Karin Bareman on You&I. 2023
It is one of the earliest memories I have. It is a brief scene, a tiny sliver, really, of the film of one’s life. I am not even sure how much of it actually happened, how much of it has been made up. Has my knowledge of events that were to transpire later, my familiarity with the characters that were to play a role in this narrative contributed to my recollection? Has the passing of time, easily thirty-five years already, coloured my reminiscence? Despite my doubts concerning its veracity, it is burned onto my retina.
Here I am, standing in the cul-de-sac of a small town in the south of the Netherlands, where my parents live. It is a quiet, leafy neighbourhood, full of young families. I am four years old, maybe. I do not recall what I am doing, nor do I remember why I am outside. Am I simply playing by myself? Am I part of the group of kids that have raised the alert? How do I even know the alarm has been sounded? Details such as these escape me.
I am certain about one thing though. The boy next door, Dennis, who is two years older than me, has fallen, and cannot get up anymore. As the scene progresses, I intuit its significance, a portent of things to come. Or maybe I have simply ascribed importance to this recollection long after the fact. After all, young children trip and stumble all the time, and bounce back up again. What makes this instance different? In any case, I am looking down the open end of the cul-de-sac, and I see Dennis’s dad - our neighbour - carrying him back home in his arms back. He is surrounded by all the other kids in my street, towering over them. It is a sad image, protective, caring, all at the same time. But the more I examine my memory of this event, the less certain I become. Did I actually witness this scene? Was Dennis truly carried home by his father? Or was he simply pushed back home in a pram?
Human memory is fickle and fallible. If I was put on the stand to testify about this particular recollection, I am not certain how convincing I would come across to the jury. Was it all a figment of my imagination then? Perhaps. But it fascinates me how strongly the image is conjured in my mind. This brings me to another point. When I look at photographs in a professional context, my imaginary rolodex of references spins into action. The cylinder rotates, the visuals flash by, my thoughts buzz. What does the picture I am studying remind me of? What link can I establish between one photograph and another, one photograph and a film, perhaps, or a television series, a cartoon, a computer game, a novel? In my writing about photography I try to explore these links, unpick and unpack them, compare and contrast apples and pears. I do this in order to shed a new and unexpected light onto images. So when I look at Jack Moyse’s self-portrait, showing him standing fully clothed on the left side of the photograph, seated with bared torso in the centre, and hunched over naked in the bottom right corner of the picture, my mind wanders towards Rotimi Fani-Kayode’s work “See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil.”
Fani-Kayode, a London-based photographer of Nigerian descent as well as openly gay in the 1980s, described himself as an outsider on three counts, “in matters of sexuality; in terms of geographical and cultural dislocation; and in the sense of not having become the sort of respectably married professional my parents might have hoped for.” He penned these words in an artist manifesto entitled ‘Traces of Ecstasy,’ posthumously published in the seminal photography magazine Ten.8 in 1992. In that selfsame proclamation Fani-Kayode describes, however, that this outsider position also left him with a feeling of having very little to lose, of having a sense of creative liberation, and freedom from convention. In his words, “Photography is the tool by which I feel most confident in expressing myself. It is photography, therefore - Black, African, homosexual photography - which I must use not just as an instrument, but as a weapon if I am to resist attacks on my integrity and indeed, my existence on my own terms.”
In some ways, Moyse is also an outsider, on account of his condition of Facioscapulohumeral Muscular Dystrophy (FSHD). This is a degenerative genetic disorder, which primarily affects the muscles of the face, shoulders, and arms. The photographer was diagnosed with this particular disability at the tender of age of seventeen, right on the cusp of adulthood, a challenging time in anyone’s life. As Moyse explains, during the following eight years he tried his hardest to ignore the impact of that diagnosis on his mental health. He also struggled with the physical repercussions of his condition. Photographic self-portraiture, finally, offered a means out, a way to confront his disability and to come to terms with his changing body.
In his solo exhibition currently on display at Ffotogallery in Cardiff, a number of photographs clearly show a growing acceptance of his changing physique. This is evidenced by pictures of the artist initially steadfastly looking away from the viewer, to slowly and timidly beginning to face up towards the camera, to finally boldly staring down the barrel of the lens. It is also shown through the gradual movement of Moyse’s self-portraits initially being created at home, in a safe space, to evermore outdoors and public locations. This is a significant move, because, as Moyse explains, safe spaces are particularly important for marginalised communities.
