VVV Portfolio 1942

Curator: I find myself drawn into this monochromatic photograph by David Hare, created in 1942, titled "VVV Portfolio." It has a curious energy. Editor: My immediate response is uncertainty. It's unsettling, almost like peering into a half-formed memory or a developing film negative, with an arresting lack of detail in representing a body. I immediately want to examine the print. Curator: Absolutely, the forms feel so fluid and mutable, slipping between figuration and pure abstraction. Considering its creation during wartime, it's tempting to see it as an expressionist portrayal of the fractured self, perhaps reflecting anxieties about identity and the body under duress. It's deeply psychological, wouldn't you agree? Editor: Perhaps, though I wonder if there isn’t a need to bring it back to Hare's particular conditions as a photographer affiliated with the Surrealist movement, one steeped in experiments with the photo-essay, alternative print processes, and collage. I find myself far more curious about those material, technological underpinnings: the paper, the darkroom, the labour… Curator: I am drawn to the figure, but not its solid form but how it has almost bled into the surrounding space as a visual meditation. It's more than just a body, but perhaps about exploring the liminal space between the external and internal. Editor: Right, that ambiguity is clearly a by-product of darkroom trickery! Consider that its presentation in the *VVV* portfolio, as an object shared between Surrealists in exile, positions this work within a highly specific artistic network, complete with attendant resources and processes. We might productively study the material conditions of such collaborations and networks. Curator: That reminds me about the importance of creative collaboration; artistic expression doesn't exist in a vacuum, whether through community or a chemical developing process. It allows the invisible aspects of shared human experiences to manifest. It certainly adds another rich layer. Editor: Indeed, understanding these networks and material circumstances gets us closer to an expanded conception of creative and material production that moves beyond biographical art history, wouldn’t you say? Curator: I see the interplay between intention and what might happen in those in-between places so brilliantly presented in Hare's work here. Editor: As do I; considering production circumstances help in seeing how "VVV Portfolio" became an invitation into artmaking itself.