A lice Zoo: When did you begin taking the photographs that are collected in Pharmakon, and how long were you gathering them? And when did you begin to recognize that a new body of work was forming? Teju Cole: The earliest pictures in the book were made in April 2020, the latest in July 2023. Across those three years, I was searching very intensely for the right form; there were a number of false starts. But it was helpful to me that my photographs were being made with the same camera and the same lens.
It was important to have a tool I felt close to, and that gave my photos a particular look, no matter where they’d been made. From the beginning, I was following a sensibility; but it was not until early 2023 that I knew what shape the final work was going to take. I made several maquettes, trying out sequences, pasting photos into handmade books, discarding one attempt after another.
But I always had the confidence that what I was looking for was already there waiting for me in the growing archive of pictures. Zoo: This reminds me of a moment in your recent novel, Tremor, when the narrator Tunde is editing his photographs, and says: ‘These are not the best of the images. They are the ones that tell me in one way or another that they might be part of a sequence with other images.
’ It sounds like you and Tunde share this idea of an artwork as something that you’re trying to uncover or reveal, rather than create; a sense that the images find their meaning in relation to o.
