Juno Calypso

by LEN Contextual Research SP

A Small Voice Podcast is the source material and images are her copyright and from her website Juno Calypso

Ben Smith’s interview of Juno Calypso on A Small Voice podcast says so much about the world of photography. It is a subjective world. Juno got a grade C for her photography A level and says she was told her work was rubbish for several years. She is disarming in her honest response to questions with many ‘oh….I don’t know’ or ‘who fucking knows.’ This included the question ‘how are you going to make money.’

Photography is also serendipitous. Juno set out on a path to practice and prepare herself to shoot models. That is where she thought she wanted to go. However, she admits to being introvert and shy and does not like interacting with others to set up shoots. This extends to her not using assistants. As she practiced shooting herself the idea of Joyce emerged. The name Joyce comes from a character in Edward Scissorhands of the same name.

  • Joyce

There are so many things to see and like in her images. The use of harmonious colour in this image and the use of lines from the sofa and bed to draw the focus to Joyce. Separation and space around Joyce help the framing. The mask attached to a remote control creates a science fiction type image but also hides the face from us. As I look longer the bottle and plate again well separated catch my attention. The longer I look the more questions arise and more possible stories emerge.

She says she is not technically expert and just works things out by trial and error until she gets the effect she wants. She claims to not fully understand lighting but when I look at her work I think she has an instinct for it. She shot with full frame and a Canon 5D but found working with the full frame was too heavy and cumbersome when working alone. She has been amused when people congratulate her for sticking with full frame when they look at images she produced on her 5D. She is also amused when people tell her what she meant with her work saying something like ‘whatever you can write my intro then…’

  • Joyce

She says this image arose out of an incident around her love of pork luncheon meat. A friends mother saw her eating it once and said how disgusting how can you eat that. This is her response blown up to large scale. She still loves pork luncheon meat.

She comes across as a rebel and was often in trouble at school admitting she hung around with the wrong crowd. This rebel streak kept her committed to her path as she invented Joyce while studying for her degree at the London College of Communication.

  • Joyce
  • Joyce

Juno took Joyce to a romantic hotel in America to produce her Honeymoon project which won an International Prize from the BJP in 2015. Sample images below. Inspiring work.

Categories: Contextual Research SP, Coursework SP, Sustainable Prospects

LEN

I am a Photographer. As well as taking many photographs I am currently studying for an MA in Photography at Falmouth University. I will direct my attention through the lens of my camera for the next couple of years and see what shows up. I see a photograph as a little bit of magic capturing a moment in time. If successful it surprises and engages your emotions. It tells a story about the wonders of being alive or tells us what we need to change to make it a better world to live in. That is enough for me to get going and then like walking a 1000 miles, which I did across the UK in 2010, or walking 200 miles across Cyprus, which I did in November last year, it is one step at a time.

I was a writer. The title of my unpublished book was ‘You Would Have Done The Same.' It is about a successful guy in love with his wife who lets her die when he discovers her in the process of committing suicide. The title gives a clue as to what I think you would have done. The book is 200 pages long. I found it cathartic to write it but after two years of work and reviewing with agents decided it probably needed another 2000 hours to get the whole book up to the standard of some of the pages. Writing is great but it is a lot of sitting down so I decided to get out and walk, play tennis, play bridge, go birding, watch football at Nottingham Forest, Arsenal and Valencia and anywhere else if I can, meditate, cook and eat. I was a writer who has so far failed to become an author.
I was a young man who loved Mathematics and thoroughly enjoyed getting a BSc at Liverpool University. While there I went often to Anfield and the Philharmonic Hall. I was all set on doing a PhD until I went for interview practice at BP and got seduced by the excitement of an International business career. BP was a great adventure building trading teams and businesses in London, Antwerp, Cleveland Ohio and Singapore. Fabulous people and some great challenges and also very hard work, constant jet lag and lots of fun along the way. I married Karen, my stunning wife, and had the most amazing time with her and our three boys Alex, Tom and Dan. She has multiple sclerosis and we have taken on many challenges together but somehow keep creating a new normal against the horrors thrown our way. She is the love of my life.

After BP I decided to coach senior executives and quickly realized I had a lot to learn
about what makes people tick. I had a fantastic 18 months on the International Programme of the Cleveland Gestalt Institute. A great faculty and a
wonderful group of people on the programme. We studied and worked in Dingle, Singapore, Holland, Cape Town and
Lisbon. This also got me interested in the way we think and make decisions so I studied for an MSc in Psychology atUniversity College London in 2010. The
Masters was in Cognitive and Decision Sciences and I found it fascinating what
we do know but also how much we don’t know about how we think and make
decisions.

I loved coaching and making a difference. I got a number of people to hear themselves, remove some of their own chains and free up the way they thought about the world. I remain fascinated by how people react to and engage with the world. My Masters thesis was why do two people given the same information make different decisions? Put simply, it is because each of us are unique in the way we are constructed.

Since returning from Singapore I found English winters tough so moved to Spain where I now live. The people are lovely, the scenery amazing, food delicious and the sun shines all the time. Almost.

All of these experiences will feed in to my time now as a Photographer. Three motivations I am lucky to have are enthusiasm, curiosity and a continuous interest in learning. All the time I look forward to meeting old friends and making new friends and experiencing this wonderful life together.