I feel like I’ve always known Olivia, if knowing her from the age of 7 is counted as always. After not seeing each other for nearly three years, I met up with her for an interview about her photography and work in film. The way that females are portrayed in her work has always been something that I marvel at. When I walked into her apartment I felt as though parts of her character had been spread across the different rooms, from her assortment of teas and almond milk to the rose quartz in her lounge and her bell jar. Once our water had boiled we sat down and discussed her practice and the female gaze.
Marcia Elizabeth (ME): Can you tell me more about your background? At what age did you get into photography, and at what point did you get into film?
Olivia Mortimer (OM): I grew up in Pretoria with an Afrikaans upbringing. The culture is quite conservative in a sense. I’m lucky that my parents allowed me to pursue what I wanted to in life. I started going on to the Internet in grade 7 and I was like, ‘oh photography is fucking cool’. I always wanted to be a fine artist with paint and pencil. Then our scanner at home broke so I couldn’t scan art anymore to put up on DeviantArt. So I was like, ‘Cool let me try photography’. I started off with point and shoot and I just got obsessed with the instant gratification of photography. There was just a spark and I just kept taking photos. The more and more I did it the more people commented on it being ‘ok’ and I was like ‘oh cool, it’s not that shit’.
I carried on with that. I just wanted to be a photographer. Then I met some friends in Jo’burg who wanted to do a short film and I was like ‘Cool ya I love film’. On our Matric vac we made Teen Creeps. We would film, put it on the computer, edit and film, and so we churned out a film about adolescence.
Looking at it now I still have such a soft spot for it. At the same time that was the thing that got me really into cinematography, but still I didn’t plan on studying it. I went to Open Window Institute in my first year and took film and photography as my majors. Something just made more sense with film. I wound up failing photography at Open Window. With film I was like, ‘I’m really fucking good at this’. My lecturers told me that I had an eye. Like, ‘yeah, fuck yeah I have an eye, fucking cool’. That’s why I switched over to making film my major.
ME: I stumbled across an article about 17-year-old Olivia by 10&5 and there you stated, “My photography is mostly about being a teenager and being young and living in the time that is the best days of life to some people. I’m interested in the juxtaposition of innocence, being young, dumb and carefree and the rebellion that comes naturally with being a teenager.” How has your work shifted since then?
In a sense it has shifted but I also feel like that does still apply to my age group. I don’t think that anyone in my age group really knows what we are doing yet. We are all just really trying to figure out what is going on. We are still fucking dumb and young and carefree and we don’t know what the fuck we are doing. We all felt the same way at 17 and we all thought that at 24 or 25 we were going to have our shit together which is such a delusional fucking idea.
When I was younger I always had my camera with me so I guess I just took photos of my friends all the time doing whatever, getting drunk, swimming, smoking weed. I was just documenting everything which I do miss doing. At the same time you need to also back away and not take photos and actually be in the moment. You do miss capturing really spectacular moments of youth culture and your friends being in this age of experimentation. I don’t think the subject matter or the feeling of my work has changed much since I was that age.
ME: Who are the models and people featured in your films?
OM: My friends or people I am instantly drawn to. I am drawn to women because women have this beautiful energy about them. It’s strong and captivating. Women have the power to not only be feminine but also very masculine at the same time, it’s just electric and fucking beautiful capturing the female form with the female gaze and not sexualizing the body of a woman. Purposefully making them have rolls and stretch marks and pubic hair and arm hair, and that’s how it should be. Women are powerful beings and that needs to be unlocked more.
ME: Can you tell me what Teen Creeps is about?
OM: We decided to make a film about this time and this age that we are in right now and we asked all of our friends if they wanted to be in a short film. At that age you are just young and reckless, getting drunk. It’s just a little love note to Jo’burg and being young.
ME: Was it difficult for you to make the transition from still imagery into moving imagery?
OM: Not at all, it felt so natural. I developed a sense of framing things and had that eye from all of my years of practicing photography. I sometimes help the Honours students at Open Window film their projects. The lecturers can instantly see that it is my work and they know my style. I specialize in using only natural lighting. I don’t care if my footage is grainy and noisy.
ME: I feel like the female presence is significant in your work. Can you expand on its significance?
OM: There definitely is because I’m female and I want to tell stories of women not just being the protagonist’s love interest. Sadly there is not a big presence of women in the South African film industry, especially behind the scenes. I want to tell stories about women at specific times during their lives.
Suburbia shows a woman at a time in her life where she’s like, ‘I’m going to fuck some guy in a car and then I’m going to go home. I don’t need him to be interested in me. I don’t need him to take me out for breakfast the next day. I want to have sex and I’m going to have sex. I’m going to get this done and I’m going to have a good time.’
People aren’t used to seeing women portrayed like that in cinema. It is weird for people to see any kind of females in cinema where it’s like, ‘I’m fucking strong but I’m also fucking weak at the same time.’ The female character is somehow created as this thing to sexualize over with the male gaze. It’s so important for women to get into film to tell more female driven stories.
ME: Do you feel like you present women differently than men do? In what sense would you say that your gaze is different to a male cinematographer’s gaze?
OM: Ya, I don’t think that men realize that they sexualize women. Obviously there are male cinematographers who don’t sexualize women but it may also not be noticeable when you first see it. Certain angles and lighting really make a difference. How we filmed the sex scene in Suburbia is different to how a man would have filmed it. We filmed it where you could only see the back of the man’s head, it was all focused on her and her being like, ‘I’m basically using you as a sex toy and getting out of here.’ She wasn’t heaving and was all like ‘oh my god this is so hot’. She was just like, ‘cool, cool, cool, all done’.
Check our Olivier’s film Teen Creeps below. To keep up with her work visit her website.