 years ago. I was able to actually spend a bit more time following my own pursuits and I got into photography again. So that's really interesting. So you got into photography about 15 years ago. Were you always drawn to landscapes? Because I know you do some still life as well. Yes, I think I always have been drawn to landscapes. I think it's the way I feel when I'm in landscapes. And although I'm very, very much a city girl, I enjoy everything that city has to offer. I do occasionally absolutely have to. get out into the countryside. It's an actually, actually a visceral thing. And because of that I feel it all the more, I really appreciate it. It's even in bad weather, I think I probably even like it more in bad weather. And I've always enjoyed hiking and all that kind of thing and being in the mountains. So it's always been quite an emotional thing for me. It's not just a matter of appreciating an attractive composition or something like that. It's the real emotional feel of it. So it's almost like that connection you go out and the environment, it sounds like you can really connect with the environment. It is. It's a really instinctive connection. I'm not entirely sure where it comes from other than maybe my father who was a Galway man and very much enjoyed his landscapes. That was always his subject as well. So I've obviously inherited some of that and absorbed some of his recollections and memories and things. But the older I've got, it's actually become more and more of a thing, weirdly. Well, I find the same thing. I've gotten into hiking mainly in this country. I'm originally from Canada and I mean, we get beautiful. You know, scenery there. But I think like you, I just need to get out, you know, particularly somewhere like London, it's just such a big city and it can be a bit overwhelming at times. Just getting out and having that break is, does make a difference. You need to see those big skies sometimes because that really lifts your spirit. Sometimes you feel that things start to close in on you. And in London, you can never really see a big sky except when you're around, maybe when you're on the river or something like that. And I think that's actually, now that we're talking it through, I think maybe that's the thing more than anything else. I just need that expanse of openness because it makes everything seem possible and it makes your thoughts clearer somehow. It does. Yeah, I feel the same. And I know you travel, well, I think you travel a fair bit. You've been abroad at least somewhat. How do you choose where you go? What draws you to certain places? Well, initially, when I first got the opportunity to start travelling a bit about 15 years ago, and I was drawn to places I had obsessions with from childhood, places that I'd read about in books like Nepal or Peru. And my first trips were doing all the very, very standard tourist hiking trips, like the Inca Trail and Everest Base Camp and all those things. And I found that although I went for the hiking in the mountains, I actually started to really enjoy the culture. hugely in fact, and it made me interested in going to more far-flung places, I think, initially, places that were less like home. And I found that, quite surprisingly to me actually, because I'm quite squeamish, but I found that I was able to rough it a bit. I didn't mind that as long as I was out in places that were really worth it. So I just, I tried to find places that not everybody was going to, really. It's not that I'm anti-tourist because I always think that's a little bit hypocritical of people who like to travel. But I just wanted to get to, I suppose, exotic places or places, for example, on the Silk Road, places I'd read about, places in all the adventure stories that you read when you're a kid. So I've been to Mongolia and Kyrgyzstan and Georgia and Bolivia and Ladakh and all these places. And I just loved every minute of it and felt so privileged to be there. That's been a huge inspiration actually. And what started my photography off again, because obviously I took photographs when I was there and I found I was taking hundreds and then thousands of photographs. And it made me want to do a better job and to learn to take better photographs and improve my technical skills so that I could actually do places justice. So it sounds like it's kind of holistic. So it's the landscapes, it's the culture, it's your technique and that sort of thing. Yes, the one thing has really led to the other. And, you know, one of my other general interests is actually in politics. I'm very interested in politics in both the national and the international sense. Partly from the point of view of cause and effect, you know, you can, when you go to more far flung places, you can really see the effects of world politics on how people live. You know, whether people are poor, whether they have access to water, all these things are the result of decisions that somebody else makes somewhere. And I find that fascinating as well. I'm always interested to see how we actually interact with landscape and geography and what we do, mankind does, for good and for bad. It's because it is both. So yeah, that all gets wrapped up into the mix as well. So what sparked your interest in the, I guess in a way, geopolitics? Is it the traveling or did it start earlier than that? I think I've always