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The idea originally was generated
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from a line in a book by Martin Harrison,
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where he explores Francis Bacon's use of photographs.
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The book's called In Camera,
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and under a worn and tatted photograph
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of George Dyer taking in Bacon's Reece Mews Studio.
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He suggests that, because a double exposure
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on a Rolleiflex camera is difficult
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or impossible to do accidentally,
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that it must have been a process actively engaged in
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between Deakin and Bacon.
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That idea sat with me for a while
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and then took me back to looking at the double exposures
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that I knew from the archive
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that I hadn't really considered in any way,
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apart from as being mistakes or errors in process.
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But after having read Martin Harrison's kind of note there,
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I went back to them to go through them again,
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which is what generated the idea
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that we might have something more interesting
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than a mistake.
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I wonder if you could say a little bit about
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that practise between the two of them.
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So the images that Deakin took for Bacon,
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the understanding of how and where
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and when they were commissioned has really been unexplored.
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The earliest record we have of Deakin meeting Bacon
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is when he photographed him for Vogue.
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I think it was December '51,
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but the relatively small circle,
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I suppose sort of like a edgy, creative,
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homosexual underground scene that they centred on
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around SoHo, both pre-war and post-war
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means it's difficult to imagine that they wouldn't have
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known each other earlier.
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The classic photograph of Bacon with sides of meat,
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it became a defining image of Bacon,
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but it post dates Bacon's first use of meat
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and painted imagery.
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After that photograph, Bacon painted a very similar kind
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of layout using meat with a central figure
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and two hanging halves of a carcass
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of meat either side of him.
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So there's like a one, two, three, backwards
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and forwards there, which kind
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of suggests at least a conversation between the two.
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We have other photographs of meats
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that Deakin took on holiday with Bacon in Athens in 1965.
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He was on holiday with George Dyer and Bacon.
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The process may have been so loose that Deakin could have
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thought about taking photographs
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that prospectively Bacon may have liked,
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mainly because he got paid, I suppose by Bacon.
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And so any sort of extra work
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that he could get would entail
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the possibility of further payment.
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I mean, I wonder if you could say a little bit about
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how Bacon used the prints themselves.
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So the process of engaging Deakin took photograph
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what became his standard subjects, Bacon standard subjects
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of his friends and associates around Soho.
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Of course, they both knew the same people
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and went to the same places.
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Bacon and Deakin even holiday'd together with Dyer in '65.
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Prints that Deakin would've made for Bacon would've gone
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through some sort of process
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of selection from perhaps from contact sheets
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or they would've been pre-delivered as, you know,
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give me five of each of those
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and he would've walked them around,
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I suppose, and handed them over.
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So this, it's difficult to say there,
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but we do have marked contact sheets of Muriel Belcher
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that Bacon painted from
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where there are two double exposures on the roll
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and if any sort of presentation was shown to Bacon
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to select from, he would've seen these other
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double exposures.
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And of course, you know, the strange effects
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and the strange photographs that kind of piqued his interest
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and grabbed at the way
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that he generated ideas to paint from.
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You can completely understand how it sits within that.
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As it developed,
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I suppose they reached the high point really in the ones
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for George Dyer, which were taken in Bacon's studio
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with the mess of his working practise.
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You know, the detritus
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and the complete wreck of all the previous paint boxes
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and paint brushes and material all around the floor.
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There are two double exposures on that roll.
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There are two prints that exist of the same double exposure,
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but on one of them he's painted out key parts of the body
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and the double to kind of give a more disjointed body.
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So paint out one part of one leg,
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but keep the other part that doesn't associate with
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that position and to give the disjointed kind
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of figurative shape to the body.
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The essential link between double exposures
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and Bacon's painting is illustrated most strongly
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in a painting where the layout and design
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of the Deakin double exposure ends up essentially carried
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over into the painting.
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The double exposure in this sequence doesn't seems
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to be the sitter repeated twice.
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Most of the other double exposures are the same person
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photographed twice on the same shot.
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But this uniquely seems
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to be a different person shot on the negative
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of a previous sitter.
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And the positioning of the face on the buttocks
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and the derrière of Henriette Marais gives another layer
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of subversive sexual,
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almost insulting kind of imposition over the construct.
