The work of Melbourne-raised, London-based photographer Paul Knight drifts between the spaces of intimacy and distance. While his ongoing Chamber Music series charts the personal, everyday experience of life with his partner Peter—be it breakfast together, laundry, sex, day trips, or moments of domestic calm—it eschews Knight’s own diaristic gaze. Allowing his camera to essentially become part of the architecture, Knight is at once present and absent, the lens and shutter left to their own devices.
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With two very different new exhibitions showing at Melbourne’s Neon Parc and the Centre for Contemporary Photography (CCP)—titled Substance and Fictions respectively—we spoke with Knight about freeing the photograph from chronology and time, finding the immaterial in the material, rendering physical and personal intimacy, and, well, cum.VICE: Your new show at Neon Parc, Substance, fits into a larger, ongoing body of work called Chamber Music. I’d love for you to preface that wider work.
Paul Knight: From the first day I met my partner Peter, in early 2009, I started taking photographs of us together. In my own history of taking photographs, the banal aspects of life have always been a big interest. Photography always looks for the spectacle in some way, so I’m always really interested in the idea of the banal becoming the spectacle and had been doing that in my own practice, shooting from the hip so to speak with 35mm. When I met Peter, I just continued to do that in my situations with him.It is very much this apparently diaristic investigation of two people’s lives. We sort of make ourselves available in front of the camera, but I like to say that the camera is doing its thing and we just happen to be there. So anything that happens in our lives is available to be seen by the camera and we try and keep everything open to that parameter.The way the exhibition’s hung at the gallery seems to have a very unconventional logic. There seems to be a randomness about it; images are scattered throughout the space in a way.
While the idea of time is unavoidable in photography, I’m more interested in the representation of photography as more of a spatial object. So in terms of time, I want the chronology to be completely broken so it loses this linear representation and is rather interpreted more in a spatial way – in terms of volume rather than length.
Paul Knight: From the first day I met my partner Peter, in early 2009, I started taking photographs of us together. In my own history of taking photographs, the banal aspects of life have always been a big interest. Photography always looks for the spectacle in some way, so I’m always really interested in the idea of the banal becoming the spectacle and had been doing that in my own practice, shooting from the hip so to speak with 35mm. When I met Peter, I just continued to do that in my situations with him.It is very much this apparently diaristic investigation of two people’s lives. We sort of make ourselves available in front of the camera, but I like to say that the camera is doing its thing and we just happen to be there. So anything that happens in our lives is available to be seen by the camera and we try and keep everything open to that parameter.The way the exhibition’s hung at the gallery seems to have a very unconventional logic. There seems to be a randomness about it; images are scattered throughout the space in a way.
While the idea of time is unavoidable in photography, I’m more interested in the representation of photography as more of a spatial object. So in terms of time, I want the chronology to be completely broken so it loses this linear representation and is rather interpreted more in a spatial way – in terms of volume rather than length.
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The geometry of the photographic print almost necessitates a particular read and logic, and to move past that can be really tough.
That’s right. All the images have to be equal in terms of scale and presentation. So burgers and fries on the street coming home from the pub has to be equal to dinner a Vue de Monde or something. It has to be the same thing. I like to think of the groupings of images as constellations in a way, so they orbit each other.The particular format of the prints at Neon Parc is important too—
I’m really interested in that idea of just looking, distilling things so they’re just really quiet. With the Neon Parc hang, there are 72 prints there but I think the success of those big, white borders is that they can dominate the images. There’s a lot of colour in there, but amid that white space it’s seemingly really reduced and reductive. That means that the viewing distance is really close.Which is quite intense, especially considering the amount of cum.
It’s everywhere. But I love that dynamic. It means that as a viewer, you’re compromised in a way. You’re in it before you realise what it is that you’re in. If it’s some huge, epically scaled print, then you never really risk anything as a viewer. You can just wander past and take it in from a distance. Often there’s not a huge reward for proximity.Sex figures a lot in all of your series – this idea of physical intimacy. Where do you see its bearings?
Photography really likes intense situations. It likes violence and sex and drug abuse and poverty and all these really intense things. It always returns to them. So for me, in a way, intimacy is this really intense conceptual space, and I’m really interested in seeing if photography – if it is so eloquent in representing these things – can capture intimacy? Because, essentially, intimacy is non-material and photography relies so heavily on solid, material things. It’s the inherent problem within the machine and the medium.
That’s right. All the images have to be equal in terms of scale and presentation. So burgers and fries on the street coming home from the pub has to be equal to dinner a Vue de Monde or something. It has to be the same thing. I like to think of the groupings of images as constellations in a way, so they orbit each other.The particular format of the prints at Neon Parc is important too—
I’m really interested in that idea of just looking, distilling things so they’re just really quiet. With the Neon Parc hang, there are 72 prints there but I think the success of those big, white borders is that they can dominate the images. There’s a lot of colour in there, but amid that white space it’s seemingly really reduced and reductive. That means that the viewing distance is really close.Which is quite intense, especially considering the amount of cum.
It’s everywhere. But I love that dynamic. It means that as a viewer, you’re compromised in a way. You’re in it before you realise what it is that you’re in. If it’s some huge, epically scaled print, then you never really risk anything as a viewer. You can just wander past and take it in from a distance. Often there’s not a huge reward for proximity.Sex figures a lot in all of your series – this idea of physical intimacy. Where do you see its bearings?
Photography really likes intense situations. It likes violence and sex and drug abuse and poverty and all these really intense things. It always returns to them. So for me, in a way, intimacy is this really intense conceptual space, and I’m really interested in seeing if photography – if it is so eloquent in representing these things – can capture intimacy? Because, essentially, intimacy is non-material and photography relies so heavily on solid, material things. It’s the inherent problem within the machine and the medium.
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It’s very interesting that amongst the intimate situations within your work, there’s always a distance between you and the camera. It’s not your gaze so to speak.
It’s the idea of setting up systems for the camera to do what it does. I’m absolutely fascinated by that aspect of photography – that it kind of just does its own thing. People try and force that - there are all these inherent, really beautiful and amazing things within that relationship between the camera and the print that just happen intrinsically. They’re just there anyway. You don’t have to do anything in a way. If you push it too hard, it ends up just weeping with effect and nostalgia. A lot of the images from Chamber Music were done on timer and I won’t use a tripod, but rather just the architecture of the space, like a mantelpiece or table. So in that way, the space almost removes me and my composition, so the room dictates the scene. You’re just letting the camera see how it sees, instead of making a decision to make something look more romantic or whatever the case may be.Substance is showing at Neon Parc till 12 JulyFiction is showing at the Centre for Contemporary Photography till 31 August.
It’s the idea of setting up systems for the camera to do what it does. I’m absolutely fascinated by that aspect of photography – that it kind of just does its own thing. People try and force that - there are all these inherent, really beautiful and amazing things within that relationship between the camera and the print that just happen intrinsically. They’re just there anyway. You don’t have to do anything in a way. If you push it too hard, it ends up just weeping with effect and nostalgia. A lot of the images from Chamber Music were done on timer and I won’t use a tripod, but rather just the architecture of the space, like a mantelpiece or table. So in that way, the space almost removes me and my composition, so the room dictates the scene. You’re just letting the camera see how it sees, instead of making a decision to make something look more romantic or whatever the case may be.Substance is showing at Neon Parc till 12 JulyFiction is showing at the Centre for Contemporary Photography till 31 August.
