S4, E1 Héloïse Bergman

Héloïse Bergman is an artist, photographer and maker from New Zealand who is based in London, England. Her journey started with textiles and has moved into photography, and handcrafted limited edition jewellery. Our conversation focuses on her journey from owning a textiles company and then some of her photographic projects. Héloïse is a member of London Independent Photography. The episode was recorded on the 18 November 2024.

Insta: @heloise_bergman, @heloise.bergman

London Independent Photography
Website: https://www.londonphotography.org.uk/about.php

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Website: www.artiststales.net
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Welcome 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 Heloise Bergman, an artist, photographer, and maker from New Zealand who is living in London. Welcome, Heloise. Thanks. Hi, Heather. Thank you so much.

Thank you for inviting me. It was great having you on the podcast. So thanks for being a guest. So why don't you tell me a little bit about yourself and your background and how you got into being a photographer, artist and maker? Oh, well, I guess it's a long evolution of many different things.  But, um, I've always been a A drawer and a maker, you know, my whole life.

And, uh, as a child I used to spend all my time sketching, you know, following my mum around the supermarket or queuing at the bank. You know, I'd be drawing the whole time, things like that. And at university I studied textile design. And I guess I was attracted to being able to work in kind of multiple mediums.

It's a very creative area, you know, textile design, and I don't know, I slowly became interested in photography, and at this point I was still in New Zealand, but after I graduated I moved to Tokyo for a few years, and then on to Thailand, then India, and I set up a textile business there, and I started really taking pictures again there, because I was photographing the people I worked with, and the people around me, and kind of got into telling the stories of the textiles.

And then, uh, I think through that, I realized, you know, that I actually love photography.  So what drew you to doing textiles in the first place? I know you kind of talked a bit about how you got into photography, but what drew you to doing textiles? Uh, it was, I think, yeah, my mum had a loom. My mum, my mum's an artist and my dad was an architect, uh, they're both passed away now.

But she had looms and she was weaving in the house a lot at one point. And I think, you know, the way kids do, I sort of followed her into that. And I also did evening ceramic classes with her at one point. So I learned to weave with my mother, but I think it was actually quite a random thing, the textiles.

I was finishing school in New Zealand, and, you know, high school, and my friend was applying to do textile design at university, and she asked for my help with her application for the portfolio, and I read the submission form. And I just like loved everything on it, you know, and kind of wanted to do it. So I got a copy of the form and with three days to go, I submitted a portfolio, you know, which I had done in three days that involved colorways, designing clothes, designing fabrics, you know, all these things.

Yeah, I loved it, you know, and I couldn't believe when I got in, because it had been very rushed. And, uh, our course was super creative, and we do everything from one semester's work, was you got a bag of wool, and you had to card it, dye it, spin it, weave it, and then make a blazer I made out of it. You know, so it was quite amazing.

And yeah, I found that very inspiring. But then the work that you could go into at the end of that three years in New Zealand at that time wasn't that inspiring. You know, it was things like designing carpets for firms or airline seats or I don't know, you know. So yeah, I went to Japan and I had hoped to do course on kimono design there, but I didn't speak Japanese well enough to do the course, so I, I didn't do that in the end.

But, you know, I guess that opened my, my eyes to a different way of seeing. In fact, everywhere I went in Asia kind of blew my mind with the textiles. And I guess they're very different to what we see in the West. Yes, it was funny because I, I kind of felt when I'd got to India that I'd learned more and kind of three days that I had in the last three years of university.

You know, just seeing, seeing how people worked and just the, you know, the incredible skill level and creativity, the way they used the mediums and the different elements, you know, yeah, it was, it was, yeah, really changed the way I saw things.  So what was your business in India? What did you do? I designed clothes.

I made, uh, sort of androgynous, both sex, one or two sizes, fits everyone clothing that was simple black or silk or cotton. And then they would have textiles, traditional vintage textiles from Afghanistan, Rajasthan, Gujarati attached to them. Uh, you know, so like, There'd be black trousers with heavily embroidered cuffs and maybe pockets or jackets, you know, with pockets and edging or collars that were in contrasting fabric.

