http://www.phototitles.co.uk/johnmacleanoffer.htm

By Francis Hodgson

Published: June 16, 2010.

John MacLean is a commercial architectural photographer by trade who publishes little monographs of thoughtful pictures as his personal work. The latest is called Two and Two and is on view at London’s Flowers East. The principle is straightforward. Two pictures are made of the same scene and printed together. They might be separated by a few moments, or they might be separated by a few hours. The process is deeply formalist, but not at all dry.

The artist has referred to Robert Rauschenberg’s twin paintings “Factum I” and “Factum II” as a starting point. But photography has always looked at controlled series. The release of work in series by artists such as John Baldessari or Ed Ruscha is after all merely a continuation of the natural outcome of roll film passed through the printing and editing process.

In MacLean’s hands, the doubling is normally purely photographic. He will shift focus, reframe, use a reflection, sometimes simply move the camera a few feet to get a new take on the scene. The small effects can be very strong: a wavy line of shadow up some steps is straightened in the companion view. A (beautiful) postmodernist image of a “no parking” sign becomes a high-period Hollywood lighting cameraman’s version of the same thing simply by moving round the corner. There is a games-playing element to all this: it can take a few moments to spot the connection between views.

It’s not all games, though. MacLean’s procedure has a solid cumulative effect. He doesn’t ask us, pair by pair, to decide between a “good” picture and one that is worse. He asks us instead to suspend for a time the too-rapid picking and discarding that we all do in defence against the sheer volume of photographic imagery that we see.

In Phoenix, Arizona, MacLean made a parody pair of images after the US photographer Lee Friedlander and suddenly an ordinary road crossing is a piece of art history. And while he was at it, MacLean curled the branches of a tree – which adjoin in the pair – into a shape more glorious than nature had given it in either picture alone.

Slightly further east in London, at Maureen Paley’s gallery, Hannah Starkey’s show is more conventional. This is an apparent overturning of the law by which art exhibitions are radical in inverse proportion to the rent. As such, it is in character: Starkey has a neat trick of consistently making old-fashioned pictures without losing the commercial allure of a certain edgy cachet. In fact, she has ploughed much the same furrow for quite some time; a radical change in her ideas may be overdue.

Having said that, this pared-down little show is close to being brilliant. If, as I rather hope, it is a swansong for this work, it is a good one. Starkey’s shtick for years has been to make set-up or staged photographs, invariably of youngish women, in which an implied narrative is caught by a single picture. It is crafted to look as though it might have been just a snapshot, and the effect has always been to make the viewer fill in the gaps of an apparently dramatic story whose beginnings and end we were not told. It is a process that many other photographers have explored but here, in five pictures made within the past year or so, Starkey has finally found real consistent form.

Each study is of a single woman, physically isolated in a still moment of contemplation. The picture spaces are deliberately, even lovingly, complicated. One woman, for example, studies her own appearance in a window as she smokes outside a blandly labelled television office building. She wears muted clothes, a dark trouser suit (it might be a uniform) and masculine shoes. She stands in a darkened doorway. Next to but not visible to her is a window that reflects a gleaming stretch of tarmac with a dozen different kinds of shining grey in it. The inescapable thought is that this woman is missing out. Something’s there, but not for her.

The only picture that has a title is a self-portrait. A figure holds a camera to her eye in a window, surrounded by white frames of an industrial kind, perhaps aluminium windows. Whatever they are, they are puns on the business of making framed imagery. Is she outside and reflected, or inside and screened? Hard to tell. What is most arresting is the sheer number of masks between us and the artist: the window itself, a clear plastic sheet, draped, a backlighting effect that keeps her face in darkness, and the camera. Defensive? She’s inaccessible.

These are very good studies of wistfulness, of the private person visible in public spaces. Like MacLean’s, their complexities are deliberate and well-mastered and their references to earlier pictures rich and helpful. Like MacLean’s, they show that to be a photographer in the age of the mobile phone takes more than just equipment. Neither photographer really photographs the world. Each is more interested in remaking it. By properly photographic means, naturally. John MacLean runs until June 26, www.flowersgalleries.com; Hannah Starkey continues until July 18, www.maureenpaley.com

July 2010

“In Shimmer, I relaxed and recognised that it’s about the moment before and after as much as it’s about the ‘perfect’ moment,” said Paul Graham in a recent interview for Aperture, referencing his 2007 tome, A Shimmer of Possibility. Made up of 12 small books, published by Steidl, it includes various sequences of images, in which Graham shot the same subject from a variety of angles and distances. “Could I be the devil’s advocate and argue that this sequence represents a more natural way of seeing; that we as photographers have become too obsessed with looking for this ’special moment’, this one punctum in life?” he asked.

