Publish Or Perish

Featuring Bárbara Traver Words by Nastasia Khmelnitski

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Publish or Perish comes as a leading concept in our conversation with Bárbara Traver that guides us in understanding her approach to the profession. We learn about her passion and motivation to continue the work and processes. For Bárbara, curiosity about the surroundings, the desire to be in the present, and observation became central themes that allow her work to pause the viewer with an emotion and a question about the situation caught in the image.

Finding beauty in the mundane and presenting it through an authentic regard for the moment is what allows Bárbara’s work to generate feelings and pause to ponder about the image, the moment, and the moment as part of eternity. Working with analog, careful choices of composition, light, and colors that are present in the frame create a glimpse of a never-ending story to be unfolded in the mind of the viewer. 

Bárbara Traver is a Spanish contemporary artist and analog photographer based in London, UK. Bárbara gained a BA in Photography degree and MA in Photography Production and Creation from Espai d'Art Fotogràfic in Valencia. She has exhibited throughout Europe in the UK, Spain, Portugal, Greece, France, etc., with a recent show at The Royal Photographic Society in the Arts, Bristol, UK. In this interview, we speak with Bárbara about her experience relocating to and practicing photography in the UK. We discuss her background in teaching portraiture photography as Bárbara explains, “There is also a practical part, which is to break down the barrier and the fear we have when it comes to portraiture. That’s when you realise what your limits are and also the desire to overcome them.“ Her project — , te quiere, mamá. — became a turning point in embracing her characteristics inherited from her mother through a deep research of the mother-daughter relationship and the way it affects every decision and aspect of a personal life. With her mother's death, the project received a new angle that is in the process of investigating the emotions, occurrences, and the search for closure. 

My Story

Hi Bárbara, it’s so nice to speak with you about your practice! How are you doing? You were born in Spain and later on relocated to London, The UK. What was the most difficult part of making this move? In what way those two countries and cultures are different, in your opinion, especially in terms of making a career as a photographer? 

Hi, thanks for having me! It's not the first time I moved to England. When I was nine years old, I lived in Birmingham (The UK), so I knew the culture already. 

I suppose the most difficult thing is the language barrier, which fortunately I didn't have any problems with. I mean… It was hard, of course. Every beginning is hard, but once you break through that barrier everything is easier. Also, in my job, I started to mix with English-speaking people, which helped me to improve my skills. Although in Spain we are much friendlier, here I feel that people help you as much as they can, and that is one of the big differences that I noticed. It's also true that in London, this multicultural city, people know what it's like to emigrate, so it's not an effort for them to assist you; on the contrary, they do everything they can to help you find your place. 

On the other hand, if you do a good job, they call you back, something that is very undervalued in Spain. We still don't have a National Photography Centre, and it’s considered a minor art form, something unthinkable in the 21st century. Many colleagues in the profession are doing their best to make this center a reality, but there’s still a lot of work to be done. In England, I feel that this doesn’t happen. It's also true that there's more competition here, but there are also more opportunities.

‘In my mentoring, for example, it’s important to ask the right questions and provoke the person to reflect on what they are doing. “Why do you do this work?” or “For whom?” and “What is the position you are in?”’

Education

You gained your Bachelor’s in Photography and Master’s in Production and creation from Espai d’art fotogràfic in Valencia, Spain. You also have rich experience teaching and holding artist talks and workshops. What are the themes you focus on when you teach, and how did teaching help you develop as a photographer?

It depends! When you give talks, there isn’t much time, so I try to focus on the importance of having your own voice and tell about my experience of how I found it. In my mentoring, for example, it’s important to ask the right questions and provoke the person to reflect on what they are doing. “Why do you do this work?” or “For whom?" and "What is the position you are in?” I use creative exercises to encourage these questions. It’s important to know yourself, to know your limits. For example, in the portrait workshops, apart from showing and teaching various photographers who practice portraiture (Laura Pannack being one of my references) and showing the importance of theory in the image to be able to read an image, there is also a practical part, which is to break down the barrier and the fear we have when it comes to portraiture. That’s when you realise what your limits are and also the desire to overcome them. If I see that it's difficult for them, I give them a hand, but in general, most of them dare to do it.

