Michael Subotzky: Retinal Shift

Steidl has released Retinal Shift, the first retrospective/compilation of recent work by the Magnum photo agency's youngest photographer Mikhael Subotzky (b. 1981, South Africa). Intriguing with its thick red cloth cover, substantial weight of 2.5 kilograms, and translucent eye ball images on the front and back covers, this book left me puzzled after a few "reads." Sandwiched between those eyeballs are 300 heavy-weight, almost plasticized, pages, and it took me almost four weeks to get through this perplexing collection of photographs.Subotzky's website provides little guidance as to the content, giving no description of the book other than a 'coming soon' link which sends us over to a medical journal article which begins:Particularly promising studies on visual awareness exploit a generally used perceptual bistability phenomenon, 'binocular rivalry' — in which the two eyes' images alternately dominate—because it can dissociate the visual input from the perceptual output.However, once inside the first few pages of Retinal Shift, it's revealed that the eyeballs on the cover are images of Subotzky‘s own retina from an optometrist visit. A telling choice for the topics covered within, as well as an insight into what lies behind the eyes of Subotzky.The heavy tome opens with several pages of edge-to-edge black and white photocopy enlargements from the long running publication Who's Who of Southern Africa. The high-contrast images are interspersed through the book as chapter markers incremented by decade, from 1911 to 2011. In 2011, Who's Who ceased printing the annual indexes and moved to an online-only edition. The images, while interesting in their own right and quite humorous when presented on facing pages, seem to stand alone in their presence, calling for a separate chapter or volume.Retinal Shift presents several excerpts from Subotzky’s recent work, including some of his photojournalistic work in South Africa, images collected from found sources such as the Who's Who collection, as well as some CCTV images. Memorable selections of photos include portraits and seemingly everyday scenes presented behind shattered glass; they stand out as challenging, interesting, time-well-spent disruptions, but again, leave one with the sense that a less oblique curation would have better served the body of work.Steidl describes Retinal Shift as an intricate and esoteric collection, and indeed it is. Subotzky's photographs, as a unique series, deserve to be explored. But juxtaposed against the array of found images throughout each chapter, the result confused me, as well as a few other readers I handed it to for assistance and inspiration. Retinal Shift ultimately feels like it is attempting to force a narrative into Subotzky's deservedly Magnum-calibre work.Perhaps my perception will shift over time. Perhaps this is the type of book that will age well on a bookshelf but, for now, its layout and design do not help shed light on Mikhael Subotzky's photographs themselves.Retinal Shift was published on the occasion of Subotzky winning the Standard Bank Young Artists Award for 2012Greg Andruszczenko for GUP