From the series "Guest". Bucklow’s photographs are produced using an extremely large multiple-aperture pinhole camera to achieve a galaxy of images of the sun – a ‘solar body’ – in a breath-taking life-size portrait. Intended to be viewed as a collective self-portrait, portraying a group of individuals, spiritual friends and foes, whose combined characters reflect a multi-faceted image of Bucklow himself.
The subjects in these works are portraits of Bucklow’s own interior in which he explains the importance of the selection of his subjects: ‘It’s like a cast of characters in a film. I think I was casting for my ‘film’ even before I knew that I was about to launch out on a narrative - the narrative of self-description that followed later in my videos and drawings.’ These mysterious, enigmatic and ethereal portraits, demand attention simply through their intensity of colour and light, provoking notions of creation, with a breathtaking celestial presence. ‘Bucklow’s spectral ‘Guests’… are responses to the unanswerable questions concerning life’s beginnings and ends, and the enigma of its vital spark,’ says Jeffrey Fraenkel In Guest the cast of internal characters, are ostensibly portraits of family, friends and foes, the work is unashamedly autobiographical and narrative based.
Bucklow explains: ‘The project – my life – has been a regrouping of all these fissioned split areas, whether I knew it or not, that’s what was going on.’ It refers to his specific life, how he works, and what he is made of – ‘Forms I have been, Forms that live in me now, and Forms I desire to become.’