Yeah, MTV used, um, some, some of the clothes for a shoot at one point. and it was fledgling MTV, so that kind of was a boost. I was really inspired by the textiles in India, in those countries, and I wanted to do something with them that suited everyone, you know, and, and shared what I'd experienced and seen with, with other people.

So I set up this kind of, factory's too grand a word, but it was actually a group of women sewing. And then was importing the clothes to England, and I had a stall in Covent Garden Market. And, uh, so it was very simple, but, you know, it was great fun and it meant that I was going to India all the time.

Probably four weeks out of every six or eight weeks. That must have been quite interesting, you know, to do, to be travelling back and forth and to be selling. the clothes you were making or getting, you know, the clothes your company was making? Yeah, I mean, I just did it, really. You know, when, when you're in these places, there's people kind of doing all sorts of interesting things, and you feel inspired, and you feel anything's possible.

You know, if I'd thought I overthought it, I probably wouldn't have done it. But, I just thought, Oh yeah, you know, I love this. I can do this. I want to do that. And off I went. And, you know, London, this was in the nineties. I think I arrived in London for the first time in 1990. And, uh, you know, it was that time when anything could happen and, you know, people were setting up businesses and doing all kinds of things.

You know, it was a very creative time in London. And so, yeah, I just jumped in.  And you said, you know, with this business in India, you started getting into photography. You know, you just mentioned it was kind of people working for you. Was it an attraction to kind of people and people you're working with or what kind of drew you into the photography?

I think it was, yeah, wanting to communicate what I saw and, you know, tell people's stories. And I guess that hasn't changed, that the thing that still attracts me to photography is it being a way to communicate with people, either the people looking at the images or the people. who may be in them. And, uh, when I was, had my little store in Covent Garden Market, you know, it was so hard for, to try and explain to people where the clothes had come from and how the textiles were originally worn.

And, you know, that was a while ago now and those areas weren't as accessible as they are now to people. So, I started taking lots of photos partially to, to bridge that gap and say, you know, these are the women who made the clothes. These are the people around there. These guys racing camels, you know, this is what's going on.

This is kind of, buying this garment, you're kind of buying a little piece of that maybe. So it sounds like it was kind of supplementing, kind of, or giving that context, really, to the clothes that were being made and you were selling? Yeah. When I started taking photos in India, it wasn't like I planned to get back into photography, which had been part of my initial degree.

It was just a kind of vehicle to tell the story. But then, sort of, actually events happened quite quickly to shift that, because what then happened is, I had my son a few years later, and he was born premature and very ill. So I had to sell that business, and I needed to do something else. And I guess building on the things I was interested in, I decided to become a journalist.

And, you know,  now it kind of makes me laugh cause as someone who's severely dyslexic, dyspraxic  and is terrified of flying, you know, travel journalism probably wouldn't have been the first thing that jumped to lots of people's minds.  But so yeah, I, I worked for time out initially and as a writer, and then I switched into photography and.

Yeah, and that was the beginning of my photography career. And I remember, like, you know, before this interview, we spoke about that shift. And I remember you were saying that, you know, you'd be visiting these places to take pictures. You had your brief, you know, it could be LA, it could be San Fran, it could be a number of different cities, but it was kind of the tourist thing.

And you were kind of seeing that contrast between the pictures that sold it to tourists and kind of real life. So maybe you could tell me a bit more about that. Yes. I mean, the, the job. was incredible, Heather. It was, you know, it was an amazing job. And, uh, so I originally worked on the magazine and then I switched to the guides, the city guidebooks, which are incredibly popular series that Time Out did at that time.

And so each job would be six weeks in each city. And I'd have a list of over 120 locations that I'd be photographing. Each location was two rolls of film of, you know, 36 shots. So it was very tight, 72 images only. 72 frames to capture anything, no matter what time of the day or night, you know, for the books.

