Comedy Makes You Strong: Finding & defining yourself through weightlifting, comedy & photography

This is long, it’s about comedy, weightlifting, the difference & fluidities between production design and photography, the creative process, the duties of care of a photographer, development of ideas, my workplace accident and my subsequent chronic pain, my rehabilitation and build up of strength, an especially of course about how brilliant the comedian Jessica Fostekew is and how grateful I am that we could collaborate last year on her amazing show Hench (which is playing at Soho Theatre and if you haven’t seen it, please go!).

I think this is what makes a photograph a great photo: When it feels that no one else could be in this photo, in this moment – at this time – and no one else could be taking the photograph, in this moment, at this time. There is a unique dynamic that only they, together, captured, an alchemy that others could attempt to copy, sure, but never again create, even by the same model and photographer the very next day – because the moment too has passed.

This set of photos with Jessica Fostekew was at a particular moment in time for both of us. I’m not sure we could have done this photo a year before or even now. It had to happen then, at that moment. It was during Jess’ ascendancy as she springboarded in her career, sharpening her own voice. This is critical. The images that we were to make I believed must must support that transcendency, facilitate, help lift it. It’s so easy to falter here, create pics that keep someone back, that present someone as not the most exciting version of themselves. I knew that the images should allow people to see what I saw and what she saw in herself, and what her fans saw, not just how great she was now but all her exciting potential – frame Jess as a force to be reckoned with, because she really very much was. That responsibility is crucial for a photographer, I teach it a lot but I have never really discussed elsewhere.

But this was an oddly particular moment in time for me too. I was full with the knowledge that I was retiring from publicity photography in just a few months, this was one of my final photoshoots. I was overwhelmed with the feeling that I before I went, I wanted to kill, dead in its tracks, those patronising photos of women looking adorable and non-confrontational (which can be fine if it is on your own terms, but these photos were not) that has dominated the comedy industry, stripping them of their agency and voice. At the time too was deeply depressed, I felt restrained, voiceless, stuck all the time, retiring in desperation to put a stop to all the darkest thoughts.

I found so much solace – so much – when allowed to collaborate with incredible, powerful, beautiful and brilliant women, who opened up tiny little avenues for me to feel like I could express myself too through enormous creative endeavours that challenged every part of me, which helped me demonstrate to myself that I could have an idea and follow it through, i could be inspired, i could feel something, i could want something, I could collaborate, I can contribute to the net “good” of the world, i could create. I was comparatively expensive to other “Edinburgh” photographers but genuinely these were still tiny budgets to work with for the ambition that we wanted to execute, and it was an incredibly Challenge Anneka rush to be able to put together impossible plans within budget over and over and over again. I wanted to… dare I say… inspire other creatives, show them what was possible, show them new ways that they could find creativity here. I’m still so stuck and I remember these moments to try and find comfort. I’m so grateful to these women, to Jess, to Jen Brister, to Caroline Mabey and of course the boys, to Ciaran Dowd, to Angus Dunican, to James McNicholas, to Tom Rosenthal, and to everyone else, thousands, thousands of others.

But it was Jess’ photoshoot that shifted something in me. I had been weightlifting on and off for about 7 years myself – a coincidence that I don’t think Jess knew when she first approached me to collaborate on this. I was a huge fan, quite obsessed with both the sport and the process. But right this second I was neck deep in physiotherapy, which consisted of persistent heavy weightlifting to build up my core again and retrain my muscles after I suffered an almost fatal accident on the set of a TV pilot that over time had utterly misaligned my body so much so that that I suffered constant chronic pain. It hadn’t seemed serious at first but over time the small misalignments compounded and every part of me was twisted, weak. Sometimes I felt overwhelming pain just sitting at my desk. I had lost count of how many times I had cried worried that this chronic pain was just my life now. I had been unable to pick up my camera, let alone lights, let alone film cameras – for I had been over the last few years been studying and training to shift into film and cinematography – and that dream had utterly fallen apart. I was broke having paid for Ubers just to get around, extra assistants to lift things or just to keep me company, as my mental health stagnated, and the last of my money went on psychotherapy. Insurance was paying for some of my physiotherapy but not all.

