Shortcuts to the Soul: review of ‘Photocopies’ by John Berger

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There is an image reproduced at the beginning of this book. It looks at first glance to be a photocopy, so stark is its contrast and so unclear its details, though it is in fact an image taken with a pinhole camera. It shows the author John Berger standing beside the first of the many people he writes about in this book, an artist who lives alone in the countryside. Very little can be seen of their surroundings, just the hazy silhouettes of a tree and the artist’s house. The figures themselves are silhouetted also, their features and clothes indiscernible, their smiles unseen. And yet the tenderness that exists between the two people is clear. Her head leans towards his, his body supporting hers like a sturdy tree trunk. And you can just make out the unkemptness of the author’s hair, as though such trivialities as appearance have been thrown to the wind.

It is not only a wonderful portrait, but a carefully chosen one, it being the visual equivalent to the writing that follows. For the writing, like the photograph, conveys so much about its subjects with so little. There are around thirty ‘chapters’ here, each one just a few pages in length, and each one being about a person who touched Berger’s life in some way.

He writes about a particular memory of each person, a memory that in same way defines that person’s essence, in the way that a portrait can. It reminds me of the drawings of Rembrandt, or Maggi Hambling. Those artists capture the essence of their subjects often with just a few strokes of the pen, and Berger writes with a similar economy. There isn’t a single superfluous word in this book. Take one word out of any of these portraits and the likeness would be lost, yet if you were to add one word more, it would stick out like an ugly ink blot.

Take Berger’s description of a Parisian photographer, now begging in the Metro:

“His eyes are an intense pale blue, and from time to time they twitch, as a dog’s muzzle twitches when investigating a scent. Its hard to watch his eyes without feeling you’re being indelicate. They’re totally exposed – not through innocence, but through an addiction to observation. If eyes are windows on to the soul, his have neither panes nor curtains, and he stands in the window frame and you can’t see past his gaze.”

Or this, his description of a motorcyclist about to mount his bike during a race:

“[he] puts on his helmet and stands very still, waiting, small, a shearwater looking out to sea from a cliff edge.”

Berger’s own humanity shines through every page, as does his respect for those he writes about. One of the most moving of all these moments is the one in which he visits a prison and reads a story to one of the prisoners, a man he has never met before but whose predicament leaves a lifelong impression on the author:

“The aim of incarceration is to reduce all exchanges with the outside world to a minimum. And this has an effect on voices. Ours, as we read, were unlike prisoners’ voices. Our voices were volatile – like swallows in flight seen through a window. Maybe our voices were more interesting than the story we were reading.”

The book is full of such acutely observed insights. And of course, this being Berger, a lot of these insights are into the nature of Art, its relationship with the people he describes and also with himself.

“A wisp of grass is blown onto one drawing. Tiny fruit flies alight on another. A scrap of leaf, transparent like parchment, drifts from a nearby field of maize on to another sheet. If I did not see these things being wafted on to the paper I would have mistaken them for painted marks. I’m no longer at all sure where to draw the line between art and nature, Becoming and Origin. This is the mystery that keeps me peering even after the light has dimmed and the chickens have gone quiet.”

I like this passage particularly as it goes some way to describing his own writing. It is hard to draw the line between the people he describes and the nature that surrounds them. People are closer here to their animal cousins than in anything else I’ve read. The motorcyclist who is a shearwater on a cliff edge, the photographer whose eyes twitch like a dog’s muzzle, or the artist who learns about her nature through cuttlefish, octopus and molluscs. It feels like some kind of distilled astrology, but one based on observation and earthy truths rather than the muddled light of the stars above.

But above all, the collective whole of these portraits becomes a celebration of individuality, and of shared humanity. You feel you would love to meet every person in this book, and you’re left, invariably, with the feeling that you have had that pleasure. Insightful, tender and wise, it is one of the most life-affirming reads I can think of, and one to return to again and again.

“The two of us stood there facing the camera. We moved of course, but not more than the plum trees did in the wind. Minutes passed. While we stood there, we reflected the light, and what we reflected went through the black hole into the dark box.

‘It’ll be of us’, she said. And waited expectantly.”

Design for the cover of the novel ‘High Rise’

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This was a personal project of mine to design a cover for the JG Ballard novel ‘High Rise’.

First published in 1975, ‘High Rise’ is sharp, witty, but undeniably apocalyptic story of a high rise block of luxury apartments, whose inhabitants descend into violent tribal conflict. Its message is simple – that modern life and architecture suppress the basest human instincts in such a way that they bubble dangerously beneath the surface, waiting for a trigger to set them violently free.

High Rise book cover

Review of the exhibition ‘Magic Show’

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I’m looking at what appears to be a photograph, of what appears to be a view outside of a window, taken from inside what appears to be a room. Yet there is something not quite ‘right’ about the photograph. The space is clearly impossible, yet it is impossible to pinpoint why (I’m reminded of Escher’s ‘Ascending and Descending’). Art is always a fiction of sorts, and this is an exhibition entitled ‘Magic Show’, so I should be expecting the visual sleight of hand. And yet I find my mind insisting on attempting to make sense of the space Sinta Werner has portrayed in front of me, refusing to accept its unreality. It is the trick of the conjuror, as played by an artist.

