Nine years previous to his death, in 1842, William Turner painted the picture Snow Storm. It was then when a friend of the painter told him his mother liked it very much –apparently the Lady had experienced what the scene represented: that storm. Considering the response of the painter, it was quite probably unexpected for his interlocutor:
I didn’t paint it so anyone could understand it, I just wanted to show how that scene was. I made the sailors strapp me to the mast to observe it; and there I was for four hours, believing that I would not escape death, and I promised myself to paint it, should I get out alive. That does not have to appeal to anyone. (Berger, 2008: 143)Starting our conversation by making use of the previous passage reveals that we are certainly facing an author definitely eccentric with a high degree of independence from external opinions which could be dumped judging his paintings. He doesn’t hide his painting, he is not painting in order to please. Known as the "dramatist of the light" (Schama, 2007: 281), he intended to achieve, with extraordinary technical skills, impressive "plays of light and colour [which in turn he] never had intended to produce a purely aesthetic effect. The need to create Great Stories in oil paint, boiled in his inner self "(Schama, 2007: 281). In line with the above and precisely due to the possibilities of technical mode of operation and programming, which offer a professional camera, a photography can easily fall into pure aestheticism.
P.- What should the picture have in order to stay away from this concept, which is twinned with virtuosity?
m.- Historically photography has recorded reality, because it had validated the maxim that if something has been photographed, is because it has happened. Even when the first digital cameras emerged and the agencies refused to accept them, being aware of how easy it was to alter the image, in their conduct of the case they finally accepted them, although today colloquial expressions like "photoshopping" are made to indicate that some dress sizes of some personality of the tabloids have been removed, what appears in a photograph is "true".
Further question about the likelihood of truth could have been accommodated here which would have taken us finally to speculate about the angel's sex. To avoid this I answer at once: photography must lie in the most credible and possible way, because everything that is not real is fake; and considering the human face –however reliable the result would be by exploiting virtuously all of the technical and programmatic possibilities, of a camera– the result will never be the face of a human being, it will only be a flat picture. It must make forget all what I just said to whom contemplates.
P.- What has motivated you to tackle and introduce this series of portraits, under the title Gaze to Gaze, which will be displayed at the Weber-Lutgen Gallery (Seville) early 2015?
m.- The need and pleasure of capturing reality in images as well as what I suffer and enjoy triggering the button on my camera, especially in this intimate and perfect moment where I feel the human being and, of course, the need and the pleasure to share.
P.-Your images do not show visual confusion, there is no concurrency or fragmentation in the frame. They may remind you the series ONE of the Japanese photographer Ken Ohara. Since the mid-1960s, Ohara captures faces of anonymous people in the front position, eliminating anything about the environment or place from the photographic framing that occupies the photographed subject. There is a common compositional trait among your pictures and those of Ohara: the frontally, which gains relevance in the image. In your case, on the other hand, you opt for people related to your milieu. Beyond this election, where does the uniqueness of this series lie?
m.-I never ever considered to create an original work, that gives me a damn, because I think that at the very moment we set a goal, that's a rational act, spontaneity dies, sincerity disappears, we lose faith in what we do and the work ceases to be honest and credible. I recognize with pride to be a son of visual culture, which I've acquired from my teachers, many anonymous, teachers of all those who have wanted to narrate retinal, conceptually or emotionally external or inner reality using any plastic means.
The relation we may find between my photography with the one made by Ohara compares to the obvious similarities between the Venus of Urbino by Titian and Manet's Olympia; the human body is coeval to art and formulas and innumerable strategies of representation and presentation, and unlike other parts of our anatomy, the face has always appeared naked.
The series, I present, does not speak of places but of faces, eyes that watch you from different landscapes, some with the smoothness of youth that life has barely touched and others authentic labyrinth atlases declaring under oath that they have lived.
Beauty, the concept of beauty is excessively misapplied.
P.- Have you acted in this way to grant the series coherence of conception and thus shorten the distance between what the image reflects and what the spectator perceives?
m.-That is an impossible question because in the same way there are no diseases, only sick people, before my work's face there is no spectator but a co-author. Viewers could always exist and hopefully my work provides them with enough information so they don't get bored.
P.- Turner tells us he wanted to see the roar of the storm in all its glory, therefore he wanted to be embossed by it knowing that he could possibly not survive that experience. What did you want to observe "in the model" and then reflect with these images?
m.- Your question leads me to perform an exercise in retrospect, because it always caught my attention, and still does, to see my image in the pupils of those who look at me, at little distance of course, and it distracts me and "derails" my image. At the very moment I was aware of that distraction, was when I got conscious that we hardly see when we look. We remain in the most superficial rind, it is like looking at a canvas and only perceiving the brushstrokes that adorn it and missing the feeling of that one who created that work.
