Interview: Renee Paiement – “Days of Heaven”
When I discovered Minneapolis-based photographer Renee Paiement’s work, I was in awe of the way she captured light dancing across an image, as if it were a character in the frame, and her confident color composition. Days of Heaven is an homage to the Terrence Malick film of the same name, a project that began through Renee’s travels and engagement with everyday life. Her cinematic approach is influenced by her background in literature and screenwriting and inspired by such artists as Gregory Crewdson and Maxfield Parrish – each image holds its own story, yet read in sequence, the viewer steps into a place that Renee describes as “the living beauty of the natural world, and the beauty that lives within the world we’ve built … big, sensational moments belong side by side with the humble and precious.” Malick described his film in a similar way: “ [Days of Heaven] is a feeling that a place exists that is within reach and we will be safe … where you will not become crazier by fighting again and again against the impossible.”
Renee’s Days of Heaven is more a feeling to experience than a place to visit. It is within us, all around us, and sometimes, just out of reach. It is shadows and light, bright bursts of it that fill us with so much possibility and life. I’m thankful that Renee shared her vision and a bit of her practice with us in the following interview.
INTERVIEW
Lisa Toboz: When did you start doing photography? Why analog?
Renee Paiement: I was in the film program, during undergrad, at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Their program was founded by the experimental, analog filmmaker Stan Brakhage, and for that reason, it had a more analog-focused curriculum. I took a Super 8 class my senior year and really loved it. I would stay up late editing rolls with a splicer and tape on the floor of my room. That same year I got my first 35mm camera and that’s when I really started making photos.
LT: What and who are inspirations for your work?
RP: With my background in film, naturally I’m inspired by movies and their makers. The work of writer/director Terrence Malick has been an important inspiration for my series. I’m also thematically and aesthetically influenced by the films of Alexander Payne, Wong Kar Wai, Federico Fellini, Lars Von Trier, the Cohen Brothers, and Yorgos Lanthimos.
Often, when I want to feel energized to create, I look at paintings. My favorite painters are masters of light and color. For example, Maxfield Parrish, a 20th-century American artist who painted amazing neo-classical idyllic, fantasy scenes. His colors are so brilliant. The incredible shade of blue he often uses for his skies has been named “Parrish Blue.” You feel the desire to swim in it. But perhaps the most enchanting part of his paintings is the light.
I’m also very captivated by the work of the American photographer, Gregory Crewdson. He has one of the most cinematic styles of any photographer I know. His photos feel like stills from a movie. He makes these dream-like scenes within small-town, suburban settings. They feel so recognizable and yet so bizarre all at the same time. His photos hold all the mystery and suspense of a climactic moment in a film. He even uses a crew the size of a film set to account for every detail in frame. Someday I’d like to try making a photo of his scale.
LT: Where, what, or who is your favorite to photograph?
RP: My sister. There are several photos of her in this series. When I first started shooting, I wasn’t confident or assertive enough to ask people to be in my photos or direct them to achieve what I wanted. I started making photos with my sister because she is the person that I’m most comfortable around, and as my younger sibling, she simply has no choice.
Really though, we’re the dream team. When we make photos, we find ourselves in unexpected places, crossing paths with different people and stumbling upon new things. It’s an adventure that I get to share with her.
LT: What is your first photographic memory?
RP: When I was seven, my grandma brought home a disposable camera. She wanted some baby photos of my sister, who was a toddler at the time, and she asked me to take them. My grandma always let me be involved.
I did a whole shoot in a daisy field down the street. We still have the photos: one tiny girl in a big hat, with yellow flowers up to her ears in all directions.
I like this memory because I’ve essentially been doing the same thing ever since.
LT: As an artist with a foundation in literature and screenwriting, can you tell us what defines good storytelling?
RP: To put it simply, any story you write will inevitably be your story. No matter what it’s about, it will always reflect the way you feel about life, and yourself. Pay close attention to that feeling. Good storytelling happens when you let the emotional truth of your story guide the way that you tell it.
LT: The title of your project, Days of Heaven, is a nod to the Terrence Malick film of the same name. How does this film influence your Days of Heaven series? (emotionally, artistically, technically)?
RP: I’m so deeply moved by all of Terrence Malick’s poetic films. Rather than keeping the stories of his characters contained, he makes them expansive. He pulls back to reveal the way both their struggles and their joy unfold in unity with the rest of the living world. His camera follows the narratives of people but relentlessly pans away to look at nature – animals, wind, bugs, trees, rivers.
In Days of Heaven, two lovers drink wine at the riverbank at dawn and one of them drops their glass in the water. The scene ends, but later the camera returns to the bottom of the river for a shot of fish swimming around the sunken glass. It’s beautiful.