been interested in politics. I've always been interested in how people live. how they are able to live, the effects of other things on their lives, how people might be constrained in their lives because of the effects of politics. And then that applied itself, it factored in even more when I went abroad a bit more because you can actually see it. You can see it much more clearly than you can at home because of course home is so familiar to us and we're so used to things and we accept so many things, but abroad you see it all more clearly. It's interesting when I moved here because it's not in many ways drastically different. It's still, you know, Canada and UK have many similarities. But what I actually found with the subtle differences between Canada and the States, and it could be things like how language is used and different terms and that sort of thing. But I can imagine going to a, because I've only really traveled in North America and Western Europe, but I can very different. You really do see kind of a very marked change and you probably see things, you know, that are either not reported or, you know, we perhaps know about but also if they are reported, they're reported in a certain way from a certain lens. Yeah, I agree actually. No matter how much you might read about other places, you really don't understand. as much as you might until you're there and you see the humanity behind it all and the small things that happen. When you're away you don't have your normal frames of reference or the normal familiar things that you just know about without even thinking about so you're seeing things really as an external observer and you see, you basically see how people react to things, things that you may have read about don't really have the same resonance until you're actually in a place and you understand how people live day to day. and what their pressures and constraints are and what their aspirations are. And one thing that always impresses me when I'm abroad is that, I mean, I think we have a very Western centric viewpoint, naturally, here in the West. And we kind of think we're the center of the universe, but actually when you go to other places, they think they're the center of the universe too. You know, and everything, you know, their culture and the things that their values. are everything to them and it's worth appreciating other people's values and actually learning about them because there's no one way to do things and no one right way. And I've just really enjoyed listening to other outlooks on life and just seeing the way people get by really and how they react to things. Yeah, I mean, it's funny because we often think if I don't have certain things like your phone or other things that we take for granted, oh, I can't cope. And it's like, well, actually a lot of things we do have are quite... modern, like we haven't had them before. And there are many in this world who perhaps don't have them for whatever reason. Yeah. I mean, we do still take a lot for granted and a lot of places don't. I mean, even things like recycling, we have to make a big huge thing of recycling and putting our rubbish out. But there's a lot of countries where they don't call it recycling. They just are sensible and economical and automatically reuse things where they can. they don't have to leave them out for somebody else to take away to recycle. They just repurpose them or do something else and it's just done. It just seems so sensible and practical. Yeah, I agree. So what influences have you had on your photography? What influences on my photography? Yes. Mostly other, well, obviously my father, as I might have mentioned, but There's a lot of other photographers who I really, really admire. I keep a list on my phone. I think it's up to about 43 now. So whenever I come across a new photographer, I write him down on my phone. The photographers I really admire are people who somehow managed to blur the lines between abstraction and representation, which is something I try and do myself, the more I photograph, the less of a distinction I really see. I use both types of photography for landscape photography. I find the more abstract or impressionist stuff more accurately reflects the way I feel about landscape. But I'm also interested in detail and precision as well. So I use both types of photography. And so I really appreciate people like Chris Freel, for example, or Al Brydon, who beautifully managed to essentially create a documentary project with abstract work or impressionist work. or a mixture of the two. And so that's really my direction at the moment. I've always had a problem with it, different aspects of my work look different from each other. And it seems as if there was no cohesion, but I've found really that the cohesion is in what's behind it in outlook rather than anything else. So I find it very helpful when I see people who are actually forging ahead in that way and making sense of it all. I also find it really difficult. to see themes in my work. And I think, and I'm thinking, I'm assuming perhaps a lot of artists do, because I find I'm very close to what I'm doing. And sometimes it's hard just to step back and see those themes. Yeah, even in casual, more incidental things, you find that you're often even just visually drawn to the same things all the same, you know, all the time. And