Is it possible then, to examine Masi’s photographs as attempts to capture the inner spirit, or the animating life force of the group through images of individuals? To make such an argument appears contradictory in the social context of these kinds of rituals and festivals. If we agree that it is possible to capture the soul of the subject, there is a danger of flirting with a transcendental notion of consciousness. This is particularly problematic given Masi’s long-standing commitment to deconstructing the apparatus of hegemony by exposing the structures of power and surveillance.11 Masi is all too aware that the history of photography and portraiture in Western visual culture are intimately entwined with the expansion of industrialisation and the emergence of a bourgeois class. Conventionally this history has been marked by a critical discourse that has emphasised the control and perpetuation of class conflict perpetuated by photography as an instrument of classification and reification.12 Masi’s intervention is not innocent but intimately entwined with his awareness of the revolution in communication technologies that have contributed to the present advanced phase of capitalism. By amplifying a whisper in the ear across thousands of miles, mobile phones aided by computer technology create a false sense of physical proximity. On the global level this has helped foster belief in the existence of a newly forged trans-national virtual community whilst on the local level widening the rift between classes in existing communities.13 In keeping with Masi’s concern with the ‘human understood’ one might arrive at an understanding of his broader concerns regarding these portraits if we move beyond a narrow view of them as ‘representations’. Instead I want to place the emphasis on the metonymic nature of the photograph as an emanation of a being-in-the-world created by a scopic drive that is not possessive nor annihilating towards its subject but celebratory. To this end one should consider the metonymic register of these images in terms of the ‘part of’ and not Barthes’s ‘that-has been’ subsequently explored by numerous writers.

Let me explain by examining the images of the Palio. In their display at the Barbican Art Gallery, London in 2003 14 there were contrasting uses of a large-scale panorama that framed the horserace alongside close-up shots of individuals, also large in scale. This contrast was a necessity for documenting an event that was potentially unknown to some of its spectators. It also signals the importance of the metonymic in Masi’s practise as an intervention on the complex problem of visualising notions of the centre and the periphery. The large scale portraits are carefully cropped and framed either facing us or in profile, sometimes shot from behind, almost always staring intently and sometimes gripped with overwhelming emotions of joy or filled with anticipation

11 Cf. John Roberts discussion of a managerial consciousness made visible in Masi’s early installations, particularly Arena (1984): “Denis Masi: Under Darkness” in Geometry of Rage, Arnolfini Gallery, Bristol, 1984.

12 The popularisation of physiognomy as an indicator of class, race and social deviancy and hence fascination with the human face is extensively examined by Mary Cowling, The Artist as anthropologist, the representation of type and character in Victorian art, Cambridge University Press, 1989. Its use in photography was disseminated through portraits of everyday types and is extensively discussed by Mick Gidley in “Hoppé’s Impure Portraits: Contextualising the American Types” in Graham Clarke (ed.), The Portrait in Photography, Reaktion Books, 1992, pp. 132-154.

13 Arjun Appadurai is the key theorist in favour of electronic media and other forms of communication technology as instruments of social change through the creation of diasporic public spheres. His argument is fundamentally a plea to consider the trans-national construction of virtual or imagined worlds as a means of dismantling the continued dependence on the nation-state as the engine or arbiter of social change. Modernity at Large, Cultural Dimensions of Globalization, University of Minnesota Press, 1996, pp. 2-11.

14 The exhibition was on display January 27-2 May 2003.