Everything changed on the night of January 31, 2020. At 11:00 p.m. (12:00 a.m. Continental time) that winter night, the United Kingdom officially ceased to be a member state of the European Union. Three years had passed since the unexpected result of the referendum. 47 years of European integration were over. A Feast Day for the Leavers; a disaster for the Remainers. Among the crowd that gathered in Parliament Square in London was the Spanish photographer Alejandro Acín, who was ready to document the events with his camera in very special premises. He began to give shape to a project, The Rest is History, a photographic series articulating a book and an exhibition of the same title that will be on view at the Sala Kursala of the University of Cádiz at the end of September.
“Brexit was a very long process for everyone,” says Acín. A change that affected the photographer personally and in which he was unable to actively participate despite having lived in the UK for twelve years. So he tried to approach this break more creatively. During his career as a photographer, Acín has worked with various historical archives such as the Bristol British Empire Commonwealth Collection which served as the basis for his latest work in progress, Alone with Empire, which he co-produced with Isaac Blease (author of the text) of this latest Photo book attached), in which he questions the way the colonial film archive is presented and experienced, using the folk collections of that institution. In this way, the Brexit Day scenario was presented to the author as a new way of examining the construction of collective memory. “A way of responding to the media narrative that was created in relation to the transcendence of this historical moment,” emphasizes the author.
Approaching the subject like a photojournalistic report, the photographer made his way through the crowds gathered in the square next to Parliament for a celebration called by the UKIP party, the UK Independence Party became. founded by ultra-nationalist Nigel Farage. In the same way, he decided to photograph the British Museum, covering two locations in the British capital of great historical importance. Several aesthetic limitations were imposed: works in black and white and digital. “I liked the versatility of shooting both indoors and outdoors at a public event. For this I used a very high sensitivity in the camera sensor. I was interested in digital noise, the random appearance of traces as a reference to the social noise surrounding the Brexit process and its consequences,” explains the photographer. The idea was to create a third space where past and present could be united. Find the point of confluence in time where it is difficult to understand today without alluding to yesterday, and vice versa. “Create a conflict between individuals, artifacts and history, which is accepted as something under construction that has just been born,” emphasizes the author.
Image belongs to “One of Yours” by Daniel Mayrit.Daniel Mayrit
From the opening pages of The Rest is History, the reader is confronted with the burden of a nation’s past. Overwhelmed by voluminous columns that transport you into a dense and opaque atmosphere. A space that is sometimes claustrophobic and sometimes dreamlike, where two different scenarios collide. They are decontextualized images in which details and symbols predominate. A petrified theater where it is difficult to distinguish people from ancient statues. A phantasmagorical setting that “refers to how history pervades our days,” the photographer adds to the nostalgia for empire some attribute to Brexiteers. Meanwhile, the hours are marked between the pictures, the story is being built.
And who is the new leader?
Populism is the main theme of Daniel Mayrit’s latest project One of Yours, which is part of the program of the eighth edition of the Images Vevey Festival taking place in this Swiss city. On this occasion, the Biennale brings together the works of 45 artists from 20 countries. A series of posters, banners and banners scattered in different parts of the spaces occupied by the festival attract the attention of visitors, who are initially surprised at how little they know the young candidate who is the protagonist of an alleged political campaign in the arising is. (Something that in principle should not collide in a political system like the Swiss one, direct democracy, a peculiarity that leads to frequent referendums). Only upon arrival at the city’s tourist office, which has been converted into the candidate’s official office, does the visitor learn the stranger’s true identity.
The display is part of the fiction constructed by Mayrit, a satire on the discursive tools and the populist visual aesthetics of recent years, for which the author uses the performance. So he set out to embody the character of a political candidate who bears his name. Using the usual graphic means of political parties, he launched a fake campaign, drew up a manifesto and staged various stunts under the auspices of a party that was also fake. Coinciding with the launch of Donald Trump’s latest campaign, the photographer launched his campaign on Instagram, publishing daily posts responding to breaking news. A strategy that lasted until the inauguration of the current President of the United States, Joe Biden.
The project was also developed through a publication. Another element of the performance in the form of a campaign magazine. It contains a complete hagiography of the candidate, his life and miracles, accompanied by several images, as well as a subscription sheet explaining how to contribute to his census, his speeches and his most viral tweets. The project is never explained. The language of the text, the exaggerations and the strategy used are so obvious that the presentation needs no further explanation. As it should happen in real life, it’s the extreme excitement that drives the reader to dismantle the farce.
Image belongs to “One of Yours” by Daniel Mayrit.Daniel Mayrit
It is not the first time that the author has set about examining the relationship between power and image. He already did it in You haven’t seen their faces, forming a sort of police notebook made up of the faces of the City of London’s most influential figures. A project that won him the 2015 Paris Photo-Aperture Award for Best First Photobook. “Populism is a very perverse word,” warns the photographer. “I interpret it as a set of communication tools at the service of any ideology, both right and left. Following the theories of the philosopher Ernesto Laclau, they create a semi-fictional political subject they call People. If it opposes the elites, left-wing populism emerges; if it does it to other internal or external enemies such as emigrants, right-wing populism arises.”
Both extremes coincide in the figure of the charismatic leader, in the hyper-leadership that this figure represents, destined to embody all the demands of the people. “A single person who seems almost chosen by divine magic,” the author adds sarcastically. In this way, the images of One of yours reproduce these messianic gestures that the leaders bring closer to the religious. Like the images to which Marine LePen has accustomed us, with open arms and eyes that allow themselves to be embraced by the crowd’s affection. “With right-wing populism, a dominant alpha male figure with a strong incorruptible character tends to predominate. Vladímír Putin is a clear example of this, riding through the steppe on horseback or petting a tiger. It is a masculinization that is independent of whether the candidate is a woman,” warns Mayrit. A tactic that has been extended to leaders and parties that do not fall under the definition of populism. Therefore, in order to carry out the digital montages that articulate the project (which represents 90% of the images, the rest consists of images made by Mayrit himself), the author had to use not only the images from the archive of the Populist Parties. “There are montages on photos where the original protagonists are Barack Obama, Emmanuel Macron and Pedro Sánchez. Populism’s visual strategy has worked so effectively over the past two decades that it has contaminated the rest of leaders and parties,” the author asserts. “The staging of Pete Souza, the official White House photographer during the Obama administration and before that during Ronald Reagan’s second presidency, is a paradigmatic case. It abuses the emotional component. Emotion triumphs over reason. It’s a photo that speaks to the gut and the heart. It no longer seems important who manages an economy better, but who reaches the passions the most”.
And are we more susceptible to manipulation since there have been social networks? “The truth is that the rise of networks has enabled the rise of populism,” Mayrit says. “It was always based on the elimination of interlocutors. The Messiah communicates directly with his people at the mass rallies, now they do it through the networks too. Not that the networks have made us more vulnerable to manipulation, but that they have collapsed without us knowing how to deal with them. They are not the sine qua non, but they were good breeding ground for the end of the populist discourse.”
‘The rest is history’. Alexander Bakin. Kursala room. University of Cadiz. Cadiz. From September 28th to November 4th.
‘The rest is history’. Alexander Azin. ICVL study. 124 pages. 29 euros.
“One of you”, Daniel Mayrit. Festival pictures Vevey. Vevey. Swiss. Until 09/25
“One of them”. Daniel Mairit. phree 124 pages. 20 Euros.
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