Mark McKnightHeaven is a Prison

In Heaven is a Prison, McKnight describes another world that is both utopian and purgatory, occupied by a pair of Sisyphean protagonists who copulate and seem both liberated and bound by their intimacy and the wilderness in which they are pictured. From one chapter to the next, the poetic sequences of this book oscillate between the literal and the figurative, between distance and communion, between violence and affection. The claustrophobic and horizonless landscapes are associated with images of ethereal clouds and entangled bodies that are at once sculptural, astute and tender. McKnight’s synonymous description of landscape and body suggests metaphor, pointing to both as vehicles – towards transcendence, slavery, beauty and abjection – while revealing them as two sides of the same coin. Heaven is a Prison is the winner of the 2020 Light Work Photobook Award, presented annually to an art project that deserves international attention.