Is Photography Yorgos Lanthimos’s True Calling?

Yorgos Lanthimos, the filmmaker identified for stylized, pitch-black comedies rife with disfigurement, deadpan dialogue, and transgressive gamesmanship, is an acquired style. Hollywood acquired it a couple of years in the past, catapulting the Athenian from artwork home infamy to international celeb with The Favourite (2018), adopted by Poor Things (2023) and Kinds of Kindness (2024), and the newly launched Bugonia (2025), all of which star Emma Stone (she insists that he’s her muse, not the opposite means round).

His experimental spirit undiminished by mainstream success, Lanthimos has not too long ago branched out to a brand new enterprise: the photobook. Although the pictures in Dear God, the Parthenon is still broken (Void, 2024) and i shall sing these songs beautifully (MACK, 2024) have been taken throughout the making of Poor Things and Kinds of Kindness, respectively, these books are removed from easy behind-the-scenes companion volumes. Instead, they allude to their very own narratives and worlds, hovering someplace between images and cinema. Below, the director talks about how these books got here to be, and what may come subsequent.

Zack Hatfield: When did your curiosity in nonetheless images start?

Yorgos Lanthimos: I went to movie faculty once I was nineteen. I purchased a digital camera and began taking photos randomly, with none objective. This was within the ’90s, earlier than the web. I used to be Robert Frank, Diane Arbus, Stephen Shore, the classics. When I began making films, I started taking photos on set. I’m very shy relating to approaching or photographing individuals I don’t know, so this felt like a extra regular, accessible factor to do. I’ve grow to be extra drawn to images, generally, prior to now few years. I even constructed my very own darkroom subsequent to my enhancing room, in Athens.

Hatfield: For years, you’ve enlisted the photographer Atsushi Nishijima to doc the making of your movies. But your individual pictures are as much as one thing else. They’re autonomous artworks, current each inside and outdoors these cinematic worlds.

Lanthimos: The lovely factor about photobooks is that they typically permit for a narrative that’s not tied to the conventions of narrative. With Dear God, I didn’t wish to make one thing that was along with Poor Things, however one thing that would stand by itself. Even extra so with the second e book. When I used to be making Kinds of Kindness, shot on location in New Orleans, it was already in my thoughts that I used to be taking photos that weren’t essentially associated to the movie. In the e book, there are all these particulars that you just’ll by no means get a way of whereas watching the film.

Hatfield: i shall sing these songs superbly feels extra classical, whereas Dear God makes use of double gatefolds, which frequently reveal proof of artifice—rigs, scaffolding, increase stands, cycloramas.

Lanthimos: I really like how completely different the books are. Michael Mack hadn’t seen the Dear God e book after we started the challenge, hadn’t seen loads of my photos. I confirmed him Dear God, and he mentioned that the Kinds of Kindness e book wants one thing completely different. The first e book is a really advanced, designed e book. The second one consists of far more black and white, loads of flash. I wished to make a extra conventional photobook, in a extra American custom. And I wished to create a story that has a extra mysterious relationship to the photographs, that exists extra within the gaps between photos. At Michael’s suggestion, I added a few of my very own fragmentary texts. I’d have a look at {a photograph} and let random ideas, observations, and experiences take over. There’s one little textual content that’s impressed by an R. D. Laing Knots sort of fashion and construction. That’s a e book I really like.

Hatfield: Can you discuss concerning the position collaboration performed in creating the books?

Lanthimos: It was very liberating to work with these different individuals, Myrto Steirou and João Linneu of Void after which Michael at MACK. I relied on them as a result of it’s not a course of I’ve completed earlier than, sequencing a photobook. There is a few overlap with the way you edit a movie with pictures, however it’s a lot freer. It looks like there are fewer guidelines tied to traditional narrative.

Hatfield: How did the actors provide help to make these photos?

