JULIA MARISCAL // BLOG

by Pedro Vicente

“Photography (re)produces, if (re)produces anything, an event, a condition of a subject rather than the subject itself. Davidson and Mariscal’s images encapsulate actions; they are themselves an event, a condition of their subjects.
What is important in Davidson and Mariscal’s work is not what is represented but what represents. Not what we see but what we don’t see. Not what is shown but the way in which their photographs introduce and use different elements, which prevent the photographs from being fully completed just by themselves. Davidson and Mariscal’s photographs need our participation to be completed. They force us to think twice about what we see, and there, in our intellect, they are finally finished and fulfilled. That demand of participation impedes them to be still, to be dead or represent death objects. They produce ‘Still-Alive’ images.

Once we have examined Davidson and Mariscal’s photographs we don’t have to look at them again, we just have to think of and about them; they are installed and anchored in our minds with their complex simplicity. Their photographs are made not only to be seen; they are also made to be thought about, meditated on and performed and, therefore, to be, in all senses, contemplated. That is precisely why these images are so extraordinary: they are created to be performed and concluded in our minds.

And it is there where Davidson and Mariscal’s photographs in truth work, not on the paper, but within our intellectual engagement. They are thinking and reflecting instruments, metamorphosis of ideas, thoughts and fictional realities in images. Davidson and Mariscal’s photographs are, as certainly photography is, not only about what we see; but, and perhaps more importantly, about what we do not see.”

 >link to see the exhibition catalogue