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Joel Benguigui.

Le Tonic N.o 8.

Images + words by Scout.

Written + Published for Le Tonic.

A man that unapologetically and unintentionally oozes both style and grace. It’s of simple nature to him. With a heavy heart and kind soul he lacks nothing short of shy. Quiet, yes. But if you listen closely, he will charm you with his endless stories of a Parisian upbringing, grant you access to his encyclopedia of worldly knowledge and offer you insight into the monochromatic way of seeing life.  

 

 


 
‘I see the world in contrast, rather than colour, it is simple, and it is beautiful.’  

 

 

 


There is a kindness in Joel that is evident upon first glance. It was gifted to him at birth and presents itself knowingly through his taupe eyes. A natural born storyteller whose ultimate pursuit is simple. Capturing life around him through the lens of a camera. This gift was granted to him from a young age and one that has shadowed close by him like a lingering street cat. He is blessed with the ability to capture beauty, thrives on the rawness of emotion and invites you into his world of stillness.  
 


With an impressive portfolio up his sleeve, Joel flipped his life around when he protested selling his soul to the world of commercialism. Yet, rather, chose to pursuit his passion and explore himself through the means of art. Each body of work is born from deep passion and appreciation of the world around him.  
 


When I first met Joel, he was in the process of taking over Studio Blanc, a photography studio situated in Byron Industrial Centre. Tucked away in a creative hub where the air is thick with salt spray from the surrounding coastline. It's a concrete jungle that radiates the heat of a sticky East -Coast summer. The space itself is elegant, like the man himself. Redefining minimalism in an effortless manner.  
 

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Le Tonic:  
Let’s talk about your early life? You were born in Jakarta? 
 
Joel: 
I was born in Denpasar, Bali.  
 
Le Tonic: 
Who is Indonesian? 
 
Joel: 
It’s a long and complex story but I can make it short.  
I am born in Bali from a Catholic mother and a Protestant father. My mother had me when she was seventeen and because of my biological father's religion, the family wanted to kill him. So, they had to run away.  
The family rejected that union, and they rejected me. The relatives where my mother was living kicked her out at seventeen and pregnant. She got taken in by one of her great uncles who told her that she should give me up for adoption.  
 
Le Tonic: 
What a story…  
 
Joel: 
At that time, my parents (adoptee) were holidaying in Bali. They had a super nice relationship with the tour guide who oversaw them. Mum said to her ‘Hey we can’t have children and we were thinking of adopting a child from Bali, is there any chance you could help us?’. Her response was ‘I have had so many weird questions in my career but that never, but I really like you guys so I will help you.’ 
My biological mother being Catholic and Chantelle being close to the church in Denpasar, she heard about me and heard about my mother. They met. Chantelle was the first Westerner to hold me. She sent a telex straight away to mum in Paris saying ‘Hey, Joseph with his curly hair, is waiting for his mother.’ 
Mum scrambled everything and took off. She spent four and half months in Bali for the adoption process…  
 
Le Tonic:  
How old were you when she adopted you? 

 

Joel: 
I think I was three months old. I was raised in Paris in Jewish faith.  
 
Le Tonic:  
Wow, are you confused? 

 

Joel: 
I was…until 2008. I grew up knowing where I came from. My parents were always super open with me and my sister. My sister was adopted as well. She is Columbian. I don’t know where this comes from, but I have pretty fair skin compared to other Indonesian complexions. That was confirmed by my biological brother the first he met me he said, ‘wow brother, you are white!’. 
I grew up with this weird idea that my mother had me with a British tourist, absolutely not. He was from Rote Island, not far from where my biological family is from.  
 
Le Tonic:  
Did you ever go back to meet them? 
 
Joel: 
In 2008 mum was like hey! Let's go to Bali and look for some clues. I was thirty. We got there and I literally refused everything. I wasn’t ready. I didn’t want to hear anything about it, I just wanted to spend the three weeks holidaying. Absolutely not interested in any of it. But mum kept pushing it with my mother's (biological) great uncle, the one who told her to put me up for adoption. So, we met with him, Facebook wasn’t as powerful as it is now. It was harder to connect people and connect dots. On the way home, leaving the airport and on the plane, I was in tears the whole trip back.  

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Le Tonic:  
Why’s that do you think? 
 
