Mapa by Max Reeves
Le Document (LD) Mapa is 138 A5 pages of full colour, it’s part Photography, part Psychogeography, and part Odyssey, but is it worth £18?
Max Reeves (MR: Well, that’s a hard one. I put a lot of blood sweat and dribbling into my work over the long years for little financial gain as well as doing lots for projects I think are worth it (The Serious Road Trip, Clapton CFC etc.) but we need to eat and pay the rent, so until we have a Revolution and abolish money I’m afraid I’d have to say yes, although I’d always consider like for like proposals. If I’m lucky I make enough to cover costs and make more books. Just don’t offer me exposure. I’m exposed enough! Exposure kills so if you offer me exposure you can fuck right off ...
LD The director of Tate Modern, Frances Morris, has described the book as being, “a poignant meditation on time, madness and creativity told as a photographic travelogue, overland and through time, across France and via the lives and locations of three artists, Vincent Van-Gogh, Antonin Artaud and Jean-Michel Atlan.” — how did you get to be writing such a book? What was the starting point?
MR Well, I had these disparate threads running through my mind as ever, Crows, Mental Illness, Gesture, Modernism, Genius Loci blah blah and whilst in front of a painting in Tate Modern they all seemed to come together in a sort of coagulum. The painting is Ba’al the Warrior by Michel Atlan Jean — and it’s in a room curated by Matthew Gale about post WW2 art and it’s response to that trauma. It’s probably my favourite room in Tate. Also Matthew’s Wall Text was beguiling about Altan as a Jew captured for Resistance activities by Nazis and escaping the Camps by feigning Madness. I began researching and it turns out he was sent to the same Mental Hospital in Paris where Antoinin Artaud had been, another figure that has influenced me, and is sort of flowed from there. The wall test mentioned Ba’al as being a sort of counter figure to the Judeo-Christian god based tradition or hegemony which is another of my interests ... Ironically getting permission to use my photos of the painting was looking expensive and a big pain in the arse so I asked Lesley Chan a Tattoo Artist to make a Tattoo Flash version of it which seemed thematic and I think worked well.
LD Tell me about your time in Marseille, do you have a fave photo that you took whilst you were there?
MR I love Marseille and I have some very good friends there who I stay with. It is a big Port town and was the Gateway to and from France’s colonial outposts so is truly cosmopolitan. It is also connected strongly to Rimbaud and I used his Drunken Boat poem as another leitmotiv. (I am very influenced by poetry.) All of the photos bar two in the introduction are taken on a ten day trip so it sort of flows and unfolded organically and themes developed along the way such as by Auvers-sur-Oise the boat has become an Absinthe Spoon advertising a museum of a phenomenon long gone ... so my favorite photo of Marseille probably lies outside this trip.
LD Who helped you get this book made? Who would you like to thank?
MR Read the back pages of the book. I guess my long suffering partner and map reader (I have no sense of direction.) She had a melt down on our last day when I had a three hour window of panic to make it to the Sewerage Museum (the sewer system in Paris echoes the terrestrial street pattern and they have boats which sail along them :D) BASTA ... I’m sick of Graveyards and Mental Hospitals!!! I WANT TO SEE THE EIFFEL TOWER!!! Ironically the Sewerage museum is right next to the Eiffel Tower and I practically had to walk under it to get there. Sozzages Sami!
LD What next for Max Reeves?
MR More Books. I have a backlog of about 20 or so. Finally the cost of self-publishing (which these all are) has become affordable and I love photo books. I am slowly building up a collection of work that represents what I'm trying to say and I think books are a great way to show it. And are hopefully of interest. I hope to keep going. Also we plan to publish more poetry books by Steve Micalef who is a friend of mine and 'The unofficial Poet Laureate of the East End'. I have many projects ongoing and ideas and research but I will continue to be inspired by this great, brutal, mythical, deranged, promiscuous, visionary, sublime Museopolis of London.