‘The most profound part of this project was getting to know my mother without the role of mother, peeling away layers and layers until I reached the depths of her person and put myself in her shoes.’

, te quiere, mamá.

The figure of a mother is one that shapes the person, and their aspiration, builds their values, and sets them up for the future. What did you discover about yourself while working on this highly emotional project? What do you cherish the most from the research you worked on to understand more deeply the role of the mother going back to reading the letters to rediscover the woman who gave birth to you and how she developed over the years?

There are so many things! Let's see if I can explain myself well because it's such an emotional work that sometimes it's hard to find the right words. The most profound part of this project was getting to know my mother without the role of mother, peeling away layers and layers until I reached the depths of her person and put myself in her shoes. For example, there is a photograph where you can see a whole chair beside one with a missing leg. When I was taking that photograph, my mother asked me what I was shooting, and I replied that I was taking a picture of us. She laughed and asked which chair I identified with. Although my mother and I have always had a lot of trust, you never want to hurt the feelings of someone you love, so I took a deep breath and told her that I felt like a chair that was missing a leg. My whole body was shaking! Do you know what she said? She said: "It's funny because that's how I feel every time you leave." 

For me, this conversation was the beginning of this project. So, as we did the work together, those layers of my mother were dissipating, and I realised that she had wonderful things that I had inherited from her and that the bad things were not so bad. I was always running away from that way of being, and the healthiest thing about this project is that I was able to embrace it. In the end, a mother is not only the person who shapes you. She is also a mirror.

‘For me, it's like the phases of love in which you fall in love with this profession, and after a few years, you go through a phase of disenchantment and disappointment.’

Publish Or Perish

Publish or Perish is a concept highly related to fear, more precisely, a fear of dying, in this case, as an artist. It also relates to time passing quickly, mercilessly shifting from one moment to another. It seems you capture the impatience of time in an attempt to pause the moment, yet in vain, as something else will occur in a second. What is your approach, in this project, to the narrative you create, and what are some of the interpretations you encountered of your work? 

That's right! There is a fear of dying and especially as a woman artist. We haven't been given the space we deserve and need for our work to transcend, although my approach to this work is different. 

Here I start with a critique of how art, and more so, photography is considered a minor art and how we also have to manage to look for grants all the time. For me, it's like the phases of love in which you fall in love with this profession, and after a few years, you go through a phase of disenchantment and disappointment. And there comes a question that breaks the mould for those of us who dedicate ourselves to this professionally, which is asking yourself whether or not to continue. Hence the title, which is an expression used in the scientific field and which I have appropriated because it’s not very misguided from the artistic field, which comes to say that if you don't publish and if you don't move forward to the next objective, you die, you are nobody, you will be forgotten. 

Based on that, I focus on quietness. I do introspection with myself and with what is around me, focusing on what I have, on not forgetting who I am. I want the viewer to go deep inside the simplicity of life. It makes you stop and observe, for example, the plant growing or a summer sunset after a storm — a poetic and intimate narrative.

Portraits

An additional facet of your work has to do with portraiture and self-portraits capturing intimate stories and feelings. What, in your opinion, makes a good portrait? 

A lot of things! And it depends, you know? It’s not straightforward what you want to talk about, from where, and about whom. I think two things are very important for portraiture. The first thing is to look at a lot of photographers' work who do portraiture. The second thing is that a photograph should ask questions rather than give answers. But then again, this can be for any type of photograph. Gosh, what a difficult question!

A Sneak Peek 

What project/s are you currently working on, and what should we expect next in terms of themes you’re developing? 

I have several projects open right now. On the one hand, I returned to my work ‘, te quiere, mamá.’ After my mother's death, new emotions appeared that I think are necessary to close this work completely. On the other hand, I started a couple of years ago a work that talks about love, care and encounters with my father in my parent’s kitchen. Since my mother became ill, he has been in charge of the house, and the kitchen is the place where I make this dialogue with him by photographing still lifes that he makes in the kitchen without being aware of it.