Joël Tettamanti Enchants the Land

Rewind to those 10 hours of flying, the grogginess of jet-lag is unavoidable as the move through time zones keeps the mind separate from body. The first moments on new ground are no more than a blurry haze. Partly stuck somewhere on that transatlantic journey, actions seem dreamed in the slow-motionness of feeling them. Only the body has arrived so far, emotions are like left luggage awaiting assortment.

These moments of disorientation are precisely the thrills in which traveller and landscape photographer Joël Tettamanti seeks in visiting new places. With a camera as the only tool, his photographs archive the surrealness of visiting an unfamiliar place. Often on the outside looking in to the surrounding architecture, the perspectives capture feelings of uncertainty and alienation in new surroundings.

With 22 major shows since his graduation in 2001 from ECAL, Cameroon born artist Joël Tettamanti’s fresh approach to manipulating dimensions in photography deals with processes of documenting. From NYC across to Europe his exhibitions have been described as ‘he, the one who sees’. Half acted and half actual the theatrical fictions of landscape are manipulated through the editing process. His images embody a fiction yet we are convinced

Dazed Digital: You have a large archive of images from the various locations worldwide, how did you select the images for ‘local studies’?
Joël Tettamanti: I worked closely with the curator on this actually I kept bringing him more and more images, but it is also an experimental study about my works.

DD: Your work deals with site-specifity do you find gallery contexts difficult?     
Joël Tettamanti: It depends galleries can be difficult people to work with, when you have a certain understanding of your work, there are always obstacles, but they also have the experience of what works and what doesn’t in their space.

DD: You mention fiction as an outcome, and in some works the photograph becomes almost an unrecognised medium is the aesthetic of the photograph important?
Joël Tettamanti: I try not to edit too much I use old school techniques which always has advantages and disadvantages, on the one hand its good quality but on the other its hard to transport. I think that when processed and developed with chemicals, the photograph is linked to the here and now. Its important not to be too dramatic and I have no problem with retouching images but I am somewhere between honest and realistic I like to shows something I did with a camera.

DD: You talk about the process as an experience of being in a new place, so is it important to begin working immediately on arrival of a place?
Joël Tettamanti: I have no system- I work simply when I am excited by the place. When I arrive somewhere new and am on a different time zone often I work as the new place sleeps. This I like, it tells a story of how photographers can live.  
 
DD: You talk about being in a place looking at inside spaces, and you are on the outside looking in, you present the viewer with this same view, of someone else’s space, but as soon as you enter new places are you immediately aware of such perceptions?
Joël Tettamanti: I am fascinated by shapes, by weather and light and the technology of photography that shows these things, I try not to be subjective about my work I have a responsibility to aesthetics and this is the way that I work. But I am very contradicting, I mean, tomorrow I might say something completely different. But that’s just part of the process, it’s all about works in progress, how boring would it be any other way?

Joël Tettamanti, ‘Local Studies’ at the Fotostiftung Schweiz, Winterthur, until 17th May 2009