Lanthimos: The experiences have been fairly completely different. Dear God was a really specific expertise. We have been in Hungary in large movie studios surrounded by units. I used a large-format digital camera to make all these black-and-white pictures, and medium format to make the colour portraits. Photography turned a punctuation in between scenes. It was referred to as “portrait time.” Whenever I had a couple of seconds between setups, I shouted, “Portrait time!” and introduced out the large-format digital camera. Sometimes, Atsushi would see that I used to be annoyed with one thing that didn’t work whereas attempting to movie a scene and would recommend to me, “Portrait time?” I attempted to do it actually quick, which, after all, is counterintuitive with a large-format digital camera. At the identical time, it was this little little bit of frozen time inside making a movie and performing. It was a sort of recreation that we loved.

Hatfield: I learn that Emma Stone helped you develop the images within the bathtub of a Budapest lodge.

Lanthimos: Emma bought actually within the means of loading movie and processing the negatives, regardless that she has no real interest in taking photos. She likes the technical side of printing. She mainly printed the black-and-white photographs for a challenge we did for W journal. I don’t understand how we had the power to do it—after an entire day of filming, twelve hours, going again to the lodge room, processing movie and scanning it. But it actually gave us power. It helped us overlook concerning the stress of filmmaking. You get the results of it instantly: “Look, we just processed this portrait that we got this morning, and we’re looking at it!” Or, “We fucked it up and scratched it, but it’s still beautiful.” It enriched our expertise of creating that movie.

I take delight in having gotten lots of people taking pictures movie once more. Jesse Plemons, who starred in Kinds of Kindness, has grow to be an obsessive movie photographer. Will Tracy, the author on Bugonia, the brand new movie we simply shot, has taken up movie images. He goes out and takes night time photos with a tripod. I feel my pleasure about images is a bit contagious.

The lovely factor about photobooks is that they typically permit for a narrative that’s not tied to the conventions of narrative. 

Hatfield: Are different artists’ pictures and photobooks essential to your artistic course of? I seen that Richard Misrach’s 1983 {photograph} Diving Board, Salton Sea, from his 1987 e book, Desert Cantos, was cited within the credit for Kinds of Kindness.

Lanthimos: I’ve been moved through the years by many photographers. I feel that in itself is a good affect, with out essentially being a visual, apparent one. I really like the work of Sage Sohier, Mary Frey, Chris Killip, Rosalind Fox Solomon—her newest is a really highly effective, transferring masterpiece—Mark Steinmetz, Robert Adams, Lee Friedlander, Larry Sultan, Alec Soth, Gregory Halpern, Alessandra Sanguinetti, Masahisa Fukase. I can go on without end. I actually cherished Melinda Blauvelt’s e book. Michael Mack launched me to Lewis Baltz solely not too long ago. I used to be gifted an unbelievable e book, Sex. Death. Transcendence. (2024) by Linda Troeller. Paul Graham’s a shimmer of risk (2018). Whenever I have a look at it, I tear up.

Hatfield: It’s exhausting to consider different photobooks that merge cinema and images in such an open-ended means. Do you recognize about Annie on Camera?

Lanthimos: What’s that?

Hatfield: In 1982, John Huston invited 9 photographers, together with William Eggleston, Joel Meyerowitz, and Stephen Shore, to take pictures on the set of Annie. It’s nice.

Lanthimos: I’m writing that down.

Hatfield: Do you think about a selected viewers to your photobooks?

Lanthimos: Not actually. I don’t assume I may attempt to make one thing for an viewers. You do one thing you wish to make or see, and then you definately hope for one of the best.

Hatfield: Right now, you’re enhancing Bugonia, a sci-fi satire. Did you will have one other e book in thoughts whereas filming it?

Lanthimos: I’m undecided. It’s a really contained movie, so it is likely to be tougher to make a images e book that may really feel impartial from the movie and powerful in its personal proper. I’m attempting to pay attention extra on doing images which isn’t movie associated. Lately, I’ve been taking panorama pictures in my travels round Greece, but additionally in Athens. I wish to begin taking extra portraits however I must ask individuals, so I’m very gradual at it, procrastinating. Hopefully at one level I’ll make a e book that’s not associated in any respect to certainly one of my movies.

This interview initially appeared in Aperture No. 260, “The Seoul Issue,” in The PhotoBook Review.