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Who that face might be
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because it looks like a man takes you into all sorts
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of funny little corners and whether it might be Peter Lacy,
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Bacon's boyfriend prior to George Dyer,
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but it also interestingly looks like Peter Watson,
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one of the directors of the ICA Institute
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of Contemporary Art where Bacon
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had his first solo show in '55.
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And of course this is only known
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because we have the negative from the full roll,
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the prints that ended up in Bacon's possession
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and then over the process became painted on,
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trampled on, cut up, folded,
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and all the rest of the kind of finance
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that Bacon enacted on the photographs to kind
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of get the image that he wanted.
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This image is not known from amongst the detritus.
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There are two images of a double exposure
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of the Bacon painting unglazed in the street.
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I think this is outside Overstrand Mansions in Battersea
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with the Woolworth heir standing in front.
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Looking at it unglazed,
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one of the things that we talked about a while back was the
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glazing of Bacon's own paintings
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where there is this argument to be made for a kind
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of super imposition within his own paintings
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where he had all of them glazed to a fairly high finish so
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that the viewer of the painting becomes part
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of the image itself,
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which I think is also quite interesting just
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for looking at this photograph
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where this figure is positioned in front of it,
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they become part of the painting itself.
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He's actually is interrupting your sight line
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of the Bacon painting by standing in front
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of it in a double exposure, which is so similar
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to the effect or a reflection in glass.
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I mean, it also makes you think about
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how you look at these photographs
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because in some ways we are also kind of struggling
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to make out what the image is within it
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or which was taken first or those sorts of questions
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and making out what is the outline of one image
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and what is the outline of another.
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So there's a sort of play between what Bacon's do
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with these photographs and then what Deakin is doing
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with Bacon's painting.
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It's interesting to look at some of the images
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as they exist now
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as prints in Bacon's Studio
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or the reconstruction of that at Hugh Lane to see the kind
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of state that they're in.
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I mean some of this is wear and tear
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and some of it is deliberate manipulation of the image,
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which has a kind of, well it's been argued
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that there's a kind of violence, I suppose,
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to the photograph itself.
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And it's interesting then to really look at these double
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exposures and think about those as an almost kind
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of icon plastic aspects.
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We've talked about being able to see new images within it,
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but actually there's also a kind of destruction
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of being able to identify the figure that
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that's happening here as well.
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In this photograph that we're looking at
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of Dyer in the studio is really interesting
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because what stays still just about in the image is this
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morass of the material in the studio itself,
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which this photograph then itself became part of.
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So it's a kind of an image within an image
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with an image within an image inside it as well.
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So there's a lot of kind of ideas about image making
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and how we recognise
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or misrecognize things within this photograph,
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But it raises some quite interesting questions about
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where the Bacon scholarship focuses its attentions
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because there's an awful lot of focus obviously on
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what is in the remains of the studio,
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but often without necessarily taking into account that
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that's a 40-year-old space.
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And that as we know from looking at the photographs
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of Dyer in that studio
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and then seeing the prints that have then become part of
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that studio, it's in constant motion.
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So we don't necessarily know that what's there at the time
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of his death was what was there in the mid 60s.
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So this archive,
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I think allows a very different take on this material
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and it allows us to pose quite different questions about it,
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which may be more speculative than going with the evidence
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of the studio, but it asks us, I think, to kind
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of address quite how we use that studio material
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and to treat it with slightly more trepidation than it has
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been in the past.
Yeah.
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Deakin was really supported by Bacon
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and able to live pretty much, you know, he would pay
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for his holidays and pay for meals out
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and he even gave him proceeds from a painting
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to live on supposedly.
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And then towards the end of his life,
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when Deakin had lung cancer,
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Bacon visited him often in hospital
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and brought him gifts and books.
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And then at the end of his life paid for Deakin to be sent
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to Brighton to Convalesce,
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which is where he died the very next day.
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Their associations are almost familial
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and that it brings to mind the phrase of queer kinship.
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The fact that he wouldn't name him as next of kin,
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which seems like a joke,
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but actually when your friends are your closest family,
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which is often a kind of constructing queer friendships,
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I think it indicates of just
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how close they were on their understanding
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of each other might have been ragged and annoying
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and irritating to each other,
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but actually that they were just fundamentally
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had a long shared history.