James Hervey: When The Heart Feels Light
Interview by Max Chavanne • Photos by James Hervey

Detroit Focus Online editor Michael Sarnacki had been quite impressed by Hervey’s portfolio presented on the French daily paper Le Monde’s Web site and called me in Paree to arrange an interview with the man. We agreed to meet up some time later in Paris over the obligatory cup of tchaï.
Detroit Focus Online: Photography guru Richard Avedon once said "All photographs are accurate. None of them is the truth."

James Hervey: ‘Accurate’ in the sense they represent something that was experienced. But there’s always going to be a difference between the experience of the person who takes an image and how someone who is not experiencing the moment will interpret it. So obviously, if it’s a photograph whose main content is information, if it’s a very strong emotion on behalf of, let’s say, someone being attacked, or someone crying, or someone suffering, laughing, dancing, it’s an emotion that, I think, you tend to identify yourself with. The actual context in which it’s taken is of secondary importance. And so it’s very free to interpretation, and an interpretation that is very far from anything the subject or photographer may be experiencing. So, the truth in a photo? I don’t know. I know the moment is true.

Detroit Focus Online: Does that Italian saying that goes "Traduttore, tradittore" ("Translator, traitor") apply in such a context?

James Hervey: That’s essentially the reason why, after a short attempt at photojournalism, I realized I couldn’t do photojournalism. I couldn’t take strong emotion out of context and displace it anywhere else but where it’s happening. At the same time, I think at a more poetic level, if something is experienced, or where it is more a sense of union and a non-appraisal of a situation, more a spontaneous harmony with the environment within which you find yourself, then I’m convinced that something similar to what I’m experiencing can be felt by someone, anywhere else in the world, using a photograph as an intermediary.

Detroit Focus Online: How so?

James Hervey: If anything, it would be the light that is acting as a support for what it is that I’m feeling. Like when I find myself in the Himalayas, for instance. Once you’re familiar with your surroundings, and you’re no longer drawn by the originality of the place in which you find yourself, it becomes far more these moments when light just brings something out. So it’s not actually the forms anymore but far more something that goes beyond the forms. And I think photography allows this to be shared.

Detroit Focus Online: Is there any such thing as photojournalism today, then?

James Hervey: I think that depends on the public. The actual photojournalist is just supplying something that either we think we need, or we’ve been led to believe that we need, in order to understand whatever is happening in the world. But from my point of view and from my experiences, I feel that secondhand information shown to us provides us with very little that will improve our lives.

Detroit Focus Online: Many times you’ve mentioned the image overload we’re being exposed to these days. Is there still a way to reach people’s hearts through photography?

James Hervey: Sure. I’m going in the way I am today because I believe so. I don’t think that it’s a formula that I can apply but simply a conviction that any work that is nourished by other than expectation or design, when it feels right, whatever it is that’s right, then it must be able to be felt by others. Because it’s not a concept, it’s not created – it’s a feeling. In this instance it happens to be photography.

Detroit Focus Online: How can that be when it comes to reach huge audiences in the context of the news, of photojournalism, of conveying information?

James Hervey: Information… I think we’re always going to have the choice between depending on, or being content with, information given to us, and knowing that within us there’s a whole wealth of untapped information. But in order to get that information we need to leave our familiar surroundings. And I think that’s not only India. Many other countries in the world hold so much more useful information that will help us, not only in our lives, but the lives of our community and, I pray, the world, if we go out and experience it ourself. Leave the cerebral activity behind and notions of what is good and bad, hot and cold, suffering and peace, and so on, and go and experience something else, for it is in that which we do not know that real understanding can be felt.

Detroit Focus Online: Why is travelling needed? Can’t this state of balance be achieved right at home?

James Hervey: I think that obviously there must be some people who are so in touch with themselves, because maybe of their cultural background, their family, the love that they were nourished with during a younger age, their education, that they don’t need to wander in order to hear those silent echoes within ourselves. But for the majority of us, it’s probably more difficult.

Detroit Focus Online: Why is that?

