He subsequently worked at The Royal College of Art for four years. John has been a London-based, freelance photographer since 1998. His exhibition Two and Two was a solo show at Flowers Gallery, London. John has had work published in Source, Photoworks, Camera Austria, The British Journal of Photography, 1000 Words, SeeSaw, LPV Magazine, IANN Magazine, Album fur Fotographie, Der Grief Magazine and Gomma to mention a few.
John MacLean is a London based artist, well known for his photobooks such as, ‘Two and Two’ and ‘New Colour Guide’. His work always fascinated me in terms of its imagination and construction.
I had the chance of speaking with him in order to satisfy my curiosity about his latest project, still a dummy book, it’s called ‘Hometowns’.
A project already widely seen on the internet and well introduced by essays written by experts such Aaron Schuman and Darren Campion.
I was wondering if something “new†or at least something from a different angle could be found by talking to John about this work, so I tried to lead the conversation with him in a very casual way, looking for his personal approach and opinions.
I found myself speaking to a person really engaged with research into the artistic process, so I tried to better understand his practice.
London, Tate Modern, May 2016
EV. Let’s start from your education, did you start from photography or you came from other kind of studies?
JM. I actually started by studying Science, and I switched to photography very late. So I studied maths physics and geology at advanced level and then switched to photography.
I think it’s interesting to arrive from a different direction, my scientific background is really important in the way I construct my photographic works. I use something very similar to a scientific method.
EV. Yeah, there is definitely something scientific in you work, all of your projects have this methodical construction. For example in Hometowns, you started a methodical research… I don’t know if was conceived like this from the beginning but at the end the result is definitely a methodical report of your activities. Let’s take the Hometowns dummy, at the beginning of the book you create this index with all the names of the artists, your heroes, and they’re hometowns that you visit. It’s a smart choice to introduce the work without too much sentimentalism.
How did you start this project?
JM. I started my project Hometowns in a unique way for me, because it began with a huge amount of research, specifically biographical research into the artists in question. I had made a list of my art heroes, and looking at these names I started to wonder why I had made specific, personal connections with some artists—but not with others. So I started to delve further into their biographies—searching for clues in their childhoods—in order to find possible connections between me and them.
Hometowns is a body of work I describe as a ‘fantasy documentary’ because I haven’t approached the project in what might be called a ‘traditional’ documentary mode (which might be, simply, to go to each childhood house of my artistic hero and photograph it) I avoided a direct approach because I wanted to try and add some layers of my own experience—to make the images more reflective.
EV. The thing I love most about your work is that you started from a personal impulse—to get in touch with your art heroes by photographing their hometowns. It’s kind of a personal research into where your artistic style came from; analysing how your work has been influenced by these people.
JM. Exactly
EV. And you did not stop at the documentary layer, but you go deeper finding and playing with the relationship between your work and the work of each of your art heroes.
We can find clear references to the style of each artist in the pictures you shot of their hometown. For example, I can see the lines and some of the blue and red typical of Kandinsky’s work in the image shot in his hometown.
Those remains form a universal connection, clues that can connect and involve everyone.
JM. Important artworks had persuaded me to travel to these locations so, unavoidably perhaps, I photographed each hometown through their afterimage.
Do you know what I mean by ‘afterimage’?
EV. Afterimage?
JM. Yes it’s when you look at, say, a really bright light and then look away: the light leaves a visual residue on your eye. So, an afterimage continues to appear to you even after the exposure to the original light has ceased.
So I photographed everything through a kind of a screen—the screen of my artistic influences.
EV. How long did you spend in each of these places?
JM. The project duration was a year and a half. I probably spent five days in each artist’s hometown. It was an intense process.
EV. I can imagine…
EV. I was thinking that each of your projects have been finalized into books…
JM. Yes.
EV. And you seem pretty involved in the book process, did you work also as a graphic designer?
JM. No, I’m not a graphic designer so I work with a very good one; we’ve worked together in the creation of all of my eight books (his name is Wayne Daly). So we have forged a really strong collaboration over these eight books.
I love photobooks but I’m particularly interested in books which have something of the personality of the maker in them. If I have to choose between buying a (traditionally) published book of an artist’s work or an artist’s book (which they’ve had much more involvement in), I would always go for the artist’s book.
EV. But when you talk about personal books, you mean that you are interested in personal stories?
JM. Yes, I think that my central interest in art itself is how artists can be ‘known’ (to some extent) through the art they make. At least, really great artists seem to be able to manage that. If we make a strong connection with an artist through their work, their work might also help us to understand something about who we are too. Everything from an artist’s childhood experiences to their adult philosophy can be somewhere ‘inside’ a painting, a sculpture or a photograph. That’s my theory anyway!
EV. Did you already find a publishing house for your dummy?
JM. No not yet. I haven’t had much luck in finding a publisher interested in making a book close enough to the book I want to make.
EV. Selfpublish?
JM. I think that might be the best way; there is already a lot of interest in the book, some people are already asking “when it will be ready?†The idea of waiting maybe another two years it find a publisher might be too much to bear.
EV. Yeah, sometime self publish is the best solution.
JM. Exactly, yeah..
EV. Are you working on something new?
JM. Yes, while I was waiting for you, I was trying to write a text for my new project which is called Outthinking the Rectangle. I’ve spent a long time looking for a good title—this one seems to sum it up quite well. I think we all find it easy to fall into rectangular thinking occasionally. So much of modern culture frames everything in rectangles. But rectangular thinking can also be an interesting metaphor—at the forefront of our minds currently is Britain’s relationship with Europe. It’s a very human thing to frame our experience because otherwise it can be completely overwhelming, but framimg can be dangerous and limiting too.
EV. And in which way, photographically speaking are you developing this topic? If you can talk about it, I don’t want to spoil anything.
JM. It’s not a secret (smile), the work was prompted by an experience that I had in junior school—there were occasions where we had to supervise art classes for younger children, and I remember this one kid in particular—when you put a piece of paper in front of him he would always draw on the paper and then continue over the edges. Once with a large piece of paper in front of him, he painted off the paper, onto the wall, and then onto the floor. He had no concept of edges. He didn’t want to be confined by a piece of paper.
(he opens his laptop)
