- Gareth McConnell
- From Close You’re Eyes: Gareth McConnell
- Photograph
Close Your Eyes is a frenzied reworking of the accumulated archive of photographer Gareth McConnell. An onslaught of kaleidoscopic imagery fuses portraits he took of rave-goers in Ibiza with hyper-real, vivid scenes of the sun rising as the night bleeds into the morning. We see bleached out crowds appearing like faceless specters dancing en mass, and figures bursting into light as if in symbolic emancipation. Punctuating the book are various examples of paraphernalia found by McConnell relating to the Zen mystic Osho, who gained an international following and whose people are said to have experimented with Ecstasy and taken it into clubs in Ibiza for the first time. Other found imagery in the book references a number of key moments in recent British history from the Battle of the Beanfield to the London Riots of 2011.