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There are about 40 double exposures in the archive.
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When you go through them and look at them,
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some of them initially seem to be a double exposure,
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but perhaps reflections in a window
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looking in a shop window.
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One thing it might suggest is that the effect was
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what Deakin was interested in
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and that the process to achieving that effect, which is,
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you know, a ways to a means.
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Deakin's pre-war life is much like Bacon's is kind of murky,
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which is interesting
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because they were of course both homosexual
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and in those difficult times,
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I suppose you covered your tracks
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or had to be, obviously had to be a lot more circumspective
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about the traces that you left of your life.
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Deakin started out in the early 30s
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as a window dresser, so he would've been aware of
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how things are displayed in a space through reflections.
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So it's interesting that we do have images of shop windows,
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many images of shop windows that kind of do have that
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frozen surreal aspect of you're not quite sure what it is
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that the image directly addressing.
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You don't know whether he was trying
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to capture something in the shop window
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that the reflection is interrupted,
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or whether it's the whole effect that he was looking for,
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or whether you're supposed to be looking at the reflection
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and not the objects in the window.
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You know, there's that sort of multilayered possibility.
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Shop window displays were a zone really of,
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or I suppose as cruising
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or cruising, the point at which being a flanner,
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somebody wandering around the city,
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taking in the sites turns into an activity
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where you're registering and judging and being judged
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and interacting with other potentially queer men
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just by exchanging glances.
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You would stand in front of a shop window
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and if somebody would come up
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and stand alongside you,
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you could have an oblique conversation
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that was supposedly about the items in the shop,
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but you had the ability to refocus your attention onto the
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reflection so that you could look at each other
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but not directly.
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So it was all this oblique exploration
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of whether there was the potential for a conversation
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that would veer out
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of its safe zone into something more direct, I suppose,
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and open and honest, not necessarily something
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that would lead to sex, but just something
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that would free up an opportunity to be more available
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for a more honest discussion.
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And in some ways it raises some quite interesting
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questions about queer culture at that time
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and about recognition of other people
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who would be forming part of that culture
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and thinking about photography and what it does record
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and what it doesn't.
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Because we wouldn't necessarily look at these photographs
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today and register them as being queer images,
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but then there is the ability of people at that time to kind
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of spot one another at a time when, as we say,
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there were very limited spaces for that kind of interaction.
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Shop windows and kind of flirtive glances.
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Quite interesting to think about in terms
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of reflection in people's reflected gazes
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where they're not necessarily looking directly
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at one another, which you can certainly translate
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through some of these photographs.
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And certainly further on
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for thinking about the double exposure
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and this idea of the split between a kind of conceptual idea
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of taking a photograph and what's in front of you.
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That there is this split of the time between one's desires
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and then one's behaviours in the street
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that certainly you could argue is kind of thematized
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through some of these photographs
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and in some quite interesting ways.
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I mean, thinking about the George Dyer photographs,
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for example, of somebody who isn't
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what was called at the time of kind of a visible homosexual,
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but somebody who was rough trade essentially,
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but who is kind of presenting themselves
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as a very vulnerable figure in that photograph
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or is being presented as that.
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That each image of you
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that's replicated can be a different facet
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of your personality, which the cameras managed
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to make expressly visible.
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That's usually hidden, which has direct kind of connections
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to the thinking around your hidden life
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as a homosexual man at a time when visible displays
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of your sexuality
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or your identity was something
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that could cause you significant problems.
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And that, you know, depending on your personality type,
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you might try to suppress or find impossible to suppress
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or would display to certain people in certain situations,
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but obviously not in others.
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The device of a double exposure illustrates
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that condition in a way
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that's quite refreshingly straightforward.
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Just last year in 2014,
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a photographer called Daniella Zalcman used the process
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of doll exposures in her practise where she went to Uganda
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to document LGBT activists.
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Obviously in a society where homosexuality's illegal
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and dangerous in that they had published on the front pages
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of newspapers, the photographs of known homosexuals,
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I suppose, under the direct aim of terrorising
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and marginalising these people into having no voice
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and putting their lives at risk.
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So she used the practise of double exposure
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to photograph LGBT activists,
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which I suppose does two things really.
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It sort of captures their double life,
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but it, she also claimed that it was
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to obscure their own identity for their own safety so
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that the double exposure really prevents you simply
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recognising a face,
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but it is the face, it is the photograph of the face,
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but it's distorted in a way
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that prevents simple identification
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and allowed her to photograph these very brave activists
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and present them in a way that they both felt comfortable
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with, but also illustrated some interesting questions
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about identity.
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One of the most interesting double exposures is
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by a really significant artist called Claude Cahun,
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a really radical figure on the margins
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of surrealism in Paris and then moved to Jersey.
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She lived as a lesbian, lived with her lover,
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but she actually considered herself as without gender.
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At the time, to generate such ideas as really radical.
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And it's part of the reason she's become such a central
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figure in the whole explosion really in queer politics
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and gender politics in the last 25 years.
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Her main practise was creating photographs
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or self-portraits in various costumes and disguises
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and makeup, one of which is a double exposure
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where she's shaved her head, which apparently was a bit
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of a trend amongst ultra radical women in Paris
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in the late 1910s.
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So she's got her head shaved
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and she's photographed herself
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with her head coming out over her shoulder.
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So two heads in the portrait,
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but turned one to the back and one to the front.
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And so it's really interesting
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to see such an early double exposure from such an important
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photographer and one who's really is at the centre
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and the apogee of thinking around queer identity
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and how you can position yourself
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as somebody without gender at such an early time
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and in such an unlikely place as a holiday island of Jersey.
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Whether Deakin knew that photograph of course is unlikely,
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but just to find such an early example connected
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to queer thinking and queer history
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really underlines the position of double exposures
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the way that they've been used by artists and creatives.
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I mean, you could also think about,
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if we're thinking about reflections on
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glass of shop windows, thinking about the negative itself
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as being this transparent image,
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which is then solidified into these prints.
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And that one also as with quite a few
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of them playing not just with the image itself
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but also with scale.
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So there's been a kind of zooming in here.
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So there's a larger head on top of a smaller head,
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which also, you know, plays with some of the variables
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of photography.
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Its ability to play with scale, with focus,
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with where the image sits within its frame.
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So again, it kind of draws attention to some
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of the technical aspects of photography
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rather than simply seeing it as a mirror of reality
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or a kind of transparent window onto another arena.