Framed Outside: Meeting Alizé Jireh
Part 1: "I'm just grateful that I was there and I could look at it with my camera because it's a magical thing"
It was great to meet Alizé, it was on Zoom but she was sitting in the sunshine and she shared about her creative journey, latest adventure, and what’s around the corner for her. This article will be released in two parts, so grab a coffee and enjoy part 1:
Can you give us a quick intro of yourself as a human and creative ?
I am Alizé Jireh, a 25-year-old photographer and filmmaker, and I have been doing this professionally for almost 10 years. With photography, documentary work, focusing on telling the stories of people, artists, entrepreneurs, conservationists. I also work in figurative art and photography - exploring human emotion through a more surreal lens, rather than exploring the reality of life. I like to travel and be outside and observe the world, take it in, learn. The visual tool is my way of being able to understand things and my way of regurgitating what I learn back out into the world. Hopefully make it so that it's nice for other people to look at and be intrigued by either human emotion, someone's story, or an occurrence.
Every work I have done, every gig I have had has led to another, and the latest one that has taken all of my energy and mental capacity has been the Women & the Wind documentary. It’s finally out after 3 years. This line of work is beautiful, all the ups and downs and the different phases that are dedicated to focusing on different aspects, different stories.
What leads you & pulls you towards the different projects you take on ?
All of it always has to do with my gut instinct and if it makes me feel excited when I hear about it. Sometimes I also have to say yes to a gig because I need to survive and I need the money. But even those, I always find a way to be interested in them! It's all beautiful at the end. Lately it's been more of me just practicing saying, yes, with or without the money, saying yes to the projects that feel really aligned and exciting. I grow from each one, and grow even more when it feels like something that makes me pulse with excitement.
Can you tell us more about your latest big project “Women & the Wind”?
The seed was planted when Kiana and Lærke first met, which are the other two women that crossed the North Atlantic. They met in the Canary Islands right before the pandemic, and really connected. Lærke grew up sailing as a kid, and the project started with her wish to sail down surfboards to the Cape Verde, to give to the kids in community, but the pandemic hit. They kept talking and Kiana eventually sailed back to the US setting out to repair the boat in a yard. She said to Lærke, “you can come, help out and we can go sail, you can take pictures of the journey”. They were thinking something easy to begin with, but the idea kept developing. Lærke works in a nonprofit organisation called Clean Ocean Project, she has this interest in microplastics and plastics in the water near beaches, and how it actually moves globally with the currents. When we dispose of plastic, it's never really disposed of, a lot of it ends up in the ocean and in our waters. So, how could this project be a little more ? Naturally, it became “we'll do a crossing, we'll document plastic, Kiana can write a book, Lærke can take pictures.”
Around that same time, Kiana started following me on Instagram because of a job that I did with a production company in South Africa that works a lot in conservation. We started talking a little bit, I saw that she was this sailor woman, and thought, that's fucking dope. I've always wanted to learn how to sail, I looked into as a young teenager, never had the money for it, so I just put it in the back burner and said, ok if it's meant to happen, it will happen. In September of 2021, I was doing a job in Florida and went to help and meet Kiana at her boat yard. Lærke was out surfing, so I never got to meet her that day. We connected a lot. Never talked about a documentary, just had a good time with each other. Secretly I was like, I would love to sail with this woman.
A few months later she asked me, they wanted to make a documentary following the plastic waste across the North Atlantic. I grew up in the Dominican Republic and plastic was always a big sore for me. So it was like sailing, plastic, and of course the ocean being something that I have always admired and feared. Those three things were enough to say instantly, yes, I will do that! Without knowing what I need to prepare, without knowing how to sail.
It ended up being a three months experience, with one month of waiting for wind in the beginning. So at that point, I was thinking, what am I doing here? Then it was 30 days after that that we were out at sea, no connection. That was in itself a very beautiful time, the journey, and being able to fully take that in. After that, it was a month of settling back in and making a game plan for the documentary. Then three years later, still working with it, working with the story.
Did you have an idea creatively, what you wanted the photos and documentary to look like?
I have my own way already of looking at things but I couldn't conceptualise what the visuals would look like because it was a new environment for me. When I first arrived on the boat in North Carolina, it was actually really helpful to have a month to sit with the environment and get to know the boat. I was taking pictures too, on the dinghy and on the boat, and that was my way of practicing.
I trust and go into it with as much observation and silence as I can. I'm listening and I'm looking , what corners of the boat call me to be captured? Obviously getting to know Kiana and Lærke too, which were my two main subjects. At first I didn’t think I was going to capture myself, but it doesn't make sense for me not to be there because it's such an intimate thing. You have to capture it all.
That was a whole other landscape too, you're just working with water, sky, and the boat and then you have the wind and all these fluctuations and weather. Lighting is always different. There were some days I couldn't get out of the cabin because it was too rough with the storms. I'm not filming 24/7, you gotta choose and there's also the limited storage space, on my one hard drive that I brought. The visuals came naturally as the journey evolved. In general, I can't have a formula because every subject and every landscape calls for its own way of having its story told, so I want to respect that.
During this experience, there was this beautiful energy, being close with women in the middle of nature and a completely different rhythm of life. I'm just grateful that I was there and I could look at it with my camera because it's a magical thing.
The camera always feels like something that helps me to integrate even more into the present moment and be intentional. I would set up my tripod sometimes, set up a shot and just let it roll. One was fishing and I was doing something else, I would set the scene and just let it happen. And then whatever wanted to occur, occurred. It was more I'm observing and Kiana and Lærke are doing their own thing.