The iron. The iron was the only constant. The iron was the only thing that made me feel like I was making progress. The numbers don’t lie. Last week you could push 15kg, now it is clearly 20kg. The incremental progress, the solace you can take in it had become so crucial for my mental and physical recovery.

Design and Photography

Not all images are ‘designed’, but this image was and it is important to talk about the difference between the design of the image and the execution of the image specifically because this image is so important to me, but also for new photographers and creative directors and designers to understand what the differences in visual creation is. It slightly breaks my heart when there is ambiguity when the description of the image like in the most recent Guardian article out today is. – “the image, shot by Idil, designed by Chris” – because Chris (who is excellent) designed (and really very well) specifically the edinburgh 2019 poster and the text, and was not part of the image design process. It’s such a subtle but crucial error that has been repeated many times by press who (which is really nice for them to even mention) want to report on the image. Now I’m trained in production design, that subtlety becomes important. Sometimes I’ve shot images on film sets that were definitely not ‘designed’ by me, other times, the design was more me, but even then on a film – the costumes in front of you have come from maybe a year of work with the costume design with the director and performer, a process I’m not always part of. But in this case of Jess’ photos, the design, the styling, the production design, the construction, the build, the get in and the strike, the post-production, the finish of the image was from my team, from me, and of course from Jess.

(Editor’s note: It is impossible to discuss this without sounding mad, but now that I’ve retired from publicity shots I only write this in hope that youngling photographers know that there is a difference between the Creative Director (the designer) of a photograph and the photographer – sometimes that can be the same person (pretty much all the publicity photography I’ve shot I have also designed), and that is WHOLLY different from the designer of the poster (which, to make things more complicated, can be the same person, like many posters I designed in previous years). Sometimes all the people are different, e.g. most the film photography in production design I’ve shot has been either designed by someone else or at the very least the make up and costume design has been designated way way in advance of me meting brought in. Anyway, this is some niche definitions for media who report on this and new creatives getting into this.)

The design of the image in this case was essential. Me doing the actual snap of the camera was probably the least important part of the entire process, more important was Jess standing in front of the camera. It took months of firstly me discarding many other ideas and interpretations of these themes. The idea of fragility, juxtaposing fragility and strength, vulnerability and resilience – these were the themes that I investigated. I wanted to show the iron in the shot, I wanted to see Jess. I wanted Jess to want that too, to show how strong she was, physically, manifestly, to see the results of her relationship with the iron, the steel of her gaze and the cut of her muscles. To want people to see her. She, SHE designed that aspect, through her lifting, SHE designed her body, SHE controlled and had dominion over it, she got her mind to that place. I just wanted to allow her to show that off, give her permission. Sometimes all we look for is permission. Sometimes the people who surround us keep us feeling small, keep us from wanting to be who we are, keep us feeling guilty. That’s how you enact control over someone, that guilt. Fuck that. Fuck all that.

I was pretty blown away by how funny Jess is, how resolute. She was not scared by her vulnerability, her tears, her agony, her frustrations. She was not scared, she embraced them, weaponised them, USED THEM. In comedy, in life, in the gym, any sadness or rage, fury did not control her, she controlled them. Any vulnerability she may have felt, it’s hers. And when wielded, when faced, those rages, that anger, the vulnerability, it’s all strength, it’s all fuel to forge yourself in.

The female nude in art history classically demonstrates a vulnerability that the woman is not in control of. The classical babe demonstrates vulnerability not as something she harnesses but as something inviting – inevitably – to a man. She is fragile, she is inviting, she can only be defined by a man picking her, noticing her, wanting her. Her nudity is not for her to enjoy, but for us to gaze at. Her vulnerability is not a personality trait that she then harnesses as incisive comedy, but as something that has been imposed on her, whether she wants it or not. I wanted us to create an image that belongs in the tradition of exposing and exploding this. Of owning nudity and vulnerability as something that belongs to you, that only you have control over. This is mine, not yours. This is about ME not you.

