An interview with Tõnu Tunnel, photographer of the built environment

“I've probably owned 40-50 different film cameras in a decade, they all have so different characters and flow to shooting.”

Tõnu Tunnel is a freelance photographer from Tallinn, Estonia in Northern Europe.

Estonia is a tiny ex-soviet state with a whopping population of 1.3 million. They say they invented Skype but that’s a complicated story.

He enjoys shooting man-made spaces of any scale from tiny cabins to big landscape art projects. For personal work he feels a mission to document the changing-evolving cityscape.

Hi Tõnu, I hope all is safe and well with you and many thanks for taking the time to share with our community. I've always admired your portfolio and especially your images set within remote environments.

Congratulations on being voted a finalist for the first M-mode Award 2020, such a beautiful image with a great accompanying story behind it.
I suppose we should start at the here and now.....Can you tell us what has been keeping you occupied recently throughout 2020 and what your plans for the up-and-coming months in 2021?

Hi Pete! Oh boy - so honoured for the nomination and also to be able to shoot that cabin. Still so amazed where this work of ours takes us. Very grateful. That rowing bit is how urban legends are born….

Hard to give any creative answers regards to the last year. The beginning of the year was real hopeful. Plans for a workshop in Armenia, Venice Biennale etc. By march I was in isolation out of town and doing a hike a day with my little ones and almost caught up to all my old post processing.

Mid-summer things started to normalise and by August I guess I was even busier than usually. Now with the second wave we're taking things easy and leaving time for family and relatives but slowly easing back to work. I need to finish my homepage but I took a bigger bite than I was ready for. Well you'll hopefully see by the end of the month.

Need to sell all the little bits and pieces of gear I don't use anymore. Practice to shoot video of spaces and read all the photo-books I've been hoarding while in isolation. If the warm season calms down I want to explore and shoot more of the local Soviet architecture heritage. No specific project in mind but hopefully I can turn it into a zine or two. Never done a book or zine and that really intrigues me.

I know what you mean about the website, it takes a lot longer to update than you first think. Sounds interesting your idea of a project or magazine, we’ll definitely keep our eyes out for your work and definitely look forward to seeing your updated website.

I've really admired your work for a while now, you really get out and about and are spoilt with eco friendly projects which is a passion of mine. Could you tell us what got you into photography and started and a bit more your background?

I guess my starting point is my Grandpa's old Zenit 19 cameras. I messed around with those, joined a local photo club and spent hours in the darkroom. That camera broke down so much that eventually got an EOS30 from a pawn shop. After that everything sort of snowballed. I've probably owned 40-50 different film cameras in a decade, they all have so different characters and flow to shooting.

The men in my family tree have been engineers so there was an inertia to go towards that. I studied construction engineering for a year but there was no spark. Went on to become the black sheep of my herd and go to the Estonian Art Academy to study photography. I did some side jobs after uni but eventually started freelancing more and more.

At some point between sleep hours and my 9-5 job I freelanced at gigs at nights and weekends, it eventually became too much so I made the jump. I still feel that my current work is quite heavily influenced by me shooting so much film in my early days.

That kind of set the lust for those warm Kodak Portra tones and constantly messing and toying with tonalities and not staying with a clean cohesive look. But I do enjoy the speed and playfulness of digital so I don't see a reason to shoot film for commercial work. I still shoot film at times as a form of therapy.

I'm from Tallinn, Estonia - we used to be part of the Soviet Union. Because of that era and the sudden release to western capitalism, Tallinn has quite a varied palette of styles and eras. I enjoy shooting the cityscape and all its scars and weirdness. Liminal spaces. I guess that honed my skill in shooting man built spaces and at some point some young architects started to contact me for their shoots and then it snowballed word of mouth.

Wow, that’s a lot of cameras! I love that your imagery is colour styled due to your experience with film cameras. It is such a more considered and reflective approach which takes time to master.

Where do you see the future of photography heading, not only in our genre but as a whole?

Does everybody get these deep philosophical questions?

Haha….

I think photography is doing ok. That’s a very long discussion but here’s a few thoughts for good and bad directions we might be heading to. 

Good because literally everyone has a mobile phone with a camera right now. We are better skilled in reading and interacting with 2D images than ever before. Visual literacy would probably be a good term? That raises the bar of complexity people demand from images hence a demand for pros fluent in creating those. Also frees us working pros from a lot of small tasks that don't always demand a camera. Clients can now do those simple photos themselves and in the process save time for everybody. We have more time to focus on the heavy stuff.

The biggest bad heading is probably trust in photos as a document of reality. That of course has been a conflicting topic since the early days of darkroom manipulation. But now with photoshop having built in sky replacements, computational photography blurring the lines between a photo or a bracketed stack of photos with AI picking the best smile and eyes from different frames?

Instagram has turned into a shiny showreel of just the best snippets but it still reflects reality, right? We might have to start redefining what still counts as a photo at some point. I guess this digitalisation and beautification of reality is what has also pushed us to look for genuine and unedited photography. Instagram used to be snippets of very random moments and food. Then we pivoted to vines and snaps as a small unedited glimpse of reality. Now there is the ever-growing resurrection of analog film photography.

