It is the first day of Photo Oxford’s fifth edition but the first venue I arrive at, Maison Française, is closed. Is this what Roland Barthes meant when he wrote that “in order to see a photograph well, it is best to look away”?
There is at least an exhibition outside – one of the 30 shows in the city’s community spaces, churches, colleges and pubs that are part of the festival this year. Michael Christopher Brown’s 90 Miles refers to the distance between Havana and Florida, a perilous stretch of ocean crossed by many Cubans fleeing the country on DIY boats – a record number between 2022 and 2023. Brown uses AI the way draftsmen created illustrations for newspapers before photography. He has collected eye witness accounts, news stories and historical reportage of Cuba’s history from Castro to today, and used them as prompts for the software. In one image, the figures positioned on and around a classically Cuban vintage car, strangely stranded in a turbulent ocean, have warped faces and limbs that melt and drip like a Francis Bacon painting. These aren’t real images – but they are truthful.
