Desire as a subject is highly problematic. The reason is very simple, it is so strong a force, and has such a personal effect that it overwhelms the ability of the artist to analyse. In the throes of desire the artist is helpless and cannot get his hands on the rudder. Creating art, as opposed to living life, is an out of body experience. Desire implodes self-consciousness. It draws one into oneself deeper and doesn’t leave the artist any freedom from the self that is essential to art. It is this distance from the self that lets the artist abstract and symbolise the things that he feels and experiences into something that is communicable. Of course how communicable or acccessible he makes his art is up to him, but art always communicates. Otherwise it is just private thoughts, or personal actions; merely, life.

From the very beginning, as early as I can reminisce to, I have been badly plagued by the quicksand-like urge of desire. It’s most powerful manifestation was and is towards women, towards girls. Then, secondly, to diginity. And, thirdly, to meaning. There are 83 such categories in strict order.

I have been avoiding thinking about desire for as long as I can remember. And I wouldn’t even breathe of it in whatever art I wanted to make. I felt that it was, that it is, a cliché. It is perhaps the most overdone, and badly done subject known to man. It is everywhere, and in everything. But there something askance in the state of Adnan. I fear that it may not be a topic that I can avoid. And since I cannot do anything purposefully below great, I fear that I have to invest a significant amount of blood and treasure into something which has such a high risk of failure. Of course, all this talk is defeatist, is pessimistic. It should be looked on as a great challenge. As the foundations of a masterpiece. But fuck that. I don’t want to get hurt. It’s all so boring. We’ve all bored our friends, and our friends in retaliation have bored us with tales of desire. It’s such an uncouth, low, maudlin subject. I won’t touch it. But I don’t have a choice. It’s a monkey on my back. Digging, scratching, spitting, and chirping. If I had a gun I’d shoot desire in the face.

And the secret is that it is not boring to me. It’s fascinating. The very universality of desire, and the desire to make art of desire that is attractive. It is under the crush of millions of rocks and and trillions of grains of sand that diamonds are made.

Desire did not, for example, start with advertising. You can see it in the cave etchings of the uncivilised. And even the great Winogrand couldn’t do it right in photography, even he, one of the most selective, most sensitive and discerning of photographers was no match. All the fashion photographers aren’t even trying to look at it critically, they are hedonistically jacking off (is there any other way to jackoff but hedonistically?). Something can be done here. Something critical. Something big. I will have to attempt it at some stage even if I get caught in the whirlpool and disappear.

As a beginning, I’ve started a piece trying to analyse my desire for women. What are the forces that are behind it? How does it manifest? I’ve started watching desire play out across the museums, metro stations, shopping malls, and parks all across Europe. I’ve learnt nothing yet. I know I run the risk of being labelled a pervert (well I am a pervert) but I will start to take photos of the things that have the scent of desire, the Madeleine. It won’t be easy and I may not be ready for awhile but there is no avoiding it. My psyche won’t leave me alone and neither will my ambition. But I feel like this will be a slow burner, it will take its time coming out, but this is an important first step. In even acknowledging it I feel like I’m going too far, exposing myself too much, or even committing to too much. I commit to nothing! I’m only fearful of the certainty that it is coming.

• desire
• essay
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Posted 2 years ago

Photo by Unknown

This is an excerpt from an email to a friend explaining what I want to do for the next seven or eight months.

I walked the streets of Paris tonight thinking about what I should do next. I’ve been thinking about this a lot since leaving Berlin.

Bangladesh was a huge success, even if the fruits aren’t ripe enough to eat yet. I took the first steps in learning to work hard, and I have started to find out how I look at the world that is different to everyone else’s. Next, I was confused between going to New York to try to sell what I have (which would mean spending 6 months there making contacts) or coming home to Australia to first learn to print, second get a gallery, and third a grant to do the printing, a beautiful catalogue and a show and if I’m lucky a bit left over for the next trip.

I will be getting a tattoo on my arm which says ‘work.’ It will be in the clearest of typefaces, the most unadorned, Helvetica. It will be a centimetre high and run down my wrist. It will only say ‘work.’ It will be with me for the rest of my life. It describes my greatest weakness, and it will describe how and why I became great. I want to see that word for the rest of my life. I haven’t talked to many people about it but others who do not make art don’t understand why I’m doing it. I was initially going to get ‘Arbeit macht frei’ which is what the Nazi’s sarcastically (or maybe in a bout of compassion) wrote above the entrances of many of the concentration camps. It transliterates as ‘Work makes free’ or ‘Work will set you free.’ Garry Winogrand when interviewed and asked why he did what he did replied ‘because when I’m photographing I forget that I exist. And for me that’s very attractive.’ I didn’t know it, but I’ve always felt the same way.

