“Vason’s collaborative photographs are invitations— communicative acts that call on us to pursue intersubjective relations with alterity. Viewers are enjoined to move beyond themselves – beyond a libidinal imaginary stripped by mass media — towards singular formations. Through their bold performativity and publication, the singularities constellated nonetheless posit and indeed create community.”
Jonathan Beller, Professor, Humanities and Media Studies, Pratt Institute, New York, USA
“Bliss
I had not seen Michael Mayhew since the mid 1980s. That was my loss, not his. Until opening Manuel Vason’s luscious Double Exposures that is. He looks younger, but is still on fire. He had played one of the arsonists for me, beautifully, in Max Frisch’s prescient play, The Fireraisers, back then. And now, he reaches out towards me, as I turn the page, and then turn back. The apparatus of the camera, in Manuel’s hands, has been lying in wait, in preparation for this moment (apparare: to prepare). Vilem Flusser would have us believe, in his philosophy of photography, that the apparatus ‘sharpens its teeth’ in readiness for photography. Well here it has sprung. And from a death mask Michael faces up to us from the grass, in bliss.”
Alan Read, Director Performance Foundation, Professor of Theatre, King’s College London, UK
