I was introduced to Chris Mann’s work earlier in the year through a mutual friend of ours, around the time of the release of his first book, Valley of the Moon. 

Instantly I was drawn in, Valley of the Moon encapsulates Chris’ work brilliantly, a collection of black-and-white photographs taken on 35mm film, made during his journey through the Wadi Rum desert in Jordan. Capturing the landscapes, ephemera, flora and fauna of the moon-like desert in a way that feels almost fabricated and man-made. His photographs have an ambiguous feel that almost shouldn’t be possible in a taken image. The focus of his images is on the details, rather than the time and place, letting the imagination run free. Taking you into the unknown, even in the familiar world. A world that is visually perfect, where shapes align, patterns repeat themselves and everything is at ease.

I visited Chris at his home in London, to get a glimpse into his world and his developing process. He took me into his darkroom — which he converted from a bathroom —  teaching me the process of developing film and how to make a Silver Gelatin print. While at his home I got the chance to have a chat with him about his process, shooting, developing film, Valley of the Moon and an insight into his interesting and mature outlook on photography.

Would you be able to give an introduction of yourself and talk about how you got into photography?

My name is Chris Mann. I am from South Yorkshire, in the North of England. I got into photography initially through skateboarding. Back in 2011, I moved to London and tore my ACL within the first few weeks of arriving, that’s when I really started to discover photography outside of the context of skateboarding. I remember visiting the TATE Modern and seeing the work of Daido Moriyama for the first time and being blown away. The work triggered the same sense of excitement that I’d only ever experienced through skate photography. That’s when I started to become more curious about photography and its potential.

Do you think your background in skateboarding has influenced your photography?

Totally. It’s that same perceptual act of reimagining and reinterpreting the space around you. In skating it’s hunting for a spot and thinking about how you’re going to skate it. In photography, you hunt for images, thinking about what to add and remove from the frame, how it will print in the darkroom. The freedom and possibilities are endless for both.

Your recent book, Valley of the Moon contains a collection of photographs you took during a trip to Jordan’s Wadi Rum desert. I think the book captures your work perfectly.  What is the story behind the book?

I originally travelled to Jordan in 2019 to volunteer with Amman-based skateboarding charity, Seven Hills. Jordan has one of the youngest populations in the world, with sixty-three per cent of its population under the age of 30. The complexities of Jordan’s geopolitical situation also mean the country hosts an increasing refugee population from neighbouring conflict zones including Syria, Palestine, Sudan, and Yemen. Prior to visiting Jordan, I knew very little about the country and its position on the international political stage. Seeing skateboarding unite so many people and break down socio-political tensions through Seven Hills was what drew me to Jordan.

Half-way through the trip we travelled to the south of Jordan to pick up some German volunteers who had film cameras to bring for the kids. We stopped off at Wadi Rum for a night. It was the most insane experience; I fell in love with the desert. I had my digital camera with me, so I made a few images, but I only just scratched the surface. When I came back to the UK, I looked through those images and realised there was definitely something more there if I invested more energy into this and got back out there with film cameras. Around the same time, I began to work predominantly with film and the darkroom. The more I fell in love with the analog process, the more it transformed my relationship with the desert. I became obsessed with the idea of returning to Wadi Rum and how its ephemera, flora, and fauna could be interpreted through black-and-white film and the darkroom process.

I love the lack of immediacy of working with film. That period between shooting and developing, when the image is latent, can be so crucial in determining how the final photograph is made. In a way, working on Valley of the Moon was a sort of physically extension of that same process; the ideas generated between the two trips informed the project as much as the photographs themselves. When I returned in 2021 to shoot the project, I made the images less reactively than the first trip. I was looking more intentionally for images that closer corresponded with my imagination and the relationship I’d been developing with the desert over the two-year period since gaining that first impression.

One thing that is prominent in the book and your work is the emphasis you have on capturing intricacies that the eye might miss or things that you may only glimpse for a split second. Where did the inspiration for that to be your focus? 

I’ve always gravitated towards more ambiguous images that sort of stop you in your tracks and take your imagination somewhere beyond the confines of reality. When things edge that bit closer toward abstraction without quite reaching it, I like the idea that no two people will interpret the same thing. The subject could be universally recognisable, but enough information is stripped back to allow for a more subjective approach to the image. It becomes more personal.