And so I let the as yet imaginary mark (I have been writing it on my left wrist in pen) be my guide. Where can I be which will get me closest to working again? And the answer for now is that I’m most excited about Australia. The home my dad chose for us in 1982. My uncle told me in Dhaka, “you know, I really wanted to send your dad to America, to New York, but for some reason he really wanted to go to Australia, he was set on it, and so he went. I couldn’t stop him.” I want to explore the impact of that decision. I want to explore what country my dad bought us to. I have been working on some ideas which are more specific:

1. I will do my close in shots. But will be very difficult to do them ‘in natural state’ like I did in Bangladesh, but that’s OK. I’m exploring a different subject (not the street) so set up shots are all right. I very much liked Benjamin Rinner’s portraiture style around Berlin. I think little narratives for certain types of outback residents would be very interesting. A portrait. Them and their house. Them and their car. Them and their animal. Their room. Two or three shots of their work (more if interesting). 10 people, 7 or 8 pictures each. Or 7 or 8 people and 10 pictures each. People in the country have structured, regulated lives unlike the ADD ones that we have in the city. I want to see if I can get a clear narrative for the people I meet with just those pictures. Need roughly 20 people to choose from. August Sander-like portraits of people in their own environments. I need to make a connection to these people. But why will my attempt be new? This has already been done by Sander but he had an even more ambitious plan to photograph everyone from all occupations in Germany. What I’d love to do is beautiful action shots of these people. Riding horses, rounding up cattle, cutting down logs. It has to look amazingly beautiful, beautifully lit etc., and they should be in a decisive moment.
2. Aboriginal communities, both towns and hopefully more nomadic groups. Call it The Aboriginals. Define them as ‘they’, something other. Sander like stuff will work very well here, but want to hearken back to what they were before. Something majestic but simple, something truly archaic. I know that’s racist but that’s what they were. I’m absolutely in love with their existence in the vastness, of their freedom in it. They overpowered loneliness perhaps? Were they lonely? Or by being one with the ground, with the serpent, with the trees did they eschew the idea of loneliness. I love, love, love their concept of going Walkabout. Of revelling and recharging oneself with loneliness. Loneliness as a positive. I think the townships are an attempt for them to be something they aren’t. They don’t have the religious-cultural drivers towards banding together in a civilisation and making progress. Or they didn’t until they are forcefully assimilated (but was it forceful?). I want to capture that more organic drive. That beautiful positive nihilism!
3. I also want to explore the desolateness, the lonesslines of the outback. It’s inhumanness. The red dirt and yellow trees. But I don’t want vistas. There has to be a new way of showing this stuff. Of getting closer to it. That movie about the girls who went missing did this at some points (Picnic at Hanging Rock, Luhrman?). A real mystery. A real hostility in the land. The land wants to nearly expel the new-comers. Australians have been pushed to the edges of the land, they can’t live in the heart of it. Really interesting. A potential solution is to unbalance it in its detail, to make it a mess but still make it aesthetically balanced. Cy Twombly’s work really reminds me of the outback. Lee Friedlander may also be a good model with his views of bush. But his are an aesthetic exercise and not a main work. Mine will need to tell a dreamtime story.
4. Need to understand the small towns. Becher-like recording of all the buildings I come across. Not judging like Evans but nearly a scientific study of what is there and what is being lost. Things that aren’t usually seen by Australians. Front on, nearly scientific. (Will I need a tilt shift lens? Or can stand on top of the car.) Need to research Evans as well as Bechers as that is what I want to be led by, but it will be in colour. But also need the town itself from a distance, to show that it is ragged, rough haven from the loneliness of the outback.
5. Night work in the outback. Tiny bits of light in an ocean of vast darkness as a continuation of my Dhaka night work. I think the ideas of loneliness and isolation will be enhanced in the dark. Can take a more abstract view and be expressive rather than scientific as is my usual drive. I don’t want one single style. like Picasso I want to develop and interweave skill in various types of styles and use whatever is needed for the story.
6. Also take video interviews of these people talking about what it’s like living on the land, loneliness, silence etc. I may not get what I’m looking for (I may be a shit interviewer) but if I have a show it would be nice to have a video installation.

