Maximilian Vermilye was interviewed for the fourth (and final) edition of the Contrast publication. You can find the online exhibition version of the publication here.
You describe your process as psychodynamic photography, what inspired you to connect photography with psychology and the unconscious?
For me, all art at some level connects with what is in our mind. Little moments of looking at something and for a moment, you register it as something else.
Playing with that moment was the spark that got me to go down this road.
To what extent do you view your work as psychological portraiture- either of yourself or of more broader emotional states?
For the most part, my artwork is more a reflection of my curiosity of the moment. Something that just didn’t quite look right at first that caught my eye in the tapestry of our world. There have been some pieces I have made when in an emotional state where finding the light seemed impossible, and it is reflected as such in them. However, these are few and far between and I push myself to find flashes of stories in the world. Little moments of narrative from a novel that I feel I opened up halfway through and am trying to make sense of with the detail provided on the page.
You work with contrast not to resolve differences but rather ‘to make it vibrate’. Can you explain more about what that vibration means to you?
The boldness of contrast is something I learned from my black and white photography days where the framing and subject in its details must be pleasing and cohesive together. Now, its my booster to create my works to emphasize the shapes I want people to focus on when looking at the whole picture. The empty space can prove just as effective as the space that is filled in with bringing drama to an image and I love to let it have its own footing on the stage of my images.
Why did you choose mobile phone photography and in-device editing tools as your medium? Is there something about that medium that is limiting or liberating?
I worked for years editing on the computer on shots that I had taken previously, but by the time I got around to fixing them I was always so lost in the weeds of details and menus and fighting the software, my original idea I wanted to capture had long since left me and I was having to come up with something new which never was as good as the original picture I had in my mind and could never get the same feeling upon taking the initial photo. I realized with mobile technology having advanced so far, many of the tools I regularly use are already available in my pocket and so the process of having an idea, capturing it on my phone and then creating it all within the moment while the idea is fresh has meant I have been able to pull out far closer approximations of the idea that first flashed in my head to inspire me letting that feeling overtake my creative process and I find my best works have come from letting myself stay in the moment rather than remember it later.
Can you take us through the creative process behind your work? From the start to the final piece?
For me, the process is one of inspiration in the moment. I will be in moments walking or traveling and as I see the world go by, something inevitably will catch my eye. Something off or seems out of place. Maybe a light in a building seems like the eye of a giant creature peering round a street corner at night, or a tree branch seems to hold the face of something hollering out to be heard. When I see these fantasies crawling out I pull out my camera to capture them and I try and build the world around them to give them full form. Like seeing a tesseract from another dimension trying to be shown in 3D in ours. This is where the mirror flipping comes in as I can find the line that brings out the most relevant shapes from every shot to find the world that was hiding in plain sight.
When all is said and done from shot to finish, I should still be in the tail end of that initial flash of thought that inspired it.
What kind of emotional, conceptual or perceptual response do you hope viewers will have when encountering your work?
The greatest pleasure I have gotten from my work has been to see others dive in and find new creatures or worlds within my art that I had not perceived before. To hear them tell stories trying to connect the dots that they have found piecing them together. What I love is that very few people ever seem to have the same story, and that wealth of different experiences really is a privilege to enjoy.
Furthermore, have you had any memorable or surprising reactions from viewers viewing your work?
I have had some moments where I’ve been totally blindsided with some of my works where I thought I had made a clear singular creature in it, yet I have had young children and adults come up and point blank say they see something entirely different. In my early days this struck me as odd but as time has gone on I have come to love these sorts of encounters.
Where do you see your practice in the next ten years? Are there any upcoming projects you’d like to share?
There are many roads I see I could go in 10 years, but I do hope that getting people inspired to try art and discuss it, sharing ideas and seeing people grow from the seeds of ideas in their minds really is what I hope my artwork will do. I want to be remembered as one of the bricks of art history upon which the future will take its next step.
As for upcoming projects, I am looking forward to having a solo exhibition by the end of this year.