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Ishmael Claxton’s journey from New York City to t
he heart of the Liberties has been a winding road. First working in mathematics, his impeccable eye led him back behind the lens and across the world. After completing 39 shows over 2023, what may be the most shows any living visual artist has exhibited in one year, he welcomed me to his sitting room, and surrounded by his astounding work, we sat across from one another sipping coconut infused coffee. He talks to me about Afro Irish, a beautiful piece which features the renowned Dublin DJ, Syl Black. “I play around with a lot of techniques. This piece deals with the idea of fighting for the identity of being an Irish person. It was part of a series I started called Migration Integration, all about dealing with when you’re from somewhere else and you come to a country, when you’re trying to integrate to a place, you bring a part of yourself with you. So, how to integrate into a new culture, but maintain that piece? The work is immediately arresting, presented across three different formats, each one of a kind. Opposite: Ishmael Claxton, photographed by Issey Goold Above: Afro Irish by Ishmael Claxton “I used a prism to create that effect of fading away, and that represents him coming into his whole being, and he’s split into these different sections of himself. This one is a technique I use called double layering, it creates a 3D effect. You have a regular photo, then you take an acetate photo on top of it, and it creates layers so if you look at it from different sides it changes. The same photo, here, printed on canvas gives it more of a painted quality.” Yet more bewildering is the purity of what he does to get such arresting results. Claxton eschews the modern conveniences of digital post production techniques and complex studio trickery, instead preferring the implementation of effects at the source, then staging and capturing a miniscule fragment of time. “This is all film, analog. So that’s literally a prism in front of the lens. There’s no post production. A lot of the work there’s really no post production. Even if you look at the Holy Mary fixing herself, a collaboration with Make Up Artist Anabel , a lot of people ask how I did it. That’s just how I took it, a black backdrop and the way it looks like a cutout, just how I lit it. The smoke was my assistant walking around with a smoke bomb and my good friend David was holding the light.” Claxton left the unrelenting roar of New York to study under individuals in Europe, the classroom having lost its appeal, from both sides. His interest in the medium took root in childhood, blossoming after he had achieved his academic goals. “I was born in New York, but I’ve lived all around the place. In America, we have these things called after school centers, where you go to do your homework and typically, you have some activities. One of mine was photography, but more darkroom photography, taking a photo, learning to develop it. I was in elementary school, so that planted a seed.” “I remember using my moms cameras back in the day, and there was always something I liked about the image. Something unique that I thought was really cool. As I got older, it went to the sideline. I come from a somewhat academic family, and when I told them I wanted to study art they were not having that, so I ended up studying Pure Mathematics, and teaching for a while. I’d saved up a few bob, and I wanted to do photography. I started taking a class in North Carolina, where I was living, and when I went back to New York, started studying and did my first solo show, at a little Japanese Gallery in Dumbo.” With a dissatisfaction that would be all too familiar to anybody working in the arts, Claxton cast an eye on Europe to further develop his craft. “I still felt the work wasn’t strong enough, I had been taking classes, but I wanted to go to Europe and study art. I had been a few times, so I had this Idea of what it would be like. I wanted to travel and learn, rather than sitting in a classroom. I always preferred a pedagogic method where I’d be learning from individuals, one on one. I went to Germany, and Paris for a while, and I was dating Violet, the mother of my daughter, who told me “You should come to Ireland”. 21