James Hervey: I think because we’re so used to secondhand information. And because over the years we’ve created an ‘idea’ of ourselves, of others, of the world – not based upon direct experience but through a sort of patchwork of ideas of others, and impressions of others. In actual fact, while we think we’re nourishing our knowledge, we’re actually closing ourselves off to the very things that will lead us to a peaceful life, and one day a peaceful world. So, I’m sure it is possible at home. But I think it helps to go where there is as little reference to Western culture as possible. There’s something in being in a place that’s different that holds great comfort and knowledge, where we go out of our parameters and yet surviving, alive. We’re not just crumbling in a mess as we might have supposed before we took the aeroplane.

Detroit Focus Online: Does this mean one needs to be a stranger to discover oneself?

James Hervey: A stranger, yes, but without forcibly doing it though. I think it’s very delicate. Over the last twenty or thirty years, the idea of going to India to find yourself has become such a cliché that people who do want to go to India to find themselves make a grand design. And, once again based on other people’s experiences, feel that they should go to India in this manner, and not do this, but do this… I think that would be as constructive as not going at all.

Detroit Focus Online: Didn’t India work for yourself, though?

James Hervey: Initially no. The first four times I went to India it was very much with design. Because of the unfamiliarity of the surroundings, I very much kept a familiar route. I would stay within an organized framework where there were always other foreigners around, where there was a sense of security. There were things that I avoided or didn’t want to know about. I just wanted "my" India, the India that I expected to see before I even arrived there. It wasn’t until the trip to the Kumbha Mela in Allahabad in January/February 2001 that, because of the four previous trips and the advantage that they did give me, I was comfortable enough that I did not block myself off from things that subsequently presented themselves.

Detroit Focus Online: You’ve said that your cameras are more a means or a "tool" than an end. Tell us about the Benares train station experience.

James Hervey: I went back to India in September 2003 to go back to a place that I’d been to briefly in 1998 and that I’d looked forward to returning to one day. That’s Uttaranchal, a small province of the Himalayas: the borders of Tibet to the North, Nepal to the East, and to the West is Himachal Pradesh. I spent ten weeks in the hills, a very wonderful experience. It seemed that finally the idea of a photograph not needing to be searched for but rather being just a spontaneous moment actually started to become a reality, instead of an idea. So I was very happy when I drove down to Benares and spent ten days before flying back to Paris for Christmas. The last ten days I felt really as if something had been achieved – not a goal but a step. I went to catch my train in Benares train station. And because of ten seconds inattention my bag was taken with all my work.

Detroit Focus Online: With all your rolls of films?

James Hervey: The whole work. Initially it was a bit shocking. The thing is I couldn’t understand why it was taken, because I felt there was real purpose for the whole experience and the work that was being carried out during the experience. But, even if I couldn’t understand it, since my whole trip in the hills had been a series of incidents where seeming obstacles subsequently revealed truly wonderful moments in many different ways, I couldn’t dissociate this event from the same feeling.

Detroit Focus Online: All cameras were taken?

James Hervey: Everything was taken. But because of what had been given, obviously it was sad but it wasn’t shattering. And there was a strange comfort in that. And then I didn’t know what to do, or whether there was any point in going back to India.

Detroit Focus Online: To re-shoot?

James Hervey: Even to take photographs again, ever. As I said this trip seemed to have finally taken me to an experience in photography that I was sure was possible – it was possible, it was a reality. And then it was taken. I can’t say it was stolen because I didn’t see anyone. So the bag was taken, the work was taken, and yet at the same time there was this underlying feeling of, well, ‘it’s for a reason’. Subsequently I found friends offered me much work the whole year of 2004 which led me to believe that I should get a new camera, buy new film, get another ticket and go back. And so I did.

Detroit Focus Online: You considered shifting to writing at some point.

James Hervey: It took a while to get those cameras. So I told myself: if the cameras don’t come, then bas khatam: that’s it! All of a sudden, it was a very concrete experience. The whole story: not only the trip in 2003 and that experience, but the whole of 2004 and this strange feeling. I’m sure that most photographers would think that it’s the worst thing that could ever happen to you, you know, the whole work and all your cameras being taken – but it wasn’t. It was uncomfortable, but it almost started nourishing more sense to go back and do it again. And so it seemed very writable. From my experiences so far, everytime I tried writing I was incapable, because you’re trying to convey poetic notions, very abstract concepts that are not confined to you but more universal ideas. I was incapable, and felt more able to do it with images. But this whole experience, the last eighteen months have been so writable that I felt like writing. We’ll see if I ever get round to it. For the moment I’m dealing with the photographs.

