This book, produced by the Royal College of Art (RCA) in collaboration with Black Dog Publishing, brings together a group of writers, philosophers and photographers to explore the theme of Science & Fiction. The fourth annual RCA Photography publication, this book offers glimpses into possible futures and futures past. Short stories and essays punctuate a series of photographic artworks by RCA’s Photography students, all framed inside a smart, minimal graphic design.
The editor Rut Blees Luxemburg explains further in her afterword:
“Photography is often narrowly conceived as a medium that captures the past. Yet it also has the capacity to critically deconstruct the here and now, whilst over and above that, can be an active image generator for the future: constructing possible visions and images of that which might come to be.”
The first essay by Alexander García Düttmann, “Time Machine”, acts as an excellent introduction to the themes of the book. García Düttmann wonders about a world without science fiction, time travel to the past and whether the world might develop differently without past fictions. This idea brings to mind the imagined futures which have come to be, exemplified by objects such as Leonardo da Vinci’s helicopter, and Star Trek visual telephones now being everyday reality. Perhaps whatever can be imagined, even in fiction, can become real.
Marco Godoy’s Oath of allegiance (after Tony Benn) captures a performative act in photography, while Daewoong Kim’s Beyond sustenance updates the tradition of still life with pared down visual language. Mandukhai Kaylin’s Infinite Cream is in direct contrast, mixing obscured, suggestive flashes of flesh and decorated fake nails with wide-eyed Japanese cartoon girls. The artificiality of Kaylin’s imagery leads to Mark Aerial Waller’s essay “Synthetic Nature” which describes a chemical reaction made into art, although a reader with a better grasp of chemistry than this one would probably draw more meaning from this text.
Victoria Proffitt’s Homo Economicus tells a very contemporary story of the banking world by pulling together a collection of press clippings and moody black and white images. Based on a true, recent news story of a banker committing suicide at the heart of London’s financial district, it is very much about the world now, underpinned by the successes and failures of the financial sphere. Mortality shades Helen McGhie’s pieces Girl and Circuit. In a visualisation of the passing of time, youth and ageing are shown side by side, like a time machine.
Young June Lee’s “One Day”, which perhaps most resembles a Science Fiction story, is about an alien object that lands but cannot be documented or remembered afterwards. The problem of documentation looms within Hemya Moran’s Still-frame from my surveillance of Robin whom I spent 3 days with in November which plays with intimacy and observation, recording a close encounter.
Of Margaret’s Wave by Tom Clatworthy and Felicity Hammond tells the story of airship production, once the most modern of transports. A peculiar hostility to the project combines with a Royal touch as Princess Margaret makes an appearance, the photographs quoting her Mustique splendour.
Martin Shepley’s “Moments of Temporality in One” is a layered story, somehow its refrain “Bowloffruitviolinbottle” bringing to mind the multiple points of view of once-futuristic Cubism. It takes a doorway as its central motif, things passing, entrances and exits. At its heart are memories as the measure of time. The short story finds echoes in Petra Kubisova’s Method of Loci and Ida Taavitsainen’s And most of all I long for your touch.
Claire Abraham’s To await what the stars will bring is perhaps the most beautiful of the works here. Capturing details, the images are sumptuously attractive, with deep colours and touchable textures.
Olivier Richon’s “Over the Moon”, accompanied by a still life image of a swashbuckling sword, recounts Cyrano de Bergerac’s (1619-1645) story about the moon which could be described as early science fiction. Here, the moon image by Claire Abraham reverberates through the reader’s mind, suggesting the evocative view the 17th century writer had of it, well before space travel three centuries later. De Bergerac’s imagined moon takes us to a place where language is currency and the nose is the most important organ. Of course, the 19th century romantic play which features Cyrano as its (anti-)hero is centred on his large nose. His moon story is an early example of the space as a site for science fiction, predicting the Star Trek and Star War narratives of our time.
Dominic Hawgood’s Under the Influence is a series of photographs exploring texture and colour, produced with commercial gloss. Katarina Hrušková’s Buttery Battery series examines the surfaces created by pancake batter, silken food textured like marble. It is partnered with the deconstructed portraits of Pin Hui Chen’s The Beginnings.
“A Celebration of the Circus Flea” by Chloe Aridjis is a quirky story about circus fleas, not only the acrobatic kind, but trapeze artists and clairvoyants with turbans; less science, more magical reality. The Unforgetting by Peter Watkins is a series of formal black and white photography of objects linked to remembering, passing of time and knowledge. Created in elegant shades of grey, the images are like portraits of objects. Remembering and forgetting echoes through Shinwook Kim’s The Family Picture #1. A family portrait is projected onto a slab of ice, obscuring the faces of the sitters like the progress of forgetting, melting away like time.
Family and time are at the heart of Jana Koelmel’s Something to do with my Father (footnotes). The work explores the artist’s relationship with her father and his experiences as a war child which echo down the generations. The hidden inheritance of trauma is sketched out. The artist works in a foreign language, and as such the work becomes about more than individual experience, and addresses the problem of articulation. Foreign language gives her the freedom to confront a difficult subject and memories not her own.
Zinovy Zinik’s short story “There Are Many of Us” is a compact short story musing over whether we would recognise our future selves, if time could loop in on itself. The motif of Salvation Army, a group unchanged throughout its existence, marches on like time itself.
Emma Walker’s Hidden figures suggest presences in the landscape. Yulia Markman’s Mirror Stage combines portraits of men in domestic settings with public spaces with human absence. The inside and outside, contrasting intimacy and exposure, seem curiously interchangeable. The final essay, Michael Salu’s “20 of the Most FAQs for S.O.U.L.”, is a kind of question and answer instruction for a “self-generated” behavioural experience. Through clinical language, the reader is invited to perform it.
Rut Blees Luxemburg’s editorial afterword explains the forces present in photography, Science represented by data and Fiction guised as invention – or Science Fiction, as a narrative of potential futures. The approach this book takes creates a kind of dialogue of echoes and suggestions. Rather than a direct call and response, it allows the readers to make their own connections, drawing lines, sometimes half-conscious, between the essays and the rich imagery. The photographs demand double takes, further thought and the occasional flip through one’s internal image bank, testifying the diversity of photographic media.
- reviewed by Riikka Kuittinen
