Life Through a Lens-Interview With Liam Lynch
While “studying Political Science as part of [his] Journalism Diploma at Technikon Pretoria” he then “witnessed, and photographed, political violence between students-realised the power and immediacy of images over words and never looked back.”
He is Liam Lynch-photographer, and part time blogger who is the essence of the saying ‘a picture is worth a thousand words’..
He is “very much regarded as a “band photographer”, usually by those looking in from the outside, over-eager to compartmentalise that which they are not a part of, or don’t understand, or are unable to fit in their world view or narrow confines of what makes “art”. I just don’t like the term… I find it restrictive.” He says “I photograph people… many of them happen to be in bands, true… but the best way to explain that might be to say that I always refer to a band in the grammatically-incorrect plural, rather that the singular collective. It’s how my mind works (or doesn’t).But yeah, that’s how I started… I knew people. People in bands. We all loved music. Begin.”
He chose photography for “the immediacy of it, but also, in the words of Kerouac: “And I shambled after as I’ve been doing all my life after people who interest me, because the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like roman candles across the night.” Photography allows me to keep shambling, to make sense of it while I am there, and when I get back… even as they burn.”
He had an Instamatic [camera] as a kid… although “it never really interested me. Then, a week after my 20th birthday, I used a borrowed camera to shoot those riots (mentioned above) then the next day my work was on just about every front page in the country. I kept on at the story, and a few months later, while almost getting shot in the face with a rubber bullet, I somehow got an image in the New York Times. I’m now 32. I still have that rubber bullet casing… though I’d rather have the Instamatic.”
He has done many a photo shoot, but the memorable ones are? “Hard to say… a lot of the HIV/AIDS projects I have worked on have stayed with me, for obvious (and not so obvious) reasons. But those memories are best pushed to the back of the mind at times. For the most part, I would have to say that the European Tour with Fokofpolisiekar is the “most memorable”, as it yielded a lot of memories, of what we all went through, and the 21 days of it have both formed part of my exhibition and the video of ‘Ek Skyn (Heilig)’.
He shot for One Small Seed Magazine “for over a year, my own portraits. I have been interviewed by them twice, and I have interviewed and shot Zander Blom for them… All in all, they have used a lot of my work..”
His favourite place to take photos? “From behind a camera.” of course…
He “hates the whole Canon/Nikon camera debate…I think it is retarded. I can’t help but notice that it [the debate] is usually instigated by Nikon users. Figures.” as for his favourite camera model? “Lord knows. I prefer to use Canon, I miss my old Leica…
Enjoy the video for ‘Ek Skyn (Heilig)’ below…
