The sun makes Laurent shine
Thato Kala | Friday March 28, 2014 14:58
“I’m a natural light photographer. I enjoy exploring it and what it is capable of doing to an object,” she says. One would think the flash on her Cannon camera is for mere decoration, especially when she does her art photography. “I would rather use the shadow to create all the light. I don’t always want to see the object. I want to see what it can become,” she says.
The ardent snapper grew up around cameras as her parents had a photography business.
But later in life she found herself in the advertising industry. While some would feel their parents’ wishes were forced upon them, she describes her parents as liberal. “My parents were free thinkers. The rule in the house was ‘you can do what you want as long as you are good at it’,” says the artist. Since discovering photography was the one thing that made her “want to jump out of bed at 5:00 am” she swapped careers. “I focus on my artistic side, but living in the real world I do events to pay the bills,” she says.
Even still, Laurent enjoys exploring photography in all its splendours. A quick run through her I AM photo collection is sheer demonstration that photography has many diversities. And evidently, she enjoys landscapes and close up photos of insects. “I have taken photos of little tiny mushrooms,” she says. It is such images that will be expected to offset Frank ‘de painter’ Monageng’s works in a joint exhibition set for May at Alliance Française. “My work offsets Frank’s very nicely. He does a lot of sketching of humans whereas mine would be a lot of landscapes. We are giving people a nice overview,” she says.
The few images she has seen by Monageng have impressed her. She enjoys his technique, use of colour and dedication. “I’ve painted in my life. I know how difficult it is. You can see from his art that he is dedicated from beginning to end,” she says. Interestingly, most of her work is never planned and she explains that when one finds sand dunes looking pretty it is nature giving to her.
Art lovers will see her plain but beautiful photos at her maiden Botswana exhibition.
“I don’t photoshop, so those that will come for the exhibition can expect a lot of black and white,” she says. And there is going to be a bit of daze for the faint-hearted with one creepy image of a dried skull. Other than that, Laurent says her photography is about showing people there is no ugly or beautiful. That has ensured her art evolves in the last two years. She turned it into a business in 2011. Her advertising background has come in handy. While she agrees that South Africa – where she was born and bred – has much more opportunities in her line of work, she says getting an exhibition is not easy. She explains: “That’s where Frank and I have a good understanding. We understand the need to stand together as artists since the market is not big.” She is convinced art in Botswana is going in the right direction.
“Art can become a viable job,” she adds.
She warns art wannabes: “You either hit it or miss it completely.” She picks on continual practice as one way she keeps refining her skill as well as staying updated on technological advancements. Laurent has witnessed some artists, particularly photographers, fall by the wayside because of technological changes.
Unlike many artists, Laurent has no particular person she draws inspiration from, but is charmed by those that use a lot of black and white and play with shadows. “I do not want to be a copycat. I view other people’s works, but I try and stick to some trends of what’s going around,” she says.
She is passionate about all other forms of art having done a bit of drawing in the past. Her strong art background at school is perhaps the reason for that.
“I don’t care if it is a guy in the corner making wire cars,” Laurent emphasises. But above her passion for art, she says she is more fervent about life. The award-winning photographer says artists are creators and they solve problems. Laurent does not do routine when it comes to her art, but instead lets life guide her lest she misses out on “so many beautiful things around us”. As a result of that, she will capture the smallest stone around in an effort to try not to limit herself. “I take photos of anything because I don’t know what it will look like when I make it black and white,” she says. Her ingenuity has earned her the International Loupe award silver medal in 2012.
But her submission last year was not successful. “I think the judges did not understand the mindset behind what I submitted,” she says.
Now, Laurent says she stays away from the big competitions because they are expensive.
“I look very carefully at the competitions I enter,” she says. After her journey in photography, she concludes it is not for people wanting instant gratification and success.
But, for her the 99 percent work and one percent pay rate does not change her urge to keep doing what she loves most.