Life is Johanna Tagada Hoffbeck’s Practice

You work across mediums, including photography, sculpture and painting. Why do you think your practice is so fluid? 

Painting is at the core of my practice, but the medium that I am choosing to work in at any one time is never the essential aspect of my work. The threads that run through all of my practice are my intention, the message I am trying to convey, and the careful sourcing of the materials for the chosen medium. The mediums that I use are like plants in a landscape or flavours on a menu. I usually use a variety of mediums and methods even in the course of one day, and there is no clear separation between them; they feed into one another. 

Whatever medium I am using, all of my work ultimately comes from the same place. I am always entirely me in the moment that I am creating, whether I am making a painting, a booklet, a little  ceramic plate, vegetables grown on the allotment plot and pickled at home, or a text. These are all forms of expression, play and experimentation. I am in favour of continuous learning and, over time, I become more knowledgeable about the techniques I use, but expression, play and experimentation always come before trying to master a technique. 

This fluidity reflects who I am, and the different languages and cultures that are part of me. I also don’t subscribe to limiting myself. If I feel like doing something, I go for it. This doesn’t mean the world always makes it possible or accepts it, I am aware that working across multiple mediums can bring confusion to others. However, I keep in mind that this creative journey, while I share it with others, is my own. As long as I can be myself in it, I can keep sharing, playing, learning, unlearning, creating, and cocreating. 

One of the strongest themes running through all of your work is a deep respect for nature, and you are also a gardener alongside your artistic practice. How did your relationship with the natural world begin, and why do you find it so important to integrate it into your work as an artist? 

I grew up mostly with my paternal grandparents in the countryside of Alsace, in France. This beautiful region borders Germany and Switzerland, and the landscape of my childhood was lush and free. My grandparents practised permaculture and raised most of the food that we consumed, and a lot of other things we traded. We would go to the shop only once every five or six weeks for specific things, like flour or chocolate. They also grew dye plants, and  made many things by hand. This upbringing definitely informed my appreciation for making, arts and crafts, incorporating day-to-day life into art, and vice versa. 

Please take your shoes off and come in collects photographs taken as part of your Analog Diary series, across a 15 year period. How did this series begin?  

I went to art school in France in the late 2000s, where I was taught black and white film processing, and my father gave me his old Minolta camera around the same time. I started to shoot on 35mm film, just glimpses of my daily life. Photography became a way to share how I see the world in a straightforward manner, capturing elements that might be overlooked. One of the first series created within the Analog Diary is Les Plantes de Mamie, in collaboration with my dear grandma. 

The Minolta camera eventually went beyond repair, and around 2015 my husband’s father gifted me his old Nikon so that I could continue my little series. As buying film (even when often secondhand or near its expiry date) and processing rolls can become expensive, I was glad to have support from a few print publications and from some photographic print sales too. 

I am aware that until they were handed to me, these cameras were part of a somewhat gendered experience, as the cameras held by the man of the family to capture family life. I felt that this handing over to me represented a significant, and very needed change.

How did you realise it should be a book? 

While some of my photographs had been published, I dreamt of photographs from the Analog Diary series being presented on their own, with no other work, text, or medium justifying their presence. 

In 2022, the publisher Jane & Jeremy edited, designed, and published my first photography book, Work The Soul Must Have, which focusing on the healing period after my grandma’s shocking suicide while gardening with my father in rural Alsace during the Covid-19 pandemic. Working on the book when the initial shock of the grief had subsided was like a balm, and I was thankful it was welcome in the world. I soon started to think that it would be nice to be able to share more of my photographic archive in this form. 

Then came the possibility to work on a book with the great team from 朋 丁 pon ding in Taiwan. We had enjoyed collaborating on an exhibition and other projects over the years, and I am so grateful for their trust and all the energy they poured into this book, as well as bringing in the great editor Lin Junye and designer K. Chen.

What did you learn about the process of keeping a diary through this  project?  

Keeping this diary has been a constant reminder of the depth and necessity of love. And that such a diary takes up physical space! 

What did you learn about memory?  

Memories come with many waves of feelings. Early on in the project my grandma had commented that photographs are a way to record what is going and changing. She used to joke that I should focus on photographing the Alsatian farm sheds and houses, as these might be gone before her at the rate of change that Alsace is going through. Already the place is so different from when I was photographing it 12 years ago.

How was it to look back on images that are over a decade old, and how do you feel your practice has evolved in this time? What’s stayed the same? 

The months of looking back over my archive, and selecting which photographs to use, were an intense emotional journey. It was a period full of nostalgia, love, sorrow, joy, serenity, hope, gratitude and enthusiasm for life. Working toward this book has affirmed that I take photographs in order to hold on to all that I love just a little more, and to have just a little more to offer. I noticed more deeply during the selection process that, in the same way that plants grow and decay, our family too experiences the cycle of life. Looking at my photographs, I feel closer both to the members of my family who are living and those who have departed. 

My practice has evolved by allowing for more hospitality, the use of more mediums and the involvement of more people, like a garden that grows through having more plants and habitants. Mine is a practice that has more questions sprouting here and there than answers. What has stayed the same is the joy, the enthusiastic spirit and surely the necessity to continue to see and remind myself of all the goodness and the beauty of kindness in the world while not looking away and stopping feeling all that isn’t - along with acting to change it.

The book has a particularly tactile dimension, why did you want to incorporate this into the format? 

I wanted to share little bits of me, and I hoped that anyone approaching the book would appreciate the softness, and might also be as sensitive as I am to textures, colours, and light. The 朋 丁 pon ding team who worked on the book, and the designer K. Chen, did a wonderful job of incorporating subtle elements from my work in other mediums onto the cover. Through the choice of paper the book is a really tactile object, and as well as all of this, no glue was used to create the book, so the entire thing can be composted. 

The book closes with a note that this now marks the end of the series. What does this mean for your practice?  

In some ways, to end is also to start. When I began working on this book, I thought the process would encourage me more to keep photographing. But I started to become puzzled. I have been against animal cruelty, and have followed a plant-based diet, for a decade. Generally, I am very rigorous in terms of the ingredients in cosmetics and art supplies, and I purchase only second-hand wool.

Analogue film rolls, however, contain gelatine, which is a byproduct of slaughterhouses. For a time I had excused this cognitive dissonance, telling myself, “It’s just a byproduct.” But I knew this did not align with the ethics of compassion and respect for all living things that I  strive to practice. Gelatine in film was the last thing in my life (other than the UK's polymer banknotes, which contain tallow produced from cattle) that I was aware of that depended on animal slaughter. I was somewhat looking for a way to end this series, and for many reasons I did not see digital as an option.  

As I explored the archive, I realised how many photographs there were, and how many other possible books and projects were hidden in the whole archive for me to find. The more I kept photographing, the less time I had to explore the archive. I did not want to keep accumulating material, and I was increasingly thinking of the ecology of images in general. 

In January 2025, as I wrote the book's text, I decided that this would be it. I would no longer acquire rolls of film and would simply continue to shoot what was in my drawer. I also stopped using Instagram stories as frequently, to generally try to be a little mindful. I hope what I share is appreciated and brings a moment of respite and togetherness. For my practice, this might mean more photography projects based on this rich archive, and a renewed focus on painting, drawing, and sculpting.