The work needs to be new, new, new. It’ll be a personal reaction and that’ll help but I also need to make sure it has never been done before. Need to research what photographs of Australia have been taken before but be able to resist that work when I’m out there and make my own thing. Maybe I will get ideas from historical photographs and paintings. Also need to see the work of the great American lanscape photographers and painters from the 19th century. Also would like to reread my history books from year 7 and 8 on Australian outback history if I can find them!

On whether I will be bored out in the outback. I want to find that out. It is the big unknown, just like it was for Cook when he sailed past these mostly barren shores. I want to be in this state of ambiguity and then see what my reactions are. It is something I have to try. But I believe “there are pictures to be made out there.” I also have a healthy respect for boredom (but not for being uninspired). I think boredom is important in the creative process. Whether you can work through it is a good determiner for whether the work will be good or not. There were times I was really bored with the work I was doing in Bangladesh and didn’t think it was any good, but I pushed through that.

… I plan to come back within a week, or at a maximum, a month (If I go to Egypt). I will probably spend a couple of weeks at home with my parents whatever I do and then I’ll need to decide where I want to be based for a guerilla art attack on the establishment:

• Doing my printing to get exactly the look I want (in large format). I plan to buy a 44 inch wide professional printer and print 1m x 1m prints of my work. It will cost me upward of $4000 for the printer and I don’t know how much for paper and so on. But I want to control the entire process right down to the print. Detail and colour are very important to my work and I want to make sure I get it right and learn how to do it myself. One of the things I hated about my past jobs was that I was in a strategic idea-making position but I didn’t do any of the day to day building. I didn’t really understand how the things I was thinking up were built. This time I want to get my hands really really dirty.
• Innovative marketing to the populace and then maybe to the art world. I want to print up these posters and plaster them around the city so that people walk by and notice these heads of Bangladeshis that they’ve never seen before. I want them to wonder what’s going on. I want to make booklets as cheaply as I can and leave them in bars, toilets, restaurants, art schools, giving them to anyone interesting I meet etc. I want to get a top gallerist by getting their friends and current artists to lobby for me, or dropping off a booklet in the mail, or a poster across from their house etc. Something scary like that. But I want to be different. I want to treat the marketing like an artwork itself. Then I’ll take what I learn and use it when I’m in New York to own that fucking town. My way.
• I want get a grant to either print my current work and get it framed (which is going to cost an imaginable fuckload) and for my planned work in the outback. If I can’t get a grant then think of some other ways of funding because after buying the printer, and buying a new camera capable of doing double the resolution I currently can (and new lens and reflector etc.) and living in Sydney or Melbourne for a bit I’m not going to have much money left for a trip. I may have to work!
• Although I’m a little scared of over-thinking or over-researching this trip, I think it will help to be a little more planned out than I was in Bangladesh (money is much tighter now, and I’d like to start getting good photos as quickly as possible). I want to do the research that I mentioned earlier.
• I also need to learn how to light like Benjamin Rinner’s work. Maybe work at a photography studio for a while, or read up on it and play around or something. Or a quick course at the ACP in Paddington. I also have to figure out to get make a transportable black background and use a reflector for these shots. Avedon took around a white background when we went touring through America.

So that’s another 2 or 3 months in either Sydney or Melbourne. Hopefully Melbourne because I really don’t want to stay with my parents, but that’d probably be the cheapest, most sensible option. It would be fun to be based in a vibe that isn’t Sydney, but the galleries that actually sell anything are probably in Sydney so I don’t know. More thinking and research required.

I also would like to go on a trial attempt for a month maybe in NSW and see if it will be fruitful. Prototyping. I’ll probably do this on my motorbike and so on.

…

Also, as you can see I’m really directed about what it is that I want to do and the time frames I would like to get things happening by. The actual trip can be fairly open-ended. I want time to be open hearted to the country and have all my plans and expectations and research totally upturned and thrown out. But I want to have good stuff to try to do another show and have enough money to get to New York for a while after that. … (Secretly I’m thinking 4 to 6 months for the actual trip. I know that’s unromantic to have a timeline, but that’s roughly what I’m thinking.)

The other issue I’ve been thinking of is that of loneliness. It’s strangely important in my work and is intimately tied in with my current ideas about Australia and the work I’m planning to do. I wonder if I need to be lonely when I’m doing this work? I wonder if I want to be lonely?

…

• essay
• work
• ideas
• plan

Posted 2 years ago