For The Curious
Nature & Junk
William Bunce & Lisa Jahovic are creative partners who produce kinetically beautiful still life images and films.
Who are you and what do you do?
We are William Bunce - Photographer / Director, and Lisa Jahovic - Set Designer, Sculptor, Art director.
Where are you and what are you doing right now?
In the studio labouring over a composition, slowly slipping a refreshing S&N seltzer.
Can you tell us a little about your history and how you ended up becoming a photographer and an art director/set designer, now specialising in still life.
Lisa studied costume design then sculpture at Wimbledon, before embarking on a career in set design, Will Studied Photography at Falmouth and assisted for a few years, finding Still Life along the way.
What made you guys start working together?
We had noticed each other’s work and got together for a meeting to discuss working together, after a few further meetings we decided to make a short film,- it ended up being about a ball, and its journey through an impossible house.
You have a very specific style, creating the extraordinary from the ordinary, can you tell us about your approach and inspiration.
We are both very influenced by the world around us, nature and junk, by textures and naturally occurring colours and often these elements find their way in to our work. From old mattresses to decomposing plaster.
You recently created a brilliant film for Glossier by creating a Rube Goldberg style machine. Can you tell us about this shoot, how long it took to plan and build.
The glossier film required a fairly quick turnaround, we had about a week between it being commissioned and us starting shooting. Which was pretty crazy given the number of ‘actions’ required to bring it to life. It was pretty challenging as we had to work the product in to the set - and they had to take and active role in the film, so the was a lot of testing and working out. The key theme was that it had to look like one whole take - in actual fact it was a few different takes that seamlessly blended in to one.
Can you recommend any photographers, stylists, music, art, podcasts to check out.
We recently discovered the artist Takis, who recently had an exhibition at the Tate, having kinetic sculpture already plays a big part in Lisa's work and we both find it a really exciting way of bringing ‘still life’ to life! - something we frequently do with our moving image work.
Tell us about something.
‘There was a young lady from Dallas, who used a dynamite stick as a phallus, they found her vagina, in North Carolina, and her arsehole in Buckingham palace'
Tell us about nothing
Nothingness, like emptiness, is perhaps the most powerful chaos. It is filled with the unspoken, all the ideas that never made it out in to the world, patiently, waiting to emerge. It is filled with all the life that has yet to begin, and the life that is no more. Filled with the potential for new life, and the decay of what once was.