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<v ->"First of all, I want to say</v>

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"that in taking one photograph,

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"a good photographer is really taking two,

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"one with the camera in his hands

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"and one with the visual imagination.

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"The photograph in his head

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"is a photograph of his idea of the sitter,

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"and he needs perception and his study to have the idea.

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"The other is easy, but the two photographs

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"have to be superimposed, one on the other

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"in some peculiar and unexplainable way

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"at the moment when the camera clicks,

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"and that is very hard indeed.

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"Being fatally drawn to the human race,

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"what I want to do when I photograph it

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"is to make a revelation about it,

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"so my sitters turn into my victims.

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"But I would like to add that it is only those with a demon,

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"however small and of whatever kind

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"whose faces lend themselves to being victimised at all."

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So this is the first two paragraphs from Deakin's text

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that he wrote for a prospective exhibition

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of eight portraits,

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so it's called "The Text for Eight Portraits."

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After this, he goes through the eight portraits

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and talks about how he knows the subjects

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and what the image means to him.

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But the first two paragraphs

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seem to illustrate something quite interesting.

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I think that you spotted, originally,

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I had actually missed the subtle association

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that there might be, in these lines,

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to the double exposures.

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<v ->It's quite interesting for thinking</v>

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about how he is conceiving of every image that he takes

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as being a superposition

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about having an idea that's in his head

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and then having something which is actually in the camera.

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Because in the photographs themselves,

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I suppose there's something slightly different happening

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where it's implied that there might be two aspects

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to the person presenting themselves,

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rather than necessarily him thinking

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about how he's perceiving it.

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And I suppose the photographs

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are doing both of those things at the same time.

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They're sort of about his framing of the shot,

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but also the person's framing of themselves.

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<v Paul>When you read the text, him saying,</v>

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"The two photographs have to be superimposed one another

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"in some peculiar and unexplainable way

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"at the moment when the camera clicks,"

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it seems to allude to the process,

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but also it seems to be slightly disingenuous,

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because he's allowing some magic

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to be introduced into his conception of the process,

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"a peculiar and unexplainable way."

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It is actually possible to explain

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what he's doing when he does a double exposure.

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So, there's some sort of magical positioning there,

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which is quite interesting when he goes on to discuss

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about he wants to reveal a demon in people.

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That's kind of like his impulse

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when he is taking a portrait.

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<v ->Yeah, and it seems to be there</v>

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about the ability of photography

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to reveal something which is unseen,

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which is quite a peculiar idea,

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because on the one hand, we're thinking about the camera

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as a mechanical device,

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something that's just reproducing reality.

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<v Paul>Yeah, it's empirical, it's real, yeah.</v>

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<v James>And that's something that's mostly associated</v>

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with Deakin's photography.

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We generally think about it as being very unordained,

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as being very straightforward.

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So this idea that it's revealing

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something mysterious or demonic,

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it goes back to much earlier thinking about photography,

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things like spirit photography

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that's revealing these ghosts in the background.

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And in some ways, these double exposures

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seem to reveal that side of his practise

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and an interest in actually revealing the unseen

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or something on the other side of the mirror perhaps.

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<v Paul>I really like the idea</v>

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of the double exposure expressing a double self,

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even the phrase, the etymology of the phrase

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becomes layered with meaning.

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The double exposure idea essentially does sit

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within that surrealist position,

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which, I suppose, was generated from Freudian analysis,

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which is that there's another self

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that can be exposed by applying certain techniques,

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and that the double exposure almost by its very nature

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seems to really illustrate that concept

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in a very pure kind of way, that there are two selves,

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and by a certain process that's both mechanical and human,

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that these illustrators in a moment by a click.

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<v ->Yeah, I mean, I suppose that there's that way</v>

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of looking at it, that it could be two images

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and one of them is more real or not than the other.

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But then there's also this idea

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which is sort of a sphere around Deakin

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are really engaging with around existentialism at this time,

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that you might have many faces,

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and none of them are a genuine self.

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And that you could also think about these images

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that actually, they're all a performance of a person.