Graham is not alone in his thinking, as sequential images have become something of a small trend recently. George Georgiou won BJP’s Project Assistance awards last month with a proposal that includes pictures captured close together and then displayed alongside each other in pairs and groups. Examples include a woman walking down the street towards the camera, and candid portraits shot from the same angle over a short period of time.

“It’s something I’ve been playing with for the last five years,” he says. “I’m fascinated with comparing the same space over time and seeing how it changes.”

John MacLean, whose images are shown here, just finished a project called Two and Two, in which he experimented with “different ways of shooting the same thing”. It was shown at London’s Flowers East gallery in June. “I was inspired by Robert Rauschenberg but also, perhaps in a spirit of contrariness, by William Eggleston. I had read an interview with him saying, ‘I believe in taking one picture of one picture’, and it stuck in my mind. I began to wonder what taking two pictures of one picture and printing them side by side could show.”

Why this trend right now? It’s partly to do with digital technology – Georgiou points out that digital capture has made shooting multiple images more affordable, while Graham says that he was part-inspired by flicking through images on his computer. But maybe it’s also just time for one of photography’s most famous dictates to be reappraised. “Someone I know, who is working on the 2010 Henri Cartier-Bresson retrospective at MoMA and has seen his contact sheets has said to me, ‘The decisive moment is bullshit’,” said Graham in Aperture. “There are ten pictures before and ten pictures after every one of them. He actually took 30 pictures of people leaping over that puddle.”

“I’m not sure that I ever really cared for the concept of the decisive moment,” agrees MacLean. “It has always sounded rather rigid. I think it is far more exciting to consider that there is more than one way for a photographer to take any picture, and exploring that fully means exploring the medium itself.”

British Journal of Photography, Diane Smyth. July 2010.

Photographing the same subject twice between 2008 and 2010.

A rediscovered interest in Robert Rauschenberg’s collages, particularly his twin paintings (Factum I and Factum II), had diverted my thinking in 2008 away from the single photographic image towards combinations of two or more. This, coupled with a desire to embark on a project that addressed the characteristics of the medium of photography itself, became the genesis of Two and Two – a series in which I have taken two photographs of the same subject and displayed them side by side.

Two and Two asserts that there is more than one way to take every photograph, and that two different photographs of the same subject represent two distinct choices. By presenting these two choices together, I aimed to define my decision-making process and thereby learn something about my use of photographic language.

I began by listing what I thought the intrinsic photographic strategies might be – and these became frequently used points of reference in the project. My list comprised the decisions any photographer might make to influence the perception of an image: point of view, cropping, choice of moment, intervention, focus, lighting, orientation and sequence. Although I wanted the process of taking the photographs to be spontaneous, inevitably I thought about the kind of situations which might illustrate these devices.

As I began photographing, I gradually accumulated a folder of diptychs which I frequently returned to when considering new combinations. I had quickly discovered that taking one photograph in anticipation of taking another meant holding at least two images in mind; and this stretched my capacity for previsualisation. The first photograph was taken whilst thinking of the second, and the second taken with reference to the first. Predictably some carefully considered diptychs failed whilst other, more whimsical, attempts were effortlessly successful. My camera’s subject matter was dictated by its potential to be photographed twice.

After two years I brought the project to completion. The editing process, perhaps unsurprisingly, offered the most valuable overview. The final selection does indeed offer some insight into photographic rhetoric. But what interests me more is the appearance of an underlying theme – a fascination with photography’s ability to describe and distort, conceal and reveal, dislocate and unite.

DV: How important is it that the essence of the city (ie, the location) comes through in your images?

JM: In this series, my goal isn’t one of documenting a specific city or giving my impression of a particular place, but of creating a city of my own – a ‘city’ that only exists in these photographs.

DV: Which element do you feel is more dominant in your work – the essence of the ‘city’ or that of the photographer?

JM: I don’t think photographs can ever escape their subject (what was in front of the lens) to become completely about the photographer’s ideas – the best we can do is explore the overlap between the two. It may be the easiest medium to pick up and become competent in, but perhaps photography is the most difficult in which to find self-expression. That is to do with the tyranny of the lens-machine, I think. In answer to your question, I would hope that the thoughts behind an image are more dominant than what the image depicts.

