What Makes Perception Unique?

My name is Ash Durden. I present my work through Ash J Studio. in the background, but it's only in the last three years that I really went at it and learned 90% of what I know now.

Interviewer:

Those three years, you said there was a change there. What made you ‘really’ go at it, or what entailed doing that?

Ash:

I always did it in the background, through skateboarding and surfing growing up, but very amateurish. I did a creative course at TAFE, and then I also did [photography] as my electives in university while studying design. And it was something I never thought could be more than just fun. And then, [my course] took me to get a design job that I still. When I reflected on what I wanted, I realised the only thing I've ever paid attention to and been excited about doing was taking photos. At the time, I was miserable being stuck at a desk, and what I wanted was to be able to travel. So it also aligned as a job where I could travel, but it was the scariest thing I've ever done to jump into that. It was a very jump-off-the-cliff moment. I quit my job with no other job. I had like 15 grand saved at the time, and I think I spent 12 and a half or 13 on the Saturday on a camera, laptop and lenses, and I just thought it felt like the time to try it. I gave it a shot.

 I reflect back now, and I know that going part-time was an option, but as I said before, 90% of what I now know I learned in those first six months to a year, where there was no other option but to learn to pay rent. So, I've never had such an incentive to practice, learn, and remember things. So I'm thrilled that I jumped off the cliff, so to speak, rather than having any sort of safety net.

 Interviewer:

You talked about your passion for photography through your youth and through skateboarding. Photography started as a way to preserve history. What's your ideology of the art form, and how does that fit into your work and what you've created?

Ash:

For me, I've always gravitated towards people. I've never been much of a landscape photographer. I've never enjoyed just shooting scenes. I've always gravitated towards people and tried to get some sort of genuine emotion. Real emotion. That's what I naturally gravitate towards; it started as a way to present or showcase what we were interested in. Do you remember the classic fish eye on a DSLR? Growing up shooting skating, and doing a tiny ollie on the ground. For me [my photography], it's always been an expression in some sense.

Interviewer:

Do you find that photographs with an emotional response or expression showcased within them tend to have a more long-lasting effect on your life or your memory rather than just something you scroll past instantly?

Ash:

The thing is with, I've always wanted to try and create something that hasn't already been... that had an impact. There is so much imagery and photos in the world that I always wanted to try to differentiate myself. So when I go through my work and if I've created something that has life to it or is unique, I’m happy. My favourite thing ever to do with my photos is mixed media and print them out, paint them, rip them up because to me that takes it further, you can give them more meaning. 

That's where I'm at now. A lot of the drive for that formed more so when I went into it as a career because I knew if I were going to do that for work, I would need to differentiate myself from everyone else. So, I was always trying to find something that hadn't been done before, which is hard because it's so saturated.

 Interviewer:

Are there any particular works you've made that have showcased your style and differentiated yourself from others?

Ash:

For me, my favourite things of mine are just tight portraiture. We've just got a moment based on my relationship with that person. You can see it makes you feel something. My favourite is when I've done some mixed media stuff.  In those scenarios, I usually print them out, and I don't have too much intention. I'm trying to create an environment with space for an open-ended question. But also, because it's difficult when I have other people I take inspiration from and who are really good at, mixed media, I don't want to do exactly what they've done. I have things that I think are cool. In my intention to try and create something unique and new, I try and set up a space where I have a bunch of different elements and just kind of play and see what happens and see if something comes up that I wouldn't have thought of.

“I have a photo of a guy named Oscar, and we shot him in the Mooloolamba fields. Then I used some of the flowers from that shoot on mixed media, and to me, that was a cool way to incorporate further where we were shooting, and it felt very wholesome. Mixing those together.”

For example, the other day, I was shooting a bunch of my photos on the table, and as I was shooting, the wind blew it. It blew it in this way and the corner just covered part of his face, but not the eyes and prominent features, and that was my favourite one; it was so cool. I think there's another one where I have ants on a portrait of the person's face, I was picking flowers to put on a photo, and then an ant got on there so then so I brought the print into the garden and tried to get all the ants on there and then shot the ants in the face.

Interviewer:

What was the portrait actually of that the ants were on?

Ash:

It was a portrait of a guy, Oscar. But for me, often what can be some of the most fulfilling is just like the most simple, stripped back, raw.

