Eve Cocks: Your interest in uncovering lesser-known histories of sites and people encouraged you to go out in the streets and meet the people in your photographs and films. Can you tell us about the relationships you build with your subjects?

Tobias Zielony: When I started photographing young people in the UK, in the late 1990s, I discovered that their life was totally invisible to the media, but also to a lot of people living in the same cities as them. Of course, this was time before social media; the internet wasn’t omnipresent at all. There was no other way than to go out on the streets and talk to strangers. I have learnt to share common grounds with all kinds of people.

Tobias Zielony
Air, 2011
from the series Manitoba
C-Print 71, 5x49x5 cm
Courtesy of Lia Rumma Milan / Naples

Tobias Zielony
Mustang, 2011
from the series Manitoba
C-Print,49×71,5×5 cm
Courtesy of Lia Rumma Milan / Naples

EC: I read a feature about you the other day by Kimberly Bradley in which she said, “along with social marginalisation and an exploration of documentary photography’s ideologies, boredom is an important, if perhaps invisible theme, running through [your] oeuvre.” What do you mean by ‘boredom’ and how does this translate into your work?

TZ: I tried to divert from journalistic narratives or stories focusing on events or sensations. Boredom is the opposite of breaking news, but still, people live their lives everyday, every hour. And their lives are heavily affected to wider political and economic developments, like globalisation for example.

EC: The “staging” of your images raises questions on the issue of manipulation and truth in documentary film and photography. Could you elaborate?

TZ: I wouldn’t say my images and videos are staged. But they are not purely documentary either, if there is anything like that at all. I see my work as a collaboration with my protagonists, a kind of acting out – in a positive sense – of dreams, projections and ideas of self. Reality nowadays is a constant negotiation of the physical and the imaginary. Media images are influencing us in almost all moments of our lives.

Tobias Zielony
Ricky, 2019
from the new series shot in Malta
Archival pigment print, 46×69 cm, edition of 6
Courtesy the artist

EC: ‘Isn’t Life Under the Sun Just a Dream’ features some of your major works since 2010. In reference to your pieces related to Malta, why did you choose to work with the younger generation of Valletta in the photographic portraits Tiziana and Ricky, and what were the challenges in tackling a sensitive and ongoing situation such as the one in Hurd’s Bank?

TZ: I photographed the two at an open-air party somewhere in a more rural part of Malta. I like the light and the feeling of summer, but also the sense of calmness and reflection. I didn’t have a particular concept or plan. The video work Hurd’s Bank is very different. It reflects on the situation in Malta after the killing of Daphne Caruana Galizia. But the video, mostly filmed with a telescope, focuses on the sea, on shipping and natures. In the voice over, I try to create a bigger picture, not just a journalistic report on corruption and crime.

ISN’T LIFE UNDER THE SUN JUST A DREAM BY TOBIAS ZIELONY IS CURATED BY SARA DOLFI AGOSTINI AND IT IS HELD AT BLITZ, VALLETTA, UNTIL THE 29TH OF FEBRUARY 2020. Read more about Tobias Zielony here

FEATURED IMAGE: Tobias Zielony, Velvet, 2016-2017, from the series Maskirovka, archival pigment print, 72×107 cm.