Here is the interview of Mark Duffy by Sophie Bernard in the context of our coverage of the festival Circulation(s). « Vote No. 1 » is presented in the Jury Selection’s. Recent electoral campaigns in Ireland have attracted Mark Duffy’s interest: in “Vote No. 1”, he examines the culture of election advertising in Ireland. The series focuses on the disfigurements the electoral candidates’ faces suffer, an unintended consequence to posters’ plastering.
Why did you become a photographer?
I was lucky enough to know early on that I wanted to be a photographer, and I quickly got into it.
Have you already published a book or been awarded a prize?
I’ve just published my first book based on the project I’m currently exhibiting at Circulation(s), entitled Vote No. 1. The series documents election posters in Ireland. I tracked down accidents such as tears and perforations disfiguring the candidates’ faces.
Last year, I was invited to the Alt+1000 Festival in Switzerland, as well as to Kaunas Photo in Lithuania.
My book Vote No. 1 was published thanks to the Vienna Photobook Award I received last year. It is a great honor because there were some incredible books submitted to the competition, and the members of the jury were renowned personalities like Gerry Badger and Colin Pantel. I was also shortlisted for the Luma Dummybook Award at the Rencontres d’Arles, but I had to withdraw from the competition because the book was still in press.
How did you hear about the Circulation(s) Festival? What are your expectations?
I heard about it through social networking. I did some research and discovered that the festival was dedicated to promoting young photographers. I was quite impressed. I told myself that it would be to my advantage to have the possibility of having my work seen by such a prestigious jury, regardless of whether it would be selected or not! Thank God, it was…
Could you talk to us more about the idea behind your series and explain what motivated you to do it?
I started this project when I went back home to Ireland where I grew up. Over there, during an election campaign, posters are just everywhere. You can hardly go anywhere without noticing them. Every lamppost is crowded with multiple posters showing the faces of the different candidates. At the time of my visit I had lived in London for seven years, which is why the phenomenon struck me as if I was seeing it for the first time. It was sort of a shock to see these Photoshopped faces smiling at you from every corner. It was hilarious and grotesque…
I took the first photo when I saw a face pasted onto a car and cut through by the frame of a window. The second came by shortly afterwards: the neck of a candidate perforated by the plastic tie used to attach the poster. It seemed so perfect, one could think it was intentional. Over the next few days I kept taking pictures, and then I had to go back to London. I had very few good images. I planned to wait for the next election to pick up where I left off. But then I had a moment of panic: the idea was so simple that I was afraid someone else would pick up on it. So I bought a plane ticket and went back the following day. I immediately told myself that the series would have to take the form of a book printed on recycled paper, and that it would be bound with the same type of fasteners used to attach the posters . Photobook binding is a bit of a specialty for me…. So I couldn’t miss this opportunity. I contacted the candidates explaining that I wanted to recycle the posters to do book covers even before the elections had taken place. Most of them went along with it. When I came to pick up the posters two months later, one candidate gave me a whole armful. It wasn’t until I returned home that I realized that I had not only his posters, but also his opponents’! … The book was “approved” by the Irish Prime Minister who sent me a letter saying that “Vote No. 1 certainly showed the election posters in a new light…”
FESTIVAL
http://www.festival-circulations.com
