I think that's kind of the hardest part of making anything — removing yourself from it and seeing it in an objective way. That's really difficult to be able to do. And with so many moving parts as you said, I bet that was challenging.
CM — But that's photography always, you know? You have to stop everything. You stop the universe and then you have to step aside and look at it from afar.
SO — I constantly have these big ideas, but I feel that's part of what I do. Part of my aesthetic is to be a little bit messy with my work, but it ends up making sense for me and for other people too. I definitely feel like as I grow and mature in my work and my process, I have come to have more anticipation. I've learned to simplify my ideas and we were able to do that really well as a team.
I know a big part of that process was choosing elements that evoked this sensory experience for audiences. How do you think senses like smell and texture elevate a photograph?
CM — Well, in this case, it was especially crazy. In the market, our senses were all over the place. There were animal pheromones and smells from everything being sold, like fish.
SO — We were there for maybe two hours and I remember moments where I had to push myself to stay there longer.
CM — It was really draining, energetically. We wanted to translate that energy into the project. When I started photography, I started because of music. It was a synesthetic process for me. I started my own kind of ritual and it was always the same ritual, listening to this hardcore music and just putting myself out of my head. And then the images came along totally just by themselves. It kind of translated the music into pictures. So we did the same thing with the market, just on a bit of a more complex level because there were so many inputs. A lot of colors, sounds, and smells. The senses are universal translators.
The photos are very visceral, which is what I love about them. The idea of sensory experiences also being a universal translator is really interesting because it helps people to connect to the photographs in this really high-level way. The photos you composed are alluring, yet uncanny at the same time. What feelings did intend for these compositions to stir in audiences? Or is the interpretation intended to be multifarious?
CM — Well, we were just like kids having fun. We didn't consider too much how they'd be received. At the moment, we were just playing around with the images. At the time, the images weren't even the point, but it was that experience we shared.
SO — But I do think that you were going for a very specific thing when you were composing the images. Definitely a darker side of the market — that visceral element that you mentioned. You don't see Micromorfosis and think about community and laughs and love; you think about the insides of the market.