Time has changed things
for David Eustace. This should be apparent in New York Polaroids, 2004, a new
exhibition by the internationally acclaimed photographer, which opens at SWG3’s
Acid Bar in Glasgow this week. It should also be the case when Eustace becomes
the first photographer to show at the Royal Glasgow Institute of the Fine Arts
a few weeks later with Mar a Bha, which translates as As it Was.
The latter is a
collection of images taken on the Isle of Harris in the Outer Hebrides. Both
shows are a long way from the celebrity portraits Eustace made his name with in
the 1990s working for Vogue, Tatler and Elle, with the likes of Sophia Loren,
Tracey Emin and Sir Paul McCartney all captured by Eustace’s lens. Like the
world around him, however, Eustace keeps on moving, physically as much as
artistically as he follows his own obsessions and avoids complacency.
Each exhibition marks
how Eustace’s work has progressed in different ways, just as they did when the
two portfolios appeared last year at the Scottish Gallery in Edinburgh alongside
two other works. These were Desert Lines, a set of images of Death Valley in
California, and Bridge, which featured photographs of a rusted bridge. Like
them, the sixteen images that make up New York Polaroids, 2004 are about
moments in motion that cram multiple layers of action into each small frame.
“To a
certain extent doing the polaroids felt part of something,” says Eustace,
enthusing from a sofa in a light-filled room in his house on Edinburgh’s south side.
“That something transpired to be a bigger exhibition, but it was also about something
to do with a change in my career and my mind and my photography, and I realised
that all these portfolios are linked. It’s almost like a jigsaw, but within
this jigsaw, each individual component has its own voice. With the polaroids, there’s
sixteen images, but it’s one piece. It’s like those mirrors up there,” he says,
pointing to a wall beside us. “You’ve got all those different components, but
they become one mirror.”
The New York polaroids
were taken of a wall in Wooster Street at a time when the area it borders in SoHo,
Manhattan and Greenwich Village was in the throes of gentrification. The
pictures capture a mish-mash of peeling posters, street art and graffiti, so at
first glance they look like collages containing criss-crossing layers of a city
in motion. Look closer, and their of-the-moment urgency becomes even more
evocative.
“I made
it as a statement,” says Eustace, who lived in New York for several years
before returning to Scotland. “It’s one piece, and the whole essence of the
work, it’s all about time. At the time in New York when I was making it, Wooster
Street and SoHo was all being developed. It wasn’t the shopping centre SoHo is
now. There were still wee edges the further south you went out, and what I
noticed and found interesting was the whole essence of time.
“The
polaroids were all made on building site walls. So it was a transient wall, not
a permanent wall. So the first thing you notice is a sign saying post no bills.
The second thing you see is people start posting bills on it, and then somebody
will come along and graffiti it, and then it will rain and start washing it
away, and what I like is these unknown contributions by strangers that add
things up. That wall no longer exists, obviously. Some of what’s in the
pictures will have been gone later that day. That, at the time, wasn’t fully
charged in my mind. I knew I was photographing it, but I didn’t know why. I
suppose it was more a statement of how things are constantly changing, how
there’s nothing permanent, and how everything’s quite transient.”
Eustace recognises something
similar in his beloved Glasgow, where, before he ever picked up a camera, he
worked as a prison guard in Barlinnie. Today, Sauchiehall Street is still
partly cordoned off by temporary hoardings following the major fires that
occurred at either end of the street over the last year. It’s there as well even
closer to home.
“I may
stay in a nice house in Edinburgh, but I’m building it as we go,” says Eustace,
pointing out the changes. “This room wasn’t like this when we moved in. There were
asbestos walls round here, right through the middle, that was all cut away, and
there was a wee old toilet in that corner. It was a halfway house.”
Eustace
relates this to photography.
“People
come in and say this is a beautiful room, and it is a beautiful room, but there’s
been a lot of sweat and sleepless nights to try and get it like that. And that’s
the same with photography. People think it’s just magic that happens overnight.”
Showing such a street-smart collection as New York Polaroids 2004 in the speak-easy confines of SWG3’s Acid Bar was a no-brainer. Eustace has been connected with the ever expanding west end venue and arts complex co-founded by its visionary managing director known only as Mutley since the start.
Showing such a street-smart collection as New York Polaroids 2004 in the speak-easy confines of SWG3’s Acid Bar was a no-brainer. Eustace has been connected with the ever expanding west end venue and arts complex co-founded by its visionary managing director known only as Mutley since the start.
“I go
way back to day one of SWG3,” says Eustace. “It was a mad idea Mutley had, and
I remember going to the initial creative meeting. It was Mutley’s mother, two
other friends, David Mullane, who used to own The Warehouse in Glasgow, and
myself, and we were just sitting talking about this idea. That’s fifteen years
ago now.”
More
recently, Mutley showed Eustace around the site of what would become The
Galvanizers, SWG3’s recently opened 1250 capacity venue, which has already
hosted the Yardworks international graffiti festival.
“The deal
hadn’t been done yet,” says Eustace, “but Mutley said to me, just in case I do
get this, would you do a document of it.”
Eustace
did so, again charting a changing urban landscape in a set of images yet to be
printed up.
“I’m
a massive fan of these guys,” he says. “They’re full of enthusiasm. They’re
full of bright light, and are really making a difference down there.”
Eustace
compares this with other developments in Glasgow.
“Glasgow’s
a city I love,” he says, “and I see people sticking plasters on things, whereas
the people at SWG3, they’re actually creating something that’s more long-term,
rather than just to get you through a couple of years. The whole essence of
having this exhibition of the polaroids in SWG3 feels right, and the balance is
the stuff at the RGI, which is, I wouldn’t use the phrase more conventional,
but a lot of people might see it that way. When people see the polaroid stuff, they
might think they’re just polaroids, and do you know what, they are just polaroids.
But they’re a statement, they’re a comment, they’re a thought, and they took a
lot of hard work to get to that. You’re not trying to pull the wool over people’s
eyes. You’re saying, this is who I am, this is what I do.”
David Eustace – New York
Polaroids, 2004 runs at the Acid Bar, SWG3, Glasgow, February 22-March 29.
The Herald, February 19th 2019
ends
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