That explains a lot when looking at your images. It is almost as if you are taking photos with a painter’s lens, leaving the interpretation up to the viewer. What is it about having that ambiguity in an image that you value?

I use the word escapism sometimes, not to sound too cynical because it’s not. I find solace in that kind of work, and I want to make and share work that hopefully evokes the same feelings in other people. Photographs innately document and accurately record a moment in time, but they can also do the total opposite. For me, it’s all about imagination and possibilities, reimagining and interpreting the world around you.

Do you want to create something that doesn’t exist?

I want to suggest, rather than outright create something new. Recently I’ve been playing with combining and sequencing images from Valley of the Moon with other works. I’m interested more in stand-alone images, printing them in a way that pushes them away from reality, and then recontextualising them to suggest a new visual territory that transcends the time and place in which they were shot.

I guess you are creating something that is more than a photograph, we spoke about it earlier, when you said this feels like your painting. Where it’s like you are shaping this with your own lens and I think that’s how it comes across.

Photography is such a subtractive medium, a multi-layered process of elimination. For me most photos often start with removing information from the frame. This extends in the darkroom where I might crop or conceal parts of the image through dodging and burning and using contrast.
But, in the darkroom, it also becomes a process of addition. With a negative under the enlarger, it’s a more intentional act of actually adding information to a blank sheet of paper. It’s a lot less reactive compared with shooting, and a more conscious act of controlling the light to make a final print, pushing things closer perhaps to something more like painting.

Do you think you could ever go back to getting a develop and scan from a lab?

Not for black and white! There is so much you can do with developing; pushing, pulling and agitating the film to change the way the contrast and grain turn out in the final image. It’s a big step in a tactile process for me. If I outsourced it to someone else, I feel I’d lose a certain connection and responsibility for the way the images turn out. 

We’ve spoken before about your photographs not having a distinct marker of time, does that come into play with all of that?

I love and collect documentary and vernacular photography, but in a way, it can be sort of dogmatic. A caption or additional context can sometimes completely change the way the image initially made you feel. It can make or break the way you interpret it subjectively. I don’t consider myself a documentarian, and by consciously steering away from making pictures about a specific time or place, they can hopefully become more ambiguous.

For example, you could have a picture that is made today on black and white film, and you could label it as 1961. That would change the way someone would look at it.

You have quite a mature way of thinking about photography. How long into shooting photos did you realise that this was the direction you wanted to take your work?

I’d say really in the last six years or so. I found myself paying more attention to and finding solace in, the works of other artists across a range of mediums such as architecture and painting, alongside just photography. I wanted to use photography more to find that same solace in my own experiences, to express my own perception and hopefully trigger something similar in the viewer. The process leading up to working on Valley of the Moon was a turning point, reiterating that I want to steer away from a more journalistic or documentary approach to image-making. I want to use photography to continually challenge the way I interpret the world. 

You keep saying make images. Do you consider what you do to be making as opposed to taking?

I think it’s a valid distinction to make. In the darkroom, I make tactile objects. Take that print we just made, there are so many steps and creative decisions you make before landing at the final print.

That’s a good way to put it.

Shooting is only one part of the whole process, especially when working with film. Processing and printing in the darkroom are just as much, if not more, important in determining how the final image will turn out.
When I’m shooting, I often consciously think about the other steps in the process too; about the light and how it will render when developed, and how the negative will perform under the enlarger. Sometimes I’ll alter the shooting settings to more easily kill shadow details later on in the process. Or overexpose to do the opposite. It's not a case of just pressing a button, it’s about the process as a whole. Which does feel like making. 

Have you got much planned for the future?

I’m showing some work in Spain next month at the InCadaques Photo festival, and loosely have some projects planned that involve travel, which hopefully eventuate. Other than that, I’m just going to continue making work, travelling, and continue exploring the interplay between the images I’m making. With Valley of the Moon, I landed at the project by being in Jordan for totally different reasons, who knows where future ideas emerge from, I’m excited to find out.