Detroit Focus Online: What about those quotations from The Bhagavad Gita that come with Part 1 of your Moksha project?

James Hervey: I don’t feel that I could write well enough to express these wonderful divine notions that are expressed in The Bhagavad Gita or in many other works, Hindu or other. I felt very close to the Gita. I’d read it a couple of times while I was in Benares during the Khumba Mela and it just seemed to illustrate so well in words what I was feeling and couldn’t describe. So I found those ‘captions’ very suitable for what it is that I was feeling. The same essence is found in other works and today I might choose another book. You know, I don’t have a particular adherence to Hinduism. I think it’s a wonderful faith that has brought lots of rhyme and reason to many lives, and much love, but today I would choose another. Don’t know which one, though. There are so many.

Detroit Focus Online: Does any one of those excerpts from the Hindu scriptures specifically illustrate your experience at the Maha Kumbha Mela?

James Hervey: You have to imagine yourself in a vast plain. There are no visible references apart from just tents, and maybe some trees and water. It’s just this vast plain with up to twenty, thirty million people all around you, with everyone greeting each other, everyone looking at each other – a real bonding of men. Actually there are two quotes. There’s one that applies more to the individual that goes: "On action alone be thy interest, never on its fruits. Abiding in discipline perform actions, abandoning attachment, being indifferent to success or failure." (Bhagavad Gita, 1: 25) And you’ll notice that most of the photographs from the Kumbha Mela, despite the millions of people, are usually ‘focused’ on one individual.

Detroit Focus Online: What’s the second quotation?

James Hervey: On a more general scale, there’s the enormity of being amongst so many people who are there for the same reason, devoid of advertising, devoid of how you’re looking on an exterior way. So the other quote goes: "There has never been a time when you and I and all the kings gathered here have not existed, nor will there be a time when we will cease to exist." (Bhagavad Gita 2:11-12) Very strong moment. As a photographer, actually it was very depressing because you realize you just can’t photograph it. There is no possible way to photograph something as strong as those words or this event, the Maha Kumbha Mela. But as a person… !

Detroit Focus Online: Tell us more about this event.

James Hervey: Normally the Mela at Allahabad takes place every 12 years but, due to the extraordinary astrological alignment of planets every 12 x 12 years there’s a "Maha Maha Kumbha Mela". So this one occurs every 144 years. It’s like a window that opens onto eternity for six weeks. During this period, there are certain important bathing days – especially Mauni Amavasya on the 24th of January, when 30 million people made their way to the Sangam. This is the point where the two great rivers of India, the Ganges and the Yamuna, both originating in the Himalayas to the North, and the invisible river and Goddess Saraswati, meet. Saraswati acts as a heavenly river channeling cosmic energy down from this extraordinary alignment of planets. The event opened on the 9th of January 2001 under the first full moon of this millenium being eclipsed by the shadow of our own planet. Without any panic. No intensity. It was intense but in a very organized and very open way. There was no fanaticism. I felt as comfortable amongst those hords, those ‘mountains’ of people, as I would be in a room with maybe four or five people. Because of what they were coming to acknowledge, they weren't interfering at all with my space, they were only reinforcing it. And I think everyone was doing the same for each other.

Detroit Focus Online: Do you feel you’ve managed to capture that spirit in your images?

James Hervey: I would never know. But I would like to think so. Dare I say I can’t see how some of the experience cannot transpire through the photos.

Detroit Focus Online: What does ‘Moksha’ mean, and why choose "Eternity in 144 Years and One Day" as a subtitle?

James Hervey: Moksha is Sanskrit for ‘The Liberation’, liberation from suffering, true freedom. Suffering: man’s heritage, the reason we’re here, and we’re trying to understand it and be free from it. I don’t know whether it is outside of Samsara. I still don’t know the subtle difference between the realm of the Gods in the Hindu pantheon and the notion of Nirvana for the Buddhists, so I don’t know whether Moksha is to go and reside in the realm of the Gods or whether it is to leave Samsara completely, to go beyond. But that event, the Kumbha Mela is to recognize your spiritual tryst with the stars, the heavens, the Gods, and in that recognition to yearn for being part of it one day, to join it, to not be reincarnated anymore. Or to be reincarnated in a favorable lifeform.