DV: Is this more conscious or intuitive?

JM: Recently I have been consciously trying to move away from ‘subject-driven’ photographs towards photographs that address particular characteristics of the medium itself.

DV: Which characteristics of the medium are you specifically interested in exploring? And why?

JM: All characteristics of the medium that are camera based – I’m not interested in computer post-production. I am talking about the photographic decisions that can skew the perception of an image to a totally new angle, such as cropping, point of view or lighting. This interests me because it concerns the unavoidable, underlying subject of photography which is always representation itself.

DV: Does your own state of mind on a particular day influence the photograph? And if so, how?

JM: I’m sure it does, but I don’t think I could tell you exactly how. I wish I knew. I know that in order to make photographs I prefer to be in a state of natural alertness rather than forced alertness. I decide to make an image when I recognise a quality I have been looking for. Later, when I look at my own photographs, each one has a palpable sense of relief associated with it.

DV: Humour creeps into a number of your images. Is this indicative of your ability to recognise humorous situations or do you seek to create a humorous quality in a particular shot?

JM: I don’t set out to create humorous photographs and in fact, if someone recognises an image as humorous it often comes as a surprise to me. I find humour in some of John Baldessari’s work and for me, it is frequently because the ordinary is made to seem absurd or the absurd to seem ordinary. So perhaps there is something similar happening in my work – the bitter-sweet absurdity of everyday situations.

DV: Minimalism appears to play a huge part in framing your images. How conscious are you of this?

JM: I have a background in science so I often think of my projects as investigations or research. A scientist will pare back an experiment to the essential elements – anything superfluous just muddies the water. Whereas in photography, the temptation is always to record too much because the camera does the work. I have collected a few books of Ed Ruscha’s work, and the audacious simplicity in his paintings has been an influence.

DV: In many of Ed Ruscha’s paintings the pictorial subject matter often becomes abstracted due to the dark shadows and strong influence of light which negates detail. Is this something that influences your choice of image-taking and/or do you emphasis this aspect during the developing/edit stages of you works?

JM: This would be something I would think about when shooting, and it might be something I emphasise when processing an image. I am looking for ways to isolate elements of what I see around me – using strong light and deep shadow are one way of achieving that. I am not trying to clarify the subject, just produce an image which has a resonance.

DV: When you are looking for subject matter or identifying an image to take are you conscious of certain paintings that you have seen or been influenced by?

JM: No, never. It is something that is far away in the background. I do my research beforehand but that is left behind when I start working. I like to photograph very quickly – and I hope that this also keeps the process intuitive. Later, I find that I can recognise influences quite readily in some of my photographs, but others are much more difficult to untangle. Other than painting, I would say that cinema is very influential, especially in terms of lighting. The titles of the photographs in City are street names and they are frequently chosen to reference these influences.

DV: You deploy the painterly concept of ‘figure / ground ambiguity’ when constructing some of your photographs. How conscious is this?

JM: It is something that I discovered in a roundabout way by making mistakes when taking photographs. A negative can only record a certain amount of detail from highlight to shadow – if there is an exceptionally bright object within a dark scene the shadows go to black and leave the object floating in ambiguous space. The result is an object that can be perceived as projecting out of the picture plane or receding into it.

DV: How important is repetition in your work?

JM: On the positive side, a form that begins to repeat itself during the production of a series may be an unconscious motif that is rising to the surface. In this case I would say it is something that should be used – at least until it becomes a habit. On the negative side, if it is a conscious repetition, the repetition may have become a refuge from trying something new, so it needs to be developed or discarded.

DV: Do you seek to break a mould or are you more comfortable working within defined restrictions you have set for yourself?

JM: Recently completed projects have incorporated quite definite restrictions. For example, Neighbourhood required me to take photographs only within a five-minute walk of my house; Two and Two required me to produce 40 diptychs where I photograph the same subject twice. Within these self-imposed parameters, however, there must be room to ‘drift’ – to allow one image to lead to another and the project to change course. City has only one restriction – that I photograph urban environments. It is, by intention, the most unruly of my projects.

DV: Would you describe your work as ‘found images’? Do you discover works as you go about your day walking, cycling, or commuting? Could you please explain your process?

