The photographer’s new London exhibition features 90 portraits of 90 individuals caught in “in-between” moments
Faces have always held a particular kind of fascination for Jack Davison. Known for his brooding treatment of light and shade, the Essex-based fashion and documentary photographer is drawn to portraiture for the mercurial nuances of expression. “There’s something about a face that can change on a dime,” he says. “It can change in light, in tone, in mood.” His latest exhibition, Portraits: 14-16 November, is a series of 90 portraits of 90 individual faces – each captured in an “in-between” attitude and reproduced with his signature dramatic chiaroscuro.
Shot rapidly over just a few days – from the 14th to 16th of November, as the title suggests – Davison worked with casting director Coco Wu to street-cast all his subjects. The models they selected from the streets of London are all very different from one another, but they each possess their own uniquely anachronistic quality. “I always look for faces that feel like they could be modern, but they also could be from the 1920s, or they could be from 200 years ago,” Davison says. He deliberately omitted a year from the title’s date; he didn‘t want it to be anchored in a specific time. “I like the idea of this book being found by someone in the future who has no idea how old the pictures are. I wanted that mystery,” he says.
The stark styling of the series amplifies its timelessness. The images are close-cropped and many of his subjects wear the same monastic-style hood to obscure their hair and any other extraneous defining features that might date the pictures or detract from the intensity of the face. “Sometimes the hair was too modern or specific, so the hood is an equiliser,” he explains. “It hides everything apart from the face. There are no headphones or jewellery. It’s an exercise in simplicity, paring back the portrait to its most essential qualities. I’m always interested in how much more we can simplify this to its most pure form; portraits focusing on the face.”
What makes the perfect portrait? Having accumulated a multitude of shots of each sitter, how does Davison select the defining image? “There’s definitely an instinct to it,” he reflects. “There are also habitual things I do. For instance, there’s only one photograph in the series where someone’s looking directly at the camera – everyone else is in the middle distance, or looking away. I’m trying to find all those transitory moments where the subject is a bit less aware of what’s happening; where it feels more of a caught moment – that in-between expression where they’re somewhere else in their head. I find, when a viewer looks at them, there’s more space for meaning. If their gaze is direct, there’s power in that, but sometimes less mystery.”
If the averted eyes of Davison’s subjects are less confrontational than direct eye contact, inviting the viewer to contemplate the portraits more deeply, then the scale of these pictures is also alluring. At approximately 11 x 8 inches, each print is relatively modest in size. “They’re quite small as objects. We found that people achieve a stronger connection to them [when they’re smaller]; it invites you to come closer. Originally, they were almost like postage stamps, but we decided that was too small.”
The texture of the prints themselves also requires closer inspection; the exhibition demands to be seen close, in real life. Davison used a technique called photopolymer gravure – an intaglio printmaking technique that transfers photographic images onto a light-sensitive plate for printing on a press. Having shot the originals digitally, this process is physically more satisfying. As with gardening, there‘s an element of “getting your hands dirty” about working with ink that appeals to Davison. “It’s messy,” he says, “It’s like being connected to something physical. It gives you the feeling of producing objects rather than digital files. And, because the images are quite simple, it just adds to the character – you get imperfections, so each one is unique and different.”
The high-contrast effect of the printing technique is also a part of Davison’s desire to distil the process down to the purest form of portraiture; the stark shadows simplify the contours of the face in a way that recalls Bergman’s The Seventh Seal. Francis Bacon is also a touchstone. “I’m always interested in reducing something down to its most essential, pure form. With faces, because we are programmed to recognise faces so easily, you can get away with so much more abstraction than with other subjects. Francis is a master of this,” he says. Like Bacon, Davison’s early brush with Catholicism touches his work in particular ways, often unconsciously. Some of his portraits from the exhibition are reduced to a form in which they could almost be stencils or religious icons, reminiscent of the sculpted stone faces adorning the facade of cathedrals. He’s not religious, he explains, “but you don’t know how much all those Sunday church visits as a child stay with you”.
Portraits: 14-16 November by Jack Davison is on show at Cob Gallery in London from 6 March – 2 April 2026.