And that is what weightlifting is, it is a joyously selfish endeavour, and the word selfish gets such a bad rap. It is okay to do something that is not about anyone else, that by definition cannot possibly be about anyone else, that we are taught as women CONSTANTLY to never be selfish, to not think of ourselves, to just let the needs of others, of our mothers, our husbands, our children overwhelm our own personality, and let that unique toxicity of aspirational shame that pervades advertising define our needs. We don’t listen to ourselves, we repress ourselves, our personalities, we’re polite, we’re cute, we laugh but not too much. But when you weightlift, when you lift a barbell that is *just* on the very limit of what you can lift, every cell, every neurone is called to attention. Your entire posterior chain, your entire physiology, and every part of your brain is recruited, is needed, is URGENTLY required to come assist. They drop everything they were doing. Worried about how much more successful someone is than you? Gone. Worried that you’re too old to start again with your dreams? Gone. Worried that there’s no point even starting because the planet is doomed? Gone. Nothing matters. The iron is VERY IMPORTANT RIGHT NOW. It yells at you, it screams, it demands but it allows you to silence everything else, you don’t do it for the iron, you do it for you. The iron requires you to be YOU, to give everything you’ve got. You’re making yourself strong, maybe to fight climate emergencies. Maybe for your kids. Maybe just for yourself. BE SELFISH. BE STRONG. BE ENORMOUS. Be the biggest you can be. Take up all the space. Yell on the gym floor. YELL because this weight is heavier than anything you have ever lifted before and yet right now you ARE LIFTING IT.

It is only cathartic. You look terrible, red, puffed, furious, frowning, annoyed, wet with sweat, your heart, even though you have not moved from this corner of the gym, is absolutely pounding. But there is only this, only this moment, like a perfect photograph. There is only you, only this bar. No one could have lifted it quite in the way you just did with your muscles, your brain, your hands, your grip. This is only ever yours. The weight drops, the gym satisfyingly shuddering from the weight smashing on the ground. You scribble on a piece of paper, your hand shaking from adrenaline, your penmanship an utter disaster: “90kg x 5 reps” you shake. Doesn’t seem like much. Fuck that. It was everything.

Nothing else matters. It’s just you, the chalk, and the bar. You are so in control, so focussed. You don’t need anything but the most crucial equipment. The weightlifting shoes to ground you, give you as much contact and push from the floor as possible. The knee high socks, as you deadlift the bar you keep it as close to your shins as possible, and as the weight peaks, the more it can absolutely ravage the skin. The belt, to make sure your spine and belly don’t literally burst as you contract every single one of your muscles. The wrist wraps as you’re lifting more than your weakest hinge (your wrists) can really handle, keep them locked, keep them tight. And of course the HEADPHONES. Block it all out. Drown out the world on your terms, with your music. This is not about you right now. It’s about me. And the more I can focus the more I can lift. The more I can concentrate the more I can DO. You look at the world, and it seems heavy. You just got to find the right lever point. Shed everything else, shed what you don’t need.

I realised Jess is not nude in this image. She is wearing all the necessary armour to do this exact task. Nothing more, nothing less. Shorts and a vest are so extraneous. She doesn’t need them. You can see how much work she’s been doing, how focussed she is, how many times she has drilled this lift, so much so that she is absolutely covered in chalk. Her whole body is caked in it. There is a laser sharp focus there, she is not afraid of anything, she is not interested in your bullshit. Give her some chalk and she’ll lift anything you got to throw at her.

It is moving – she’s aware of the weight of the world, of what is thrown at her, indeed like iron, she is so used to it now, that she knows the exact weight. She is tired. But being so used to it, knowing exactly how much it all weighed allowed her to start training for it and now it’s nothing.

Building The Image: Trust & Elbow Grease

There is such a privilege in the studio that you have as a photographer. To be nude in front of the camera is a huge, huge task, and that can only be achieved if firstly the idea itself is sound, and secondly if there is utmost trust between everyone in the studio. We did not start with nudity. We started with many other non-chalked, fully clothed variations. Slowly slowly we built up to it. I tried to check in constantly with Jess. And at every point gave her an out. We can see how we feel and we don’t have to do it. We can even do the photograph and burn it if we don’t like it. There are a thousand outs. Every step is only collaborative, only trusting, only for us. I hope more than anything that Jess felt she could bring me any of her concerns.

