Sharing Travel Experiences

Art and Wanderlust Coming Together

by Andy Hayes

This week’s interview is with a local artist here in Edinburgh, Rhiannon. I met Rhiannon via the wonderful world of Twitter, and her photographs and projects really interested me. Her 12 city project sounded like so much fun – so grab yourself a cup of tea and read on – some really inspirational and intriguing insights for the artist and inner creative in each one of us.

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Why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself?

I’m Rhiannon- born and bred in Edinburgh although got the travel bug very early with first trip to Holland aged 4 months. A Dutch mother/ Scottish father and a language degree ( interpreting/translation Heriot- Watt University) did nothing to reduce my wanderlust. And, from the age of 17 until five or six years ago, tourist guiding was also a constant thread .Although I am not guiding at the moment I still remain a member of the Scottish Tourist Guides Association who issue the coveted “Blue Badge”.

As so many photographers will say , I first started out with photography when I was around 9 and was allowed to take my parent’s Kodak and light meter off on a school trip. From that point on , photography was always something that I did, but I never considered taking it more seriously. I used it to document my travels and later as a way to record design inspiration during the 8 or so years that I was a textile
designer. I only started to pursue photography more seriously 7 years ago, first of all with a couple of summer school courses at Edinburgh College of Art and later with all kinds of other courses and seminars. I’m now a full time photographer dividing my time between portrait shoots and my fine art projects. I’ve had two exhibitions of my Polaroid photographs so far, with another one coming up in September.

Andy’s Note: When I read about all these fantastic exhibitions, I said to Rhiannon “you’re famous.” She thought I was talking about someone else. How humble!

And her Dutch is quite good – we had a bit of a blether about Amsterdam life as well.

Let’s talk about the 12 City Project. Just the title of it sounds exciting.

At the moment I am 2/3rds of the way through my “12 City Project”. On a whim last year, I decided to photograph 12 European cities in a year, roughly one a month. The impetus to do it all within this time frame is because my preferrred film, Polaroid SX70, is discontinued ( as is all Polaroid now) and becoming increasingly expired and unworkable. So I wanted to get round the cities with the film as usuable
as possilble. The cities I’ve chosen may appear to be random but I was looking for a mix of north and south, eastern and western europe. Also a combination of cities I knew well and unfamiliar ones. And finally – did I want to spend a week there? Actually it became quite difficult to narrow the choice down and I could easily have compiled a list of 24 interesting cities.

So – the city list..Florence, Prague, Gothenburg, St Andrews, Venice, Paris, London, Amsterdam, Istanbul, Budapest, Sibiu and the final city will be either Tallinn or Riga. At the moment I have completed up to Amsterdam and Istanbul is the next one on the list. Impossible to sum up all these cities in a couple of sentences but my favourite by a long way so far is Venice.

When I started the project my main aim was to shoot the Polaroid film, with no real thought as to what I would do with the material. Now that I am getting towards the final cities I would like to create some kind of exhibition and in an ideal world tour it round all the cities involved. I’m also starting to explore the idea of collating the images and experiences into a book – but am concentrating on just completing the cities before making any firm decisions.

Andy’s Note: Readers – PLEASE COMMENT below on where you think Rhiannon should go, Tallinn or Riga. We’ve discussed it and my suggestion was Tallinn, but I don’t know the Baltic capitals that well. What’s your view?

Being a world traveller and photographer is fantastic. Where’s the most inspirational place you’ve been?

Very hard to choose one single place that is the most inspirational. Venice was amazingly beautiful – in a way that ( despite having seen many photographs and items on television) I hadn’t really anticipated. I am also very fond of the fresh greenery and island studded coastline of Sweden, but Romania has for years been the most magical place for me and I would like, at some point,to do a more extensive
photo project there.

Andy’s Note: There is good reason why Venice is consistently ranked as one of the most beautiful cities in the world. And when you’re ready to head to Romania, let me know, I’ll take notes and hold the camera bag!

What’s your favourite picture so far out of this project?

My favourite picture is very often the one I have just completed, but this one is a particular favourite. Its not one where I was “at the right place at the right time” – in fact it didn’t seem like the right time at all – it was raining heavily and I decided not to queue for ages in torrential rain to visit St Peter’s. Once I had decided on my shot I waited a good half hour or so until the people with the bright umbrellas were in the right place – then I retired to a nearby cafe for a cappucino and a dry place to do the manipulation.

What’s next after the 12 Cities?

I asked myself this question when Polaroid was first discontinued and it blocked me completely for several months. Now I have given myself permission not to address the “what next” until I have completed the 12 cites. I will continue with my portrait work, which I have also still kept going during this year. And from a photographic point of view I am starting to experiment more with photoshop and digital painting. Possibly because I have worked with manipulated polaroids for so long, an “unworked” photograph only feels like half the story to me. I am no longer satisfied with merely recording what I see, I want to use my photographs as the basic ingredient and then work on it to create an individual vision.

And a little bit more about Rhiannon and her work:

Using a vintage SX70 Polaroid camera and a type of Polaroid film that does not set straight away , I take photographs which, once they have been manipulated ,have a dream like quality half way between a photograph and a painting. You can see examples of my work at my main website, purchase prints from my Etsy shop and follow the “12 cities project” on my blog. I will also be exhibiting for the first two weeks of September at the newly relaunched Gallery Cafe in Ullapool.