And so, yeah, a guide I did was to the state of California, which was incredible. It was the first time they'd attempted something that large. And I also remember it because  it was a bit of a nightmare because it was the very beginning of the digital era. And at that point we were using memory cards that fitted, I think about six or 12 images maximum on them.

And I was given an RV to travel the length of California. So I went from San Diego and Tijuana, driving up the coast to Portland, Oregon, and then back on the inland, you know, through all the mountains and incredible national parks, photographing all these, you know, things off a list on the way. And that was amazing.

I mean, it was quite stressful because of the new digital era that no one really understood. But one of the things was that I was sent to all these tourists, you know, locations or not really tourists, but locations that Time Out had picked as, you know, a must see or a must experience for their readers.

And, you know, they were always interesting, cutting edge places. But I was really starting to notice that alongside those sites, there were other stories I was seeing. And one of them, uh, an example was that I was in Santa Barbara and, you know, there was a famous burger place there. I think it was called Red Rum.

And it was some other things, but there were also a lot of vets and wheelchairs in a really quite soul wrenching situations. And they weren't part of the story. And so when I did take pictures, you know, of things like that that were going on, you know, they, they weren't part of the guidebook. And they didn't get used.

So I, I started kind of doubling up and doing other stories, you know, to try and tell. the stories of what I'd seen and publish them elsewhere. But, you know, after this for a while, you know, it's a very high energy job because you can start the morning, you know, I might start in the botanical gardens or some water side place because the light's right.

And then I might shoot two restaurants and then be in a museum in the afternoon and then a bar and then a nightclub. You know, it was a, it's a huge job. And very energetic. But, I slowly decided that it was more important to me to tell these stories I saw, rather than the main story that I was being sent to tell. 

Yeah, and those stories that you wanted to tell wouldn't necessarily fit in the detourist, you know, books and things? No. And, yeah, I mean, I I was lucky because we got a lot of leeway and, you know, really we were trusted with the whole book, you know, the look of it. So you could, we had a lot of scope to do what, you know, I had a lot of scope to do what I wanted, but still within that, you know, a lot of the things I saw weren't appropriate.

There were limits. Yeah.  Even with the best intentions, there were limits. And also, you know, it was a fast turnover, you know, six weeks in a place you're moving around. And I started to feel, you know, I wanted to dig deeper into things I'd seen and I was more interested.  So yeah, that, that kind of brought about a change.

And, um, I slowly decided actually that I wanted to go to art school. And so I think I did a foundation year to just part time. I was still working, you know, by now, I think my son was six or eight or something like that. So it was all pretty hectic. And I did this foundation year to put together a portfolio and I applied for with my portfolio to art school and I got accepted.

So that was brilliant. But then I got quite a lot of work and I couldn't really afford to take the time off the work to go to art school, you know, it felt a bit of a luxury to step out of a job when you're a single mother and, you know, an indulgence to go to art school. So I deferred and, um, you know, work was going quite well so I kept deferring and in the end actually the art school I had applied to, it closed,  Guildhall, and so, um, I, yeah, I couldn't go. 

So, um, I decided to do a course and do a fine art photography. Yeah, so I used that pathway to, you know, change career, I guess. Yeah. Was this project part of your photography degree? Because I remember you were talking about one of your projects where you were exploring kind of the culture of smoking. And I do like the fact that you were telling me that you, you take time and research, you really do research things.

So was that part of your photographic sort of degree? Yes, that was the final year of my, that was the final project for my Ph. D. B. A. in Fine Arts and, you know, so at this point I'd already been a photographer for quite a while and, but I'd never done portrait photography in a studio. So I'd set out, sort of set myself a brief to do studio photography because I've always worked on locations and I found that setting it all up, you know, quite a different vibe.

And um, the project came about because I was doing some work with the Science Museum. And they have a subterranean archive that is like heaven. It's about five floors, I think, in the building, with all these goodies that are in storage. And it was incredible. And one of the things, you know, for example, we photographed there was, I remember, a Tibetan medicine bag.