Joel: 
The connection was established, I guess. No matter how much I didn’t want to believe it. I came back in 2017 on my own. I reconnected with a friend I met in 2008 who helped me find Boni Balata (check). I tried to reach him, and he wasn’t responding. So, Neno (Check) posted something on Facebook. Thirty seconds later she gets a message from an agent from the hotel that she was working at saying ‘Hey, you’re looking for Boni Balata? He is my Neighbour. Here is his phone number!’. She explains to him that I am on my way to Bali, and I want to meet my mother…  
I take my flight, land in Bali and get a message from Neno that we are going to meet my mother tomorrow.  
We met Boni Balata in the morning. We got to his place, he turned up an hour and a half later smiling at me with his wife on the back of the scooter.  
“Joel! It's a miracle, we found your mother yesterday. She is here, she is in Flores with her family.”  

 

Le Tonic: 
Was there any part of you that questioned if you should go?  
 
Joel: 
I straight away check the flights and got on the next one available. I spent three weeks on the Island with the family. My biological mother and one of my brothers. No-one spoke English, it was incredibly hard. My cousin who lives in West Timor came over. Thanks to him we could establish base level communication, he spoke English. After that I had to rely on google translate. My brother is three years younger than me. He is my mum and second husband's son. He never went to high school, he is a fisher man, but he speaks a little bit of English. We got by. Now we chat almost every day. Before Covid happened, I planned on travelling three times a year to see the family. 
 
Le Tonic:  
What was it like meeting your mother for the first time? 

 

Joel: 
It was fantastic. She was beside herself. She grabbed me, you don’t really kiss people, but she was practically smelling my skin. It was really interesting; I had those moments because I was completely blank because there was so much to take in that I just had to cut out all the emotion. I remember my brother telling me that when he grew up, every time he got asked if he was the eldest. If you are the first born, then you are given responsibility. He would always answer that he had a bigger brother he doesn’t know that lives in Paris. He never took responsibility fully because he was always hoping that I would return home one day. They grew up knowing that I existed. He told me that my mother would always go to bed after praying, she lived her entire life with this on her shoulders.  
 
Le Tonic:  
It is a big weight to hold.  
 
Joel: 
A big weight. In 2017, I came back and met the whole family. It was so overwhelming in so many ways. Emotionally and in realising the condition that they live in. My brother a fisher man, my mother was a cook, she worked on plantations as well as farming. She got by doing different small jobs. She comes from a family of fifteen siblings. My youngest uncle is younger than me. So, meeting all these people was intense. But also, in Indonesian culture there is that thing that you are never really alone. It’s insane, it’s a community. When you try to escape to have a breather, it is impossible. You will walk down the street, and someone will ask where you are going. You tell them you just need some time alone and they respond saying great they will come with you. I would walk one hundred meters down the road and bumped into two fishermen who asked who I was. Turns out they were my cousins. I realised that the whole neighborhood was family. Wherever I would go I would meet someone. My brother, being proud and excited, would take me every day to visit a new family member. I would have like five breakfasts and ten lunches and twenty dinners because we would jump from house to house.  
 
Jala (partner) comes from a major Sydney Jewish family but was raised in Bali. She is more fluent in Bahasa and is more knowledgeable in Indonesian culture than I am. Whilst I am more knowledgeable In Judaism than she is. It is absolutely fantastic.  

 

Le Tonic: 
Tell me about your adoptive mother? 
 
Joel: 
A very strong female. She is a fantastic woman. The kind of woman that takes on that journey of going to a country where tourism is not, yet a thing and most people don’t speak English. She spent four and half months with translators, on her own. She had that determination; she had a drive. She was a very complex woman, brilliant, very smart. She had her PHD in psychology at twenty-one. She came from a very big Jewish family from Morocco. She raised me with a great sense of self and a great sense of tolerance. She had a great appreciation for the arts, she was always stimulating my creative ability. That’s what I love about her.  
On one side, Dad was not rigid, nor strict but very focused on goals and targets. Completely different people. Very pragmatic, very mathematical. Mum, very focused on literature and arts.  
 
Le Tonic: 
Why did she choose to adopt? 
 
Joel: 
They couldn’t have kids. There are a lot of adoptions in the family. We all grew up knowing, which is fantastic. There were situations around me where I knew that a person was adopted, and they didn’t know. It was fucked up.  
 
Le Tonic:  
What was your childhood like in Paris? 
 
Joel:  
Very privileged. In many ways. Access to everything, culture, exhibitions, money. There was almost no limit. I had a very Liberal education with a very good sense of respect. We would never cross other people's boundaries, but we had freedom to explore. We were at an exhibition probably weekly. We were surrounded by culture always, it was great. When you grow up in Paris you don’t realise how privileged you are. You do realise when you leave it. But I guess that’s the same with anywhere you grow up, you need to get out to realised what you have.  
 
Le Tonic:  
If it's all you know then you don’t realise there in a perspective in comparison… 

 

Joel: 
Yeah. My childhood was Paris, Majorca and Switzerland. Multiple times a year. I started skiing when I three, ice-skating when I was three as well. 

