Musings on the work of Joss McKinley
There are moments when you forget what time it is. When your
skin breathes sun and the smell of freshly cut grass hangs in the
air. Occasionally a plane draws a silent white thread across the
sky. Quietness surrounds you. Only the birds make themselves
heard every now and then.
The photographs of Joss McKinley alternate between
landscapes, still lifes, abstract images and portraits, mostly of
friends, family and loved ones. Through the use of soft colours and
unspectacular subjects the photographs breathe tranquility. A boy
sleeps under a languid sun, a beautiful woman looks serenely
towards the horizon, a white wall, betrayed by a socket, reflects a
golden afternoon glow. To give the photographs an interesting
tension McKinley uses imperfections such as double exposure,
blurred edges and stripes on the lens.
In 2009 Dutch philosopher Joke Hermsen wrote Stil de
Tijd, (Stop the Time) a plea for a slow future. Her collection
of essays deals with the elusiveness and complexity of the
phenomenon of time. It states that,
'…since the introduction of international Greenwich Time at the
end of the nineteenth century we have lived more and more to
the clock and so that other, more personal or inner experience of
time has been expelled to the background'.(p.11)
"[…]wij sinds de invoering van de internationale Greenwichtijd
aan het einde van de negentiende eeuw steeds meer naar de kloktijd
zijn gaan leven en daardoor die andere, meer persoonlijke of
innerlijke ervaring van tijd naar de achtergrond hebben verdreven".
(p.11)
McKinley's work deals with human desire for nature, quiet,
daydreaming and time. For me 'Gathering
Wool' is the expression of Hermsen's inner experience of time
in which there is no place for the clock. The meaning of McKinley's
work lies mainly in the feeling of a loss of time evoked by his
subject matter, the sequencing of the images and the space in
between.
McKinley's photographs illustrate one of the fundamental
characteristics of photography. Photography stops time and captures
it in solidified moments. However, because time cannot but
continue on, a hint of melancholy remains.
Kim
Knoppers