Rick PerezMay 14, 2020

Breeding in the Dark

Rick PerezMay 14, 2020

Passion, Secrets, and Disrepair

Photography by Caroline Bonarde

Analog photographer Caroline Bonarde uniquely documents the artists from the New Wave, Goth, and Post-punk scene, giving us a view into this beautiful, dark world.

London, United Kingdom

American electronic duo Boy Harsher, London, Feb 2019

Who are you as an artist and a photographer?

I think I can say I’m more an artist using the medium of photography to express myself and my ideas. While I don’t have a classic training in either, it was just something that I could not help doing. While things happening around me are definitely something that I want to document, and I consider myself always observing my environment with passion, I also want to give a certain timeless aspect to it. It’s almost like I’m trying to have a whole movie in one photo, I want to capture more than a subject, I want to capture the ambient, the feel to it, make it other worldly and if I could each of my photos would even have their own soundtrack. I’ve always been greatly influenced by cinema and that’s why I started shooting film anyway.

When did you begin shooting?

Funny enough I did buy my first professional DSLR to shoot Film Premieres and Red Carpets in London around 15 years ago. Already back then I was not looking to produce the usual pictures you would get from press shots but I would work on the photos on Photoshop to make them look more cinematic, like it was the frame of a movie. I tried to avoid using flash and getting the ambient light. Turned out, I never had that good of an equipment and it was way too much work to wait for celebrities outside the theaters in the cold. But I did have some good shots and you might have even come across some of my photos on Wikipedia as they used them a lot for their celebrities pages!

Mar and Morticia at Monster Queen, London 2019

What was your journey like? When did you start calling yourself as a photographer?

While I was still shooting red carpets I was looking at other artists on Flicker, that old platform for sharing your photography work. Combined with my love of cinema, I found certain artists using film and Polaroid to produce artistic images that blew me off my mind! Suddenly I fell in love with that medium and I knew that was the medium I wanted to make my images with. As I always loved the old Hollywood aesthetics of lighting and drama, I managed to buy a Polaroid and started experimenting with it. Usually without the flash of the camera. I also bought some other film cameras that were 35mm and 120mm (medium format) and started shooting my partner at the time, and because I didn’t have many people around me (I had come from Brazil not too long before), I started taking self portraits. I was in love with Wong Kar-wai and Tarkovsky films and it seemed to me that Polaroids and film photography gave me that organic and timeless feel of those films I loved. I then started shooting friends and casting models to work with me. In fact it all started because a stylist found my work and loved it, she said it reminded her of Sarah Moon as I did double exposures with my old Polaroid Spectra.

After that I started doing more shoots with other creatives always with my own style, which was not very commercial, and it seems art takes a long time to be recognized by your immediate audience. I had my work compared with Francesca Woodman, Diane Arbus, Antoine D’Agata, really artistic photographers. But it seemed there was never any money into it. I stopped shooting for a bit as I was not very motivated and it was very expensive to shoot film, but I always kept doing self portraits. I never really called myself a Photographer, it was just something I was doing to express myself and create some poetry.

Goth and Post-punk duo Lebanon Hanover. Back cover photo of their latest EP "The Last Thing", London, 2019

How did you become involved in the New Wave/Post Punk scene? What are the clubs and people like where you are (London?)? Why does this subculture inspire you?

In my own Isolation, having lived a long life already, I started seeking solace in music, which was my first passion back when I was a kid. My mum is a musician and she was a music journalist in my childhood and that made me have a lot of contact with big musicians as I was always in Press Conferences with her and in the big shows in Sao Paulo. I always loved music and suddenly I started going back to some Post-Punk and Goth music that I used to listen when I was very young, and also my older sister was obsessed with goth, so all of this started to come back to me and I was constantly listening to this music while shooting sporadically, mostly personal photographs. I think my style started to become more dark as I was feeling more that state of mind. Existentialism, search for meaning, melancholy, nostalgia, relationship fails, etc. I then started finding out through You Tube the new artists making this sound today, and I became completely obsessed with music again. The first band I became obsessed with was Minuit Machine, a Parisian duo of synth wave. When I saw some of their videos - some made by them, other by fans - of their songs with edits of old Hollywood films, I was like wow! That’s what I want for my work! Intense feelings like passion, loss, secrets, melancholy, disrepair. It was all I was feeling! haha.

The clubs came much after I had already started working with the bands that I loved the most, as I used to send them messages and ask them please can I take your picture after the gig?! I used to have a couple of instant film cameras and not much time, not much light, so I always had to use flash, but still, I think it matched the underground style of the bands, and also my passionate style of trying to capture emotions worked well with the synth artists, specially some of them were amazing women that were feeling like I was and we clicked straight away.

When I first walked into a club that was playing the music I was listening to in the gigs I was in love though. And of course all that past of my childhood, all that gig culture, was right there for me to enjoy with other people in many many nights, not only gig nights. Suddenly I realized that culture was not dead at all! It brought to my head the work of the amazing photographer Derek Ridgers who photographed the punks and goths in the 70s and 80s, and that’s when I wanted to document what was right in front of me. It was not the past but the present blended with past and the future wave: Electronic music, gender fluidity, non-binary identities; something that I never had much contact with but I could totally identify and wanted to be part of.

What’s your process like? What kind of camera and film do you use? How would you describe your style?

My process is to try to pack as light as I can though sometimes that’s not an easy feat, as I like to enjoy the places that I am shooting at as much as I like to get pictures. If I’m going to a gig it is because I want to be in front seeing everything, enjoying it to the fullest. If I can get the photographs after, or before, if I made the artist become interested in allowing me some time with them, then great. I don’t like to push. I like things to be natural. So mainly I will have my polaroid, one other film camera but not always, or my digital camera. I mostly end up using my polaroid shots because they are usually the images I want. I might sometimes push for a bit more equipment like a spotlight if I know the artist, because I know they will give me much better results and depth in my photos but it’s not always possible.

My style is definitely raw, natural, and I try the best I can to have some candid moments, which can happen a lot in clubs when I’m amongst people I know, but not always with the bands, not enough time for that. But I think by now my style is pretty much set, if you see one of my photographs they will be recognizable. I also try to make some surrealist images or use motion or double exposures to capture a glimpse of a moment, something that conveys more sensations and feelings.

Where do you want to go next in your journey as a photographer?

I don’t know much about video making but I know a little and I have co-directed two music videos in the past. I think I can be a great director and I have many ideas and I can have the lay out of the scenes and shots I want, develop a script and put the vision out there, as it happened when I co-directed with Hante. her music video “Serre- moi Encore”, I just need to have someone helping me executing them, but as usually is in the alternative scene, there is never much budget to get many professionals involved. But I am definitely planning more music videos. And I also want to do more subculture documentaries as there is an important movement breeding in the dark right now. I think it will be relevant and change things for the generations to come as the post punk and goth changed for us.