 

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Le Tonic: 
What were you like as a little kid? 
 
Joel: 
Happy. All the time. I was playing all the time. I had a lot of friends. I was a super active kid, not hyper-active but super active. I was creative from a young age, drawing, music, piano.  
 
 
Le Tonic: 
What is your first memory of photography? 
 
Joel: 
I had my first camera at six years old. I was always fascinated by stills and moving images. I picked up a camera very early and then it was on. 
 
Le Tonic: 
Do you remember what camera it was? 
 
Joel: 
I have it somewhere… It's a one ten camera. Rebranded and repackaged by Fisher Price. A blue rectangle with rubber corners, a black strap and a yellow stripe. I got a more serious camera for my Bah mitzvah. I was always playing with my dad's film camera and video camera. 
 
Le Tonic:  
What did you do after school? 
 
 
Joel: 
I went to business school. I graduated high school and my dad's cousin asked me what I wanted to do. I had no idea but somehow settled for prep school and business school. I have a master's in finance and about ten bachelors, which I never used in my whole life… 
I remember doing an internship as a junior headhunter and worked in HR. I also junior art director in a graphic design and branding agency in Paris. I did two internships and they hired me. I had absolutely no idea what I was doing but they hired me. I put photography on pause for a while, but it always kicks back in.  
 
I remember when I was a teenager, I wanted to be a war photographer, I wanted to change people's minds and life with pictures. I ended up in fashion. Which in itself is another sort of battle. I always made sure the people that I photographed would feel good and empowered. 
 
Le Tonic: 
How did that journey into fashion begin? 

 

Joel: 
It begins with me working in cosmetics and then starting to get approached by a major cosmetic brand in Paris; By Terry. I was shooting cosmetic campaigns; more so products. I started to get into portraiture and was approached by a makeup artist who was a student at the academy of Paris. We started collaborating and built her a new portfolio. The school then asked me if I wanted to be the new in-house photographer. So, I worked three and half years with the academy shooting the students portfolios. That was a lot of fun but tragically that went south. It shattered my faith in the industry and lead to a severe burn out. 
 
Le Tonic:  
How’d you come back from that? 
 
Joel: 
I moved to Spain. I was invited by a friend who was a model agent, and it was around the time of fashion week. I stayed there weeks, flew back to Paris, packed my stuff and moved to Valencia for two years. That was intense but somehow, I needed that to get back into making images that I was really proud of. Working in cosmetics, the money was fantastic, but you shoot for the money, but you don’t shoot for the art. Every time I looked at my images, I would feel bad.  
 
Le Tonic: 
You’re an artist and you are commercialising yourself in a sense. 
 
Joel:  
It is fucking hard. You can’t look at your work and be proud. My ex and I worked together for ten years. She was a makeup artist but decided she wanted to be a photographer and we made an incredible portfolio together. Working together, with that sense of self and identity, brought us to working with people who had the same integrity.  
We had a few mentors. One of them who also gave us our first job, was the photo director of vogue. They really nurtured us and took the time to drill in the idea that we shouldn’t follow commercial trends. We shouldn’t try to please people and should remain strong. Learn how to say fuck no! That’s what we did. The capacity to say no and to say fuck it we are not doing that. 
 
Le Tonic: 
What’s the fashion industry like? 
 
Joel: 
Fashion is like any type of industry; the beginners, the middle management, then you have the big on top. You don’t want to be associated with the two thousand people who try to make it. You want to be seen as someone who does things. We had a complete change in attitude, as soon as we left Paris, our phones just started ringing. We weren’t just paid to click buttons. We were paid to think, paid to create. We had full trust and freedom in creating. It was a huge privilege.  
 
Le Tonic: 
How long did it take to create that portfolio? 
 
Joel: 
Four years. Four years of flexing a muscle every day and shooting for free but with an idea. Refining work all the time. Not being easy on myself, not compromising. Also really working with people who understand the idea and dedication. In saying that, you as an artist grow with this idea that if there are people in your team, we are all equal. We all have the same power, the same freedom to express an idea. There is no ego.  
 
Le Tonic:  
In that time your establishing relationships… 
 
Joel:  
It’s not about the relationships. You work with amazing people if you actually take the time to build a strong relationship with someone. It’s never a one off. It’s never opportunistic. It’s never trying to connect with someone and hustle. If you hustle too much you don’t flex your artistic muscles. 
 
Le Tonic: 
Have you always shot black and white? 
 
Joel:  
Ninety-nine percent of the time. You focus on the story. 

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© 2022 SCOUT O'DONOGHUE

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