Cyprus Mail 17 November 2020
By Melissa Hekkers
“Everything is storytelling. I think that’s the secret of anything creative. A play, a performance, a photograph, a sequence of photographs,” says writer and director James Phillips. “The skills are different but the impulse is the same. If you’re writing a play then the story might come together over many months. On the street taking a photograph you have to see it visually and you have to see it in an instant. Your tools for each separate discipline will be different but you’re always trying to answer one simple thing: What is this thing in front of me and why does it matter?”.
Among a list of achievements, Phillips’ four-part epic Flood was a centerpiece of the UK’s 2017 Capital of Culture, and comprised two live plays, a thirty minute film commissioned for BBC Television and a short film. Flood was voted by Guardian Newspaper Readers as one of the Top 10 UK shows of 2017.
Married to Cypriot actress Daphne Alexander, the island is a familiar place to Phillips and it’s also been a inspiration for his work on a couple of occasions; he wrote a play about Cypriot refugees in 2013, and he also published his first documentary photography book on Cyprus entitled The Last Dividing Line in the same year. But, he says, CYPRUS: ELEMENTS Fire, Earth, Air, Water has a different standpoint.
“The Last Dividing Line was a project which I loved but with much narrower parameters than CYPRUS: ELEMENTS Fire, Earth, Air, Water. Essentially The Last Dividing Line documented life within Nicosia old town, along the UN Green Line. It had a very specific look and ethos. Shot all on old 35mm rangefinder cameras, on film, to give a sense of place held in time. In essence it was a type of enhanced, political street photography,” he explains. “I loved doing it, day after day disappearing into the streets with a couple of cameras and looking for the story held there.”
“CYPRUS: ELEMENTS Fire, Earth, Air, Water is much broader: it tries to offer a much wider impression of the island. There are photographs from every part of the island, including the occupied areas. There’s documentary, portraiture, landscape,” says Phillips.
“I went out at dawn on the first day of the hunt, photographed the grape harvest near Kathikas. I spent time in Karpass and met and photographed members of the enclaved community. I spent time with the UN, photographed the families of the missing and the funerals of lost ones recently recovered… It was a privilege and an education to have the chance to meet so many extraordinary people on this beautiful island”.
The black and white photo book itself a poignant ‘overview’ of Cyprus through four elements: Fire, Earth, Air and Water. “It’s impossible to fully tell the story of anything. It’s always selection. And it’s always hard to know when to stop,” says Phillips. “I spent four years whenever I was in Cyprus working on my little project: but I tried very hard to set a limit. There are many more stories I’d love to photograph… and I wanted to try and tell a story with my photo essay in an impressionistic way, something that gave a sense of the island as I found it. The sections – which were guidelines to myself as much as anything – helped with that. Fire, for the legacies of the past that still exist on an island occupied since before I was born. Earth, for the connection to the land and to the work which happens here. Air, for the spirit, for some of the extraordinary people I have met and the religion and soul of the place. And Water for the island as an island, as a place connected to the sea and to the world, and a country with such a significant diaspora”.
Saying documentary photography is just another type of storytelling for him, Phillips said he “felt passionately about some of the stories I had learnt about, and I wanted to see whether it was possible to give a poetic sense of a place in a book like this”.
The result is a beautiful book that’s dominated with visuals that reveals Cyprus as seen through the lens of a foreigner as opposed to a local. “I hope that’s a strength,” comments Phillips. “It’s useful sometimes to be able to see something in a different way. Many of the books of photographs that people had showed me (of Cyprus) were often full of saturated colours and lovely sunsets: a version of the island for tourists. And there seemed so much more that was fascinating here”.
CYPRUS: ELEMENTS Fire, Earth, Air, Water is available as an E-book: at https://indd.adobe.com/view/e51b0c25-08d2-48ef-b903-dd25123faaa1
