Until such a time that the exhibition opens in the Duveen Gallery on November 11th this year, I am reluctant to draw connections between Steve McQueen's Tate Year Project and his earlier work commissioned for Documenta 11 in 2002, or indeed any other of his masterpieces since. And yet in the months that I have been working as one of his photographers, the hundreds of hours spent traversing London's transport systems across the highways and byways of its 33 boroughs, inside my headphones, the multiplicity of meanings and passageways of thought that a lifetime of McQueen's work explore, have continued to open up, branch out and entice. Now, with all the 1, 800 or so schools photographed, all those 700,000 or so children 'frozen in time' explained away in hundreds of workshops, it is time to pause for reflection.
As outrageously ambitious as it is simple, the project is transparently objective. But whilst I step away from the execution of this first stage, to think and write, choosing my words with extra special care in light of knowing how taciturn Steve himself can be, I leave this blog with his words to me in conversation last week: 'People will make of it what they will.' From me, that can be seen as a perfect opt out. Mea Culpa! From him, well let's see....