Elisabeth Ouni loves hip hop, old school R&B and rap. She plays it when she DJs and shoots it’s megastars for her blog, A Polaroid Story. Even the official title of APS is a rap rhyme- “No Balls, No Glory, A Polaroid Story”. After 5 years at the helm of a hugely popular and awesome blog, Elisabeth is finally getting the recognition she deserves. Celebrating and penetrating the surface of the most badass, infamous and guarded music artists in the world, Elisabeth is a force to be reckoned with. It all began when she found some old Polaroid film cameras in a thrift shop by her house and bought the lot. From there bread a fascination with capturing a moment permanently. The website that holds her blog and reignites the dying art of instant, untouched photography as an artform was updated in February of this year. An exhibition in Brussels in conjunction with Hunting + Collecting in March gave a sneak peek to the exposition tour of her photography extending through the Summer in London, Berlin and Paris. You’ll want to remember her name.
Lamé: What is your title?
Elisabeth: I work as a pr/communication consultant for clients in fashion, music & lifestyle. I see myself as a content creator, a storyteller with the means I have at the moment I make/tell them.
What was you childhood/coming of age like?
I’m a child of divorced partners, with a Muslim father. I left home at age 16 and took care of myself ever since. My coming of age was very hard, but it made me into who I am today.
How did you end up doing what you do?
I always wanted to become an actress and leave Belgium for LA to pursue that dream. Life decided a different path for me. I ended up doing what I do, caus I try to make a living with something that makes me happy.
How did you manage to make a business out of it?
Still working on that part. 5 years in, apolaroidstory.com is still a running cost fueled on passion and love for music and storytelling, not a profiting business.
Where are you located/where do you thrive?
Ostende, Belgium is the city I call home and lived in since I left home. I’m now located in Ghent, a city more central in Belgium. I thrive wherever I meet people I can connect with. But I’m most happy in tropical temperatures, then again, who isn’t?
What is the dream that drives you?
I just want to create things that have intense memories and moments attached to it and try to make a living with that. Dreaming is what drives me, without it, life is just a routine of uninspired events. Having no dreams or no goals seems terrifying to me.
What limits you?
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Money is the only thing that can work limiting. If you have enough and you spend it consciously, it creates possibilities and it can make you more agile. Then again, if you lack money, it stimulates the brain to be extra creative or resourceful with the means you do have.
Or at least, pushes you to be a better hustler.
What is the message behind your work?
Execute your ideas. Don’t give up. Do how you visualize it. Make it happen. Trust the process.
Show it how it really was in the moment. No gimmicks. It is what it is.
How do you choose your subjects? Has this changed over time?
The music is the first thing. I have to genuinely be into the artists’ music. After that, it’s purely circumstantial since I’m located in Belgium, I’m independent of artists that pass here during their tour. Sometimes I travel when I’m sure a Polaroid picture will happen and I can afford the trip. It did change a little bit over time, considering I started out front row waving with my Polaroid camera, to hustle more legit one on ones via contacting managements and much later the labels (mostly Sony Music) started to contact me to collab with their artists. But at the end of the day, it still is not easy to do what I do. Some stories comes on a silver platter, and others are just starting from scratch all over again. Read my last Pharrell Williams story and you will read the difficulties between the lines. Don’t think I’m invited with a red carpet to come over now, because I get a little press here and there. Although the young emerging artists definitely reach out quicker to me and give apolaroidstory.coma lot of respect, which is motivating.
How do you forge so many collaborations?
It’s a thing I started working on over the years. Sometimes you connect with somebody that years later will be important for you to tell a new story. I’ve been doing this for 5 years, so I met a lot of new people, managements, artists, entourage. Sometimes one of these people help me with new stories, sometimes they reach out again to collab again, and besides that: mails.
Iv’e send many many (mostly unanswered ) mails.
How do music and style feed each other?
They go hand in hand most of the time. One inspires the other.
I feel it mostly works or feels real when it’s effortless and organic.
What came first- the Polaroid or the story? What’s more important?
First came the idea of how cool it would be to try and take a Polaroid of Pharrell Willams. After I succeeded doing that, I had to tell so many people how I did this, the idea to write it all down came soon after. People who were réally interested could read it if they wanted to. When I heard Pharrell say in an interview that you need to hold on to ideas that stick too long in your head and try to execute them, caus you’d be surprised where they might take you, I decided to stubbornly hold on to the idea and the concept and just go for it. And here we are. Not even halfway there. J
What is the appeal of working with film? You can’t edit or plan what you get the way you can with (modern) digital cameras…
Working with Polaroid has a magic to it. It’s simple, it’s instant, it’s real. It has no gimmicks. It is what it is. It’s light & temperature sensitive. Sometimes that leads to much more interesting results than a controlled digital image in a controlled environment. It also allows me to connect a bit more closer with the artists that I encounter, which is more interesting to me, and perhaps for them also a bit more lasting in their memory, who knows.
What’s next for you?
I want to create more stories and also grow in my additional video storytelling. I would love to do this fulltime, but I still have to juggle APS with my fulltime job which can be pretty exhausting. I still have so many artists on my checklist that I want to feature on apolaroidstory.com,… time will tell what and who and how that will be possible.
I want to give more expositions and travel with them to different cities in the world and meet my readers where ever they are. One day a big old book should be happening to, but all in due time. For now, it’s story by story. Polaroid by Polaroid.
All images courtesy of Elisabeth Ouni
