Beki Cowey IG@beki_takes_pictures bekicowey@gmail.com
What is your specialization in photography? (portraits, fashion, nature, street photography, etc.)
*
My specialization, I guess, is that I don’t specialize. I really hate being pinned down and living for people's expectations; I think it’s the biggest killer of creativity. Broadly speaking, my photographic practice has three main forks.
There is my contemporary art practice, which usually starts from a lens-based viewpoint but isn’t restricted to photography and also encompasses video projections and mixed media installation-type works. A lot of this work is related to my experiences as a woman and my response to the world around me, often using self-portraiture and memento mori.
Commercially, I shoot editorial, portrait, and product photography—anything from really simple and clean to highly conceptual, depending on the client brief.
Also, as I spend a lot of my time traveling, I like to get out into the world and photograph what’s around me, so I shoot a lot of travel, street, and documentary photography. This allows me to connect with where I’m at and try to stay present when my studio work can get me in my own head—a kind of journal, I guess—but this has also been published and exhibited internationally.
When I first started out, I photographed a lot of music and nightlife events. I'd been studying fashion design, dropped out of my course, jumped on a friend's band’s tour bus, and that’s how I got my start, documenting those wild times. I'm currently working on a book of this archive.
I think my background in fashion design leads me to approach photographic projects in a collection-like way, where, although there are overarching commonalities and themes, I have no desire to keep reproducing the same work repeatedly or for projects to necessarily go on for many years, continually producing the same kind of imagery and keeping myself from feeling too trapped or put into any particular box.
What inspires you in your creative work?
*
Many of my projects begin as throwaway comments from conversations with friends. My Notes app is a treasure trove of phrases that I might like to return to. I’m going to do something with that. For example, my Nunsploitation series came from a friend being really mad about a dating experience and proposing that we just become nuns. I love to take these little seeds and extrapolate them. The series grew into a collection of modern-day Magdalenes and Marias that drew references from religious iconography, Renaissance art, nunsploitation movies, and fetish and porn magazines.My project, The Widow, was a response to how I felt and to a lot of the things I felt were projected onto me after the death of my late partner. I started playing with these tropes and stereotypes of widowhood, dragging them out to extremes.In Bad Barbies, I wanted to address the way that filter culture has taken over and that when I was a kid, Barbie dolls were blamed for people's self-image problems. Now we’ve become our own Bad Barbies as we shape our online avatars into increasingly exaggerated forms that show only a tenuous link to our true appearance.I guess, to me, art is how I try to understand life.
What key techniques do you use in your photography?
*
My practice is split between my primarily digital commercial and fine art practice and my primarily analog documentary practice. Commercially, I shoot mostly editorial, portrait, and product work. It can vary between clean and simple all the way through to very conceptual shoots.My contemporary art practice is largely lens-based—photo and video—although some projects then extrapolate out into installations. I’m planning something fun for the summer with this, although I can’t say too much right now.My work heavily features self-portraits and memento mori-style still lifes. As I am currently living out of suitcases without an actual home base, photography and video are ideal media because I can streamline my kit to be able to work pretty much anywhere. Using my own body and face allows me to create work quickly while still having a strong feel for what I have envisioned.With my street and travel documentary photography, I primarily shoot film. However, if my iPhone is the only camera I have, then that will work just fine. Shooting on film pulls you back from all the bad habits that digital allows to creep in. You start to think more deeply about the value of each frame you shoot.
How does your culture or country influence your photography style?
*
At one point, I would have said not at all; rather, the need to escape is one of my biggest influences. Since I was a teenager and first left home at 17 to move to Spain, I have always had a massive fear of inertia, of being stuck in one place for too long or being in limbo. Maybe one day I will figure out where I fit in the world, but I think my work comes more from a constant need for flow, from the feeling of transience.I’m currently working on something for the summer that explores both my relationship with home as a physical place and the idea of home as an abstract concept—a reflection of the last three years of living out of my suitcases, juxtaposed with the notion of having a “hometown.”
What resources (books, online courses, webinars) do you recommend for improving photography skills?
*
I’m a massive book hoarder. I love digging around in thrift and charity shops for interesting gems. YouTube is a great resource. I don’t necessarily have any go-to channels; I just look up things if I need a solution.Course-wise, I’m not very teachable. I tried university twice, and I guess my brain just isn’t suited to formal learning. When I catch hold of an idea, I tend to just dive in and figure out what I need to make it happen. If you have a vision and the will to make things happen, then you will figure it out.I think building community is very important. Having friends who are artists, designers, and photographers around you is a great resource to be able to help each other. Additionally, mentoring new people coming up and helping them develop and find the right opportunities is crucial—people need to shift from a competition mindset to a collaboration mindset instead of gatekeeping.
What editing programs or tools do you use for processing your photos? Why did you choose them?