JM: All of my photographs could be described as ‘found images’ in the sense that I don’t photograph constructed or staged situations. However, even though there is an element of chance in my work, I wouldn’t describe my discoveries as serendipitous – they are images I have been looking for in one way or another.

In general, I photograph in concentrated periods, say ten days, and try to avoid distractions within that time. I have worked in California recently because ten consecutive days of good weather is not unusual there and the continuity this affords is invaluable. Outside these intense periods of work I don’t produce anything, nor do I reconnoitre places to assess their potential.

DV: How does your movement through different neighbourhoods and areas affect your finished works?

JM: Recently I have been trying to slow down and cover less ground. It occurred to me that in walking long distances I might be missing more than I was discovering. In slowing my movement through a city I hope my photographs will become less about recording ready-made subjects and more about actually making photographs with the camera, where what is in front of the lens is largely irrelevant.

DV: Once you find an appropriate site for the structure of one of your photographs, do you wait for the ‘right’ time of day to bring it to life? How often do you wait for the desired light?

JM: I never wait for the light to be right – I like to work too quickly for that. What directs my progress through a city is the search for good light – so if a fork in the road appears, I choose the road best lit. I see a pool of great light, head towards it and see what I can make with it.

DV: Do you carry this sentiment into the editing room? Describe your editing process.

JM: I think of the editing room as a place where a much more protracted, considered process takes place. To edit the finished photographs, a certain period of time must elapse so that the images can become somewhat unfamiliar – then a process of reacquainting myself with the photographs can begin. This is necessary because I want to try to see the work as someone else may see it – as much as that is possible.

DV: What kind of qualities must a photograph have to make it through your editing process?

JM: I recently read that a number of photographs Diane Arbus made, and then rejected, were found in her archive. On the back of each print was written ‘Not complicated enough’. I think a number of my works fall at the ‘Not complicated enough’ fence in the early stages of my edit. I am not trying to disorientate or leave the viewer rudderless, but I am interested in images that require deciphering.

In general though, a photograph that has more than one thing to say or can function on more than one level will be a strong contender to make it through an edit.

DV: How do you determine the size of the works you make? Is this something that you think about when taking your photographs?

JM: No, this would be one of the last decisions I would make in the process. I think large prints should only be made if there is a discernable advantage in doing so.

DV: Why do you make books?

JM: Publishing City as a series of books gives punctuation to the project, creating small units within the whole. I will be working on City for a number of years, so each unit offers me a chance to pause and contemplate what may be missing and can be addressed in the next book.

I have always been impressed by the book production of Japanese photographers – specifically Araki. Takashi Homma has produced a beautiful book called Tokyo and My Daughter, and I adopted its exercise-book format in my productions. The unit cost of such a small book means I can afford to give a large proportion away, so the books have become a great way of sharing the work.

DV: You have mentioned that Robert Rauschenberg was a key reference for your last two books (Neighbourhood and Two and Two). Does he continue to influence you in City: Book Two?

JM: Not especially. Although I have been thinking about his statement that he wanted to work in the gap between art and life, because that gap may just be where photography works too.

DV: Which other artists were you looking at during the time you were shooting images for Book Two?

JM: I had been looking at James Turrell among many. The influence of his work is something I can readily see in a least two of the images in City: Book Two, Coacoochee and Taub Loop. The appeal of Turrell’s work is two-fold: his interest in the material nature of light, and his investigation into the influence of light on our perception. Both are central to the nature of photography. I have also been looking at painters who use photography: Baldessari, Bacon, Hockney, Richter and Ruscha.

DV: Who else do you admire? And why?

JM: I admire artists who, even though they have acquired a high level of recognition for their work, change tack in order to continue learning. Stanley Kubrick comes to mind.

DV: What do you feel has been the most prominent shift for you, in your process or in your work, between publishing City: Book One and City: Book Two?

JM: There are two shifts that I recognise: one is a move further towards abstraction. I think I have understood that I cannot dictate what a viewer will understand from looking at my photographs and, as I do not set out to send a clear message anyway, I worry less and less about trying to do so.

The other is a realisation that photography is particularly well suited to themes of perception: exaggeration, distortion, illusion, error, anomaly, etc. And that the investigation of how the perception of a photograph can be altered requires no other tools than those already in the camera.

DV: What is next for you? Have you already started thinking about how to approach City: Book Three?

JM: I will be working on two other projects before I start Book Three. I hope to cross-pollinate some of the ideas that arise there into new City works.