All images by Emrys Thurgood. Used with permission.
I love playful, experimental work. The kind of photography that can leave you awe or scratching your head wondering what you’re consuming. Either response is a win for the photographer, because it shows they took a risk, and that they were prepared to go outside the realms of safety and structure. Emrys Thurgood is a risk taker; trailblazing their way through life one photo series at a time.
There is something to be said about creative work. The blend of conceptual ideas, props and scenery. It’s a clear indication there’s a lot going on in the mind of the creator. This makes photographers like Thurgood the ideal interviewee.
Wanting to unpack their way of thinking, I sent them a series of questions that would hopefully help us understand the mindset behind their remarkable creations. Thurgood is also a curator and I wanted to explore how that folds into their creative process.
Them Frames: Hey Emrys! I love how experimental your photography is. Where do you think your urge to create this way comes from?
Emrys Thurgood: Photography functions as escapism for me. My style of image making came from a love of playing with Photoshop when I was younger, but has now evolved from creating effects to making new, unreal worlds.
They are imagined spaces that refute the binary, overwhelming nature of the real world. There is room for the characters within them to exist unlabelled and undefined.
In recent projects, I’ve also enjoyed the addition of making physical props. It doubles down on the strangeness of it all, but I think it also adds a childish element to my stylings. A child-like imagination often has fewer limits on it, which I think is a great thing against the rigidity in how we can see things as adults.
Them Frames: What tends to inspire your ideas and how do you plan your projects?
Emrys Thurgood: The core of my projects is typically some creature or character that I’ve designed. These tend to be loosely based on some past mindspace I’ve been in, with the characters acting as decentralised versions of myself.
Two major things I explore are my experiences of derealisation and genderqueerness. As these are abstract experiences, I find it euphoric to depict them ambiguously and playfully. I aim to create comfort by depicting these externally, which I hope extends to an audience, regardless of if their experiences match mine.
Them Frames: Under a Blue Sun is a beautiful series. Please, talk to us about the role of the moon in this project and why it was important to you…
Emrys Thurgood: The Moon is an emblem of the type of alternate worlds I enjoy building! The light of the Sun is revealing, but the Moon conceals. As a genderqueer person, I wanted to play with what having a body means. The setting of night is one of my favourite ways to do this, as it offers a landscape that is obscured and empty of people.
The character of this story is a statuesque, glowing figure. They lack definably gendered features, giving them the opportunity to simply exist. As pure light, the function of their body is to facilitate their existence, rather than to be a social limitation.
Them Frames: You’re also a curator. How does your approach to curating differ from photographing and how do your processes overlap?
Emrys Thurgood: One gallery space I’ve gotten to be a part of is called the Loovre, and as a team, we run open calls to artists in and around Bristol. These shows are especially enjoyable as they are multi-disciplinary, so different mediums have the chance to complement each other.
I’m especially excited when lens-based images get to interact with more abstract mediums like illustrations and sculptures.
There’s an extra layer of narrative deconstruction in this combining of styles, which ties to my personal love of ambiguity in my own practice. This gives more room for a viewer to build a connection with singular images, and to imagine their own extensions of the scene.
Them Frames: In terms of challenges, what are the differences between curating your own images for a project, compared to curating another photographer’s body of work?
Emrys Thurgood: The shows I’ve helped curate have been group shows, so there always has to be some compromise with how much a single artist can present. In a way, the compromise is the fun of it!
There’s room to create pockets into many artists’ worlds, and expose an audience to all of them within the same environment. Having multiple artists in the same space means completely separate artworks get a chance to interact with one another.
Them Frames: If you had to blend a piece of music or album to your body of work, what would it be and why?
Emrys Thurgood: I’m going with the album ‘Starry Cat’ by Starry Cat. It has a quiet intimacy to it that ties to my work; sometimes it’s melancholic, but has some more upbeat songs too. Though I’m creating somewhat lonely characters, there’s a freeness and joy to their isolation.
The album feels full of love alongside heartache. In my work, I romanticise a world that couldn’t exist, by breaking down the world that is. I’ve loved the album since I was a teenager, so I have a personal nostalgia for it, but the recording style and instrumentals have a quality of a lost past by themselves.
Them Frames: Finally, please finish this sentence. I need photography in my life because…
Emrys Thurgood: it lets me redefine how I experience being a person.
You can see more work from Emrys Thurgood by visiting their website and Instagram.
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