"This is the one, and when something like that comes up, and I feel like it was unique and I've come up with something different, that's like the most fulfilling thing I've probably ever experienced; some people thought this was Photoshopped, and that bummed me out. I'm like, I spent an hour in the fucking garden, trying to, whisk ants on, like come on, come on, come on."

"This is just someone in front of a white wall. But everything just aligned to where I feel like there's emotion, just looking at that, the first thing I'm struck with is a sense of solitude and a sense of longing, almost."

She wouldn't stand in that pose for a long time. It's the kind of between moments that happens rarely, but when it does... It's funny, the things that I'm most hyped on, I feel like, especially at the start, were the least celebrated.

I spent all this time on this mixed media piece, and people get hyped on other things that aren't my intended focus.

Interviewer:

Do you have any specific moments?

Ash:

I remember when I was early into my I say 'career'. But I remember trying to appeal to more commercial work, and I posted an e-com shoot, and it was just a girl in a studio who was focused. I remember it got more attention than anything I'd ever put out before, and I was confused; I didn't go to all these lengths to try and create something unique. It was, I don't want to say soulless, but it has less emotion behind it. It wasn't as thought out as the rest. So I thought that was interesting for a while, and I think I've gone through stages where I've then let that impact how I create, but now I'm kind of trying to come back to just what makes me happy, what I love, which is just shooting people and trying to capture who they are in a photo.

Interviewer:

You mentioned before that you feel something when you look at the photograph you've taken or do the mixed media process. Are there stronger emotions captured in the photography that relate to easier-to-feel something, or would you say everything has its place? And it just depends on what mood you're in.

Ash:

Well, it's completely subjective, right? And it's funny you say that because I think about this often. What is that voice that speaks to me? I mentioned before that I have to meditate through the process because if I'm letting agents come up with what other people might think, what clients might think, or how it might be received, I'm not actually listening to the only thing I have unique to anyone else, which is my perspective, so I try to sit through that and not be thinking, and if something strikes a chord in me if it hits something in me, I mark it. I'm going through, sometimes, like a thousand photos.

Interviewer:

So it's almost like a subconscious observation for you?

Ash:

Yeah.

Interviewer:

Have you noticed patterns in any of your works that you've marked?

Ash:

Yeah, it's all to do with expression and emotion often.

Interviewer:

Any emotions in particular?

Ash:

It's always different depending on what it is. I mean, even in some branded shoots I've done, it can be as simple as when a hand just turns a certain way. And there's just something in my brain that goes, I like that, that works for whatever reason. I don't know what that is; it's an interesting question. I know some people sometimes wonder whether that's separate from them, whether that's like some sort of an emotional intervention. But it is my intuition, and I suppose that's a bigger question. What is intuition? It plays on what I appreciate, which I understand as authenticity: I hate when you touch my nose. I don't think that's real. I don't think that that shows character. It shows what it means to be a human being. It shows the nature of being imperfect, which we all are. Still, a lot of the industry I work in is trying to tailor it to not be that, which I think is really unhealthy for people to absorb, especially at a young age. I often feel a certain responsibility to not do that, so young people don't see that, thinking that what they experience in themselves, other people aren't as well. 

To take away the blemishes of someone's face when they clearly have them is setting up an unrealistic example for young people. And I have seen it a lot, and I suppose that's an example of something inauthentic. So if someone has unique features and you kind of catch that in a certain way based on the way they were moving or even the way the light might catch someone's uniqueness on their face, maybe they have robust certain features and then a light catches it, and you can see it. That, I love that. So yeah, I suppose it often captures a moment where you can feel some emotion. But, to your point, how I perceive that emotion is subjective. Someone might say that one you saw before is depressed or isolated, or so that one in particular is sort of a lost, solemn. Those are two words I would probably say. But I mean, that girl in particular looks so... When you see her, she looks very young, she looks very youthful, but in that photo, I just captured this very mature, very strong… a photo, you can shoot it at thousands of a second. And it's such a small moment. I don't know; sometimes, you can get things in a different light than what you usually see.

Ash:

I've realised now that intuition is the only thing I have, different from everyone else. The only sort of primary intuition is based a lot on what I've exposed myself to, but I'm the only one who likes exactly what I want in the world so that's why I try and meditate through it because I know if I can play into that, it will lead me to a path to creating something more unique, or that's more like me, at the end of the day.

