Composite Research......

Paul M Smith

Following the success of Artists Rifles, Paul rejoined the discourse with the masculine identity in Make My Night. Ostensibly a record of a very laddish night out, Paul used a similar technical method to that of the previous series combined with the use of multiple self-portraits. As before, he becomes the anonymous everyman but this time is more overtly the narrator as well as the protagonist of a frequently observed ritual.

The multiple self-portraits emphasise the effect of the military structure on a person's identity as it is subsumed into the unit, to become as it were, brothers in arms.

Though personal, the work also engages with its audience with a broad range of allusion and pictorial reference; in on picture the composition reflects that of a classical painting, another derives from Robert Capa's iconic image of the Spanish civil war. It may not necessarily be a specific or single image referred to but a stylistic genre such as the reportage from the Vietnam war, as in the picture "Scene of a jungle ambush", a photograph that nearly became "Demise of artist in local river".