I'm not sure what my final official answer is. I think we'll be fine. Photographers as a profession aren't going anywhere soon as long as we don't get lazy and keep up with the times and progressing trends. There seemed to be a point some years back when Iwan Baan was the architecture photographer in the world. This documentary style getting more and more attention in comparison to the very methodological and transcendental work of masters like Helene Binet.

Very interesting ideas there. I agree that the lines have become blurred somewhat, especially in interior and architecture. We strive for perfection in our images and want to show the subject at its best. It can be different to separate now an excellently executed photo or a CGI. Personally I’m not that much of a purist as I’ve only ever worked with digital files however I appreciate the frustration.

As you mentioned you’ve owned a lot of cameras over the years….As a photography community, love it or loathe it we have to talk a bit of gear. Could you tell us what equipment you have in your bag and enlighten those who aren't familiar a little bit more about your process.

For my commercial work I now mostly shoot with a Fuji GFX 50R and a Nikon Z7. Which one goes in the bag depends a bit on the subject and if I need to be more tied down or want to run around and shoot handheld.

For both I sometimes opt to use a Cambo Actus tech camera. I use that with a bunch of Hasselblad and Schneider lenses but mostly for exterior work, I don't find myself using shifts that much in smaller indoor spaces.

I almost never tether. Last time I picked up a flash was probably 5 years ago to shoot a sandwich in a studio. I like how light works its way around a room and enjoy the shadows if they appear.

DJI Mavic 2 Pro. You will crash a few. 

Big sturdy carbon fibre Sirui Tripod that can extent to about 2.5m if needed. Arca Swiss Cube. I love that thing, tt seemed very expensive but considering how much of my time I spend with my camera on it - it was the easiest investment to life quality I've done so far.

I very much enjoy F-Stop backpacks. Sturdy and they open up from the back so I can throw the bag into mud or snow without worry. I've got two. Then a bunch of shoulder bags. And a lowepro belly bag that fits just two smaller lenses has been really nice sometimes. I can leave the backpack in the car and just take my tripod and a few lenses to go for a quick vantage point out in the field.

I always have some hex wrenches and a pocket knife, two-three kinds of tapes, clamps, umbrella, rubber boots.

Nice and compact it sounds like it. I’ve certainly thinned out my gear, or only take a rucksack with me these days.

Is there a certain approach you like and where has your inspiration come from in creating your stylised look?

I guess I sort of answered that in where I come from. I used to shoot a lot of film and that tonality and lust for warmth is in my genes now. As much as I respect the clean work Barry MacKenzie or Peter Molick do - I can never push myself to that neutral look. I need some tone and character. I keep messing and playing with my presets and then overlaying it all with some brown tone.

I don't style my sets too much either. If there is something very obvious that can be removed temporarily, I will remove that but other than that I'd say I'm leaning heavily on the one-exposure-documentary-style. I feel I'm stuck in some sort of a weird in-between. I'm not as clean as the boys mentioned before but at the same time I don't feel I've got the sensibility Mary Gaudin has for example. I wish I could see and isolate tiny elements and emotions like she does.

I can understand that. If we were all producing the same images everything would become very one dimensional. That’s what I love about our industry and the great freedom for creativity it can produce. You put 10 photographers in a room I guarantee everyone will do things slightly differently.

Is there a favourite subject you like to shoot and why?

Human-scale architecture. Small experimental concept architecture, cabins, tiny homes, installations. They need to think outside of the box more often instead of just cladding a glass cube with some interesting perforated metal. Also logistically a lot less running around if the subject is 5x5x5m but I very much also enjoy the local Soviet Modernism heritage. I need to shoot and conserve that before it falls into crumbles / gets renovated into something anonymous.

What would say the highlight of your career would be to this point?

Being able to leave a printed trace of myself and the era I live in. Two yearly calendars for the Estonian Centre of Architecture, catalogues for exhibitions, the Soviet Summerhouse book for the Architecture Museum, 5 year project documenting the Estonian Art Academy building process all the features in design magazines.

If I have to pick one event then Skåpet Mountain Lodges in Soddatjørn, Norway for KOKO architects back in 2016. It was so difficult, so tiring, so adventurous and so rewarding. I miss the mountains.

Do you have any favourite photographers that inspire you and anyone you think we should be keeping an eye out for?

This changes so much based on my current mood. For inspiration I look back to Ezra Stoller, Schulman, Lucien Herve etc. Or Bas Princen or something other more conceptual. From my contemporary colleagues I always get excited when I see something new from Double Space, Anjie Blair, Iwan Baan's work is still amazing, Adam Mork, Guy G Archard, Todd Hido, Brooke Holm, Benedict Redgrove, Reuben Wu, Bastiaan Woudt, Jean Bai, Shai Gil, Laurian Ghinitoiu to name some.

Some great names in there, some familiar to me, some not. Will definitely go and check them out!

Lastly, what has been your favourite takeaway in all the lockdowns?

So much more time for my kids with zero regrets. And a lot of time for work with ourselves. Find things that bring you joy. Also these virtual communities connecting people and colleagues from all around the world. Despite being locked in to our homes, I've had some very heartwarming and fun Facetime calls with people all around the world. What a time to be alive!

 A big thank you to the very talented Tõnu Tunnel for taking the time for his takeover and for answering some of questions. All the best in the future…Estonia is certainly on the bucket list when this is all over.

To see more of Tõnu’s work check out his website….when live!

www.tonutunnel.com