And as we opened it up, all this sort of powder and funny smells came wafting out. We were wondering if we're just, you know, going to asphyxiate ourselves before we got it photographed. And, um One day we were having lunch and just chatting and we were talking about how one day there'd be a museums for smoking and this was I guess around 2010 maybe or something and they'd brought in some new laws, you know, restricting people smoking in the workplace and outside and, you know, New Zealand where I'm from was saying that they were going to ban smoking totally, I think by 2030 maybe it was.

So I was kind of, that was a little idea and it sort of germinated and I was thinking, wow, you know, smoking is so entrenched, you know, it's, it's really part of, there's a whole visual language of it and, uh, you know, and the whole cultural language where people, you know, chat people up by asking for a cigarette, you know, the cigarettes are really embedded in our culture.

And I was kind of interested in where this visual language would go if cigarettes were taken away, you know. And I should say, actually, I don't smoke myself, but, you know, I found it interesting observing how whenever we would go clubbing or to a private view or an event, and smokers would all be outside and the others would be inside, and you'd have to choose which group you wanted to be with, you know, and I started really looking at it and researching.

And, in the end, this project was called The Dying Art of Smoking. And I think it was about an eight year project in the end. And so I, there were so many problems. It's quite funny now to think about it. Because smoking was outlawed in educational  workspaces, I couldn't shoot the portraits in the university studios.

I couldn't shoot them in my own work studio. So I had to have a separate place that I photograph people. And I kind of, uh, I got lots of friends and people I knew to pose, but then I, I was thinking, oh, you know, I'd see people smoking on the street, so I'd go up to them. And asked them if they were interested in being in this documentary project.

And, uh, I think so many people who smoke were used to getting grief for smoking, that when someone approached them and was really interested in why they smoked and when they started and all the, you know, how they felt about the language of cigarettes and, you know, the culture behind it, they were really kind of pleased to be part of it.

And, um, so they would come to this studio I set up especially for this. and smoke one or two cigarettes, and I would record them talking about smoking, and I made a few little films of it. So it kind of became a performance art. For my final project, one of my tutors was Patrick Brill, who's Robin Roberta Smith, and so he was so supportive of him, and Mick Williams is another tutor of mine, and they were, the photographs were A0 size, so they were massive, shiny.

Like billboard posters. In fact, I also fly posted them around kind of Shoreditch and sort of the areas where I'm from in London. And I put them in tube stations, like I put them everywhere. And I was interested to see if when people looked at these portraits of people smoking, Whether they thought they were advertising or how people reacted and yeah, I'm, I kind of like the fact, I, I'm, I like fly posting as a way of spreading art, you know, and then simultaneously showing in a gallery space. 

It's also subversive to fly post, because it is illegal, as far as I know.  Oh, really? Yes. I don't know if it's illegal, but it's taboo. You know, it's kind of Yeah. You see it a lot, but yeah. It's kind of illicit. Yes, I like the subversive element of it. I mean, I, I worked on this project. As I said, I did a lot of research and I guess I showed it in quite subversive ways because for my graduation show, we, uh, we gave out cigarettes to people as they came in.

They were actually fake cigarettes, but when you sort of suck them, they puffed out little bits of kind of chalky puff stuff  for want of a better description. And I had, uh, ashtrays around the degree show, which was on several floors. With kind of stubbed out cigarettes. I've been collecting cigarettes for a long time.

So it was quite performance y, installation y. And uh, people couldn't tell, you know, whether, whether people had been smoking or whether you could smoke in here or what was going on, you know. And the next morning I remember going in. And the cleaners weren't sure what was going on, so they'd left all these empty bottles alongside my overflowing ashtrays, because they didn't want to clear out the wrong stuff. 

