Output details

Fear of reflections: the photoworks of Paul McCarthy

This 5,000-word chapter is published in an edited collection devoted to the impact of the writings of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari upon photography theory. The collection emerged from a project on photography theory undertaken by the University of Leuven, a major centre of photographic research, and more directly from Minor Photography, an international conference held there in November 2010, where Matheson presented a paper on the photographic work of Paul McCarthy. McCarthy's work as a performance and installation artist has been well documented, whereas his photographic work has been little researched. The article analyses a significant body of photographic work produced by McCarthy during the 1970s, using theoretical concepts drawn from the work of Deleuze and Guattari, and in particular their use of the term ‘minor’ as developed in their 1975 book 'Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature'. The term ‘minor’ has been developed more widely at Leuven in relation to the siting and analysis of photography in Belgium. Matheson deploys that concept in relation to McCarthy’s photographic work, in order to re-evaluate the relationship of photography to performance art, and to assess the role of McCarthy’s photographic practice in relation to the dominant art photography practice of the period. The article is based on extensive research of McCarthy’s practice and on a rigorous and original theoretical analysis of that work using the work of Deleuze and Guattari. The article, as with the rest of the edited collection, constitutes an original contribution to photography theory as well as a re-evaluation of a neglected aspect of the work of a major artist. The concept of the ‘minor’ has already gained a certain currency within the theoretical field, finding application for example, in relation to architecture and to politics, and this collection will contribute further to that development.