On Photographer and Activist Dexter McLean

The photographic work of Dexter McLean is produced through the prism of his existence and is informed by lived experience. At its core we encounter an enquiry into the black body, disability, and representation. Over the past few years and while studying for his Master’s degree, McLean has made critical shifts in his thinking not only concerning the image-making process but also the journey he wishes to pursue as a photographer and visual activist whose primary aim is to challenge the absence of imagery of disabled people across mainstream media, the history of visual culture and photography in particular, as well as the prevalence of negative imagery historically. His work constitutes a generous offering to his audience, a body of nuanced and layered representations that illustrate his relationship to himself and others: intimate moments of self-portrayal, and documentary portraiture of those who care for him, with whom he identifies and loves and cares for in return. McLean’s practice is powered by a passion for giving voice to those who have been silenced by the devastating body politics of classification.

In the series Untitled (2020), developed for Autograph’s artist commission Care | Contagion | Community – Self & Other, McLean has photographed his subjects looking straight back into the camera lens with their faces covered by personal protection masks. These faces locate the viewer within the immediacy of the current context of a global pandemic. The masks are symbolic of the public health and safety regulations that we have come to recognise as part of our new reality. However, those portrayed also share something that is not obvious to the viewer: they are all in McLean’s support bubble.

When read as a body of work, these portraits produce a collective tension: the masks leave little of the face to discern except a ‘forced’ close-up encounter with the eyes. The viewer has no choice but to return the confrontation of the sitters’ gaze. This device references one of McLean’s key influences, the late American photographer Richard Avedon who would ask his subjects to stare for long periods of time at the camera lens before taking his split-second exposures.

These close-up portraits of youthful black faces also inadvertently address the fact that in the past all of these boys and young men would have been at risk of being stopped and searched by the police if they dared to cover their faces with masks in public. McLean is here flirting with his audience’s understanding of this perception shift in the representation of masked faces and Black subjects, adding an important layer to this turbulent visual history. His series of portraits invites the audience to consider the mask as a signifier that now works to remind us of the devastating and disproportional impact of Covid-19 on the African, Caribbean and Asian populations in the UK.

As an artist with cerebral palsy, McLean understands what it means to live with barriers, to be locked out of dialogue and isolated in society. So, while we collectively await a return to our pre-Covid-19 ‘normal’, McLean through the production of this series wants us to reflect on the resonances of what defines ‘normal’, how this ideology is metered out, and by whom and for what purpose? This thought underscores both the gravity and necessity of McLean’s practice, and, because of his own personal circumstances, is tangentially reflected in these striking new portraits.