Quiet works - Dan McCarthy

” I’m playing with my ideas about the sub-conscious, what it means to be ’spiritual’, contemplation and the surreal”.

Dan studied Film and Photography at the Polytechnic of Central London, at a time when it was a hotbed of philosophical debate around representation, the sub-conscious and photography as a vehicle of change. “It took me a long time to move beyond the PCL approach” McCarthy says. “My interests as a photographer have always been elsewhere, in the realms of the surreal, the sub-conscious and contemplation, and I’ve spent 25 years quietly ploughing that furrow”.

McCarthy’s recent colour work develops this sub-conscious aspect, where familiar objects are seen in unfamiliar settings. Sometimes light and colour itself is the subject, and we are drawn into the photographs by attempting to disentangle reflections, shadows, repeated motifs and assorted apparitions.

The black and white pieces are more about contemplation, silence and slowing down to engage with what we see and hear. “Quietness and the appreciation of beauty have in themselves become political gestures. You could say that I am making my own quiet stand against the noise and triviality of our culture but the reality is that I just make images that I find mysterious and beautiful”.

We asked Dan to talk us through some of his works, his influences and techniques.

“ ‘Sandgate Windows 1 and 2’ are pieces I developed to mark the opening of the Crístus gallery. These two prints crystallise and sum up many of the things I’ve found fascinating and worked on over the years. First of all, there’s the dreamlike quality of the objects. The space they are layed out in could be real, or might not be, and I like this uncertain quality. It causes some people to look more than once, to get their bearings or to perhaps discover something new in the image. Finally, I really like all of the impurities in these images, which are from the translucent glass surfaces but which appear to be on the surface of the print itself. People try to remove them, as though they are ‘real’ dirt, but what is real and what is not? I like the idea of these prints never being dusted, gradually being hidden away behind years of dust. I think they will look better like that.

By the way – some of my colour work is unashamedly indebted to Eugene Atget. I think we both like reflections and mannequins and shop windows.

There is a similar ‘impurity’ theme going on with the Royal Military Canal print. I hope people will look into that image closely, it holds a surprise.

The Buddha prints are very straightforward. I have a Buddha statue in my garden and I often photograph it and rework my take on it. It’s stone, subject to erosion, dead and cold. The ideas it represents are mind expanding, infinite, alive and warm.

The black and white pieces are even simpler. I have little to say to commend them – they either resonate or they don’t. Technically, they are much more difficult images to achieve than the colour ones. Despite the simplicity most of them share some themes with the colour prints – reflections, the role of the mind and perception, and the interest in breaking down the illusion of “this is a river” or “this is a long barrow”. I’m creating a new illusion, as all photographers do.

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