'Taking photographs' is a poor phrase for 

what Paul Kilsby does. A glance through 

the images on the following pages will 

reveal a bizarre and very internal world, 

full of strange couplings and echoes - 

where 'real' objects such as fruit, fur, 

clothing, human hands, are placed next 

to 'represented' objects - details of 

paintings, classical sculptures and 

reliefs, anatomical drawings. By some 

strange and subtle magic these objects 

appear to converse: they exchange 

information, ask questions, make jokes, 

tell each other their secrets and their 

pain. The aesthetic effect is vertiginous 

and thrilling. The images within his 

photographs reveal each other's forms 

and structures; they reflect ironically and 

teasingly on each other's way of picturing 

the world. The caryatid in 'After Cortona 

lll' is set against an anatomical engraving 

by Pietro da Cortona, with ears of corn 

and poppies in between. Time and space 

are weirdly collapsed. We are invited by 

this photograph to compare not just two 

ways of seeing a woman's body, but three 

ways of picturing fertility and at least five 

ways of conceiving one of the great 

themes of western art: the contrast 

between the timeless and the 

momentary, the immortal and the living, 

between a Greek marble statue and the 

petals of an English flower picked one 

summer's day in the 1990s. 

The ideas and suggestions in the picture 

don't stop there. There is something 

almost unbearably fragile and beautiful 

about Cortona's woman opening up her 

womb for the anatomist to view. This sets 

up echoes with the delicate tissue paper 

slit in 'The Tear', the surprised naked 

intimacy of Diane de Poiters, and the 

surreal half- visionary half anatomical 

ectasy of the saint in 'The Visible 

Woman'. The word 'photograph' just 

doesn't prepare you for these 

extraordinary experiences. 

How are these images made? The 

moment of pressing the shutter release 

on the camera is just one brief stage in a 

long and meticulous (but surprisingly 

playful) process. 

Paul Kilsby spends hours, days even, 

arranging these objects and images to 

his satisfaction, toying with them, 

'treating' or interfering with them in 

various ways [burning, tearing, breaking, 

retouching] experimenting with light 

reflections, angles and shadows. In his 

tiny studio he creates a stage setting for 

a miniature theatre of the mind, in which 

every effect is carefully and delicately 

shaped. Afterwards there is the process 

of printing, the search for a perfect range 

of tones, for the ultimate black, for a 

balance of light and shade. And before he 

even begins to assemble the objects 

there is, of course, the crucial stage of 

mental preparation, when books, ideas, 

things seen, sensed or imagined, start to 

ferment in his mind, creating fantastic 

new forms and encounters. 

In a lecture given at The Royal College of 

Art in London in 1994, he said, "My 

photographs are very much about the act of 

looking- not the habitual casual glance 

which fails to take in so much but the 

slow, sustained gaze like that of a 

seventeenth century painter of still life; 

which becomes a kind of meditation." 

This, it seems to me, is the way in to his 

world. The ideas are practically endless, 

yet they are generated in us as we look at 

the images. But this really does mean 

looking, stepping back for a few moments 

from hectic, data bombarded lives, 

slowing down our mental metabolism, 

and creating a stillness inside ourselves 

that allows the resonances in the picture 

to be heard.