Purpose, Creation and Sarcasm: An Interview with Joyce Peters
- Faramade Olaitan
- 4 days ago
- 4 min read
Joyce Peters: "I feel like it's a disservice to myself and the world to have all these ideas and not do anything about it."
Joyce Peters is a fine art photographer and artist based in the UK. She has been active in the industry for 11 years and for about a year and a half has been selling art and creating stylised self-portraits. The creative says she first felt inspired to take up the art in 2014 when she was in university. “It was actually my friends who encouraged me. They used to compliment me when I would take photos on my phone. I thought they were just being nice.
“Then when we were going on holiday, they said, if you don't bring your camera, we're not going to talk to you anymore. So, I brought the camera and just started doing shoots, then charging. That's how I found it, through friends and motivation.”
Peters says “anything from conversations to the things I see when I walk around, the thoughts that I have, anything can inspire me.
“But the purpose of it is what inspires me the most to create. It’s a gift God gave me and it’s my version of service. Because imagine, I'm able to create like my Creator, it's something beyond me. I feel like it's a disservice to myself and the world to have all these ideas and not do anything about it. That's my drive.”
She says her creative process starts with “the colours, and then what I want to wear, because it's mostly on myself, sometimes the message comes before, during, even after. It's mostly the colours, the wardrobe, makeup, composition, then lighting, backdrop and everything.
“But I'm starting to do things more for the meaning because I want to be more intentional with it and delve more into storytelling.” she says.
“After the shoot, the editing is quite experimental. It's very detailed, there are lots of corrections I make sometimes. With my Fruition series, sometimes the fruit falls during the shoot, so I have to not sort that out, edit them, put things into the place that I want them. It's very intricate, and it's quite experimental with some ideas. I like to always push boundaries while editing.”
Though she has over a decade of experience Peters says she sometimes finds herself undervaluing her work because “there are great painters out there and I'm doing fine art, but I’m working on that.”
Peters says when faced with setbacks in her work, “I just take a step back because I can get overwhelmed, have all these thoughts, so I take a step back and just think of why I love this again. Sometimes I just take a break from photography and look at art as a spectator or appreciator would rather than someone who's making art themselves.”
She says she considers her greatest artistic attainment to be, “having my art shown at the National Gallery in London, that was a big triumph. It was lovely.”
The photographer describes her work as “kind of contemporary, it has a royal, ethereal vibe to it.” She says she hopes it evokes feeling in people, “I don't mind what they see. I hope they see something glorious, I really want them to just see something and for it to have some form of impact, be something that makes them stop and look and feel something.”
Peters says she never saw herself becoming a photographer, studying Nutrition and Dietetics at university, though she says her academic background has "influenced my work largely. My ongoing series is called the Fruition series. I adorn myself with fruits, it's a very healthy food oriented. I have a shoot coming up soon where I actually use noodles, and it's quite cool, we'll see it soon.”
Her advice for beginner photographers is “experiment. You should not think any idea is a bad one. And if you have any block, you should use sarcasm. Say what you will do sarcastically and then take it seriously. That has really helped. It removes all the blockages that you have with all the logical thinking, you just say everything. And sometimes it just makes sense. That's literally how I started the Fruition series, as a joke.”
“Always believe in yourself. I know that everyone says that, but especially in this economy now, you have to really take everything you do seriously. Still have fun while doing it, but when I say seriously, I mean don't undervalue it, because the main fact that it came from you and no one else has done it, that makes it special.”
The photographer says she sees herself next “being more in production and doing more collaborative work with other artists. I do tend to work by myself, but I want to do bigger projects and go into video too. She hopes to work on an exhibition to be open in December, but at the moment she is officially opening her shop to sell prints of her work.
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