John McKean

Two good days in Togliano, the first with Franco Bunčuga and Adam Wood, the second with Alberto Franchini, talking in all sorts of ways, inter-knitting this trio from my past and now in all our presents, and the possibilities of publication of Franco’s conversations with De Carlo in English and stuff by me about Segal in Italian and all sorts of other tales enlivened by Adam and Alberto’s new youthful energies and Alberto’s excavations in Giancarlo’s archive at IUAV.

Great company, great thinking, good weather and lovely food. Conviviality.Adam’s snap of Franco and me with three editions of his Conversazione, empty prosecco glasses and bottle, my English/German ancient book on Walter and the French edition of my book on Giancarlo on the table between us.

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What an unexpected collision of two bits of me this morning, 11 July 2018, our first morning in England for six weeks, to find two complete journals just arrived, one 24 pages, one 32 pages, and not a single word in either not written by me… and yet they couldn’t have come from more disparate corners of the universe. Will I ever find my pigeon-hole? 

Well now it is time to get that focus onto Walter Segal.

Did I really take this photograph of him 44 years ago?  I guess so.

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Unlike the warnings which annotate everyday life (“may contain nuts”, “do not attempt at home”…) this is a promise: No reality was hurt in the making of the photographs in this exhibition. No CGI (computer-generated imagery), no Photoshop.

In the 20^th Century, Susan Sontag reminded us that we understood a photograph to be of something that did or does exist, no matter what lenses, filters, or films were deployed to transformed it. Whereas a painting had no necessary connection to the real. As Roland Barthes succinctly put it: “A photograph is always invisible; it is not it that we see.”

In the 21^st Century we have all learned to perceive differently. While we still look through the photograph in front of us, we no longer believe it must portray a solid reality. Today, it is not the KGB expert’s unusual skill which eliminates a discredited enemy from the politburo photograph. We can each remove the whole crowd on the beach around our beloved, with the simple touch of a Photoshop finger.

Forty-five years ago, Sontag wrote “A faked painting (with false attribution) falsifies the history of art. A faked photograph (retouched or tampered with) falsifies reality.”

We see a quite different world now. Yet the photograph remains ‘invisible,’ is looked through, not at.

My current work explores this central paradox of photography: and the difficulty of seeing what is in front of the eyes. There is too much reality out there. As we move through the world, we tend to edit out much of what is actually in front of us. I am not interested in post-click, electronic manipulation: here is what I see.

Does the distinction between the real and unreal, the true and fake, matter at all?   Are they not just flat images of more or less visual interest?

Ah yes, but what the caption “this is a real photograph” is saying is: “Look! This is what you too see, if you open your eyes.”

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Are not all photographs self portraits, in fact? Seeing both, sees much more…

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My little exhibition of photographs opens in Cividale on 9th June (at weekends for a month) 

Unlike the warnings which annotate everyday life (“may contain nuts”, “do not attempt at home”…) this is a promise: No reality was hurt in the making of this photograph. No CGI (computer-generated imagery), no Photoshop.     

(No lung damage will result from smoking: Ceci n’est pas une pipe.)

If I can find a moment I will put up gallery or two of these new images during June

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My little exhibition of photographs opens in Cividale on 9th June (at weekends for a month) 

Unlike the warnings which annotate everyday life (“may contain nuts”, “do not attempt at home”…) this is a promise: No reality was hurt in the making of this photograph. No CGI (computer-generated imagery), no Photoshop.     

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