LONDON'S AWARD WINNING NIGHTCRAWLER EUGENE TUMUSIIME
London-based photographer, cinematographer and analogue glitch artist turning the city (and its musicians) into neon, one night at a time.
Greatest inspirations Eugene?
My nighttime street photography started with Liam Wong and his neon-laced work in Tokyo. It was like visiting another world. Soon after, I started shooting at night, I started watching cyberpunk films for inspiration. There’s a shot early on in Akira that has a sense of scale I’ve been chasing since 2017. Ghost In The Shell has some really subtle use of luminance in its skyscrapers. Even Taxi Driver was useful. Less than five minutes into watching it for the first time I thought “Oh yeah, streets can just be green!”
Tell us about your creative process and what you’r most looking forward to this year?
As far as shooting goes, it boils down to looking at the Tube map, seeking out paths I haven’t explored yet and hoping for vantage points. When it comes to grading, I see how many light sources are in the shot and then find the sweet spot between a sliding scale of how dystopian I’d like an image to look and how much colour I can draw out of the image. Colour for its own sake tends to be more fun though, as long as the amount of local adjustments doesn’t start to look too obvious.
I’m definitely most proud of working on the title sequence for UKTV’s We Hunt Together; I was commissioned to spend a couple of nights getting shots that depict a neon hunting ground but still feel definitively London. I managed to get two spots close to my house on internationally syndicated TV, which feels like the most expensive inside joke I’ve ever made.
This year, I’m just trying to network more. Most working photographers tend to have specific kinds of subjects they shoot and industries they service; whereas I have a style that can be applied to many different projects, so now I’m reaching out to people way more often. I’m also starting to see that for me to work in the context of larger industry jobs, an AD, CD, photo editor, etc has to figure out where I fit in the workflow, rather than having a few people on their LinkedIn who can reliably do natural light portraits and handle an NDA. Photojournalism wasn’t high on my bucket list, but someone felt that my style was appropriate, and now I can say I’ve worked for The Economist. Thanks, Melanie.
How has this year changed your creativity and how do you see things moving forward?
It’s hard to say how the past year changed things for me, but ultimately, I had much more free time. I got to work on a couple of music videos remotely because I already had analogue glitch gear. I already had RAW files for a couple personal projects I wanted to do, I just had more time to edit them.
I’m definitely more aware of the need to PR my projects a little bit and send them off to blogs instead of only dropping Behance links in my Instagram bio, so that’s a plus. Going forward, I’m excited for everyone who’s gonna be making DIY music videos over the next year. Vimeo is gonna get real interesting soon.
Icons of our time?
Greta Thunberg. Come on. AOC is amazing too.
Do you think the art world needs to change, and if so how can it be improved?
Yes, in general, but people need to detach from the idea of meritocracy just a little bit. It’s not an absolute.
I know “It’s who you know, not what you know” is a popular line when people are unhappy with their career growth, but if you’re trying to get in, every single promotional effort you make ultimately closes the gap a little bit between you and the person who will buy a print, commission you for a project, retweet you, etc. All you can do is cast the net as wide as possible and show up. How you go about doing that is something else entirely. I’m still trying to work it out.
On the other hand, if you’re in it, make the effort to include people from marginalised groups. Skill and reliability are great, but people have to be willing to entertain the idea that there are massive, untapped talent pools all over the world.
Portfolio: https://etvisuals.co.uk/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/etvisuals/
Prints: https://displate.com/etvisuals/displates