if you went back, if you did proper key wording in everything in your light room, which I don't. But if I did, if I searched lonely benches or things like that, I would probably come up with hundreds and hundreds of photographs. Or if I searched windows with curtains blowing, things like that, because you do repeat, repeat. And it's because it's new to you every time. It's new to you because it really appeals to you. There's some little thing in it that has an emotion that really appeals to you. So I think that's what we. in the end that's how we create our themes or our style or whatever you want to call it really. LARISA And I think often it's, well it can be subconscious how, whether or not that's often, but you know it's not until lockdown and I was, you know, like a lot of people just trying to keep in touch with people via Zoom. And you know speaking with another photographer who just, you know, she'd be looking at my stuff and we'd be kind of sharing our photography that we're doing and you know it's all lockdown photos with it. which I think most of us were doing. And she was able then to start picking out things and she was seeing things and that got me seeing things that perhaps I didn't pick up when I first took them. Well, it also speaks to the need sometimes to have somebody else look at your work, I think, as well. I think that can be quite an interesting process, a bit daunting, but it's often really interesting what people pick out and it seems so obvious to them. And then once it's said to you, you think, yes, of course, I've been doing that all along. Indeed. And I remember at first being quite shy about sharing my stuff or getting people to look at it. Whereas now I really appreciate it. And some people can be a bit dismissive or whatever, but I think over time you get trusted people and people with really good feedback. And even if it doesn't quite work, but think about this, it actually is really quite helpful and I've found it really has helped my photography. Yeah, I think the more that you produce work as well, the more conscious you do start to become and the more deliberate you are about what you create. And therefore it's useful to have feedback from other people to know if you've actually succeeded, I suppose. And you can become a little bit less attached to it because you know you were trying to do something and you want that feedback to tell you, but you're not gonna take offense if you haven't succeeded because you really want to know. So I think that's part of the rationale behind receiving criticism. If you want to have a kind of correction sometimes even, or to be told where you've done well or not done well, the two things are equally valid. I agree with you on that. So you've talked about doing landscapes, and I know you do more than just landscapes. So... Do you want to talk about some of the other things you're involved in? Yeah, I do enjoy the still life too. And the still life I find quite therapeutic to do because it's one of the few situations where you can create everything. You can create the subject, the lighting, the arrangement, the time it takes you to do it. So it's a rare time when I get the tripod, the lights and everything out. It takes a long time to set these things up and I'll leave it all set up for days at a time. and just really, really enjoy doing it. And of course, you can, some of it is a bit trial and error and that's great because you're there in your little studio, my home studio, and I can see what it looks like on screen and try again. And so I can self critique if you like and keep going till I get what I want. And it's, I mean, I haven't been able to do any for a long time now and I'm so looking forward to actually spending a few days actually just doing that. I have a bunch of tulips downstairs which are wilting beautifully. I look so nice. sort of half dead when I actually photograph them. Because I do, that's one of my weaknesses, flowers that have passed their best and have acquired an organic fading glory, I think. So doing this to life in some ways, and correct me from wrong, to me in some ways, it's very different from doing the kind of landscapes because it does take a lot, you know, probably takes a lot more time, although traveling and stuff does take time, but it's a very... To me, it sounds like a very different mindset. It is. It's much more calculated, I think, because you can adjust all the parameters yourself and create everything from scratch. And because you don't have any variables that have inflicted on you from outside, you can just work your way through. And it's often a bit of a learning exercise, trying something new. So it is very different. It's something I started actually in lockdown when, like a lot of people, I was filling days. And it really did absorb a lot of time and it has a meditative aspect to it. It slows you down, makes you completely think in the moment of what you're doing. I can pass hours that way. So that's really the aspect of that I really like the best. And that feeds in to actually what I produce then, because I mean, some would probably find it a bit melancholic really, the sort of still lives I do, as you know, because I like them. tend to like the dark ones and I like the wilted flowers and I like the slightly mournful kind of approach. But that's just really the way I am. I'm