‘Untitled’ from series “Uncanny Valley” ©Kata Geibl

Interview conducted by Heming Liu

Of many contemporary symbols in “Uncanny Valley”, highways struck out to me as a powerful visual motif, both socially significant as a country’s functional vein and a hallucinatory path towards a region’s history. Between powerplants to residential highrises, public space are captured in a subtle fashion. How did you choose each location, and establish the relation between them?

To answer this question I need to go back a little but how the whole project started for me. The series was shot entirely during the 4 months that I spent in Finland during my Erasmus at Aalto University, in 2017. Back then I never spent so much time abroad, living in another country. Everything was very new to me, especially me being someone who grew up a post-soviet country. For me Finland really felt like walking on a set of a science fiction movie. I spent the first one month just with location scouting, without my camera. I just took sketches with my mobile phone and tried to figure out what part of the day, in what lightning to go back to create the pictures. For most of the images I decided to use the rose colour of the sunset and the soft light of dawn. The relationship between the places happened during the editing. I had hundreds of pictures which I needed to sort and create something that is also understandable for an outsider.

In your series’ title, which refers to our anxious encounter with “too human- like machines”, the symptom described appears to infer our fascination with technology and growth. What interest me about your work is its emphasis on contemporary infrastructure as a force of habit, an incomplete environment informed by the ever-changing present. Was the project informed by an understanding that social, economic structures has moved too fast for our comprehension?

Back then I didn’t think about this at all. I had a very personal relationship to the Gulf of Finland and a very strong vision on how I wanted to step away from the cliché about the North. If you think about what comes first to your mind about Northern Europe, it’s the small wood-houses buried in snow under the green of the nordic light. It’s a very common picture that we associate with nordic culture, so my main aim was to step away from that and show a different side of the Gulf.

I am glad to hear you are an admirer of Tarkovsky’s films, which I also enjoy. While the cinematography in his films have often been described as a dystopian and surrealist future, the viewing experience proves more meditative, an aspect I find beautiful in your series. Did Tarkovsky’s editing influence the order of images?

I don’t think it influenced me on a conscious level, but I watched Solaris a lot during my stay. As with every project of mine I want to tell a story in the end. But the biggest struggle with Uncanny Valley was that there are no people in the photographs, just traces of them. So how do you build up a story from that? To finalise the project I worked together with the guys at MAMA Photobooks who helped me to realize the project and edit it so it’s accessible to the public.

In one image of a residence horded by a shopping cart, old computers, and miscellaneous objects, the viewer is introduced to an empty private space. I find the image particularly insightful to the film, Solaris, where the characters attempt to find “ satisfying answers for the hallucinations”. How do you consider photography’s role in hallucinations, projected by real social and political events?

As everything now in our society we need to take considerations about every fact that is given to us. Just a couple of decades ago our main concern was the lack of information we had access to, nowadays we are bombarded by information where we no longer can define what is reliable and what is not. The information society is build upon our awareness and what we do with it. I believe that you are referring to the constant mistrust towards the media and our political leaders and if so the role of photography didn’t change much in the last couple of years. I think by now it’s a fact that photography can’t be seen as a proof anymore. This is why I was always intrigued by Bayard self portrait as a drowned man, which is one of the first photographs ever made and still represent this duality of an image.

Describe you're creative process in one word?

Impulsive.

If you could teach a one-hour class on anything, what would it be?

How to find your voice as an introverted person.

What was the last book you read or film you saw that inspired you?

For books, it’s Shoshana Zuboff’s The Age of Surveillance Capitalism. For films I would say Once Upon a Time in Hollywood which I just saw a couple of weeks ago and really loved it.

What is the most played song in your music library?

According to Spotify it’s Angel Olsen’s Shut Up Kiss Me!

How do you take your coffee?

Espresso with a little oat milk.

Check out more of Geibl’s images on her website and @katageibl