Bubblegum Club

Tag: cinematography

  • Alex Paterimos – The young Cape Town based photographer interested in capturing sentimentality

    Alex Paterimos – The young Cape Town based photographer interested in capturing sentimentality

    Alex Paterimos is a young creative focusing his energies on photography and cinematography. Born in Greece, he spent the first four years of his life living in Athens. Thereafter his family moved to Ballito where he completed his high school education. Upon completing his secondary studies Alex felt that he needed to be part of a culturally rich space that challenged him artistically. Being drawn to the beauty and sense of community that he found in Cape Town, he is currently based in the city as a student of cinematography.  “Throughout my life, I had always wanted to enter the creative world, and always envisioned myself making art in some way.”

    The origin of Alex’s devotion to the craft of image creation is something that he can’t pin point to a specific time in his life as he states that he has had a passion for being behind the lens ever since he can remember. Receiving his first camera (a basic digital point and shoot) at the age of 12, he was awarded the opportunity to document his life. The drive behind Alex’s shutter release is sentimentality that translates into images of friends and memories captured in time.

    Formal training was accessed at the film school Alex attends where he was taught the essentials of photography and DSLR cameras. The main focus of his craft currently is developing his personal style and ensuring that his work conveys emotion to its onlookers. He predominantly works on 35mm film at present which facilitates in cultivating feelings of dreamlike nostalgia within his work.

    “Film adds a sense of value to an image for me and forces me to really perfect and love a photo before I take it. This process of crafting my images has helped me discover and nurture my passion for composition and lighting.”

    Inspiration comes to the young creative in observing the city he now calls home and new, yet undiscovered spaces for him. He shares with me that he is inspired by its architecture, colours he observes and the people that occupy these spaces. He is also interested in how human bodies are contrasted to their immediate surroundings. Taking from this he sometimes aims to replicate his observations in his shoots.

    Alex’s creative process for a shoot is one that unfolds in collaboration with his friends. Mood boarding and brainstorming about a shoot takes on a formative role in these developments. However, on the day of a shoot spontaneity often acts as a contributor to the final product.

    “Managing to effectively capture moments that just happen by chance is what I find most rewarding, as this aspect of spontaneity is encapsulated by the look of my 35mm point-and-shoot and essentially plays a big part in shaping my work.”

    To Alex, the central aspect of his image creation is evoking sentimentality and capturing the essence of the people he photographs as he feels strongly about not creating heartless work. “…I am focussing on developing my style and visual language first. I think that once I feel more confident in this, I will be able to begin pushing myself more creatively.” As Alex photographs his friends, his work can be said to contain an element of documentary-fiction.

    Alex’s raw talent seeps through his images that read like candid heart felt shots of friends. His work conveys not only sentimentality but a sense of who the people he photographs are. His work can be considered to be a reflection of the youth of Cape Town within this particular time and thus contains an element of documentary-fiction.

  • Meëk: aspiring to create the future of art

    Abi and Claire Meekel present under the collective Meëk. They have swiftly become a feature within the South African art scene dabbling in various forms of expression. You may recognize them as the sisters who modeled for Tarryn Francis or the sisters in the recent film by Aart Verrips or perhaps you know them as the DJ’s from AIR 2.0. However you know them, almost everyone in the art community in South Africa today has heard about them or seen their murals around Johannesburg. I met up with the 21 year old artists at a bakery in Melville. They walked in with a calmness about them, and Abi still had a blue paint mark on her neck from painting a mural beforehand. The blue of the paint accentuated her blonde hair and bold features. Claire’s red polo neck hugged her small frame. After we ordered our drinks, we began to talk about the various parts of their artistic practices.

    The Meekels were born in Amsterdam and lived there for seven years, hardly able to speak English. They then moved to Johannesburg and attended Parkview Junior where English became a part of their lives. Art has always been an integral part of the Meeks’ lives. Their mother is an artist and their father is an installation artist.

    “It has always been in our blood and in our faces. My dad would sit me on his lap and he would edit with me and with Claire on his computer.’’ – Abi Meekel

    “My mom would give us drawing pencils and pens when we were like 2 years old and we would sit there and draw and we loved it.” – Claire Meekel

    Meëk unfolded at the end of the Meekels’ matric year when they went on holiday in Europe. During this three-month period they decided that they wanted to create something, whether it was a brand, or an art collective or a movement. They were largely influenced by the art in Europe, from the graffiti on the walls to the architecture they were surrounded by. One day they sat down and just started drawing, and didn’t stop. And so Meëk was born.

    In speaking about this process the Meeks say that they created a character. Feeding off each other’s energies and shared background they decided to work as a collective. “It is more of our left leg or our right hand. It’s something; it’s an experience we have had as twins or sisters. It’s our pasts, our difficulties. It is what happens when we just come together. And it is very deep in a sense. It is also very playful. It’s like taking two halves and making it whole, almost.”

    The Meekels state that the older they get the more friction is evident between the two of them. Going to university led them to grow into individuals focusing on their own artistic practices. The Meekels are currently studying at Wits. Claire has always dreamt about being a photographer or a cinematographer and is currently specializing in cinematography. Abi specializes in sound and directing and has been playing the piano for nearly 14 years. Both sisters express that even though Meëk has a large following they have a need to work as individuals as well and find their own unique voices. They have already started branching out, with Claire having her own separate photography account on Instagram called @El_mno.

    @El_mno, Claire explains, is about close-ups of peculiar textures that make the viewer question what the object is that is photographed. She tells me that these pictures are all taken with her phone and then cropped out, and not edited. She enjoys the quality of the images and the restrictions that are enforced with a phone camera. The oblivious nature and confusion of subject matter that the images portray is what Claire finds appealing.

    Inspired by director David Lynch whose style can easily be described to resemble a nightmarish, fantastical dream, the Meeks conceptualize the soundscapes of their projects. “It’s a feeling. Like an atmosphere. An ambiance. It becomes a lot more difficult for people to relate to because it is a background thing. It’s something behind your head. In your head.”

    The Meeks aspire to create the future of art, but still take from the past and apply what inspires them into their practice. Becoming public figures in the art world at a very young age, they believe it has to do with their generation and the way the world is moving at this moment in time. They started putting their work up everywhere and took care to manage their social media presence. They have also been backed by their friends whom they collaborate with from time to time.

    Meëk is not about flawless imagery or content but instead they focus on creating a raw, unpolished aesthetic in their work. In their collage work they like to play with the fact that Photoshop is, in common practice, used to create perfect imagery but instead they warp normal perception with cutting up and duplicating parts of images. The twins have a uniform style and perspective that leans towards experimental that I like to think of this as cutting edge. “It’s just an image, it is nothing else. It’s not real. It is a moment in time. And you are editing over it. It’s distorting, changing.”

    The Meekel sisters are a part of Autonomy Wave‘s first micro residency, Future 76, and will be showing their work this Friday alongside artists that they consider to be their friends. Believing that this micro residency will push young South African artists to a new level they are excited to have been chosen for the first wave.