Paul M Smith

B&D Studio, Milan
Through June 20

Despite the fact that Paul M Smith’s photography is inspired by reportage, his work actually contradicts its actual nature. After a series devoted to military exercises and episodes from military life, in his new cycle “Action” he makes images that are like movie stills.

He takes his inspiration, with a heavy dose of irony, from famous American action films. Unlikely urban battle heroes, all of which resemble the artist himself, are portrayed on five light boxes which hang from the ceiling of the gallery. The figures leap from one building to building, jump out of helicopters with gun in hand, or climb up the glass dome of the Whiteley’s shopping mall in London.

These extreme situations perfectly mirror the generalized “type” of the action film hero, which itself responds to a collective male fantasy. It is exactly this kind of examination of collective behavior and of mass interpretations of social phenomena that characterizes Smith’s oeuvre. The British artist’s latest work develops the theme of war that is evident in his earlier pieces, though on a much lighter note, and also examines its usual, stereotypical interpretation. The new photographs, created through a lengthy process of digital manipulation using Photoshop, are highly glossed and made even colder by their lighting.

They explicitly draw attention to their artificiality, constructing a language that cannot be translated directly into reality, but only by the use of technological means. The repetition of the artist’s own likeness, in almost identical poses, reduces them all to the same extreme realism, common to action films, and therefore also questions the acceptance of this kind of portrayal.

Smith has already treated this subject in the past, with his army photographs, exploring how the military structure makes the individual part of a single whole, and here he touches on it again, with these action movie heroes, always perfect and attractive, not in the least perturbed by the terrifying situations in which they find themselves. Positioning the images above the viewers heads emphasizes the difference between the actual and the fake: the hero really seems to fall from a great height, but the obvious fiction of the settings allows us to feel the difference between reality and artifice.




Elena Di Raddo
Translation by Jacqueline Smith