A woman crush from our archives — Catherine Hyland

Interview by Federica Belli

Your landscapes are about a lot more than what is depicted, it seems that the land could come to life, shift and evolve as in a kaleidoscope, absorbing the observer. Would you link this to the bond you have with that area?

China is an endless pool of inspiration for me, it’s so steeped in history and aligned with what I aim to make work about in terms of fabricated memory and national identity. The way in which fast-track urbanization has alienated the population both from the countryside and from their own histories. I think I am intuitively drawn to it.
The past has been erased in such a major way, in so many different areas that there is this constant tension in the air that you can’t escape. Humiliations of repeated invasions and occupation in terms of their history has practically been hidden, painted over. Their furious attempts to modernize, control and manage the landscape, is part of overcoming the past and I think that’s something I relate to both on a personal level and as an idea. I feel like it’s a human instinct I see all around me, there is a fight or flight aspect to it.

I’m interested in the attempts to transform nature into a theme park for contemporary consumption. The idea that the earthquakes, the landslides, the famines, invasions and the floods are a thing of a great and colorful past. The notions that they are part of a history that has and continues to be transformed into nostalgia. But I believe there is so much underlying anxiety to this enclosed world, we try to tame the land so much but it will outlive us.

Do you think there is something special about that area that makes it uniquely apt for this project? Or is it just a placeholder for this planet?

I’ve always had a keen interest in the idea of the sublime. The idea that embracing how small and vulnerable we are can be empowering if looked at in the right way.

Landscapes became a fantastic tool by which to experience the world and I see it as exactly that, a tool that helped/helps me to experience things I otherwise wouldn’t. It has allowed me to tell stories about places, and about our connection to land, in a way that can only be done by getting out into those spaces so that is what made me focus on it initially.

It took me out into the world, to experience the unexpected. And in the more desolate locations, which is quite important, to feel small myself, to see how far I could push myself and most of the time just be open to strangers and new places.

I want my photographs to provoke people to look, to ask questions, and to find their own answers because that is exactly what I am doing through taking them, that is and was my main motivation.

I believe we experience the world through encounters, mostly seemingly inconsequential short experiences, tourism specifically in its universality helps us understand and digest the complex nature of the world. I’ve always believed that the most trivial acts, are the most telling, the pleasure of discovery and adventure, no matter how choreographed encourages us to be curious.

It is important to me that my photographs be connected to my principles, that they ask questions about human nature and our desires. To bare witness to this collective striving for transcendence that seems to be engrained in the modern man, my project Universal Experience in particular is an attempt at that. To make people feel something, some kind of truth that resonates with their own lives or their own actions.

I think people constantly try to escape our mediated world because it’s very difficult to find something truly authentic, so much of our lives are based around reproductions and mass manufactured illusion, we start to get that overwhelming feeling that we are all occupying the same space and so we seek out new experiences as a remedy to that feeling.

This is an ongoing theme throughout all my work but as opposed to the previous project Belvedere, Universal Experience aims to focus on the more surreal and unexpected locations in which these sites exist primarily in and around China and Mongolia, with a specific focus on scale and vastness throughout the project which in turn enhances that element of human behavior. So the desolation and surreal nature of these spaces, is very much being used as a tool.

The scenery appears alien. Did you find the immensity around you to be somehow comforting while shooting these pictures?

I think it’s always been pretty important to me in terms of being creative that I embrace the idea of there being no set path, so I just feel a sense of freedom psychologically. But also clarity in terms of thinking about the way we treat the environment and the wider implications our choices have on the planet. Which is very easy to ignore when we are in more comfortable surroundings.

Really all I’m interested in is paying attention. I don’t want to control my environment, in fact the less control I have in all aspects the better for me, so travelling for long periods of time is ideal, just giving myself away to an environment or the people I meet and seeing where it leads me. As long as you are willing to give that time away and don’t see it as a sacrifice, then I think it can be a very cathartic way to work as the camera becomes primarily a tool to experience the world and life itself.

WCW Questionnaire :

Describe your creative process in one word.

Cathartic.

If you could teach a one-hour class on anything, what would it be?

Making sushi. I find it really relaxing.

What is the last book you read or film you saw that inspired you?

Hirokazu Kore-eda's Shoplifter.

What is the most played song in your music library?

Everywhere, Fleetwood Mac.

How do you take your coffee?

I don't, I've never acquired that particular taste, strangely.