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Far away so close: Max Kandhola from Ag32, by Simon Bainbridge |
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‘The certainty of death has been a constant reminder to Max Kandhola, both in work and life. Simon Bainbridge discusses with him a newly-published project on the subject. I DID NOT REALISE HE HAD GONE until the nurse placed her hand on my shoulder. I looked away from the camera’s viewfinder then across the room to find that it was now full of my family. From the silence of my camera’s viewpoint the atmosphere changed to that of mass hysteria. It would never be the same again.’ Images of death ambush us unceasingly through the daily news media, fascinating and repulsive before we consciously protect ourselves from the anxiety of their meaning and quickly tuck them away. When it comes to those we love our experience is reversed: their passing comes suddenly, but their presence lingers painfully and imperceptibly in our memories. The clinical calm of Max Kandhola’s photographs in Illustration of Life (published by Dewi Lewis in conjunction with Impressions Gallery and Light Work New York) are all the more extraordinary in that they capture the final four hours of his own father, terminally ill with cancer. His motives for publishing them are neither mawkish nor intentionally shocking, but an attempt to preserve and come to terms with the last moments of his life as he entered into the unknown. Their graphic simplicity is unnervingly honest - both in the recognition of death’s beguiling beauty and the depiction of the messy paraphernalia of medical intrusion - Kandhola and his camera’s close proximity providing a rare and contemplative view of life’s passing. Death has been a prominent subject in Kandhola’s work over the past 15 years, intimately entwined with his personal experience and the loss of a close teenage friend, his mother, father, brother and most recently a cousin, all within a relatively short period of time. His father had been the subject of previous projects, most notably in The Realisation of the Beautiful, in which he pondered his passing, not yet knowing it was to be so soon. Returning from an artist-in-residency at Light Work in Syracuse, New York, he determined to continue, focusing on the effects of his father’s ageing process. His inspiration was also precipitous: he had been looking at Richard Avedon’s compelling photographs of his own father undergoing chemotherapy. Next Page >> |
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