Detroit Focus Online: Can photography be liberating for viewers?

James Hervey: I don’t know, because it never has happened to me. I’ve seen beautiful photographs but I’m not a fan of photography in the sense that I have very few photographic books, I don’t go to many photographic exhibitions. At the same time it’s very hard not to be subjected to photographs today because the world of imagery is so strong and omnipresent. So I don’t know. The excitement I get today with my tool and where I’m able to use it is because I don’t feel I’m following any limitations. I don’t know what’s possible and I don’t know what’s impossible, and so it’s going in a direction that I’m following. I’m not asking my photographs to go in a direction. I don’t want a ‘result’ out of them.

Detroit Focus Online: How does modern life exposure to pictures affect you, like TV, advertising, video and especially the news?

James Hervey: I go beyond it. Not everytime but I’m so numbed by it. If the importance of a photograph, in an informational sense, isn’t obvious, then my curiosity will probably make me look at it. But a photograph – whether it’s showing someone holding up a rifle to someone in the street somewhere in the Middle-East, or whether it’s a pair of tits on a billboard in the street – I’ll just go through it. Simply because I don’t want to dwell on it. I know that the whole idea of images today is to arouse your interest in something, and that the two most obvious ways to do so are either with sexual inuendos or with violence. So as soon as I’ve established that, I just block it off. But without forcing it either. I’m not affected by it. I don’t need pictures to understand there’s suffering and injustice and terrible things happening in the world. If an image makes me dwell on it, it’s not serving a purpose.

Detroit Focus Online: If one single picture taken from "Moksha" was to remain, forever, when all others have gone, which one picture would that be?

James Hervey: For the moment, it’s a photograph I call "The Prayer", the silhouette of a man palming his hands to his forehead in the morning mist at the Sangam, the meeting point of the rivers in Allahabad, India. The sun is on the other side of this veil of morning mist and, yes, the man is anonymous, his silhouette is anonymous but his bodily expression is so generous and humble and worshipping and human, in the strict sense of the term, towards his goal…

Detroit Focus Online: Has your choice of Hasselblad, a square format, anything to do with some even or ‘perfect’ proportions? For instance, mandalas are square.

James Hervey: I think that came later. I enjoy printing a lot and I would print sometimes with a friend who uses medium format. Initially I wanted to get a greater definition in my images. This is when I was 29-30 and started photography and was very much wrapped up in the parameters or possibilities of photography. I was drawn towards a ‘clear’ image – an image with little grain and with high definition. To use Hasselblad was also recommended to me because it’s mechanical. If I were to go away for two or three months I shouldn’t take a camera that’s electronic in case something goes wrong. And that’s proved exact. Today I haven’t had a problem with it at all. Subsequently I enjoy it, although it must have taken three to four years before I finally felt very comfortable with it. One of the things I like about it is – aside from not covering the face to take a photograph, which tends to disturb a situation much less – you don’t think anymore about whether it’s going to be vertical or horizontal. Yes, it’s square, it’s very equal proportions and it’s less appraisal of a situation. I just try to have the least things to think about when it comes to the actual tool so that more is invested in the actual ‘invitation’ that is presenting itself.

Detroit Focus Online: What is your feeling towards the slow death of traditional film photography, specifically black and white?

James Hervey: Oh I don’t know. I’m sure I could develop an opinion on it but I think at the end of the day we just have to do with the way things are going. I still get great enjoyment out of it, many other people do. It’s obvious to me that the public still loves looking at black and white photography, for reasons which even themselves don’t know. And so it’s all the more reason to continue taking black and white. You know, color photography is nice – it’s obvious, you got the nice colors, it’s beautiful. I just feel that if there isn’t something stronger than colors in an image then it doesn’t really appeal to me that much.

Detroit Focus Online: Picasso once said "When I don’t have blue I use red."