Jess is clearly really magical. She’s smart and funny and she handed over so much trust to us, care of her body over to us. We knew the importance of that and how much had to go into the image. My team and I had spent the weeks leading up to the shoot designing and building the set and sourcing the styling. Red. A fire, a burn, your cheeks, your muscles, hot, furious, strong. The dilapidated wall, she has been here for years, doing the same lift, known, used, this is not new. I painted the back wall with many different rollers and colours, let it drip, sanded it down, it was weathered. The lighting was designed to focus just on her steely resolve to isolate her My brilliant assistants Stella Bckm and Natalie Simone sourced much of the outfits, the steel and the weightlifting armour. All red and white and black, the colour palette muted and harmonious to not detract from the moment, the lift, from Jess, from her focus. The colours were powerful but not overwhelming, only ever in support of Jess. I discussed the plan with my brilliant make up & hair artist Becky Hall who has done many effects and other practical work with me before. We would coat Jess’ body with chalk on site. As much in camera as possible to minimise photoshop. Indeed as Jess says in the Guardian article she herself trained for the shoot. There were so many moving parts to this and indeed so many of my shoots, which is why I’ve never really seen myself as a photographer because really, I’m putting dozens of different parts of an image together, I’m building it. Creative Director or producer, later production designer and then ultimately director always felt more natural.

Ultimately, the image is comedy, it’s a funny image. It’s a funny moment – so focussed that you’re completely covered in chalk, that you’ve discarded all your clothes to concentrate, ripped them off, you don’t need ‘em! The seriousness and the focus makes it funny to me, makes it engaging and electric. It’s joyful and it’s unique, and it’s unexpected, it subverts lots of different expectations. It’s not outright nudity, it can take people a while to realise it sometimes. And, critically, it wouldn’t work if Jess was…. dare I say…. shrugging, gawping at the camera, wackily smiling, it would utterly undermine the comedy and the heart of it. It’s funny…. because it’s true. Because it’s real. Because it’s relatable. I am going to try so hard that I’m going to rip off all my clothes – she’s an action hero. She’s Captain Kirk with his ripped shirt rolling around on an alien planet, defeating the villains. She’s Indiana Jones with his unbuttoned shirt, she’s Wolverine, who simply is TOO INCREDIBLE for a mere SHIRT. But when women tear off their clothes in those 80s action movies, it always seemed more about showing them as more vulnerable, not as heroic or more titillating, a very uncomfortable suggestion that a frightened woman with weakening autonomy is…. more attractive? I mean that is fundamentally problematic. So here you go, here’s the switch being flipped. Fuck that. Fuck it all.

It’s hench and hopefully it was hench on Jess’ terms, on her autonomy. And that specificity I hope led to a universality that seemed to engage others, who stopped and looked at it in the street, took pictures of it. I was really startled myself by it about how eye-catching it was so big on the poster – and that’s where the design of the poster is important, something that Chris did (and as guided by Jess) and not me, where he really allowed the image to take up as much space as possible on the poster – and that crucial decision is part of the design process made it really sing, so my gratitude to him and his design. Equally now in Soho Theatre the poster design allows the image to take up all possible room – to flood it. And again my gratitude – context is everything for image. It wouldn’t work as well if say the text were huge at the top of the page and the image reduced to just be underneath, squashed, reduced, put back in its place. That would have crushed the intentions. Time and time again I’ve seen my images (and images by other photographers) used so badly in designs that suffocates them or undermines them and design around a good photograph to bring out its best qualities is an art form. This kind of image calls out to be liberally spread across billboards (it’s literally the only thing I have ever wanted for my images) and credit to the designers who listened to that yearning. It’s a design choice and it’s exciting and it’s thrilling and it’s wonderful.

*****

Comedy & Photography

It’s Jess’ image but it remains a deeply important photograph for me, looking back at it. I’m at an odd crossroad, fully retired from publicity photography now, a career I only got into by chance, grateful to have something to exercise some creativity in while actually I lay crippled and buried in my own insecurities having suffered a lifetime of bullying and sexual and emotional abuse, too terrified to make my own work, too terrified to speak in my own voice, relieved that these brilliant women and men would allow me to collaborate with them. These images facilitated and empowered me to voice something, make something, do something through their work, through their resolve, through their optimism, through their strength. At the very least it kept me working, kept me going, kept me making, kept me engaged. I have now, taken a break, I am just recovering. I am just trying to figure out for the first time how to speak in my own voice, trying to make, to cook, to write, to draw, making my way back into film finally through directing, to help others and of course, to lift. I’m just trying to get strong again.

