Double exposure - The Douglas Brothers
THE ICONIC PHOTOGRAPHY DUO INVITE YOU TO TAKE A LONG JOURNEY INTO THE SPACE BETWEEN DREAMS, TO RECOVER A LOST ARCHIVE OF THE SOUL
DIAGRAM OF DESIRE, Clerkenwell, London, 1993
There are certain images that seem to emanate directly from the shadowlands of the subconscious, those images of an opaque, surreal nature that remind us our daily existence is still nothing more than a kind of waking dream. It could, of course, be argued that this is the ultimate purpose of artistic endeavor of any kind, a process seeking to connect us with the deeper, intangible truth of being in an absurd, temporal universe that’s bookended only by a journey into darkness. In this paradigm, where meaning and purpose are inextricably linked to the creative drive to rage against the dying of the light, the Douglas Brothers stand apart. While their name is known mainly in industry circles, the brothers are considered
peerless as a photography duo, known for creating dreamlike excursions into the surreal landscape of identity that holds a significant candle to the iconic painterly deconstructions of geniuses, such as Salvador Dali, and Francis Bacon. If this sounds somewhat like hyperbole, you only need to look to an early interview in the early 90s Eye magazine, to understand that this journey into the subconscious was precisely their intention, the duo stated in no uncertain terms that their work was to be a reaction to the ‘pin-sharp, pristine and sterile photography’ pervasive in portraiture and fashion at that time: “We were pushing blur to see how far you could go, to see how little information the brain need to make a picture.”
ADRENALIN, Clerkenwell, London, 1992
It is no understatement to say that this undertaking of Andrew and Stuart Douglas made them responsible for some of the most iconic underground portraiture of the early-90s, capturing some of the most celebrated cultural provocateurs of their generation in the dark eye of their lens. Famously, they shot one of the very first, and most haunting, portraits of actor Daniel Day-Lewis. However, it is often remarked that the light that burns the brightest burns the shortest, and in regard to the Douglas Brothers it is an aphorism that rings true. Early into their promising career, the siblings fell out with near Shakespearean fervor, not speaking to each other for some 20 years. During this prolonged period of enmity, the brothers, almost wilfully, mislaid a huge body of work. It was the almost miraculous discovery of these long-lost prints in a discarded refuse container in London’s King’s Cross three years ago that finally brought them back together, subsequently witnessing the work be placed in the permanent collection at London’s National Portrait Gallery. The finding of a long-lost archive is, of course, a narrative with an epic sweep, but while the fourteen portraits that now hang in the National Portrait Gallery are important cultural artifacts, they were not the only works discovered in the chance excavation in King’s Cross. Among the haul recovered from the brink of destruction were also a number of deeply surreal works that exemplified the strange ruminations on being that resolutely underpin the ghostly portraits for which the brothers are now celebrated. On the following pages, AUTHOR is privileged to now present a number of those lesser-known gems, taking you on a journey into being and nothingness where gentle shadows churn through dreams, in the gold-edged veils of night.
CREDITS
by John-Paul Pryor
