John Hilliard Explores the Boundaries of Photography and Perception

Photo: John Hilliard: Visionary Artist and Master of Photographic Experimentation

Celebrating an Artistic Vision That Redefines the Role of the Photograph

John Hilliard delves into photography’s complexities, embracing its flaws and possibilities to challenge notions of truth, representation, and artistic intent, while celebrating its unique material and conceptual strengths.

John Hilliard stands as a towering figure in contemporary art, weaving his profound understanding of photography and sculpture into thought-provoking works that challenge our perceptions of reality. Born in Lancaster in 1945 and educated at St Martin’s School of Art in London, Hilliard embarked on a creative journey that has continually reshaped the boundaries of photographic representation. From the outset, his work has been characterized by a relentless exploration of photography not just as a means of documentation, but as a medium worthy of investigation in its own right.

With his early site-specific installations in the U.S. and subsequent shift towards photography, Hilliard demonstrated a visionary approach that has resonated across continents. His photographic interrogations—rich with intentional “errors” like motion blur, variable focus, and multiple exposures—force us to reconsider our understanding of the ‘perfect’ image, making us aware of the intrinsic qualities that make photography a unique art form. These elements, often dismissed as technical failures, are instead celebrated and utilized, reflecting Hilliard’s dedication to embracing the true nature of his chosen medium.

John Hilliard’s groundbreaking vision transforms photography into an intellectual and artistic pursuit, redefining how we perceive reality through images.

Through decades of teaching and exhibiting globally, Hilliard has inspired new generations of artists while remaining at the forefront of photographic innovation. His work transcends the mere visual, engaging the viewer in a dialogue about truth, representation, and the fleeting nature of reality. As we delve into Hilliard’s artistic world in this issue, prepare to be challenged and inspired by an artist who sees beyond the lens, capturing not just images but the essence of our transient existence.

How has your early use of photography for documenting site-specific sculptures influenced your later work with the medium?

In recording my own work as a student at St Martin’s in the Sixties, and looking at reproductions of works by other artists (in journals such as Art Forum and Studio International), I was aware of the inevitable difference between the photograph and its objects, and the questions that might be raised when photographic evidence was being proposed as a proof of authenticity. An interrogation of the medium, initially prompted by that awareness, has shaped all the work that I’ve made since.

Can you elaborate on how you experiment with the materials and instruments of photography in your practice?

With analogue photography, short of building one’s own cameras and preparing one’s own film and papers, the equipment and materials fall within industry-defined parameters, and digital photography, similarly, has its own boundaries. Despite those limits, the potential for producing radically different versions of the ‘same’ image, simply by choosing different variables in different combinations is enormous, and my experimentation is concerned with testing those combinations, especially where their pairing might be deemed unlikely or undesirable.

“Blurred, unfocused or over-exposed images may in many contexts be seen as mistakes or failures, but these are precisely the kind of qualities that are specific to photography.” –John Hilliard

In your work, motion blur, variable focus, and multiple exposure are explored as intentional elements. What do these “errors” represent to you in the context of your art?

I have in fact described my practice as ‘a catalogue of errors’ – a description presented as a joke, yet with a serious intent. In true Modernist style, I want to articulate my medium of choice in a way that respects and utilises its innate properties, and in so doing make those properties manifest. Blurred, unfocused or over-exposed images may in many contexts be seen as mistakes or failures, but these are precisely the kind of qualities that are specific to photography, and as such are there to be usefully deployed and to be celebrated, not denied or suppressed.

How do you balance the technical aspects of photography with the emotional or conceptual aspects of the images you create?

As a general rule, my first step towards producing a photographic work is in the form of an idea, which is then transcribed to paper as written notes or a diagram or a sketch. I may even make a drawing of a photograph before it ever comes into existence. The techniques required to produce such a photograph may be embedded as part of the original idea, or may be selected afterwards as being suitable for the job in hand. Any content giving rise to an ‘emotional’ response is likely to arrive as a final part of the creative process, and may surprise me as much as anyone else.

Can you describe a specific moment or project where photography allowed you to push boundaries or express something unique that other mediums couldn’t?

Despite my enduring suspicion of photography’s objectivity, I also recognise its unique capacity for the instant capture of ‘likeness’ and of moments in time, and in that sense it was a valuable tool, perhaps the only tool, to allow a largely reliable record of my site-specific sculpture. Beyond that, its inbuilt capacity for devices such as multiple exposure or variable focus and its essential dependence on positive and negative inversion, are qualities only truly shared by one other medium: cinema. But my own interest is in making still images with temporal fixity, where the viewer can spend as much or as little time with them as they wish, and within that territory the photograph provides a rich resource for exploration and experiment.

How do you see photography’s role in capturing or representing the transient or impermanent nature of the world around us?

Known as a ‘fugitive medium’, photography itself is always decaying, always transient and always impermanent, so may be seen as appropriately in parallel with a changing world that it seeks to document. While knowing its material shortcomings, coupled with the shortfall of its attempts to accurately mimic reality, we nevertheless acknowledge it as a useful tool for arresting and affirming events at a particular time and place. That acceptance, however, a kind of holding position, is now in jeopardy because of recently added challenges to the photograph’s credibility as evidence. In a ‘post-truth’ environment facilitated by digital technology, even that holding position is undermined, so that we need to be doubly alert to the wilful dismantling of photographic veracity, and doubly particular in testing any evidential claims.

EYE TEST (2024)

John Hilliard’s Eye Test (2024) masterfully explores the interplay between vision and perception through a striking composition. The photograph juxtaposes a close-up depiction of a human eye with a classic Snellen eye chart, symbolizing the act of seeing and its scientific measurement. Set against a dark, minimalist background, the dramatic lighting emphasizes the stark contrast between the eye’s nuanced reflection and the chart’s bold precision. Hilliard’s work invites contemplation on the nature of observation, optics, and the subjectivity of sight, while the moody atmosphere elevates the image to a thought-provoking study of human perception and its inherent complexities.