Having accepted the impossibility to remove what hindered me, my reflection, I thought I could see what the person saw who saw me, "rectifying" the curvilinear perspective of the reality I see reflected, on the eye that I look at. It was at that time, years ago, when I started to take close-up portraits, capturing that divergent space of gaze in the landscape of a face.
There are many factors that differentiate us from other animals I that I tried to leave exempt in this work, I only emphasized the glance, more specifically the eyes; they differentiate us from the other species because we are the only one bearing white sclera. That detail, we rarely pay attention to, is an evolutionary trait that allows us to "anticipate" the intentions of our fellow human beings, because we clearly see what they look at, an eminently social placement that leads us to believe that we can guess the other's thoughts, because somehow we can see what they see, and here we can come to believe we can see that they see us.
In the coldness, the apparent inexpressiveness of the images with those faces, we can perceive ourselves because their eyes clearly look at us and we suppose to sense, albeit changing position, that they go on observing us. My intention has been to start a game between the real and the unreal, produced by the rivalry of our rational prefrontal perception with the emotional limbic and so generate a conflict between what we know intellectually and what instinct tells us.
P.- Since the look portrayed is the central focus of the image, what do you intend to inquire by using the gaze? And extending on the previous question: what do we contemplate facing your portraits?
m.- I think that the initial question is not valid, because it is the observer who will have to use his gaze and if he feels like search, analyse geometries and balance of weights in the image or even calculate diaphragmatic differences between areas of light and shadows; or he could imagine what the model faced, or simply perceive that he could be the one who is visually captured on the photographic two-dimensionality of the plane or, perhaps, that he is being observed.
P.- It is striking that you opt for black and white. What does this decision add to the image?
m.- Black and white images provide the observer with more freedom to decide and transit, unintentionally, from the merely contemplative to the creative position when adding the missing information, by means of his imagination, which he needs to understand the presented.
To come from an image's pictorial concept to recreate a three-dimensional reality based on a two-dimensional surface, to what the artist only counts on technical and narrative strategies to help the viewer "see" atmospheres and depths, where in reality they do not exist; or the fundamental information, our brain recreates, lost through the fracture that inevitably has to be produced in the linearity of space and time, in order to make that total/partial understandable.
Colour also lacks in black and white photography and nevertheless no one doubts that a forest is green and the sea is blue, even if it is observed in greyscale; the nuances in colour values are intimate and distinct for each observer so through adding them at will, the observer becomes co-author of the work.
P.- From the point of view of the light, so masterfully handeled by the pictorial reference already appointed, and not so intentionally sought by Richard Avedon, who wanted "that light source would be invisible to neutralize its effect on the appearance of things" (Avedon, 2001: 18), for the series In The American West 1979-1984, what role in the conception your images do you grant to the light?
m.- Let me forward a comment I made, in a chat that I had last November 11th in which Marisa Vadillo and others participated, to you. She is Professor at the Faculty of Fine Arts of Seville, and currently lecturing on Idea and Production in a Master course, besides, she participated as a model in this exhibition's work:
I believe in one God, Father Almighty, creator of Heaven and Earth, of all the visible and invisible. I believe in one Lord, God of LIGHT, true God from true God, self begotten and not created, by whom all things were made, Omnipotent and omniscient which sees everything. Lord and giver of life. I believe in permanent resurrection of those who were killed while they were portrayed and in future life in a world of images. AMEN.
P.- How do you think your images invite us to meditate about photography? Is this one of your goals when pointing the camera at a given target?
m.- As we perceive Photography today, historically was it understood alike; despite the manipulations, carried out by masters like Dionisio González or Joan Foncuberta's psychosocial manoeuvres, these can only initially evade the observer's ability to question the credibility of the presented, because he is seduced not to explore the usual mimesis present in other arts; because the approach that if what the artist really samples adheres to reality or if it has been altered by the influence of the inner world of which who creates the reproduction, is almost obligatory, even in the view of a figurative painting or sculpture.
What might be called "democratization of photography" meaning that almost everyone has a camera and that any modern cellphone is able to replace one, it paradigmatically reaffirms that photography is done and exists to record, fortify one's memory and to share, what we "reliably" lived, with images.
I have no doubt that, since the first pictures I took in my own prehistoric humaneness, no more important reason pushed me than relating my existence with images. The rest of the intentions are attachments to this purpose.
