Pauline Rowe: Can you tell me a bit about how and why you became an artist?

Phoebe Kiely: That’s an incredibly difficult question. It has and probably will always be a drive and compulsion to first capture my life and the people around me. From the age of 13, I was curious to collect, it became second nature to me quite quickly. I remember consciously thinking one day that everything I saw, I framed in my mind. When I opened my eyes I began to look at things differently. I remember it becoming irritating, having to see everything like a photograph. I have no other way to describe it. I think back to this time and I think it was my mind training my eyes to see what I wanted my photos to capture.

I began with a digital camera but it didn’t take me long to change to analogue.

I took three years out, between college and university. It was a wise choice for me. I gave myself time to think and to shoot. Three years I shot colour film. It gave me a purpose.

PR: So you use the same camera – why do you like to use it?

PK: I use a Yashica twin lens reflex. I moved on from 35mm at the beginning of my third year. It proved to be a wise choice for street photography. Medium format just allows me to slow the whole process down. Initially it made me much more careful.

It’s a trust thing, too. I trust this camera. With analogue I feel like that’s one of the most important things.

However, I am moving on to my Hasselblad now. I bought it almost two years ago and I didn’t use it. I feel like now is the right time. For the forseeable future that is what I will be working with. I feel like I need to feel comfortable with it for this next chapter.

PR: Some of your pictures are enigmatic, others have a documentary feel – others are close-up studies of the environment. How do you decide on which images make up an exhibition?

PK: I was told during university that most photographers can’t edit their own work; they’re too close to it.

It’s almost like a secret, it can’t be too obvious. The way that I work, the edit is always changing. There’s so much work, there’s no wrong edit, really. It’s difficult to commit with new work always surfacing.

The edit for my degree show changed over and over. It changed every time I shot more, every time I printed more. It was only about a week before the degree show that I finially had to stop at an edit. I find it difficult committing to one sequence of images.

I constantly look for human presence in the images I capture. Occasionally people will feature in the work. I feel like there needs to be some balance between photos, therefore there can’t be too many photos of people.

PR: Can you tell me about the title of your exhibition- They Were My Landscape?

PK: It’s a quote from The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath. When I first read it I pencilled underneath that particular line.

I always avoided titling anything during my time at university. Edits are more comfortable things to decide than the titles. My work, it doesn’t refer to a specific place or person but – there – it’s my landscape. The unifying factor is my experiences. There is no concept behind it. It is a way of fixing me into the frame, into the story. The dream like sequence, it’s about the human condition. The peeling paint, about my human condition. My way of making it permanent.

PR: Will the work be framed conventionally?

PK: The work will be pinned to the walls. Frames feel too permanent, they would fix the work too much. Pins make everything seem more temporary.

PR: Do you have plans for after the exhibition?

PK: To sort my own dark room. Then the next step is a residency.

Poems linked to ideas, energy and themes in Phoebe Kiely’s work:

The Moult: Jen Hadfield

http://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poetry/poems/moult

A True Account of Talking to the Sun at Fire Island : Frank O’Hara https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACpLm3qNamU

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A PDF pack containing interviews with each of the artists exhibiting in Open 2: Pieces of You is available to download here.