Moyosore Iyanalu Briggs is a portrait photographer and videographer, living and working in London.
''Briggs’ photography in a sense, is a memoir of herself, an exploration of her expressions. Her camera acts as a mirror, be it in the literal sense where she takes self-portraits or more abstractly where she shows herself through the subjects in her portraits. She moves to her camera, using it as a form of articulation of some of the darkest moments in her life and it is the honesty and bravery in the way she uses it that makes her work all so compelling and noteworthy.". Interview by A'naala on the artist
Q&A with Moyosore Briggs
Tell us a little bit about your practice.
My name is Moyosore Biggs, I am a portrait photographer. My current art practice revolves around portraiture and self portraiture, I am very interested in exploring the idea of the true self. My work revolves around Freud’s theories of ego and superego, I am very interested in further understanding the complexities of the human mind, especially my mind in particular. I use art as a tool to explore these things.
My creative setup during the lockdown has been quite interesting and different to how I usually work. So normally I would shoot with a DSLR camera or a point and shoot film camera but recently the last three or four months I only take my self portraits with a Sony VHS camera as well as my iphone’s video camera. This is mostly because i have been exploring different methods and ways of creating images that are poor, I absolutely love the poor image, so through using a VHS camera to an iphone camera I have left the DSLR’s clean cut look and I work only through videography and using screenshots to create self portraits which has been very interesting. It becomes a cameraless photography in some way, even though it is still a video.
Horror has become the main focus of my creative work over the past 2 years. Mostly because it is a genre I enjoy very much in my personal life. My favourite author is Stephen King, his books have inspired a lot of the photography that I have made.
What have you been doing during lockdown?
During the lockdown my creative setup has been extremely different, it’s changed so drastically in such a short period of time. Although I work as a self-portrait photographer I work also as a portrait photographer. I don’t shoot in the studio, I shoot outside in the city, I have very specific spots around London and even outside the country that I enjoy shooting in very much. Since the lockdown I can’t even go past my front door, and it was interesting to see how a lot of people were doing face-time shoots, but the shoots that I do, they involve blood or props, so I can’t reach my model and have that pure interaction that happens when you’re face-to-face. I have moved on to only self-portrait work.
Can you tell us more about your interest in Horror?
Horror has become the main focus of my creative work, mostly it is just a genre that I greatly enjoy. I absolutely love the horror genre, Stephen King is my favourite author and I have been a fan of it since I was very young; I grew up watching horror movies with my family. As a young Black women though, growing up and reading these books you notice the stereotypes, the tropes, the Black person dies first, there are barely any Black people in some of these movies. It is just representation and diversity, I want to see people that look like me and people that are like me in this space that I love. This is one of the main reasons why it is the main focus of my work, plus I adore the aesthetic and it is just an extremely beautiful aesthetic. There are so many complexities and layers in the whole horror genre; it’s not a very respected genre which is very surprising as an artist, but it’s one that I feel should be explored a lot more within photography and mainstream film.
What artists have influenced you?
When it comes to the artists and creatives that have influenced me I am very inspired by my peers. i actually look up to my peers, the work that the young people around me are creating is the future it is the present, it is the now. When i see the work that my friends are making, and other people around me, those are the people that influence me whether it is a painter, an illustrator a writer, as long as I see them and they are working Now.
I do have a lot of influences and my influences lie mostly in writers. The author Stephen King inspires my work quite a lot, the imagery that you can pull from his work as you read is amazing to me. Growing up I was very strongly influenced by Japanese documentary photographers who were a part of the Are-Bure-Bokeh movement. Dado Moriyama in particular is a huge influence on my work, I look up to him very much and I still continue to shoot in a similar style to him when I do documentary work. As of recent I have been looking at photographers such as Petra Collins, Juno Calypso, and Jesse Draxler.
Where do you see your work going?
I want to continue on with my photography, I want to continue to develop my style and grow as a photographer, especially as a self portrait photographer. There are so many ways that we can grow as an individual and as a person there is so much you can learn about yourself. The more I learn about myself the more ways I will be able to find to photograph myself. Since graduating from Art school this year I have been thinking abut going into academic writing and that is something I am really strongly interested in. I would like to possibly do a Masters in Publishing and go into book making, if possible even going into teaching and being a lecturer. But at the moment I want to keep growing as a photographer and further developing my practice, hopefully I can have a solo show soon as well, those are definitely the goals.