Yeah, and what, another thing I did was I exhibited with some fellow artists in a gallery in Dalston called Doomed. And, I've been reading about the smoking is a Pavlov's dog psychology, you know, so things trigger people to smoke. So in the gallery, I set up a big ship spell and I showed, I think, about 20 portraits which were large, you know, I think they were like maybe A2 or A1, they were big glossy portraits of people smoking.

But in them, I, in some of them, I erased the actual cigarettes, because I was interested in the fact that when people look at the position of the subjects in the portraits, they imagine the cigarette, even if there isn't one, because they recognize the gestures. You see it, but not see it. Yeah. Yeah. And so, you know, if someone's It's sort of standing with their hands in a certain way in front of their face.

Your brain just imagines there's a cigarette there, because it knows the language, this body language, and that interested me. And for the opening night, I had actors, friends, and every time someone rung the ship's bell, They lit a cigarette and smoked it in the gallery. And, uh, that was quite subversive and maybe challenging.

I do apologize to the other artists because that was challenging for them. But, um, you know, cause I just was interested in how people now felt about smoking in venues, you know. Having been used to the freedom to do that. And then that, you know, the laws changed and people actually were quite anxious.

People coming up to me and saying, Heloise, Heloise, uh, can we smoke in here? Oh, look, there's someone smoking. Oh, you should tell that person not to smoke. Oh, can we all smoke? Well, it's just interesting to see how people reacted. Yeah. And one of the actors felt too guilty to smoke.  You know, because he felt he was,  he does smoke as a person, but he felt bad smoking inside.

Yeah, it's interesting that shift in kind of social norms. So that's one of, I think, of probably a number of projects you've done. So when I met you, you were doing a project, or you're finishing a project, on the Māori in New Zealand. So would you like to tell me a little bit about that project? Ah, yes. I love that project, I have to say, Heather. 

Um, makes me smile just thinking about it. That, I think that ended up also being about an eight year project with kind of heavy research. And, yeah, the project was inspired by people I met and, you know, stories I was seeing about kind of a new paradigm of Māori thinking in Aotearoa New Zealand. And people were getting tā moko, which is the traditional Māori name of for tattoos, again, and reclaiming cultural heritage.

And it's on their faces, isn't it, the tattoos? Yeah, so it's quite different, I guess, from UK or, you know, other histories of tattooing. The moko kawaii was what I was really interested in, which is the chin tattoo that's traditional for women. And it can be on the lips and the chin. I'd met several women that were so strong and, you know, were a real inspiration to me, that I decided I would love to do a documentary about this kind of cultural revival and the idea that people were externalizing their internal identity.

Because I think, you know, that's a global thing, of people being able to reconcile who they are internally. externally, you know, and be the person on the outside that they feel they are on the inside. And I just found, you know, it was like a new paradigm. I found people really inspirational and I met a lot of strong leaders and I just wanted to, I guess, learn from them and tell their stories.

So I didn't know whether this would be possible. You know, I was living still in London at that point and do my master's. But I thought if I made that my final project, I would have a vehicle that I would be able to do it. And at that time my parents were both quite ill, so I was going to New Zealand a lot and spending maybe three or four months a year at least there.

So I kind of was just discussing it with people and it kind of all just fell into place. And I met some Maori elders that gave me their blessing and I started learning te reo, which is Maori language. As a kind of a commitment when I was doing this project, and I remember the first meeting I had was Albany in Auckland, and I met two Maori women and three men, and I photographed them and we talked for a bit and got to know each other.

And then the session started with a Akia, a prayer. And that kind of made the format that I followed in all the subsequent sessions of photography, that I would start the session with a karakia, a prayer with the person I was photographing, and then we would, you know, talk about how Having the moko would change their lives and what it meant to them, and the history of it, and their whakapapa, their family history.

Because in a way, for Māori, the moko is like a thumbprint. Each one is unique, and it's the externalization of the internal self, and so it's very powerful.  Yeah, everyone had unique, interesting stories and, you know, for me it was amazing to meet all these people. So, I just travelled around New Zealand on the bus sometimes, on the car sometimes, staying with people and hanging out with them and photographing them.