Parallels between magician and artist are highlighted throughout ‘Magic Show’, a Hayward Touring exhibition, currently showing at Chapter Arts Centre, Cardiff. It is an impressively diverse exhbition, mixing actual magicians’ props and paraphenalia with artworks in many different media. Some work directly references the world of the illusionist, such as Juan Munoz’s photographs of the fingertip mirrors used by card sharks, whilst other work’s relationship to the theme is one more of technique and intent – such as Sinta Werner’s exquisitely perplexing space collages.

Sometimes the technique is intentionally exposed, such as in a series of films by Joao Maria Gusmao and Pedro Paiva, in which inanimate objects become animate – a rope becomes a snake, writhing viciously before two men, who cut it down with swords; boulders in a desert rumble slowly into life, rolling their way toward a shared destination. In all these films, no attempt is made to hide the artifice of the situation – the strings are quite literally visible. This honesty allows the viewer to engage with the work as a spectator, not an interrogator, and enjoy the touching, quaint absurdity of the actions unfolding before them.

The highlight for many will be Zoe Beloff’s “A Modern Case of Posession” – a film of a play about French psychologist Dr Pierre Janet. The play performed is interesting enough, but it is the way that it is presented that impresses the most. The film of the play is projected onto a small theatrical stage set. The film is shot in 3D, and with the aid of 3D glasses the viewer is treated to a wonderful experience, in which the miniature actors appear real enough to pick up off the stage and hold in the hand. The manipulation of scale and the viewer’s perceptions of it are both brilliant and playful.

‘Magic Show’ is an excellent exhibition, one which entertains, surprises, and occasionally perplexes – just like all good magic shows should.

‘Magic Show’ is on at Chapter Arts Centre, Cardiff until 12th September, after which it moves on to Pump House Gallery, London

Design for Swans album ‘Filth’

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This is a personal design project of mine to re-design the debut album of New York avant-garde industrial band Swans.

Released in 1983, ‘Filth’ is a brutal album that centers upon crude, half-formed, monolithic rhythms, punctuated by enormous swells of power. It is an album of extraordinary intensity, which seems to reduce both performer and listener to an almost infantile level of despair. Nevertheless, all that pain has an almost cathartic quality which makes the recording not only re-listenable, but utterly compelling.

Swans 'Filth' album cover

When style needs no substance: the film ‘Suspiria’

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A young woman leaves an airport to hail a taxi for an unknown destination. It is pouring with a rain, the kind of rain that drives away all human presence, and you can see a hint of fear creep in when the first taxi passes straight by without even slowing. When the second taxi also passes by, the audience begins to share her trepidation, and we suspect that this film isn’t going to be an easy ride.

Indeed, not long after we see an exceptionally violent murder, shot with an almost cruel explicitness. But it is compellingly brilliant in its visual realisation – the victim’s face being pressed against the glass of a window, her features being pushed around into increasingly contorted masks of terror, configurations of flesh that that we didn’t think were possible. We are fascinated and repulsed simultaneously, as we are with all the violence in this film.

Most of the horror comes from the film’s oppressive atmosphere, hanging like a dense fog over the story that follows, which revolves around a witch’s presence in a secluded ballet school in Germany. The protagonist, a new student played by Jessica Harper, becomes a liability to the school’s witch when she witnesses the murder in the film’s opening scenes, and soon she is desperately looking for a way to escape the witch’s clutches.

Lurid lighting – bright red, blues and greens – light the dark corridors of the school. Director Dario Argento has no need to justify their presence, they are simply there for effect, giving the film a nightmarish quality. It works well, particularly in the dormitory scene, where the white curtains are transformed by red lights into veils of blood, behind which a sinister silhouette appears in the middle of night – not wielding a knife or sprouting tentacles, but something far more unnerving – sleeping. Unnerving because the lighting tells us that the figure has sinister intent, yet our minds boggle as we wonder how it will achieve that intent through an act of such passivity.

Adding to the atmosphere also is the crashing soundtrack by the progressive rock band ‘Goblins’ which sounds as though it is trying to pummel the film into submission. The music has a life almost of its own, and the blind music teacher, a character who lives in a world of sound, reacts at times as though it is the source of terror itself. The music appears out of nowhere and disappears when you least expect it, shifting the film’s gear dramatically, and accentuating moments of tension tremendously.

‘Suspiria’ is evidence that sometimes atmosphere can be more than just a way of conveying mood. Sometimes it can successfully be the focus of an entire film, its raison d’etre.

Design for Bauhaus album ‘Go Away White’

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This was a personal project of mine to re-design the cover of the Bauhaus album ‘Go Away White’.

‘Go Away White’ was a one-off album recorded during the band’s brief reunion after over 22 years. I wanted the design to reflect the album’s light, playful approach to the band’s trademark, theatrically dark ‘gothic’ sound.

Go Away White album cover