Interviewer:

It's a really good philosophy.

Ash:

It's taken so long and so many panics to figure that out. A lot of existential crisis. I remember so many nights when I just could not sleep, especially when I was living in Sydney.

Ash:

If I put out my work and it wasn't seen how I wanted it to be seen, and it's taken, there are so many of those to go through. And I was like, what am I doing now? I realised how, at times, I've responded to other people's opinions the way they will see it and then that's taken me down some funny paths where I've gone away from what I enjoy doing, and then I've become jaded in it because I'm like I've gone away from the horrors. I'm doing the first place.

Ash:

Yeah, which is, I think, a really difficult part of having it as your career, full freelance, full creative, because depending where your work is at, you can become more incentivised to appeal more to the brands and people who are going to pay me money. But then, in doing that, you kind of go away from who you are. So it's such a balancing act, but I suppose you learn more about who you are as you go in and out of those spirals.

Interviewer:

Okay, with photography, why were you drawn to it other than things such as film, music, or even painting? Why has photography become such a vessel for you to showcase your work? What do you think photography can show that other forms of media can't?

Ash:

That makes me think of shooting portraits, and I suppose when I do that through photography rather than, for example, painting, you can kind of capture someone in so many different lights. I can also experience experimenting with so many different ways of doing things. It's funny thinking about it. I don’t even understand why I'm so gravitated towards it sometimes. But I am, and maybe I can put more time into thinking about that now because that's an excellent question.

I guess my influences are always people who have really inspired me and have always shot photos and even the tactile feel of holding a camera. I love that, but editing is my favourite part of the whole process. I wouldn't even say that I'm in the process of shooting and being like, oh, I love this; I just am more excited to make it my own afterward. 

When I envision how I want it to look, the shooting is almost the... It's the canvas. It's almost like a necessary step to get where I want to be. I almost use the word chore, but it's not a chore at all because I love doing it and the process of it. But my favourite part is the post, so I get excited when shooting; I'm just thinking and waiting for it to get to that point.

Interviewer:

What do you like to do with your shots afterwards?

Ash:

To me, it almost feels like painting because I experiment a lot. I can take it so many different ways, and often, I'll find something that I haven't done before, which excites me. I suppose that's the part that I get. But I think all my influences when I was younger were always very creative, like even just skating and surfing. I feel like all those people were either being photographed or they were also shooting on the side of what they were doing, I suppose I wanted to be like them, and it just kind of led me down that path. I mean, also, I grew up in a digital age. I remember loving Tumblr and being on that when I was about 14. I would have had Instagram when I was 15 or 16. So I'm also in a pivotal age, experiencing all these media, photos, and content. Even in school, I watched so much YouTube of these people and went so much into brands, which they were all doing. Like my surfing and skating influences, when they would do their like day in the lives or whatever, or like come with me to do this, they were always like they shot film on the side or something, or they shot photos. They were always very involved in the creative process, and I think I probably took a lot of inspiration from them.

Ash:

I never really realised that until you asked that question.

Interviewer:

We'll take it in a different direction then. You've been to multiple countries around the world. How would you say other countries and different cultures have influenced your work or changed the way you photograph or edit in that subjective moment of being there?

Ash:

I don't know how much I can say now, at least that it's impacted my work, but I definitely remember how I felt in each place. For example, when we shot in LA recently, I felt like it was a place where I could be whoever I wanted to be. So, it potentially allowed me to go a bit wider in who I am. Break down my walls a little bit. When you spend much time in one place, you probably build this subconscious parameter of who you are, which would come into your work. Whereas every time I move, that identity is often wholly shifted. Each different place for me is representing a different stage of my path. Moving to Sydney, for example, the scope of what I was seeing and absorbing was very high fashion, editorial, and commercial, so that really broadened how I saw my work because it kind of taught me how to set up a more professional setting if I needed to. In Bali, it got stripped back again when I moved there, and it was a more relaxed scenario, more one-on-one back to just sort of stripping it back again and then focusing more on the art of it. Then, the States went back another way where it was a bit more campaign-focused. I'm struggling to think of exactly how it affected my work, but I know that they each affected me as a person so much and every time, my identity was stripped back to the point where I had to rebuild it.

To see Ash’s full work, visit his site here