(
'.
연대기로 봐도. 회화는 사진보다 먼저 발생되었고, 몇천년을 이어져왔다. 폭압이라고 할만큼 압도적 영향을 가하고 있다는 것.
그걸 부정할 수 있는 사진은 지구상에 단 한장도 없다. 물론 당분간.
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He has had major personal shows with such important institutions as the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam and the 11th Documenta in Kassel (2002). His works are included in leading collections, including those of the Museum of Modern Art in San Francisco, the Tate Gallery in London and the Fondation National d묨rt Contemporaine in Paris. However, Craigie Horsfield (born in Cambridge, England in 1949) did not become known by following in the wake of the latest trend뾧ust the opposite. He became known by doggedly pursuing his own artistic poetic, even at the risk of going against the current. For example, ahead of his time, Horsfield was probably the first photographer to print large images in an era (that of the late Seventies) in which photos were generally offered in small or medium format. Yet recently, in the midst of the spread of the use of tableaux images, he took a back swipe at this tendency by courageously showing at the Frith Street Gallery in London unexpectedly small still life images in color (entitled 밒rresponsible Drawings?. He has also utilized such old printing techniques as monotype and photogravure, but although these images are different in format and subject, they do not betray one of the central themes of his work, that of time/memory, the past that emerges in the present and over a long period of time. An extended sense of time interlaced with stories, tracks and faces mark all his work, as does the procedure he uses and the time required to produce it. For example, Horsfield sometimes waits long periods between when he takes a photo and when it is printed, sometimes even as long as ten years, thus transforming his own activity into a torturous process, itself extended over time, aimed at calling up one뭩 memory. He also uses a special printing technique that requires slow ?very slow ?processing times, but which makes it possible for the full grey scale to emerge from the black and white of his photos. It is almost as if he wanted to restore to the photographic image a consistency, a density and material viscosity that is almost pictorial in nature and which opposes the instantaneity of the shot. These processes, as Carol Armstrong so astutely writes in the magazine, Artforum, 밿nvolve a material and temporal enlargement that connects (instead of severing) the photographic and the pictorial, the modern and the antemodern, the then and the now, the thee and the I, the medium and the message, rather than simply hyperbolize the subject matter, scale, canonical esteem, and market value of the photographic commodity. Theirs is a trancelike slowing of the famous fast time of modernity and instantaneity of the photograph until they yield their opposite, turning the hare into the tortoise.?The act of looking뾲he images of this photographer seem to want to tell us뾡oes not mean just looking quickly at the surface of things, but rather penetrating into and immersing oneself in the hidden folds of being. It means staying near them, accepting with them their shadowy side and listening to their muted language. A language that requires time, silence and waiting to be heard. And that, in some ways, requires an anti-modern approach capable of giving up the rush and anxiety of fleeting time. Not accidentally almost all his images (like those in his wide-ranging work, 밚a ciutat de la gent?dedicated to Barcelona and its people, shown in 1997 at the Fondaci?/span> Antoni T?ies in Barcelona) are taken at night. But the night darkness is also a sort of inaccessible background in which the bodies and buildings Horsfield photographs take on a sort of mysterious gravity. In the darkness, in fact, the faces, streets and squares of the city lose their immediate, temporal contingency. Just as his portraits do not aim at simply capturing the expression of a given moment, so, too, the places he photographs do not just describe a city with its new and old buildings, its suburbs and downtown areas. He is not interested in fleeting appearances, but rather the 뱒ubstance?of what is real. He is concerned that his images contain a secret, a blind background as if plucked from the flow of time so that those that observe them are aware of an intensity linked to the past and stories contained in them. Stories, however, that do not remain nostalgically relegated to the past, but extend into the present. Another fundamental aspect of Horsfield뭩 work is its political and social side. Horsfield, who in 1972 chose to move to Krakow, Poland to live in a socialist country, has created the major part of his photographic projects (such as the 1996 Barcelona project cited above, or his 1998 Rotterdam and 2000 Brussels projects) starting from his encounter with the inhabitants of the place he intends depicting. It is no accident, then, that in speaking about his Barcelona work with Manuel J. Borja-Villel and Jean-Fran?is Chevrier, he said: 밡othing exists outside singular experience and faith, and if, as I suppose, the world consists of people and things and their relationships, the only evidence I have is experience. The real is particular, is specific, generalities exist only as a model (? I think that the picture itself may be part of our action in the world, a part of our relation.?His photographs, in fact, are born of the experience, of the concrete relationships he establishes with the people he meets. They are relationships that are not satisfied with banally creating a friendly, relaxed atmosphere as so often happens in traditional portraiture. An important part of Horsfield뭩 work consists in listening to and recording the true stories of those living in the city or place he intends working in, and then connecting these stories together until they form a net of relationships. In this way, all these stories and relationships뾞s his recent study and book, La ciutat de la gent, dedicated to Barcelona demonstrates뾢nd up becoming an integral part of his work, just as the extremely precise captions giving the name, surname, place and date of the people photographed are. In short, we find ourselves faced with an operation in listening, in gathering of experiences that, in turn, become intense portraits in which each face is the bearer of unfathomable뾷et fully active and present뾪emories and stories. It is as if Horsfield still utilized the long posing times of early portraitists. Aprocedure that 밿nduced those posing not to live projecting himself beyond that moment, but rather to fall back into his interior self,?as Walter Benjamin noted in his essay ?span class=SpellE>Piccola storia della fotografia.? A falling back into silence and into one뭩 memories, quite removed from current hustle and bustle, between present and past, into a time frame capable of interrupting the frenetic continuum of history. As Jean-Fran?is so aptly noted in La ciutat de la gent, 밬topia is usually about the future, but right now, in the field of art, it should be much more about the past.?o:p>
by Gigliola Foschi?
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