But past the stage of being the means for the exploration of the self, it appears that photography has also become an instrument for Moyse, like it was for Fani-Kayode, to resist attacks on his existence and integrity. In a very strong and moving performance piece, Moyse can be seen standing barefoot, blind-folded and nearly naked in the sweltering heat of southern France during the renowned photography festival Les Rencontres d'Arles, with the words ‘I’m Jack, I’m disabled, how does that make you feel?’ written on his torso. It is a public challenge to abled passersby to confront Moyse's disability, to see if they have the guts to utter ableist slurs as would frequently happen in the anonymous environs of the Internet and social media, to investigate if a more empathetic and deeper understanding of difference is possible.
Stairs play an important role in Moyse’s work. They act as a form of punctuation throughout the exhibition. Some of the pictures are quite formal in nature, appearing to focus on geometry and shape, on composition and light. Without further context, they bring to mind other stairs in the history of photography and film. Walker Evans explored the formal aspects of American vernacular architecture, Alexander Rodchenko tried to open the viewer’s eyes to new perspectives, Sergei Eisenstein demonstrated the powerful impact of montage in a scene involving a pram careening down the steps in Battleship Potemkin, and FSA photographer Marion Post Wolcott subtly challenged segregation in the American Deep South. All opted for the humble stairs to prove their point. Moyse, however, uses them as a means to ‘measure’ his physical decline. Bearing this mind, the many images depicting stairs by themselves, then, drive home how much of an obstacle they can be for non-abled bodies.
But back to reminiscing about Dennis. Soon after his fall from which he could not get up again, Dennis is in a wheelchair: a motorised one, with lots of bells and whistles. I vaguely remember my parents explaining to me that Dennis has a condition that makes his muscles grow progressively weaker, and that is why he cannot walk any longer. Me and the other children in my street take it in stride. We play endless games of football, and Dennis in his wheelchair mucks in just as much as everyone else. There never was a more unstoppable goalkeeper.
Dennis continues to attend our primary school for as long as possible, as does his younger cousin. The latter is the little brother of a boy in my class, who also ends up in a wheelchair. At this point I have learned, probably through my parents, that they both have Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy (DMD). It is a condition that only affects boys, and their mothers are carriers of the gene causing this disability. To my young mind (or am I formulating this thought later?), it appears inherently cruel for the younger cousin having to witness his older cousin decline, and knowing from a very young age that this is what lies in store for him too. Another thought, a naive and not so nice one, pertains to the Russian roulette that appears to have been played. Two sisters, four sons between them, two of whom are sound of body, and two who have ended up suffering from this incurable condition. When Moyse talks about the ‘rules’ he initially set for himself upon receiving his diagnosis, one of which related to his decision not to have children, I think back, uncomfortably, to my own ableist judgement at the time. Having now experienced motherhood, I know I would love any child of mine with every fibre in my body, odds such as these be damned. Even so, Moyse also relates how, when he was diagnosed, his consultant told him it was his “muscular dystrophy of choice.” According to the NHS, FSHD progresses slowly and does not usually shorten life expectancy in the way that Duchenne’s does. Perhaps so, but it is still a life-changing diagnosis. The consultant’s flippant attempt at comfort seems ill-judged.
Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy is named after the nineteenth-century French doctor Guillaume-Benjamin-Armand Duchenne de Boulogne. He is not only known for his contributions to the nascent discipline of neurology, but also for his attempts at using photography for the purpose of science. In 1862 he published his Mécanisme de la physionomie humaine [The Mechanism of Human Physiognomy], comprising photographs of facial muscles being manipulated by electrical currents. Duchenne de Boulogne believed that he could map universal human emotions through the expressions created in this way. The subjects in his pictures were often mental patients from the hospital he worked at. Today, I use this work as a case study to highlight some of the misplaced uses photography has been put to in the past, and the abuse some photographic subjects have suffered in the course of the history of the medium.