And a lot of the people are, you know, still good friends of mine now, you know, I made friends. Amazing friendships through that. And my husband, who'd never been to New Zealand, spent his first trip not doing any tourist things, but driving around with me, meeting all these people with Tāmoko, and being kind of the man who had to hold the pop up studio tent. 

And the reflectors, while all this was going on, and do the recording of the story. So, yeah, it was incredible. And then, the end of all the photography, when it was wrapped up, the first, sort of, chapter, we had a Palfrey, which is like a, a prayer session, and the work was all blessed by elders. And then got sent back to the UK and I exhibited it in my graduation show for my master's.

And then it was incredible because Ngāti Rānana, who are the Kapahākā Māori group resident in London, came and did a blessing, a pōwhiri, and opened the show and did the haka and, you know, a lot of songs. And, you know, that was just an incredible experience. And yeah, Moved so many people to tears, even if they didn't have Māori or New Zealand heritage.

I can imagine it was beautiful.  So it sounds like you really, you know, researched, you really engaged with the community. It wasn't just bang, you're there for 10 weeks or whatever. You kind of had that engagement, which is really interesting. So I know since that project, Efstin, you started to do kind of, you know, images on leaves and things.

So could you kind of summarize that project and how you got about doing it? Yes, that, after the Tāmoko, modern Māori warriors, that kind of initial project morphed into other things. And I did as kind of, I mean, my photography, my art practice always is evolving, Different trains of thought lead to different, whole new bodies of work.

And the Māori name for Māori is Tangata Whenua, which means people of the land. And so I started thinking about this. And I'd seen Almudena and Vietnamese guy called Binh Da. Almudena Romero is a Spanish photographic artist. And they were pioneers, I guess, of chlorophyll printing. And so I went to a workshop at my studio's.

El Medina was a, she had a residency there and so she taught a workshop and I went to it. It rained the whole time so we couldn't really do chlorophyll prints but the outcome was that I felt like I had a vehicle to tell the story of people of the land so I then started putting my portraits on leaves and I went back to New Zealand.

and used leaves that were grown in New Zealand to expose the portraits on. And I don't know if you know, you know, or people listening know about chlorophyll printing, but I, I think it's amazing. I'll just describe how chlorophyll printing works, because maybe some of your listeners won't have heard of it.

So it's a process, it kind of reminds you a bit of traditional darkroom photography, but it's nature's own process. And it's whereby the UV light from the sun interacts with the plant's chlorophyll chemicals. And so if you put a negative over a leaf, the image is exposed directly into the leaf. And so the, for me, the process is I take photos and I make a digital negative, which I put over a leaf and then the sun creates the image.

And how long does that image stay on the leaf? So far, my oldest ones are about seven years, but I actually feel quietly confident  that the,  uh, I mean, it's an ephemeral process, so, you know, they're not, it's not permanent, but I guess nothing's permanent, so. Yeah. My final question is, what's next? Do you have any sort of upcoming projects at all?

Uh, yes, I'm continuing my chlorophyll printing work because the problem with that is now it's autumn, all the leaves have died, and as it's deciduous leaves I need to use, I have to wait till next spring or go overseas to do the next round, but I'm working on several books and I'm exhibiting the leads next year.

I have a solo show and so I have a lot of preparation to do for that. I'm continuing that project. Yeah, so that's in 2025 for listeners. So, great. Well, thank you. It's been wonderful chatting with you, Heloise. Thank you, Heather. Thank you so much for inviting me. It's been a real pleasure to speak to you.

It's been a real pleasure to speak to you as well.  I really appreciate you listening to this episode with Heloise. I hope you enjoyed it. For more information about Heloise,  including her social media handles, check out the episode notes. I'd really appreciate it if you could also rate and review the podcast in the podcast apps.

In the next episode, I have a really interesting conversation with Ellie Laycock, an award winning British artist who explores the urban environment and its impact on residents, ideas of power and control, politics, and the passage of time. I really look forward to you joining me in the next episode.