IN MEMORIAM 

Errol Sawyer 1943-2020

I measure myself as a craftsman in proportion to the degree of consciousness I bring to bear upon a given event at its inception, not at its conclusion! 

—Errol Sawyer

Errol Sawyer passed away on December 24, 2020 in Amsterdam. He was an early supporter of Caesura and generously offered us a portfolio of photographs and a short reflection for our Issue 0. Errol’s work, informed and formed by a piercing historical consciousness, will stand as a beacon to those who aspire to the production of a critical art. 

Errol could teach you much of what you didn’t learn in art school. He’d often illuminate the task of artistic creation with the confidence of someone who learned by life-long practice. In this interview, with his wife Mathilde Fischer, he delivers the aesthetic philosophy of German Idealism in three sentences: “A good picture results from a subconscious dance between being present and not being present. A photograph, or any image for that matter, should not only articulate a point in time and space but simultaneously provoke a re-evaluation of that particular point. It should stimulate our perception of what we take for granted about physical phenomena.” This is the objectification that belongs to art, that which constitutes the dance of distance and proximity animating the critical moment of aesthetic experience.

Intuition and reason mingle in what Errol has called the ‘Real Intelligence’ of the artist. Via his personal vision, the universal rises to speech: “...by virtue of some cosmic alchemy, we are communing with forces beyond description whose presence resonate in our beings to a degree as sure and ethereal as when we are moved by great music.” This is how the artist gives voice to the as-yet-senseless vortex of history — the topography we’ve traversed and the vantage point from which we now survey the dark and formless shapes punctuating the horizon.

Without a question mark, Adorno once wondered, “...what would art be, as the writing of history, if it shook off the memory of accumulated suffering.” Errol’s Face In The Tree (2014) is instructive in this regard and gives the lie to the so-called political art of our day. What he articulates at first is the moment of his passing by a gnarled tree trunk. An oblique sunbeam riddles its already rough surface with shadows, revealing a latent poem etched in braille for our eyes to read. For Errol, haunting this fleeting trunk was the childhood memory of another picture, his encounter with Emmett Till’s features in Jet magazine. If the photograph stands on its own, it does so above all by its capacity to preserve and pry open a moment of time — to still our conflicted desire to reimagine the world each instant and our incapacity to forget. The brutalization of society parallels that of consciousness, and neither forgetting nor remembering is in itself a liberated practice. Contrary to artists and critics preoccupied with the who and what of representation, the strength of Errol’s work is the irreducible ambiguity of how we see or could see the world around us. Thus his photographs stare back at us defiantly; for we might not possess the faculties to judge how any of it is done or why that how matters. Errol’s how may be asking something that none of us is equipped to answer. 

Benjamin optimistically wrote that “Mankind is preparing to outlive culture.” Errol’s recent photographs depict culture having survived mankind. In Rokin Boutique (2018) an elegant earring dangles from an alabaster mannequin head in a window display. Behind it, unfinished plywood retains swirls in its grain — a natural pattern in tension both with the sharply cut edges of the plywood itself as well as the buttery-smooth features of the mannequin head. The uncanny verisimilitude that attracted the Surrealists to mannequins finds itself defeated in the inhumanly delicate visage on display. An impression of inanimacy pervades, but it does not erase the idea(l) of a woman’s head. A dark right angle juts into the frame between the wood and the figure. The composition’s unity flashes up in the band of light on the outermost layer marrying the recessed wood to the dark shape in the middle ground, then finally to the pale cheekbone of the face. Here appears the glass of the boutique window, a surface reflective in every sense of the word. In the faint glow, we become aware of the photographer’s eye — and of our eye looking through his. But there are no eyes to meet ours on the other side of the vitrine. Our gaze will not be returned. If, in photography, as Benjamin teaches, the last refuge of art’s cult value resides in the human countenance, what does Errol’s eerie portrait impart? An image of humanity...unrealized? Overripe? Manqué altogether? It is late indeed, but is it too late? 

The work of Errol Sawyer will continue to speak as long as we have eyes to see its saying. These photographs are no consolation; they are not even cold comforts. Errol has quoted Valéry on the praxis compelled by the artwork: “A work of art provides me with ideas, teachings, not pleasure, since my pleasure is doing, not having things done to me.” If we still dare to undertake the critical task, we must rise to art’s challenge, that which Errol pursued: “the purpose of a work of art is clearly and simply, to make people think.” With Fanon, we join the chorus of reflexive prayer: “O my body, make of me always a man who questions!” //

–Austin Carder

“Simon Myssen Bakery on the Albert Cuypstraat Markt was undergoing renovation; therefore, the torn canvas that solicited my attention then suggested we compose a visual mud pie.”


Simon Myssen, Amsterdam, 2018

Leica R9 camera
Leica Elmarit 180mm APO f/2.8 lens
Aperture 5.6
Speed 125

“The configuration in the tree reminded me of the picture in Jet magazine of Emmett Till’s face when his mutilated body was dragged out of the Tallahatchie River in Mississippi in the early 50s.

I could not have been older than ten years if I recall correctly?

I decided not to mine the tragedy because it was too painful; therefore, Face In The Tree.”


Face In The Tree, Amsterdam, 2014

Leica R9 camera
Leica Elmarit 180mm APO f/2.8 lens
Ilford FP4 Plus
Aperture f5.6/f8
Speed 125

“While walking along the Rokin, one of the main drags extending perpendicular to the Dam Square in the direction of the Munt, I noticed the eerie imperfections in the plywood partitions behind several mannequins in a boutique window.

Fruit cake that I am, I simply followed the voices in my head et voilà!”


Rokin Boutique, Amsterdam, 2018

Leica R9 camera
Leica Elmarit 180mm APO f/2.8 lens
Ilford FP4 Plus
Aperture f5.6/f8
Speed 125