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Jack Daniels and Mr Freud (2008 to 2020), 2640 Photographs. Artist’s edition by Francisco Paco Carrascosa

‘Peering, watching, zooming in – into brightly lit windows, dark alleys and gloomy bars: Paco Carrascosa’s latest work, the final piece in a trilogy of monumental stature, is an exploration of the night. The photographer, like an extraterrestrial who has just landed on Earth, marvels in awe at the orgiastic drama playing out in the dark: an eruption of colours, lights, shapes, reflections and perspectives.

Yet gloom holds sway here: people stare at their screens, sit at tables or wait at train stations – alone, exposed, abstracted and detached. Even the title of the book hints at an uncovering: when the whisky maker and dream reader come together as allies in the night, all masks fall away and the world is shown naked – its innermost and most intimate features laid bare to the eye.

The 2640 images in this work implicate us in this knowledge: for a moment we are participants in the lives of other people, empowered by the all-seeing eye of the telephoto lens. Unlike the masses of pictures offered for sale and decoration, mostly visual clichés or clickbait with louche motifs and celeb shots angled towards social media and sensation-hungry news outlets, Paco Carrascosa’s photographs show us the real and the raw. His trilogy reaches its dreadful and beautiful climax here, full of sparkling poetry.’ (Sascha Renner)

‘A canto of evening life – ending in pure, shimmering light, rhythm, luminous music, like free, wild electrified scores.’ (Urs Stahel)

Trilogy, people – animals – night:

‘Francisco Paco Carrascosa’s long-term project is set to run for twelve years and form a trilogy. The first part, ‘Johnnie Walker on the Beach’, published in 2014, was dedicated to people. The second part, entitled ‘‘Black & White’ with Friends’ follows animals and their tracks through the human world. The third part ‘Jack Daniels and Mister Freud’ is dedicated to night-time and twilight. It is an encyclopaedic undertaking, spanning all continents, whose object is to gauge what it is to be human – today and right now and per se. An intensive, endless flow of looking.” People – animals – night: the inner logic of this ongoing narrative is as captivating as it is convincing.’ (Sascha Renner)