I saw the amazing Jen Brister and Jess at the awards nominee party (for which Jess was nominated). I must have looked insane because I immediately burst into hot steaming tears all over them. Jen’s show (which should have also been nominated, and it is a joke that it wasn’t, it was so searing and brilliant) and Jess’ show, their photo shoots, those processes, unlocked and shook up something in me, seeing them create so furiously and so urgently made me feel like perhaps I could too. Jen’s photos were about the uneasy seat of privilege, the comedy intrinsic in extreme luxury, control through artifice, other topics which I dove into joyously.

These are the photos, these are the moments, the urges, they can only be copied, but never recreated. These photos can only ever be of them, they were entirely made with and for and through and from them, in that moment in their lives, in that moment in my life.

If your comedy is repeatable, if anyone else could be saying those lines, then, perhaps fine, you can have a photo that anyone else can have. But that is rare. Meeting thousands of performers, being privileged enough to see first hand the work that goes into creating a perfect hour of comedy, this is what I’ve worked out makes the best work: the stuff that cannot be repeated by anyone else. It was to be you, in that moment, at this moment in time, that is utterly and intrinsically you. It makes me so upset that so many of the images representing that entire year or two of comedian’s life that has gone into a show or a book are utterly interchangeable, they could have been shot by anyone and they could have anyone in them. If you don’t think anyone else can do what you do, then correct, you should be doing comedy, you’re in the right game – so then why get a photograph that anyone else could be in. Delight in the visual representation of your work, your thoughts, your process, your comedy, your brilliance, collaborate with someone brilliant, who has similar or even wildly different neuroses hang-ups, but who exorcises something with you through the creation of that image. Find new people, find people like you, find people not like you. Don’t get the same photographer that everyone else gets why would one person suit everyone. Ensure your creative team is inclusive, find people of different ethnicities, backgrounds, genders, sexualities, experiences to you.

Don’t underestimate the importance of the creative direction, the make up, the outfits, the styling, it’s never just the release of this shutter. That final image is your ambassador to the world, represents everything you have been, everything you are, everything you want to become. I repeat this in all my seminars and lessons: Thousands if not millions more people will ever see the photos than will ever see the show. The image is what people see when they close your eyes and think of you, it becomes a visual reference point for how people see you, sometimes for a year, sometimes for ever. The images guide our memories. You close your eyes, you think of a celebrity, chances are an image, a front cover, a poster you have on your wall, a music video (another visual representation), consciously or subconsciously guides your memory of them. Even our memories of friends and family are guided so much by the photos we see. Those are the images that can define someone. (Editor’s note: Yeah man this way too long now, but look how important photography can be: always credit your photographer!)

Sometimes the process of being in a photoshoot allows you a magical moment to become what you secretly see in yourself. Most of the time we don’t even get the chance. Sometimes it’s the process of making a show allows you to grow into the person that would make a show like that. It’s an irrational leap that can bring out so much of yourself you can be too scared to show. As I retire I want people to know that you should enjoy your photography, allow it to scare and challenge you, and should never just be just another boring administrative chore but an intrinsic part of the creative process.

Good photos, they’re like good comedy. The best gigs I have done (and I know this sounds ridiculous for someone known for being a photographer but although it’s been very on-and-off, I’ve kept my hand in performing since I was a kid and I’ve done some absolute fucking stormers, I know what I’m doing man), those holy-shit gigs when you basically transcend, the Matrix opens up to you and you feel you understand every single one of the audience members and they all understand you, the room shuddering with the force of their laughter – those gigs are because you feel most like yourself. You’ve unlocked the weird tomb holding your weird secrets and you’re not ashamed, quite the opposite, you’re in control of all your madness, on your own terms. Your hang-ups disappear, the world disappears, you’re locked in, razor sharp focus – you’re red, puffy, hot from adrenaline, you look terrible but you’re electric, the heat makes you radiate, the feel of effortlessness even though you’re sweating, a perfect swing, you look terrible but your strength and your swagger is a glorious aphrodisiac, there is no one else who could have done it and there is no other audience that could have worked in front of. There is only this moment. You look down at your watch, your hand shaking from thrill. 10 minutes. Doesn’t seem like much. Doesn’t seem like much. Fuck that, it was everything.

*****