Thus the compilation of photographs presented in this collection will tell what each person who sees them wants to sense, but they will “believe" what is in front of them and undoubtedly they will not only perceive what they see hanging on the walls of the gallery but with the addition of what existed when photographing.
On my behalf I just squeeze the trigger and the photographic image will tell what the public wants to scan in the support, but they will never doubt that the people showed by the images existed and that they were such as they see them, because the photo presents, it does not represent.
P.- Concerning your series of portraits, is it a reflection towards the concepts of identity and existentialism? Do they reflect therefore the hidden drama, of the sitter, transmitted to the anonymous viewer: transience of life?
m.- The answer to the first part of this question is obvious: everyone has at least one portrait in his wallet, you got one printed on your national identity card and it is trivial to name it that way, you carry it because it identifies you and you must renew it periodically because time alters our image, not only that of the soul, but that what the others, who see you retinally, perceive. In this exhibition I do not offer different personal identities but the long elapse of our existence which is revealed by all those details that those, living from the tricks of "eternal youth" and from the selling of the idea that aging it is a drama, are so pleased to diligently take care.
P.- What does photography allow what no other means of expression offers (painting, sculpture, installation, ...) ?
m.- They are different expressive approaches though they allow and enjoy cohabitation and hybridization the author confronts them with same semiotics but very different notation. The work, aside from physical disquisitions, can be considered the communication channel between the transmitter/creator and receiver/observer and any language is valid provided it allows this transition smoothly.
As I said before I consider that just one factor distinguishes photography from other forms of expression: credibility, and albeit there are sectors determined to prosecute the likelihood of photographic truth due to the misuse of the advantages digital pictures have, we stick to believe "chromosomally" that the shown in a photographic image is true and that a photograph would reproduce reality.
P.- To take an extraordinary photograph, how should it be built and what should it suggest?
m.- Paco, we have been knowing each other for years and you know perfectly that I strictly do not interpret my works. What matters for me is not the intention that I may have when I get into creative tasks –I suspect that, although I might not be aware of it, the intention's existence is likely–. I make things the way your quotation of Turner says, and let me paraphrase him. I do not photograph so that no one understands what I see but to show what I saw. I have made pictures which it took me months to encounter the precise moment that I wanted to show. In others I have had to wait for hours and even days to get that snapshot. Even in some of these, this exhibition’s material where people obviously acted as a model, in which I have intended to include an apparent spontaneity taking them with natural light, without any kind of technical support, repeatedly travelling out of my environment on different days to get "a picture" that "I promised myself to make" at whatever costs.
P.- Before starting we already knew that "our conversation"–making use of e-mail and some "live" breakfasts– had its limitations in terms of space and time. However in the light of your answers I may say that we needn’t wait until eight years before our death to know that the author’s decision prevails that of others. Knowing that neither the intention nor the modus operandi of Turner and the few above mentioned artists has little or nothing to do with what you are campaigning for, naming them however served to confirm that they and you, agree at least in one principle: when a plan arises, it has to be implemented. And that's because when the "I have a dream" happens, that picture, that painting already exists in in the imagination and there is faith in it's future existence. And I mean the "faith" already proclaimed in the early 80s by Thomas Lawson, artist, writer and dean of the School of Art at the California Institute for the Arts with his now famous statement: "Everything comes down to a matter of faith" (Lawson, 1981: 40).
Photography, when it is formally and conceptually well built, allows the audience to believe in the represented illusion (Dionisio González –whom you quoted), pulls the viewer up or leaves him indifferent depending on how you "present" the represented. As you said, technology has democratized the medium. A mobile allows to get an image that, saving its weight in pixels, manages to meet, by a single act, personal self-fulfilment; at the other extreme of photographers, passing by the amateur who makes pictures -private, personal, family-, you come over the work of those who are able to produce images with autonomy and own voice, transcending the period in which they were created due to arising from masterly human creativity. Finally in order to come to an end: Any question that you would have liked to answer, that would help us to go one step further in the direction of clarifying the content of your work? ... a labour requiring prick-eared watching!
m.- No doubt, I have not only one but a bunch full; I precisely miss a very concrete and direct one: Why possessing such an expressive and diverse repertoire in the scope of photography you have opted to create an exhibition of raw black and white portraits? … Because I relished it.
Paco Lara-Barranco
Painter and Tenured Professor of the University of Seville
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GILI, M., LÜRGENS, A., y ROMERO, Y. (2001) Richard Avedon. In the American West 1979-1984. Granada, Barcelona: Diputación de Granada, Fundación “La Caixa”. [Catálogo de exposición].
LAWSON, T. (1981) “Last Exist: Painting”, Artforum XX, 2 (octubre), pp. 40-47.
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