not a miserable person. It's just what appeals to me and what speaks to me mood-wise really. Yeah, and I think, I don't know if, well, okay, melancholy might be a word, but I'm also thinking it's a moodiness. It's, you know, it's something that I think perhaps in today's society, if you look at a lot of social media, it's all happy. It's almost like a bit of a tonic saying actually happiness is a feeling, is a legitimate feeling, but there kind of is a more thoughtful, more melancholy, more melodic. There's other things we can look at which are just as valid. Yes. Also, there's a quiet contentment in doing those things as well. It's not just say a bad mood or anything. It's an absorbing, quiet process and I'm at heart a very quiet person so it's very good for me from that point of view to have hours like that which still at the end of them they actually produce something. So you've touched on doing landscapes and still life. Are there projects you're working on or are you kind of working on things to produce? Well I'm still finishing my big... book project, which has taken up a huge amount of time. And it's been a big learning curve because there's been so much more to that than actually just the photography, learning how to make a book, learning how even to get help to make the book and all the various processes that are involved. So that will be due for launching in January next year. And after that, I shall be a free woman and I shall start all my other projects. So I will do some still life, I think, for a while, just to... get back into photography proper, using all my equipment again and getting into the photography side of the whole practice because more recently my practice has been book based rather than anything else. I've even learned a bit of book binding and how to make different types of a book. I've got a whole stack of books waiting to be filled with photographs and then I'm also learning a bit more about printing so that I can actually do the whole process from start to finish myself. it will be nice to get back into photography. And what's the book on? The book is called Dividing Lines and it's about the Northern Irish border as affected by Brexit. And I'm concentrating on a particular area of Ireland that I have a real soft spot for and it's the extreme Northwest of the island, although politically it's within the South, a very rural rugged area, Donegal, probably my favorite place in Ireland actually. And... although I wasn't born there and I didn't come from there, my DNA is almost 100% from there, weirdly. So I think that might be why there's this visceral pull there. But it's such a wild, rugged landscape. It's always seemed to me slightly absurd that anybody should try and carve it up or impose a border on it. So it's a landscape project, really just concentrating on the landscapes of that region, not the glamorous tourist landscapes, but the real everyday scruffy. landscape, the hard landscape. It's on the Atlantic coast and it's often a windswept place, but to me very romantic and appealing. Sounds very appealing and I'm looking forward to seeing the book when it's published or when you've finished with it. Now you mentioned that you've learned a lot of skills in terms of creating a book and bookbinding and other things book related. Is it something you think you might keep doing or is it? something you think you've done that and you've produced something? No, I definitely think I'll keep doing it because the idea of being able to make the physical manifestation of a body of work is very, very appealing to me. I love the fact that you can have a series or a project or even just some little monograph or a little thought or something and actually create something physical with a beginning and an end, you know, a cover and type, everything chosen by yourself. It's a very, very satisfying thing. And then books often, there's so many different ways that you can do them if you're actually binding them yourself or creating them completely yourself. And they are works of art in their own right. And you can make the form of the book echo your subject. And I think that's a lovely thing to do. So yeah, I think I'll be making a lot more books, not big runs or anything, but maybe half a dozen handmade books on one thing or zines or things like that actually are quite accessible and easy and quick to do. Yeah, I mean that's the thing I'm really conscious of, and particularly listening to you, where the books themselves, it's not just the photos or whatever goes in them, the books themselves are actually a piece of art. Because they are the hand-made ones. But I'm also conscious in a very, very digital age. It's very easy to keep all your images on a phone or a digital device and on your computer or whatever, or tablet. In many ways, we've kind of gotten away of, I remember, I mean, I'm old enough and I started photography early enough, you know, dropping off your roll of film, waiting for the film after a few days, getting the prints back. And actually having a photo album. And I have to say over the last quite a long time, I won't say how many years, I've gotten away from that. So I think like in some ways, I'm interested in starting to do books or to actually have the physical. thing in my hand because I think that's the other aspect of it. It's actually something you can hold