"Joseph McKenzie, formerly lecturer in photography at the Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art, Dundee, was one of the most ambitious and prolific photographers of the nineteen-sixties. But, in 1972, after a decade of achievement and neglect, he abruptly withdrew from public exhibition of his work. Ironically, this self-imposed hiatus occurred just as interest in photography as a medium of serious creative expression was to expand rapidly.

During his publicly active years, Joseph McKenzie produced a substantial body of work, primarily in the form of five major exhibitions, each of a minimum of 200 prints. These studies were Gorbals Children (1965), Dundee - a city in transition (1966), Dunfermline and its people (1968), Caledonian images (1969), and Hibernian imagks (1970). In 1969, he became the first living photographer to be awarded a grant by the Scottish Arts Council.

Joseph McKenzies art is rounded upon the solid basis of a quite superlative technique, one of the most outstanding of any British photographer, living or dead. He utilises every type of camera, from 8 x 10 view to 3 5 mm, his small camera technique in particular being exceptional.

His broad technical virtuosity is matched by wide ranging subject interests. Landscape, streetscape, social documentary, portrait, and even personal family snapshots, are all integrated into the McKenzie world view. His work, therefore, represents not just a documentary view of British society, but something more, a record of the artist's experience, a passionate commentary upon human existence.

Unlike many British photographers, Joseph McKenzie does not relate to the European 'photojournalistic' tradition. Rather, he is closer in attitude to the great American humanist artist-photographers, such as Paul Strand or Ansel Adams. Like them, he combines aesthetic with ethical and political concerns. Like them, his work is much more monumental and static than fluid European small camera work. It is metaphysical rather than existential in tone.

Although he has not exhibited for a number of years, McKenzie has continued to photograph. Recently, he has made many lyrical landscapes, which are represented for the first time in this selection, which covers his career from the late forties to the present. When the complex threads of McKenzie's work are unravelled, it can be seen to be amongst the most ambitious attempted by a post-War British photographer. The neglect of him by the British photographic establishment has been shameful, for it is quite clear that he is a highly distinctive and original voice in British photography."

[joseph mckenzie, pages of experience, photography 1947-1987, edinburgh 1987]

Als Theologieprofessorin sind Sie natürlich kein Beichtvater. Was aber können Sie denen raten, die als Homosexuelle im Dauerkonflikt mit ihrer Kirche und ihrem Gewissen nicht klarkommen?

Ich meine: Wer viel fragt, kriegt viele Antworten. So fand ich es im Fall der Empfängnisverhütung einfach unmündig, zu warten, bis der Papst den Eheleuten sagte, sollen Sie mit Omo oder Dash waschen, erlaubt er die Pille oder nicht?

Das war eine medizinische Frage, aber doch keine Frage an den Papst. Auf dem Gebiet der Sexualethik werden Männer und Frauen - und das können sich auch die Homosexuellen hinter die Ohren schreiben - in Unmündigkeit gehalten, d.h. sie halten sich selbst in dieser Unmündigkeit.

Wenn also ein Homosexueller Trost oder Rat bei mir suchte, würde ich ihm sagen: Warum wollen Sie denn unbedingt meinen Segen haben? Sie sollen sich nicht von mir oder von der Kirche einen Freiheitsraum erwarten, sondern ihn sich selbstverantwortlich nehmen. Das wäre im übrigen doch eine Überforderung der Kirche, das wäre glatter Klerikalismus, wenn man auf alle Lebensfragen Rat bei alten, zölibatären Herren suchte. Dabei kommt doch nichts rum, das kann man sich sparen.

[aus einem interview mit uta ranke-heinemann, 1982]

You have worked within many genres, but social realism seems to be a favourite. Would you agree with this, and is this why you chose to do this one?

There's a wonderful moment when Billy Wilder said, it's very kind of you, but I think you're taking me for a rather more serious person than I am?. I simply read a script that I enjoyed. If you said to me, well why aren't you interested in different kinds of British films?, I sort of don't know. I just thought it was great. I'm not a saint. It just seemed a really good story. I liked the fact that it was told in popular form; that it wasn't just a piece of English realism. I could see that it was well written, which is a much more commonly characteristic of what I do. It looked like a sort of life that I understand, but I don't mean that I know this world at all. When I walk down the street, out of the corners of my eyes, these are the things I can see. Although it's instinctive, I can see that I am drawn to certain things.

What problems did the film's subject matter pose, when the production was sourcing a real hotel to shoot in? I believe that you shot in several in the end.

You turn up at a hotel, and say well, we'd like to make this film about bodies that get cut up in your hotel.

interview mit stephan frears über seinen neuen film dirty pretty things