MACHAS

What You See Is (Not) What You Get

Diver & Aguilar’s latest installment for Italian Riders Magazine delve deeply into the visual heritage of the Master of Photography such as Lange, Evans, Avedon to challenge our notion of truth and beauty.

The textures, the ancient faces, the setting: the viewer is lead to believe that these photos were taken in 1936, probably somewhere in Nowhere, California. “We are already manipulating the true identity of the work you see before you”, says Mike Diver ”as we have chosen to show you our pictures in black and white. By erasing the color from these pictures it is much easier to try to convince you of a truth that is not.”

What might look like an harmless re-enactment of Diver & Aguilar’s deepest admiration for some of the most iconic images of the history of photography, is a visual essay on the nature of the photographic image smartly disguised as a fashion editorial, a reflection on the camera’s cunning and sometimes deceitful mechanisms to manipulate the vision of the viewer.

The title itself “The Eye of the Beholder” is an extract of the famous saying “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder” and the act of looking is a recurrent theme throughout the whole project.

Diver & Aguilar have specifically cast a blind man and intentionally brought him into the photographic studio to be photographed. Going against the grain of what Strand, Kertesz, Ben Shahn or Gary Winogrand recorded, suggesting that to photograph of a blind person is perfection of this truth as their face cannot lie (If they are unaware of the cameras presence), Diver & Aguilar made the subject, Richard, aware that a camera lens is pointing at him. Although Richard is still unaware of his surroundings and asks, “What am I wearing?”, “What Camera are you using?”, his face can not tell the truth of his mind, as his thought process has been interrupted by alerting him to this fact.

Diver & Aguilar went one step further with the “deception” by also asking the subjects to close their eyes so they were unaware of the moment their image was captured. This lead the black gentleman be moved to tears, so he was blinded not only by emotion but also by the physical act of crying.

“I believe that this work will leaving you to discern your own truth from these images,” Mike concludes. “Who do you find beautiful? What beauty can you find within all living beings? Must we admit the camera always lies? Even though this is a fantasy what truths do lie within these pictures?”

See Diver & Aguilar Portfolio Here