Push Process - Jonathan Walker Writer

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More speed, more light, more time.

But this is the fastest possible film, pushed as hard as it can be pushed; the lens wide open to catch every drop of brightness; the slow exposure shaking the image apart. Right up at the edge.

Go farther, closer.

Venice, 2000.

Richard is a postgraduate student living in the city to research its past. He’s supposed to be working in the archive, but he meets Merlo and Lars, two art students who are more interested in Venice’s present. He decides to pick up a camera and join them.The world comes alive for Richard through photographs: for the first time, he feels connected to a place – and other people. He’s determined to continue, whatever the cost.Push Process is a novel about art, friendship and being European, illustrated with over fifty black-and-white photographs of Venice.

Recommendations and Reviews

[N]ever-less-than-fascinating discussions about photography and art, but also a genuine sense of being transported – by both words and images – to an atmospheric world of fully-realised characters for whom these questions are not merely of academic interest, but the stuff of life itself.

The Scotsman

The book encourages us to pay attention: the descriptions are detailed and hyper-focused, the photography of Venice is layered and intricate, and the accompanying captions raise ideas that any reader, novice or experienced photographer, can appreciate.

Like his photography, Walker’s writing is contemplative, pairing pithy observations ... with highly specific photography vocab and snippets of Italian. These specialist details rarely make the reader feel alienated, however: we become tourists in Venice, acquainted with Richard’s artsy friends Merlo and Lars, catching soundbites and glimpses of meaning in a way that is clandestine, conspiratorial.

The subtle manipulation of perspective is what really makes this book shine, as we zoom in and out of Richard’s life like the focus on a camera lens ...

Snack magazine

A genre-defying work that blends quality fiction with art theory and criticism to pose the question, what are we really trying to capture when we decide to take a photograph?

Stu Hennigan, author of Ghost Signs

In Push Process, Jonathan Walker takes a stylistic risk, producing a novel as arresting as it is innovative, resulting in an alchemic book infused with shades of Ian McEwan's The Innocent and Teju Cole's Blind Spot.

Ali Millar, author of Ava, Anna, Ada