Michelle Sank- MS0127

michelle sank

Michelle had no real interest in photography when she decided to have a go in her final year at art college - it turned out to be life-changing; “It was an extraordinary experience for me because it was like an umbilical cord and I suddenly discovered my voice of personal expression.”

She has gone on to develop a collaborative social documentary practice, working with her subjects to create her images. Her work documents young people across the country, their everyday experiences and how they choose to express identity. Her images provoke a thoughtfulness to the lives and stories of young people.

Interview and text by Esta Maffrett | 15.09.21

michelle sank young
Michelle Sank- MS0140

How did you get into photography?

When I was still in South Africa, I did a fine art degree. So it was really painting and sculpture, and in the last year of my course they introduced a photographic module and I thought, well, I'll give it a go. I had no interest really in photography prior to that. It was an extraordinary experience for me because it was like an umbilical cord and I suddenly discovered my voice of personal expression. I had an extremely enthusiastic, very passionate lecturer who really supported my work and that's how that was the beginning of it really. I had the real gift of David Goldblatt who was really the father of documentary photography in South Africa. Very, very well known. He's not alive anymore. But he picked up on my work as a student in South Africa and became a mentor for me, which was extraordinary. And as I say, a real gift.

How do you use portraits to empower your subjects?

I think what has been said about my work is that the space of the camera becomes almost like a stage where people can present themselves. So it's almost like an act of performance really. And I think the way I work with people, which is, I hope very empathetically and there's sort of mutual respect, I think allows people to bring up something of themselves in the image. I think people have amazing intuition. They pick up something about you and when I see something I'm genuinely excited and it's almost like an act of love in a way, really. That recognition of something quite special about the person that I'm either finding on the street, or that has been presented to me through commissions or residences and so on.

Whether it’s bedrooms, back gardens or home towns every subject has a special relationship to their environment in your photos. Besides telling where the kids live, why is the surrounding so important in your images?

Even in more formal situations where I have a commission, or projects that I've generated where I've worked in the bedroom and not known what I'm going to find, there's certain signifiers and cultural coding that I think makes the narrative. On another day that may not be there. So I think when I'm outdoors, and I see someone, it's how the whole thing is working. And what's often been said about my work as well is that it's almost as if the portrait is stuck on to the background and there's that narrative going on between the two. But as I say, I may if I'm working outdoors, meet one of those subjects, and the signifiers aren't there and then I don't see that something special. And when I go indoors I have this antenna I guess that tunes into the signifiers, subtle as they are, but for me very important that says something about someone's personality, or has some kind of reference to personality, cultural coding, history and so on.

Do you spend much time organising those signifiers, maybe changing the room? Or do you just go with what's there?

Sometimes I've had to adjust because sometimes the spaces that I work in, not having known where I'm going to end up, are sometimes quite challenging as far as space goes. So if someone's positioned according to the light, or whatever, and there's something coming out of their head, or there's a painting on the wall, that is disrupting me, I will remove that or change it. But for the most part, I'm working with what's presented to me with subtle changes, and it's really just about giving the figure a clean space to breathe. And when I'm outdoors and all those signifiers are there, I'm finding them. It may be that I have to move someone slowly so that a pole isn't coming out of their head. But it's really to do with the fact that one can focus on the figure without distractions that I don't want.

"For me it's a real celebration of magnificence of these young people really, they're not really conforming yet, they still have their individuality and their expression"

Michelle Sank- MS0142

Your images really show the way we perform, through image, style and posture to be the person we want to be. Do you think there is an awareness in these young people of their identity as in a state of flux?

I don't know if they have a consciousness of being in a state of flux. I think that there is a consciousness of the presentation of identity through clothing, through decoration, through posture, body image. And that goes back to my very, very early work, it's almost done a full circle if you think of cosmetic surgery (Referencing projects such as In My Skin). I think as you’re growing up what constitutes acceptance is within that world of media, or peer group, or society as it is now, you know, what is expected of you. My very first projects like Bye-Bye Baby were dealing with that. And then my later projects in 2012/13 on body image, it was the full circle according to the pressures of society. I think that the pressure on young people because of social media being so everywhere now, I think that that pressure is probably enormous. I would imagine is even more extreme now than it was in 2001 or 2005 when I was studying Bye-Bye Baby because that social media wasn't so ingrained and so everywhere.

Alot of your images explore the way young people are ‘adulticised’. Do you have any thoughts on how this denies or even speeds up our personal expression?

The pressure from social media, and the pressure that young people can be under I think can and will change the involvement of a natural progression. Because I think there are probably certain sections of childhood that are now speeded up, or, you know, that element of play has probably changed or experimentation has probably changed in a different way. Because instead of being 9 or 10, there's a desire to be 15 and everything that may come with that. And because I think, and certainly when I was doing Bye-Bye Baby, the way advertising was being used by clothes organizations, thongs for kids of 4 or 5, that's really speeding on sexuality. So I think that that will have a huge effect on young people's aspirations and what they think, once again, is acceptable. Or in order to be loved, if they're dressed like that or look like that they will get more love and acceptance. So I think it's gapping out certain parts of maybe what was a slower development for someone like myself?

For your series My.Self you were commissioned to explore the cultural divide in the Black Country. You chose to stage the images in teenage bedrooms and I was wondering how much your aim was to display the way the political and personal are connected?

I don't think it was so much the political and the personal. I think it was more the cultural and the personal because I was working along the ethnic divide, well not the divide the ethnic diversity so I think what was important. For example, Rebekha, the one girl in a sari sitting in her bedroom on her bed, see the signifiers. You've got the very traditional way of dress, but then you've got the wonderful really English houses outside and the heart (on the wall). I'm very interested in that cross cultural thing, co-existing, and how a lot of these people were maybe the next generation of immigrants, but still I love their cultural ownership and then I'm fascinated by how westernization is also creeping in. I think for me it's not so much the political, it's more a celebration of cultural similarities and differences and individuality. If you take Georgia, the Irish dancer on her bed. For me, I never knew what I was going to find, you know, and this wonderful furry cushion and the sort of sensuality that goes through into the phone, which I think has got a lion on the back. For me, it's a real celebration of magnificence of these young people really, they're not really conforming yet, they still have their individuality and their expression and I think that's what I was also looking for in that. Although those influences that we spoke about are there, within those influences they're expressing their absolute individuality, which I really enjoy.

If you could put one object into the Museum of Youth Culture what would it be and why?

Gosh, one object. A top. like a male or female, upper clothing. A t-shirt or a top. Because I think a lot of that references the time. The time that that image was taken, what was in fashion at that time? It displays evidence of both femininity and masculinity. And you know, what's written on that t-shirt, what the decoration is on that top or t-shirt. Yeah. And it also has the body. It holds the body that is expressing the gesture, or part of the gesture.

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