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And if we're looking at somebody like say Muriel Belcher,

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who, herself, is kind of always on show

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when she's described in the setting

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of the (indistinct) rooms as something

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that's constantly performing for her group of people,

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it's quite interesting to think about it that way,

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that it's not necessarily revealing

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a more genuine or authentic self,

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but actually saying that that might not exist at all.

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And I was very interested in this image

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that we're looking at here,

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which is not related really to the circle around Deakin.

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I mean, it is tangentially,

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because it's part of the art world itself at that time.

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But this photograph of Pegeen Guggenheim

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where it's definitely demonstrating this idea

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that creative people have an inner life.

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They are working with the imagination,

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and it's using the double exposure

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to thematize that in some way.

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But it's difficult to look at this photograph

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without thinking about the biographical details

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of her life as well,

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as somebody who struggled with depression, particularly,

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'cause the pose itself is this melancholic,

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leaning on the hand, but also,

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them being surrounded by all of these tools of the trade

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of brushes, pencils, and all of those kinds of things.

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So he's definitely thinking about it,

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not just as a technical trick,

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but also one which is able to communicate something from it.

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And here, I think there's a very deliberate play

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with psychological states

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that's related quite explicitly to the sitter.

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<v Paul>I've not really thought about it before,</v>

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but the more I think about this image,

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and as you say, knowing a few biographical details of her

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that she ultimately committed suicide, I think,

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is that these brushes and the tools, as you say,

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are almost crowding her out.

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It's almost like they're multiplying around her.

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I know that she struggled

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with the relationship with her mother, Peggy Guggenheim,

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that her mother didn't really support her artistic endeavours

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and never thought they had any merit,

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which seems to be a fairly, almost become a standard trope

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of children of famous or successful adults

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working in the same sphere as their parents.

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Even the pictures on the wall and boxes of paint,

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and the paper is all actually coming up in her

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and unsettling her.

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The studio that that's taken in, her studio in Paris,

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I think it was on the Île de la Cité in the centre of Paris,

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was right at the top of a very tall building

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with loads of skylights and glass and windows

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and rickety balconies around her.

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<v ->It's quite an unusual composition compared to the others,</v>

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which are broadly, centrally focused.

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They're photographs where the sitter is centred,

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which again, you could relate back

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to some of Deakin's paintings,

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which often have this bilateral symmetry

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that's then thrown off through it

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and which the double exposure plays with an idea

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of symmetry, of mirroring, but it's not ever really possible

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to get something that is that symmetrical.

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So there's always something slightly unnerving

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about these images, where they are slightly off centre,

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which seems to be deliberate

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and which, of course, relates back to Deakin's painting,

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but is also used in sittings way outside of that circle.

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<v James>And some of them, as Deakin was saying,</v>

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in his (indistinct) of eight portraits,

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he wanted to expose a demon in his sitters.

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Some of 'em actually do come across as demonic

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almost in the classic sense.

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I thought it was interesting

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that a double exposure photograph was used

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to promote the film about the possession,

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the big film in the seventies.

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<v ->"The Exorcist?"</v>
<v ->"The Exorcist," yeah,</v>

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which is defacto a demon possession.

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It kind of links it straight through to, you know,

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that's more sort of gothic,

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sort of like extreme what double exposure infers.

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The early years of photography,

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I suppose, around the late 1800s,

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when the tricks become formalised, I suppose,

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the access to these tricks become like specialised knowledge

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of the photographer in the fact that the general population,

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I suppose, wouldn't be aware

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that double exposure is anything other than reality.

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It captured reality, because that's the narrative

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of the assumption of photography,

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that it uniquely manages to capture reality.

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So they were able to create, I suppose,

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a whole sub genre of spirit photography

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and capturing ghosts and capturing dead people,

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which again, ties into Deakin's inference

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that he was capturing a demon in people

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when he took their portrait.

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<v Paul>I think these images are very interesting,</v>

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mid 20th century photographs, which are really looking back

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to some of the origins of it

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for thinking about spiritualist photography,

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for thinking perhaps about motion capture.

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And they seem to be really thinking about photography itself

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as a medium as much as what's being captured in the image.

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