Two other nineteenth-century photographers interested in the use of photography in the name of science cannot go unmentioned here. The first, by the name of Eadweard Muybridge, had accepted a challenge from California businessman and horse owner Leland Stanford to find out through means of photography whether a horse’s hooves would all leave the ground when galloping. Muybridge decided to line a track with cameras at regular intervals. As the horse would run past, it would trip cotton threads tied to the shutters of said cameras. The resulting images garnered Muybridge instant fame, and formed the starting point of a career centred around capturing human and animal locomotion. In fact, he was specifically invited by the University of Pennsylvania to continue his experiments. During his time there, Muybridge produced more than 100,000 images. To create these, the photographer instructed male and female subjects, often nude, to carry out specific activities, such as walking, jumping, or climbing the stairs. Each activity was allegedly photographed successively, as well as from the front, the side, and the back. These would then be combined into composite plates.
The second nineteenth-century photographer, Étienne-Jules Marey, was inspired by seeing Muybridge’s original horse sequence, and similarly attempted to use photography to capture locomotion. Unlike Muybridge, he managed to record his subject’s movements onto one single plate. It is very easy to see echoes of both approaches in Moyse’s photographs. In one particular image he has tracked his progress ascending a set of stairs pace Marey. In two large grids in the gallery, Moyse captures the sequence of particular activities in a similar fashion to Muybridge. The difference here is that none of these activities are straightforward for Moyse. In the case of the grid showing Moyse picking up a shopping bag, it is clear that the photographer has had to develop an alternative method for doing so.
Speaking of alternative methods, Moyse does not use them solely in relation to the movements of his own body. He also follows through in his curatorial and outreach strategies for the exhibition at Ffotogallery. In this way, he reminds me again of the aforementioned Fani-Kayode. In his manifesto, Fani-Kayode rails against the art world of the time, for only showing his less threatening, ‘ethnic’, pictures, for only accepting that Black is Beautiful within white frames of reference. It chimes with a conversation Moyse and I had as part of a walk and talk through his show. I remarked that I had noticed a lot of children’s programmes suddenly sporting a wheelchair character as their token disabled person. Despite being wheelchair-bound, they were always otherwise completely unaffected physically or mentally, and often embarked on heroic acts.
We agreed that any representation of disability in either the media or the artworld is to be embraced, but even so, Moyse pointed out that the representation of disability is often very limited and one-sided. The only disabilities on show are often of the ‘palatable’ kind, and usually linked to and symbolised by wheelchairs. As a result, able-bodied people can be blind to the reality of being disabled and the wide variety of forms this may take. According to the Office of National Statistics, nearly 18% of the population of England and Wales, or 10.4 million people, reported a disability in the 2021 Census. And whilst a quick search for a reliable number of wheelchair users proved frustrating, the charity Motability noted in a summary of studies that estimates for 2018-2019 range from 688,000 to 1,37 million users in England. It does, however, prove the point that disability does not equal wheelchair use.
In his manifesto, Fani-Kayode was making a case for his photography to be accepted on its own terms by the art and the wider world, well before the recent Black Lives Matters movement finally initiated some long-needed diversity in the form of increased visibility of art by people of colour, as well as art critics and curators of colour breaking through the glass ceiling of art institutions. A similar paradigm shift is needed for artists, critics, and curators to take account of disability. Not just in terms of collecting, exhibiting, and publishing art and photography depicting disability, but also in terms of vastly improving accessibility. Photographer Jaklin Romine drives home this particular point rather tersely in a series called Access Denied, showing her stuck in front of or inside galleries and art spaces with her wheelchair, often with stairs being the main culprit.
As part of the exhibition curation and design for his show at Ffotogallery, Moyse has chosen to hang a number of works at ‘wheelchair height,’ a very simple strategy that curators would do well to consider in the future. Other things that could help make art spaces a less daunting place would be to provide exhibition texts in large and accessible fonts or coloured backgrounds, to offer high-quality and enjoyable audio tours free of charge, to provide changing places and similar facilities, and to create safe spaces for neurodiverse visitors as well as people with complex needs to visit and enjoy the works on display. Finally, Moyse mentions the need for exhibition spaces to make time and space in their install schedules to account for artists’ conditions. As someone with more than eight years of experience installing exhibitions, I realise that such a simple adjustment never even crossed my mind.