“We haven’t gone beyond tokenism”: Exploring diversity’s “now moment” with Liz Johnson Artur

INT: First of all, I wanted to talk about the way interviewees usually refer to you. When I’ve read interviews with you in the past, everyone always seems to open with the fact that you are Russian and Ghanian, referencing your heritage in the first sentence, then introducing your work through that. Do you think that kind of introduction is useful for understanding your work?

LJA: My experience of growing up was more one of slipping into different boxes. When I grew up in Germany, I looked different to most of the people around me but at the same time, it was difficult for people to put me in a particular place. Some people thought I was Turkish, others thought I was American. So I’m used to being taken for something which I am not.

To answer your question, I always felt that whatever interest takes hold of me, I can go there. I never felt limited in terms of my identity, so sometimes I swapped. Sometimes I felt more German, sometimes I felt more Russian. For me, it’s not a fixed idea.

INT: Mmm, I can relate to that feeling. I was born and grew up here in London but people still ask where I’m from all the time. Recently I watched Lulu Wang’s The Farewell which I loved because it’s the first film where I felt I could relate to the protagonist. She was Chinese but grew up in the West, and displayed the nuances of having this cultural duality. Did you experience something similar?

LJA: I suppose that if you look for it, then you can find something. But because of what I said about feeling entitled to go to any culture, I never looked for the culture. I think the first Afro-Russian that I met was in my mid-twenties, so it was quite an isolated existence in terms of relating. But for me, there was never an issue of ‘who am I?’ as such, but more, if I can be this or that, then I can try this or that.

INT: Wow. That’s so different to the way I think about identity. I much prefer yours. Can we talk a bit about your new work showing at the Southbank Centre. Your work is often about community and you really get that feeling in these new photographs; the energy, the togetherness. What drew you specifically to these communities?

LJA: I have to say, my work usually comes out of me going out and finding things. This project came about because the Southbank approached me and said we have this idea for a project about people in South London. They did a questionnaire and the public put forward people or institutions they find significant in South London, then we picked them from that list. Some of the places I knew but had never managed to go in, like Ebony Horse Club [a community riding centre in Brixton] which is just five minutes down the road. I pass it every day but never managed to go in.

What I liked about this project is that it didn’t just come from me; in a way, it was curated by the people. It felt natural to be part of it through the approach. It wasn’t contrived. Everyone involved was interested in showing the people of South London. I shot the pictures and we had a big meeting with the subjects to choose the final pictures together. Not everyone came, but the people who did engaged with the pictures.

Going back to my other work, one of the things I’ve realised since I started exhibiting, is that it’s nice to do collaborations, and this was an especially good one. Everyone involved, from the Southbank, to the people I photographed, all wanted to represent South London. That was the best thing about this project.

INT: When you work on collaborations, do you ever find that other parties see your work differently to how you intended?

LJA: This is the biggest project I’ve done as any kind of collaboration with an arts institution. But personally, with my background being in freelance photography, for magazines for example, the process has been very different. You take the pictures, hand it over to the art director and whatever becomes of it is out of your control. That process was important because I learned to maintain a certain control when it comes to my pictures and how I want them to be seen. But it wasn’t like that in this case with the Southbank work, everyone was focused on the people being photographed.

INT: What kinds of attributes do you look for in a person you want to photograph?

LJA: Of course it could be anyone, but I don’t think that’s humanly possible. What I do, in a certain way, is at the same place as when I started out; creating a body of work which can say something about human beings. For example, in my archive, I represent people mainly from the African diaspora. Taking photos of Black people is simply a choice that could have very easily been a different one. The bottom line for me is that I’m representing people. I’m trying to catch moments that I feel would be nice to preserve.

I look at photography as something that has its own life. I can’t represent people as human beings in the complexity that they are, but in terms of being seen, I try to accumulate work where, in the end, people don’t look at it and think, “Oh, it’s another Black person.” It’s about getting into the moments of where this person might be or what this person might symbolise.

These are all things that you start to say when you have to talk about photography, but when I take the photographs, it’s often spontaneous. Even if it’s composed, it’s something both the subject and I work on together. The person I photograph comes up with the ideas, and I’m happy to take them. But I am also a photographer so I look for my composition, my light, all those things come into it. Also, I have to say that I’ve been doing this for 30 years and have learnt this along the way.

INT: Is there a discernible difference between the way you photographed people 30 years ago compared to now? In terms of the kinds of people you look to photograph, perhaps, or a certain expression you want to capture?

LJA: Someone asked me this the other day. I was doing a talk at a college, and sometimes I start my talk by saying that I was quite shy and that it took me a long time to take out the camera and approach people. One of the students asked whether I’m still shy, and what I said then is that yeah it’s still probably how it is. I can still be that shy person but when I have the camera, when I want to take a photograph, I don’t think about shyness.

INT: And do you ever think about your work in this kind of activist sense?

LJA: I think for any artist to commit to anything political is a one-way street. Personally, a lot of what I do is embedded in the everyday. I can do what I do because I live in London and have that kind of eye level with people I see and meet. One can see that as political but then it’s very hard to pull politics out of anyone’s life. Particularly if you live in a kind of urban environment, or any environment really!

I don’t see myself as a political artist, I see myself as an artist who uses photography to pose questions. The Southbank project is a particularly interesting example. I see it point blank as, “Have a look at some people” to consider London in the wider picture. The appreciation of another human being is important in the context of living in a place which doesn’t have much space.

INT: It’s funny because after researching for this interview, I didn’t expect you to say that. Because there’s so much talk around diversity at the moment, coupled with the fact that your work often captures the African diaspora. So I guess my question is, do you think your work becomes over-politicised or over-intellectualised?

LJA: There is no real context where we can just talk about my work for what it is. We don’t have that context when we talk about other cultures – whether it’s Black or Asian or anything else that isn’t represented on a mainstream level. You know I never push my work out, and one of the reasons is because as soon as it goes out, I have to explain “Black”, which is really not what I was thinking about when I was taking the photographs.

LJA: That’s what it’s all about really, to widen this conversation. I think it’s interesting that my work only came about recently in the UK. It only happened through some work I was showing in Berlin that a lot of curators from London saw. Sometimes people ask me, so where have you been? And I say, well, right here. It’s what you decide to look at. So if my work can stimulate that, then that’s great.

INT: In an ideal world for you, would you want interviewers to even ask questions in relation to race?

LJA: Well, my archive is both, it’s about the people in the photographs, but also the photographs. You know I really like photographs and I like them traditional, I like to shoot on film and I like to be able to go into a dark room and make a nice print. So that’s how I look at my work, as photographs, and I try to take photographs in a way I think will sustain the test of time and still make sense in 10 or 20 years. But, in a certain way, as objects, they are photographs and who they depict is important.

One of the things I recently realised is that people reference my work. I think if that’s something that people can take and use for their own conversations, then that’s wonderful.

INT: And what are your thoughts on tokenism? We see it all the time in the industry, if a curator is putting on a show for instance, and they need an artist of a certain background to tick this or that box.

LJA: I see it in a way where we — when I say we, I don’t know if I include myself, but I guess I do have to include myself — in a certain way, we haven’t gone beyond tokenism. Maybe we don’t have the language for that yet. We don’t put out shows where we happen to have five Black and Asian artists and not mention the terms Black and Asian, and just show the work. It’s that kind of understanding where we’re still lacking.