James Hervey: Yes, I mean the moment someone is looking at a black and white image and are really drawn to it for reasons that they can’t say, in terms of the composition or the form within an image, then I’m sure they can imagine their own colors. They make the colors themselves. But not to give color priority. We all love looking at beautiful colors. If you take a photograph where the colors are beautiful then you don’t know whether it’s actually the colors, or whether it’s the photograph itself that is stimulating. So, a certain facility. I think you can go deeper with black and white. Yes, it goes deeper.

Detroit Focus Online: What would you say to a young kid who dreams to ‘become a photographer’ today?

James Hervey: Probably to try and get to a lab. Without a doubt my whole understanding of photography today is as much based on work in the lab – printing images, retouching images, presenting images, hanging images – as it has to do with the ‘taking’ of the images. It doesn’t finish with ‘taking’ a photograph. There’s so much more that happens in a lab, the choice of contrast, of density in a print, and so on. Once again it’s a natural process. Because the memory of the experience is gone you now have a choice of how to print the image. It’s still the experience but now it comes out with your choice of contrast, of texture, of paper, everything. And I think if you work backwards, with more time in a lab, understanding the printing and processing of film, then maybe taking images becomes ‘easier’.

Detroit Focus Online: More tips?

James Hervey: Besides that, just to enjoy themselves. To try and distance themselves from what ‘a good photograph’ is. To really understand why they want to become a photographer. Is the objective to become a photographer, or is there enjoyment in taking photographs? To understand the two, and to enjoy it. Because there’s no shortage of photographers. It could just become another job. The enjoyment can leave and you just find yourself ‘taking photographs’. But I’ve never felt so strongly about my work today. It’s infinite. As long as you don’t expect anything from it, then it will always be giving you these images, these surprises, these references to how you, yourself, more than the photographer, are evolving, and working.

Detroit Focus Online: You play the classical piano, the Indian ‘bansuri’ flute and various electronics including the tampura machine. Does this affect your photography at any stage of the process?

James Hervey: I think it can only help. What’s the expression? "Jack of all trades, master of none". Once you get the thrill out of being creative, whether it’s sowing seeds in the garden or just drawing a sketch or making something out of anything, you find creativity can express itself in a thousand and one ways, and even more. And there must be a coherence. I can’t see how you’re going to do one different from another. But in choosing one outlet, and in this case photography, it’s more applied.

Detroit Focus Online: You’re also interested in calligraphy, Yoga, T’ai Chi and Tibetan culture. Where and how does your photography work fit in there?

James Hervey: It’s part of it. Once again I’m allowing my photography to take me places. You know, if I have to do that I have to distance myself from photography and make the most important things in my life myself. And that needs direction. And that direction has been nourished notably by Tibetan culture, both the Buddhist and the Bön practices of Tibet, and through other forms of, dare I say, not divine expressions, but a purposefulness. You know, I do not think my life is going to stop the moment that I die. I believe that it will continue. And so the whole way I live my life is bearing this in my heart. I hope that my photography is nothing but a product or an expression of the various things that have nourished me in my convictions, in my belief. Not only for myself but for all things and everything.

Detroit Focus Online: Could it be that this is all seamless, non-fragmented?

James Hervey: It can’t be dissociated. If there’s James the son, James the father, James the friend, James the photographer and all these fragmented different characters, I’d go mad. Having said that there are obviously moments where, with the camera, there’s not a continuity, there’s subjects to attack as well. I find myself frequently taking photographs that actually don’t follow what I’m saying at all. This is why we have an editing – not to choose the "good photographs" but to take away the things that don’t correspond.

Detroit Focus Online: So as a photographer do you believe there is a way to rise above duality, as in meditation, which you also practice?

James Hervey: I would hope so. Meditation can be extended to absolutely everything one does in both waking and sleeping moments. I’m by no means at that stage but I consider photography as a form of meditation. Not a passive one, more an active one. Meditation not in the clichéed sense, though. Meditation is a means to accentuate awareness and an end in itself, to go beyond form, to understand the transitory nature of all things and all moments, and to use it as a channel to express oneself. But not to consolidate an opinion. This is my daily challenge – to know the difference between trying to create an opinion with my photographs and just expressing myself spontaneously. They’ll always both be there.

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