"Images in the mind": The magical realism of Jonathan Inglis' photography

Jonathan Inglis is a Cape Town based photographer, born in Pietermaritzburg. He is known for his photographic work capturing the Cape Town creative scene, and particularly the Jazz scene. Between the 20th and 27th of November, he accompanied Kujenga on their first international tour to London. I have known Jonathan for a while, and having seen how he has progressively honed in on a striking aesthetic of colour and glow, was particularly excited to get insight into his journey with photography in the midst of a milestone.

Where did your photography journey start, particularly in terms of Jazz photography?

I have always loved taking photos. I grew up looking at photos that my father took. He was always walking around with a camera. I took photos with my iPhone 7 and eventually got an upgrade to an iPhone 10 which had portrait mode and that blew my mind. Now I could blur the backgrounds and take these kinds of cinematic looking shots of the bread on the table or flowers in the garden.

A lot of my aesthetic understanding of photography and its technical aspects actually just comes from those years of trying to make things look as beautiful as I could with the phone.

When it comes to Jazz, that’s just been this year- what a wild ride! In October 2023, I got my first camera- a Canon R- to make short films for my UCT film course. I never thought photography would reveal itself as something that I could step into as a job. I just started taking photos of live music that my friends were taking me to.

I took photos at the Cape Town Jazz Festival, which was really I guess the launch of me as a photographer. I took a lot of photos of Kujenga and Yussef Dayes and sent them to them on Instagram on the same night. I got home at like 3am and stayed up editing!

Kujenga loved the photos and invited me to their next gig to take photos of the performance and at the soundcheck. Kujenga has been the group that has allowed me to see photography as a profession rather than just a hobby.

When you step into these events as a photographer, what do you feel your role is?

To capture something that people might feel but not see with their eyes.

I feel like music takes you into another space emotionally. I feel like it creates images in the mind that are not actually what people are seeing but I feel like people can see sound when they listen to music. They imagine what the sound looks like.

For me, in jazz specifically, that’s a lot of colour.

I want people to be able to go home from the gig and see the photos and actually see what they felt, not just what they saw.

I want to capture what’s maybe not there physically but definitely there emotionally and spiritually.

I don’t just capture the factual legacy of that moment but also the emotions that it conjured. It's a documentary of the tangible and the intangible.

What are your primary technical tools to do that?

Shadows and lighting, as well as isolating the subject within darkness. I find that when you’re listening to music it’s like everything else dissolves away and that person is suspended in this mental void. You just feel them and the music and nothing else matters.

I’ll find gaps between things and people in the audience space and shoot between the gaps so that the subject is isolated in shadow.

Emotionally, all that is going on is the experience of the glow of that subject producing the music. That’s what I focus on in the images.

Why do you think people like your work?

I think I capture their experience and give them something that they can hold onto.

I would love to have photos of my own imagination, and I think that’s what I capture.

In my artistic practice I try to make people feel how I feel and so I think people connect with my work when they feel an emotional resonance with it.

Do you see yourself expanding out of event photography?

Definitely. I think it’s an amazing space to be in right now because I get to spend time with so many creative, revolutionary people. It feels like a real community.

However, music isn’t the only important thing to me. I love wildlife and nature. I think always my photos will be half representing what is there and half what people feel. I would love to do that with everything, not just music. I would love to take these magical-real photos of everything for the rest of my life.

What have you learnt since buying your camera almost a year ago?

This camera has changed me as a person. In the beginning the lens brought me to so much newness- people, experiences, and it allowed me to express myself so easily. It was so rich and sometimes it felt like time just stopped and I was suspended in this richness.

Other art forms are very periodic for me, like I couldn’t draw every day. But it isn’t the same for photographs. It's like breathing. The challenge of making something look good is fun for me. I think it’s because I’m not bringing it fully out of my own mind. All of the beauty is in front of me and in the mind. I’m just documenting something that you can see and something that you can’t see but both already exist.

So ultimately, I’ve learnt how diverse Cape Town is. The camera opened doors for me into so many communities.

It’s interesting that you say that the camera has brought you in, even though you are on the other side of the lens. Do you ever feel like an outsider in the situations you photograph?

I never feel like an outsider. My photos have allowed me to connect with people who I might have never otherwise. I’m sharing something with these musicians about themselves.

I think I would feel disconnected if I was just capturing in a concrete documentary style- just images of the tangible. I think a standard wedding photographer taking the same photos every single time might feel disconnected from the joy of that space because you’re trivialising what you’re seeing into something that can happen anywhere or has happened before.

I capture how I felt in the moment and how others felt. When people emotionally resonate with my photos it is very validating because they’re resonating with a part of me, my experience in the moment.

I feel very involved when I share the photos that I’ve taken.

What does it mean to you to be a creative?

It’s about the ability to make people feel, and reflect on their own experiences.

The power to make people feel. Maybe it sounds vain and terrible, but ultimately it’s a thing about capability - it’s having a way to make people feel things that I have felt, allow people to change, to create something that previously only existed within me.

Finally, you’re in London at the moment with Kujenga, how are you feeling about being on tour and how are you feeling about the work ahead of you there?

Very good! My thoughts are more on who I am as a person in this new landscape, I’m feeling confident in terms of the photos.

What I'm staying aware of is what these photos mean for the band: they represent an archive of who they were, and what they did. Again, it's not just the historical objective documentation of the band, but also a subjective, and emotionally charged history, thanks to what they make me feel in the moment.

The emotions that the photographer felt show up in the photo and that goes into the history, it shows the legacy of how the music made people feel.

In Inglis’ work, he is conscious of both the tangible and intangible that are conjured in the spaces he photographs. He creates the image of both through his personal lens, drawing from his personal experience of the moment to resonate with viewers.

How he attempts to do this most faithfully is by highlighting the emotions which are evoked within him.

It is often difficult to tell, just by looking at his photos,how he achieves the effect that he does. The physical matter gets obscured, used and transformed into the emotional image:

Half magical, half real.

Written by Emily Freedman, 27th Nov 2024

“images in the mind”: the magical realism of jonathan inglis

How Music Is Home For Lelam

Raphadu & Mpho’s Illustration Of The Film World