and look at and go back to. I think it's nice to even do it with some bits and pieces from your back catalogue. So I've got so many photographs now, my hard drives are all groaning and I've got lots of older projects or travels or things like that where I'll never do an exhibition on them because they're five years old or 10 years old or whatever. But there will be enough that I can select that will be. you know, suitable for a book. And I think if I actually do that, then I'll feel like I can actually draw a line onto those particular projects and series and then move on. At the moment, I'm very conscious that I'm dragging this huge archive behind me, and it seems overwhelming sometimes. So that will be one of my projects actually, to go back and, you know, not do everything, but select a few series and make little short books of them. and then they can be filed away and I can forget about them and I can put the hard drives away and carry on with new work then with a clear conscience. Yeah, I think I probably feel the same. And then I started looking at my back catalog to do a very similar thing. And I think the thing that has put me off until more recently is feeling a bit overwhelmed of how much stuff there is. Well, again, it's one of the problems of digital photography as well. You can go out and shoot a hundred at a time and it's not a big deal. If you're restricted to film, you're a lot more economically. with your shots. I think it's probably very good training for you and a very good discipline sometimes to shoot film. But yes, with digital you amass huge quantities of photographs. Yeah, with digital I've tried, not only successfully, I've tried to be a bit more disciplined so I'm not sort of like taking too many and having the discipline of thinking I have the role of 36 or whatever, you know, 35 mil, but just trying to keep it. I'm not sort of like, you know, taking, bing, bang a whole bunch, but it's kind of being a bit more methodical about it. It's difficult to do though, when you know that you can take them and rather than miss a shot, you'll always take another one or, you know, but yeah, film doesn't allow you to do that. I do use film a bit now as well, actually, and I do enjoy it, but you do have to use a very, very different approach because of that reason, really. Yeah, particularly when you're using medium format or large format. I have a lovely Pentax 120 camera and I really, really love it, but I really have to gear myself up to using it and go out with my one film and for that to be sufficient. Yeah, very different experience. It is and I have to be a bit careful. I limit myself maybe to two or three. I don't always take two or three in a day, but yeah, it can get quite expensive otherwise. Yeah. And if you don't... involve yourself in the whole process. I mean, I can't process my pictures. I will usually get the negatives created so I can scan them and then I'll work from there. But without doing the whole process, it becomes prohibitively expensive. Plus I also feel with film, it's almost as if you should do the whole process, like it's part of it really. Yeah, I think there's an element of that. But you know, I think the discipline also is doing it without like I try not to. take too many as I used to because it has gotten expensive. But sometimes it's not practical. It isn't. Not everybody has the space to do that. No. And they're pretty horrible chemicals to handle as well, which is also slightly off-putting. But there are other processes though that are a little bit more benign and alternative processes. So I'm quite interested in exploring those as well. Same. Yeah, same here. So what sort of challenges, if any, have you faced? and doing your photography, doing some of your projects. I have to say my biggest challenges have all been entirely self-made and entirely personal. My main challenge is really just working with my own personality and character because I'm very much an introvert and some of the other stuff that goes along with photography, you meet a lot of people which is great. really to use opportunities to collaborate, to self-promote, to network, to all these things. I'm just not really a natural at them. So that is a real challenge and a restriction that I'm always kind of fighting against. So it's something, you know, you learn to work around things up to a point, but there's a point beyond which you just can't go. And so I keep hitting that, my own glass ceiling, self-made glass ceiling. I think it's probably not an uncommon or I think it's a challenge that many people face because I'm also more of an introvert, funny enough, after doing a podcast or after producing a podcast. But I just find, you know, I find certain things, you know, I also find it hard to sometimes promote, let's say, the photography or even promoting the podcast can feel a bit uncomfortable because it's, you know, shouting about what I do doesn't necessarily come naturally. I know I'm good, but it's kind of that shouting about it, which I find quite difficult. It is difficult. For some people it just goes against the grain of who they are. I think we all learn to work around our issues, but there are things that just never really become that much easier. That happens to just be one of them, really. But it is amazing that you're doing the podcast. I mean, that's a very high