My photos also show people with deep passions, set against the backdrop of our universe, which is as amazing as it is indifferent. Throughout my series, the presence of nature is found in every shot and photos of people are regularly interrupted by shots of flowers with remarkably human qualities.
My work shares a lot of the same visual motifs that are seen throughout Malick’s film – clouds, wind, water, and fields. Most of the movie’s plot unfolds in a wheat field. Malick shows characters laboring, playing, celebrating and suffering all in one wide open expanse, under the sun. In my own work, a shot of a picker in a strawberry field follows a photo of a girl lying blissfully next to heaping bowls of fruit. This is the rhythm of our lives, and both are beautiful.
I love his title and I thought it suited my work. “Days” gives the impression of the ordinary, repetitive pattern of our mundane existence. And “heaven” refers to the phenomenal, profound beauty that we randomly experience during our time on earth. The Days of Heaven represents the duality we live by, a duality that has always been very hard to accept.
LT: What is your favorite photo in the series and why?
RP: Photo six is my favorite. I like how the gold light is flooding into the black room and it looks almost like the light is holding the subject, or protecting him. And he’s completely unaware, totally at peace. I like how the bed is like a ship with golden sails, and the sunlight reveals the delicate pattern on the curtains. The whole scene feels universally familiar, and despite how beautiful it is, there’s still something very sad about it. I wish he could stay there forever, in peace, held by the golden light.
LT: Do you use your screenwriting experience in conjunction with your photography? Or rather, do you see one influencing the other, or are they separate practices for you?
RP: I think I approach my photos with a screenwriter’s process: build a world, invite people in, and inspire them to feel something.
The reality is, writing a screenplay takes a long time, so I tend to make the landscape of my story a place that I myself would like to live in for a while. I decide the setting of a photo the same way. And like the opening of a movie, I try to make photos that pull people into the world I’ve created.
The photos in my series are structured like a screenplay. They function individually, like separate scenes, or moments, but they belong to an overarching story. And the meaning of that story is contained within each of them.
Just like a scene in a script, my photos involve a location, a character, and a want. The protagonist’s burning desire is what creates the tension that drives a film narrative, or the story within a photo.
Whether I’m writing a script or making a photo, the intention is always the same – help the viewer feel connected to what they see. Movies and photos share the powerful ability to help us understand ourselves.
LT: How did Days of Heaven begin and evolve into the project it is now?
RP: I made photos through grad school, during travels abroad, road trips, adventures, and in the quiet days of quarantine. These years of photo making have really been for the sake of my own enjoyment. I never had a greater goal in mind, other than what I aimed to achieve in a single photo.
My photos are able to exist on their own, but there is a corresponding aesthetic and thematic thread that runs through a lot of them. For this reason, I was able to weave a sequence from work that was made at very different times and in many different places. They’re interconnected.
LT: Future plans for your work? What can we look forward to seeing?
RP: Right now, I’m focusing on putting my project out into the world and getting more eyes on my work. And hopefully I’ll be able to gain exposure for two other projects in my portfolio.
I’ll always be making new photos. I recently started experimenting with turquoise and magenta film and it feels like I unlocked a new potential for world-making. Color is a tool I use to create my mise-en-scene and now it seems there is a whole new realm of possibility.
GALLERY
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Renee Paiement is a traveling, Minneapolis-based artist, working in the medium of analog photography. A graduate of the Columbia University MFA Directing/Screenwriting program, Renee is a trained and practiced visual creator. She was a film student who discovered the school’s basement darkroom. And like a movie theater, she knew within its deep dim emptiness, there was enough space to hold a universe. Her photos share a cinematic quality that is inspired by her favorite filmmakers, including the transcendental visions of Terrance Malik, whose film is the namesake for her series, Days of Heaven. Renee’s work explores the wonder of spectacular beauty as a divine presence in our physical world. Using light that speaks and colors from dreams, she makes sensational scenes of the great rapture and silent longing that together define our delicate existence. Connect with her on her Website and on Instagram.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Lisa Toboz is a self-taught, Pittsburgh-based artist with a background in writing and literature. Her work explores self-portraiture and creativity as a form of healing using various Polaroid cameras and film. She is inspired by vernacular photography, Victorian spirit photography, and ‘70s supernatural cinematography, as well as reading fiction. Her recent photo books include Dwell (Polyseme, 2020) and The Long Way Home (Static Age UK, 2018). Her Polaroid photography can be found in various publications including Shots Magazine, as a featured artist in She Shoots Film: Self Portraits, and Polaroid Now (Chronicle Books, 2021). A copy editor by trade, she has exhibited internationally and is represented by photographer Stefanie Schneider’s Instantdreams Gallery (Palm Springs, CA).