Brian McKee
Biography
Brian McKee called himself “a visual historian” who ventured to “convey a unique and important view of select aspects of World History” with his photographs.
“Within architecture and landscapes I find my true subject, the detritus of civilization, and seek to explore the way we define and relate to its existence. Although creating precisely composed and executed images I carefully chose projects that have a conceptual meaning and importance beyond their visual interest or beauty.”
For the past 15 years McKee had focused on examining and visualising a body of work that explored both the current and past social and political atmospheres of countries around the world. Photographing with an 8x10 inch Deardorff plate camera he composed poetic images, which conveyed a complex untold narrative embedded in an immaculate concept, which didn’t only exist for aesthetic purposes. He was fond of ”the idea that houses, buildings, towns and cities provide us with a true understanding of the cultures that inhabited those spaces. At the same time they are a reflection of the social, political and personal atmosphere that created them.”
His signature subject of the rise and fall began 1999 when he photographed Soviet military bases in former Eastern Germany. “Due to circumstances of political and social change, these historical sites were left to decay on a scale that was just as large as the scale in which they were conceived and constructed. I was unaware at the time that (…) the construction and destruction of our various systems of political, social, financial and personal endeavors would be one that I would focus on for the next fifteen years. Since that first project I have built my work around the idea that chaos is something that is never planned within a society, but is nevertheless inevitable. The work in this show represents projects I have done in the former Soviet Union, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, India, Lebanon, the United States and Turkey, the location of my last major project.”
His last exhibited photographic series ŞOK depicted abandoned or run down sites in Turkey, a country that, for centuries, has been a breeding ground for a variety of cultures, political ideas and ideals, religious beliefs and tumults.
Brian McKee’s artist statement about ŞOK:
“My most recent project ŞOK explores sites conceived and built to further the functions of systems of commerce. They are all structures, now abandoned, and located throughout modern day Turkey. The sites themselves span periods from the 14th - 20th century and stood, throughout their various metamorphosis and evolutions, for the concept of a global market place environment. Due to Turkey’s singularly unique geographic location, partly in Europe, partly in Asia and bordering the Middle East, they represented a concept or system of commerce that was equally unique. They were, in fact, a microcosm for what we today refer to as global commerce. Many of the structures were located along the Silk Route or in major hubs such as Constantinople / Istanbul and here they represented and severed a vast expanse of cultures, societies, beliefs and concepts. They now sit as the detritus of a system they helped evolve and as metaphors for our own rapidly evolving systems of global commerce, where ever it may lead us.“
In the simplest of terms, McKee’s work over the last fifteen years attempts to ask the question, “How close are we with respect to the fine line that separates order from disorder.” Perhaps more important is the question of how and when do we know that we have crossed this invisible line. I certainly cannot answer such a complex question but I have spent many years exploring this topic. I have attempted, to the best of my abilities, to visually present points in history in which this invisible, yet very real line has been crossed and the subsequent results. In the end, no matter how much we attempt to stabilise the world that we live in, once again we have to realise that “Nothing’s Permanent.”
Brian McKee died suddenly in 2018 in Istanbul.