Clover Green - Dialogues

“The creative encounter with the image happens through interpretation. Much of the time that process is tacit, and often it is banal. Some of the time, however, the image becomes a place for challenging or enhancing one’s experience of the world. Whether eliciting revulsion or awe, or revealing the familiar as strange, or fragmenting what had been whole, or joining what had been separate whatever the encounter, the image is at that point prompting important reconsideration of how one lives with others.” 

Robert Hariman and John Louis Lucaites – Seeing the Public Image Anew

Clover Green, in their recent publication, Dialogues, has embarked on a straightforward approach to bookmaking; an editing together of images culled from their archive from the last three years, centering on the form, structure, subject and colour inherent in the photographs themselves.

The rudiments of pairing form and colour start on an interesting note; the book begins before you turn a page, with a white pillar protruding from a hazy green bed of grass. Towards the top of the pillar is a crudely painted red circle. The passage of time is etched on the pillar’s facade, with various scratches revealing the white placard beneath. As you turn the front cover, the photograph which meets your eye is fairly monochrome, aside from a thin what-looks-like red scaffolding pole, offset to both the left and right of centre frame, the colour glaring amongst deep shadows and green-tinged highlights. The simple structure of the book, sequential, often architectural, photographs of quotidian observations, complements Dialogues’ underlying purpose: to draw the viewer’s eye to the repetitive nature of the urban world. 

The simple structure of the book, sequential, often architectural, photographs of quotidian observations, complements Dialogues’ underlying purpose: to draw the viewer’s eye to the repetitive nature of the urban world. 

The book is organised in a sort of ‘spot the difference’ way. As an exercise, I wrote down the descriptions of the images which followed the what-looks-like red scaffolding pole: (1) another image with a red pole centred on a background of black; (2) another image of a pole, though this time there are three of them, they are yellow not red, and they sit about a meter apart in the middle of a field of green grass; (3) three more poles, again about a meter apart, this time in black and white, again in a field of grass; (4) a green fabric covering a metal-link fence, the fabric has three cuts in it so you can glimpse the background behind; (5) a close up shot of a brick wall which meets the corner of what looks like either a door or window frame – the image is split into three sections: the left, which is white, the middle, which is a thin strip of red, the right, which is brown, where the bricks are – another set of three.

I managed to undertake that practice for six pages before the repetition became fairly banal, and herein lies my problem with Dialogues. Sometimes it’s hard to do the simple things well, and I feel that this book falls into that trap. Whilst there are some interesting images, there is much lacking in the combinations of photographs, the flow from page to page. After six pages I almost don’t want to turn to another page. It’s as if I have seen the book in its entirety. Some may say that to give up on a book after six pages isn’t giving it a chance, but let me describe the seventh page; it is a double page spread, the first in the book so far. It is a monochromatic image, (not black and white, just a grey wall and equally grey floor, shot and printed in colour) on the wall are three protruding features, all similar to the pole structures we have already seen, except this time they are italicised, sloping from the left upwards to the right – each feature is about a meter apart. Dialogues is akin to reading a book of prose, only for the same story to repeat again and again, page after page, with very little change in the settings or the characters, with no forwarding of any story or plot.

This criticism isn’t to say that the images are bad or uninspiring, or that the book doesn’t work as intended; there is something to say about the slow, repetitive nature of Dialogues, the slow combing of the archive, the repetitive pairing of marks and structures, tones and light. Through this deliberate, methodical system of contemplation, Green uncovers a nuanced way of perceiving our everyday surroundings. For me, however, the essential premise of the book is fraught: it is too simple.

There is something to say about the slow, repetitive nature of Dialogues, the slow combing of the archive, the repetitive pairing of marks and structures, tones and light. Through this deliberate, methodical system of contemplation, Green uncovers a nuanced way of perceiving our everyday surroundings.

A quote from Matisse heads the loose page of writing, tucked into the centerfold of the book: “What I dream of is an art of balance, of purity and serenity devoid of troubling or depressing subject matter – a soothing, calming influence on the mind, rather like a good armchair which provides relaxation from physical fatigue.”

What is hinted at is the ‘balance’ between images – in this case, the slow, repetitious elementary reading of colour, form, shape, and line which dictates the positioning of images from one page to the next. This way of working can do well to transform the ordinariness of everyday life into something extraordinary, or, as Green aims to, into something beyond the ugly rhythms of this modern human world, towards something beautiful; the childish scrawls of coloured chalk dusted over a grey concrete floor, fallen cherry blossom sporadically decorating an otherwise flat, lifeless pavement.

Through my eye, I find it hard to see much ‘purity’ or ‘serenity’ in the images of Dialogues, instead they are laced with the ersatz facade of a concrete dystopia which so happens to be the modern world we’re living in. Instead of the book acting, “…like a good armchair” I instead turn its pages quickly to try and escape the barren, soulless world which has haphazardly been placed in front of my eyes. I wish I could witness the body of work as writer, Charlie Robin Jones does, as, “an inner conversation: a non-verbal search for beauty, for the infinitude of colour, for the comprehension of a moment as shadow falls on a concrete wall” but I just can’t, (perhaps my dismay for the dystopia we live in is too much) and this is okay.

Art is meant to prod and provoke, it’s meant to interpret from the eye of the maker the world that lies before them. Whether that is through colour, form, light, shape, structure, subject, object, thought… Green does this. Their images interpret, they challenge the experience of the world, they reveal the familiar as the strange, they prompt a (re)consideration. This is what continually excites me about the ‘creative encounter’, that our (re)considerations of the world can evoke a kaleidoscope of conversations; what we all may see might not mean the same.