achieving thing to do for an introvert. I think over time I've come to the point of I want to challenge the fear. It's kind of fear of exposure. It's fear of being maybe a bit vulnerable. And the same thing could be said about photography because in a way you're putting yourself out there. And I like to do art that's authentic. And that can be quite a scary thing to put out and have people look at and react to. Yeah, it is a big challenge exposing yourself to the world and just... basically saying, say what you will, I've done this now, this is who I am. It's a, that's a very challenging thing, I think. It's good to do it though. I think we kind of need to do it really. You can't hide away, but yeah. So as far as challenges are concerned, that is it. Really, that's the big one. Yeah. And I think too, the thing that I've, and I don't know if you've experienced this, but the thing I found both with the podcast and the photography is, you know, there is that kind of, people like it or people are going to be super critical, but By and large, people really engage with it, people find it interesting, people interact whether it's the photography or the podcast in a way, particularly in ways that I wouldn't necessarily expect or they pick up things that I wouldn't necessarily expect or have thought about either in the pictures or the podcast. I think too, I've met some wonderful people either doing photography and the podcast, but also I'm really conscious in both that people identify with things. know, people might hear someone being interviewed and they think, actually, I can relate to that person because X, Y or Z or, you know, the same thing about the photograph. And it's things like that I wouldn't necessarily expect. And I don't know if you've come across that during your photography. I suppose indirectly I have. Yeah, I mean, sometimes you make comments on Instagram or something and try and do a little bit of a more than a caption, a proper comment that says something about how you're feeling or what you're doing or what's on your mind. And it's it's really quite rewarding when somebody comes back and really relates to what you've said, because actually even that, the writing part of it, is another form of self-expression and another form of exposure, self-exposure. And it's wonderful to make these connections because it's not like having small talk with somebody where you're kind of going around in circles just talking about superficial things. Someone is connecting with something meaningful that you've said and it resonates with them in some way. So you kind of cut out all that. other stuff that you normally talk about when you first meet somebody and go straight to what's more important or what's at the heart of things. And I find that really interesting. And in photography generally, I mean, I think practically everybody I know now in my immediate circle, I've got to know through photography. And we can always have those conversations because we have that common interest. And we're all, all of us in our own ways, carrying on learning all the time, which is interesting too. And you know, new things are striking us or... upsetting us or interesting us or exciting us and we talk about them. So that's an ongoing pleasure and interest really. I agree and I've experienced that as well. I think having that commonality or having that you know I guess commonality or common form to talk about something and the common interest is probably the better phrase I think does help. So where do you, what's next? Where do you think you might, I mean after publishing the book and that sort of thing, where do you think things will take you? I've got a little list of maybe projects which I'll start thinking about. The first thing I want to do is when I finish the book is to go through the back catalogue and actually think about making some zines and books. I think that will be quite a satisfying and therapeutic thing for me. And then after that I'm not entirely sure what I'll do next actually. I've got so many ideas floating around and it becomes overwhelming sometimes so I need to actually sit down and concentrate. relish my newfound freedom. It will probably involve still life or studio type work though I think just as a complete antithesis to what I've done before. Yeah and I sometimes find that the gut is very good. Nudge, nudge her, you know pushing in a direction. Well thank you, it's been really interesting speaking with you so thank you. Thank you Heather, it's been lovely to talk to you. Thanks for listening to this episode with Frankie. I hope you enjoyed listening to it. More information about Frankie, including her social media handles, is in the podcast notes. I'd really appreciate it if you could rate and review the podcast in the podcast apps. In the next episode, I speak with Andrew Matsubara, who is a DJ based in Ottawa, Canada. Here's a clip of a conversation. By the end of the 90s, like, I'd say from 95 to... the end of the 90s, that was when I was really learning how to DJ because everybody said, if you like that kind of music, you like to make it. The thing to do is DJ, which is take two turntables and a mixer and mix records together. So it was kind of like a clash of two worlds. I was mixing and on the other side, I was making my music. I look forward to you joining me in the next episode.