*
For the majority of my work, I use the Adobe suite—primarily Photoshop and also a bit of Lightroom. I’ve also used things like Gigapixel from the Topaz suite. I use Photoshop because it’s the industry standard, but also because it’s what I’ve been using since before I even started taking pictures seriously, going back to being a teenager who wanted to study fashion design. Sometimes it does feel frustrating as a creative because you feel held hostage to the subscription nature of these editing programs. It would be great if there were an alternative.Additionally, in some of my projects, I am interested in how we edit images, especially those of ourselves, for social media, and how we change our faces. For this, I have used apps like Snow, Uplens, and even the resources that tacky Instagram filters provide. We are rewriting our own impossible beauty standards by taunting ourselves with impossible-to-emulate online avatars. I used this in my miniseries Bad Barbies, which was exhibited in Budapest. I think it’s important not to overlook these kinds of apps because they are how many people engage with photography on a day-to-day basis. Also, it can be freeing, and sometimes messing around with a silly filter will present me with a new way of seeing an image.
Which social media platforms or networks do you think are the most useful for promoting photography?
*
Primarily, I use Instagram. I’m a little frustrated with the shift to being video-focused because although I also make video artworks, these are work-related rather than just spewing content for free, which seems to be what Meta wants. Additionally, that kind of TikTok-style performative video just isn’t really my vibe. The desire to overshare about yourself is draining. I want a platform to showcase my work, not feel compelled to do a dance to some music that I hate. It's distracting and has a heavy note of “pick-me” that I just can't gel with. I get that it works for some people; it just isn't my style.I still cross-post some of my Instagram content, like exhibition news and shoot availability, to Facebook, but mainly because I have a fair-sized audience there, rather than because I like anything about how it works as a platform. It feels very static and dated.I do feel frustrated with Meta’s lack of understanding of the female body in art. This, paired with their censorship of women artists, presents a challenge for how I can promote my work. If I boost a post advertising an exhibition in a certain city, I seem to get mostly thirsty guys dropping fire emojis, whereas much of my organic following who interacts with my posts are women (and the theys and the gays). It proves to me that the algorithm still has only a very superficial ability to read and understand art, largely missing the themes my work explores. You constantly feel like you are dancing on a fine line between how much you can show to get seen and getting yourself unceremoniously deposited on the community standards naughty step and being shadowbanned.
Do you have favorite photographers or artists who have influenced your style? Which ones?
*
I wouldn’t say that my work is super influenced by other photographers. I tend to look for influences from other genres of art and popular culture, often mixing together quite disparate elements. Looking back to when I started out in photography, the people who were influencing me were definitely a split between those who were creating super-produced, high-octane, glamorous fashion photography and those who were producing something much more realistic—a close-to-the-bone documentary style.I think you can still see those two kinds of “angel-devil,” or whatever you want to call them, sitting on my shoulders now with the work that I put out. On one side, I loved Ellen von Unwerth, Steven Meisel, and Helmut Newton. On the other side, I admire the still photography of Larry Clark’s Tulsa and the work of Nan Goldin. I also love Chris Killip, who photographed much of the northeast coast where I grew up, and Letizia Battaglia’s photography of Sicily. Both capture that raw sense of place and people, which informs my documentary street and landscape photography.More often, I am influenced by movies. When I started out, I wanted to shoot photographs that looked like stills from a new wave movie. Godard was God, and Fellini’s 8 1/2 was the holy scripture. My Nunsploitation series draws heavily on the film genre of the same name but juxtaposes it with Renaissance art and iconography, with a nod to porn magazines, too. I like to make my work look cinematic, as if it is a still from a lost movie—a world that you could step into.Directors who have influenced my work include Dario Argento, David Lynch, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Abel Ferrara, and Jean Rollin, but this list isn’t exhaustive and could be pages long. I would also mention Bruce LaBruce because I love the way he continues to push boundaries. I was fortunate to be invited to the London premiere of The Visitor, his reinterpretation of one of my all-time favorite Pasolini movies, Teorema.Music and the surrounding subcultures also permeate my work. Shooting live music and documenting the late-night chaos that ensued is how I cut my teeth as a photographer, and it is still there. It sneaks into titles, or sometimes an image evokes something while listening to music, right down to the playlists I compile to soundtrack fashion shoots, ensuring the model gets the mood.
What technical or creative challenges have you faced while creating your work, and how did you overcome them?
*
I don’t think I would enjoy my work if there weren’t challenges. I don’t like easy things; they’re rarely good. I’m willing to pay the price for a good image in the dream location, whether that means working in -19°C or dealing with clouds of mosquitoes in a swamp. I like weird and “difficult” light; it often makes for the most interesting end result.As a lot of my work involves self-portraiture, I’d also say that working with my camera on a tripod, shooting using the timer or a remote trigger can be limiting. Creating something that doesn’t feel clumsy while setting up the angles so that it still feels organic requires a lot of skill. There is a great deal of self-reliance in much of my work, from scouting locations to building props and learning SFX makeup, which is key to a lot of the transformative themes that recur in my art. I’ve had to learn to be very adaptable.The way my project The Widow looks today is largely due to two hard drives failing and me losing too much footage to make the art film I’d intended. I went back and started working with what survived. So far, it has picked up a set of finalist laurels from the Waterford International Film Festival for Best Cinematic Image and a finalist position in the Best Series category at the Tirana International Photo Festival. Works from the project have shown in galleries in London, Rome, Athens, Budapest, Glasgow, and Barcelona.
How did you hear about "Depo," and what are your expectations for our magazine? Are you interested in participating in future projects or collaborations with "Depo"?
*
I think I noticed Depo through an Instagram ad (I guess sometimes their algorithm works) and was curious, so I looked through your site at the interviews you’ve posted. I'm always open to talking again in the future!
