Pro in Focus
We sit down with one of the world’s greatest exponents of colour photography, who has just published a new book of his images of India. Steve Fairclough finds out more…
Visual storyteller Harry Gruyaert talks about his new book,
Harry Gruyaert is first and foremost a visual storyteller. Perhaps that’s hardly surprising: his career began as a freelance director of photography for TV. Some of his groundbreaking stills work saw him shooting the 1972 Olympic Games and the first Apollo flights as they were broadcast on his TV set. The resulting pictures became the exhibition TVShots, published as a book in 2007.
Gruyaert is widely regarded as one of the great European colour photographers; his work stands beside acknowledged US exponents of the art such as Stephen Shore, William Eggleston, Saul Leiter and Joel Meyerwitz. Indeed, alongside Alex Webb, Gruyaert was amongst the first photographers in the Magnum Photos agency to shoot mainly in colour.
His penchant for colour photography is an ideal fit for his latest book, India.
Back in 1976, Gruyaert was offered a job as a director of photography for a documentary film project in Rajasthan. Once in India, he took the bold decision to leave the project and instead pursue the more instantaneous art of shooting stills in India. His 200mm lens was stolen during a train journey, forcing him to use a shorter-focal-length lens and get closer to people than he had before.
In over a dozen visits, spread across five decades, Gruyaert has documented India, and the new book on this work showcases more than 120 of his images. With text by the recently deceased writer and scriptwriter Jean-Claude Carrière, the book paints a picture of a magical land of mystery, colour and intrigue.
Family affair
Gruyaert’s love of photography dates back to his formative years. “I was very lucky,” he says. “From an early age
I knew that’s what I wanted to do. My father was not very happy about it – he didn’t think that it was a serious profession. But at home there was always a Rolleiflex still camera and a Paillard movie camera, and I got into that. I always knew that that’s what I wanted to do – there was no doubt in my mind.”
As well as India, Gruyaert is also known for his bodies of work from Ireland, Morocco and Egypt. “Travel is about discovering, finding something new and being stimulated by another environment, other colours, other mentalities and so on,” he says. “Otherwise you stick to the same place – you might be doing good work, but I need to be stimulated by different things. It’s like different love affairs. It’s a question of freedom, and of discovering new environments.”
On the topic of love affairs, I ask Gruyaert if he has had one with India. He replies, “Sure. I had a love affair with Morocco and with Egypt. I’ve had a love affair with different places, but India is maybe the most puzzling, because everything is so contradictory. A Muslim country like Morocco is a bit less chaotic, and my pictures [from there] are more simple. In India, everything goes in all kinds of directions with so many different religions and different opinions, and it’s always on the move. It’s very different and stimulating because of that.” Unlocking potential
The idea for the India book came about after the book publisher Xavier Barral had been to see a show of Gruyaert’s, which contained only about three or four images from India. “Xavier Barral liked them very much,” Gruyaert recalls. “So he said, ‘Do you have more?’ and I said, ‘Oh, potentially, I’ve been there very often’. I started to look again and dug out a couple of hundred pictures that surprised myself.”
Unfortunately, Barral died in 2019, but the book idea was still taken up by his publishing company; Thames & Hudson has also released an English edition.
To do a picture edit for a book or exhibition, Gruyaert has a fascinating approach to viewing his photographs. “I don’t like to only work by sending pictures on email. I like discussing,” he says. “I print absolutely everything first, small, but I put it on the wall and make links between pictures. In my atelier, I have a big metal wall where I can put up pictures with magnets, so it’s like making a script.”
The India edit took months, says Gruyaert. “I put them on the wall,
I need to be stimulated by different things. It’s like different love affairs
then I come back to it, I look at it again and then I change everything. I talk to other people – the publisher and other people who I trust – and we… it’s more like teamwork. I do the basics but in the end, it’s a dialogue.”
The march of time
The images in India date from 1976 right up to 2019. Gruyaert notes: “It’s unbelievable, but I’m surprised that people say they don’t see very much difference between the pictures I took more than 40 years ago and the pictures I took two years ago. I suppose it’s mainly because of the colour. Colour is so present in all of the photographs. In the beginning of the book there are villages in Rajasthan, which are very nice, and so different from places like Calcutta, for example. The city and the country are very different.
“Things keep changing all the time. Nothing stays the same, so there’s only one thing you can be sure of, life in general, everything changes and evolves. Thanks to Buddha… and Darwin we know that.”
Gruyaert estimates that around 90 per cent of India was shot on Kodachrome slide film, with the remainder being digital images he has shot since the year 2000. Nowadays he keeps his digital kit pared back and admits, “It’s very simple – the latest Canon camera with just a small 24-70mm zoom lens.” When asked what people should expect to see in India Gruyaert laughs loudly: “I don’t know – it’s up to the readers.”
During the current Covid pandemic, Gruyaert has managed to keep busy.
“If I’m not shooting, I’m not very happy. I have many different projects I’m working on. For example, I’ve completely revisited
Morocco. I did a book many years ago but it sold out, so I’m re-editing it, and eventually I will do another book. I am also working on projections.
“I have at least five or six different projects coming up, so I’m working much more now. At a certain age you know you’re not going to be 120 years old, so if you want to see what you’ve really accomplished, it’s better to give it a form. I’m really enjoying that and really re-discovering things I’ve done before.”
Harry Gruyaert turns 80 in 2021, but his project pipeline suggests that his life’s work is far from finished.
If I am not shooting, I am not very happy – I’m working on many different projects