Preparing for Assignment 3

After keeping a diary for a fortnight, I took a series of pictures of me at my desk. But …
this is not my desk and this is not the room I write in. This is set dressing. I laid out some books on the table and posed with a remote trigger on a three second delay. The camera has sensors front and back for the remote: even so, the three second delay is only just enough. I used a tripod and set the camera at f16, ISO160 and let the exposure look after itself. I shot in DNG RAW and developed the image in Photoshop using the Auto button and then dehazing slightly to improve contrast.

Does this image contain any truth?  I do use all these books but the one my pen is poised over is a holiday diary and sketchbook written in 1992. The book by my left hand is my Context and Narrative notebook. The atlas in the second picture is completely irrelevant. It just fills a space on the table.  I do use a wide selection of reference books and I do write about things other than Context and Narrative. Is this picture biographical? Yes, if only because the things in it cover a period of time and represent an ongoing activity that tells the viewer something about what I do and how I go about doing it. My actual desk is not nearly so interesting. There is no homely fire by my desk, only a window that looks out into a yard where the cars are parked. Florence, our elderly neighbour in the building opposite can see me at work and I can check that she is OK.

This diary entry goes with these images.

Images versus text in autobiography. Preparing for Assignment 3

Question:- is an autobiographer’s presentation of themselves analogous to a photograph? If so, how? If not, why not?

An autobiography takes moments of time (even though the moments may have significant duration) and presents them as representative of a life. A photograph, perhaps a series of photographs, attempts to do the same thing. The difference is that an autobiography cannot work unless it has some kind of narrative. Proust doesn’t just give us a series of flashbacks but gives a consistent narrative in which flashbacks achieve relevance. His madeleine does not sit isolated on a plate: it is connected. A photographic narrative has to be inferred whereas an autobiographer presents the narrative up front. Photographs by themselves have no protection when released into the wild but text knows better how to look after itself.

Both written narrative and photographs are unwitting witnesses to a kind of truth. Both are selective. We learn something about the author when we see what they select, and how they present that selection. Mark Twain, for example, does not tell the whole truth. He constructs what he wants to be the truth about himself. (1) A photograph is similarly economical with the truth. What seems to be the unassailable truth about a moment in time is, in fact, as Barthes said, “weak in respect of meaning”. (2) It is only a fleeting moment which must be anchored somehow to fix its import. Take this picture for example.

(3)
The meaning of this image would be enhanced (limited?) by knowing something about the subject and the location. Without that, stories about prisons, isolation, boredom and so on could easily be invented.

Perhaps a photographic book could approach autobiography more closely. The images, choice, juxtaposition, colour and format all show the same control as autobiography. They are generally self-published, it seems, and do not have the benefit of an editor. But where the images dominate, leaving text in their wake, they are as cryptic as the image above and less explicitly autobiographical.

In the past it was not uncommon for people to carry a notebook and to make sketches. Text predominated. I have notebooks with sketches going back forty years. In fact there are very few sketches but a lot of text saying where we were and what we did. Now I take hundreds of photographs, snapshots, and keep them as an aide memoire. Anything autobiographical now would be based on the photos, an invented narrative created as a commentary on the images or prompted by them rather than vice versa. Even if that were not the case there is a danger of it being perceived as such – image trumps text.

“Images do not make up a life story; nor do events. It is the narrative illusion, the biographical work, that creates the story.” André Malraux. Lazarus (4)

 

(1) Orvell, M. Biography. Vol 21, Number 3, Summer 1998

(2) The Death of the Author in Barthes, R, (1977). Image-Music-Text. London. Fontana Press .

(3) Mine. The reading man. Athens Museum smoking area.

(4) Malraux, A, (1974) Lazarus. Paris. Gallimard

On reading Picturing Ourselves, Photography and Autobiography. Linda Haverty Rugg (1)

She begins by asking “What (or how) do photographs mean in the context of autobiography?” She says, “photographs … simply supply a visual metaphor for the divided and multiple … self.” Also, photographs as physical evidence re-anchor the subject in the physical world.” (But see my comments on Duane Michals (2))

She talks about the “double awareness” of the autobiographer  – awareness of the “autobiographical self as decentred, multiple, fragmented and divided against itself in the act of observing and being” and the self that is constructing the autobiography. Photographs are used to support both these views.

She compares the loss of control inherent in being photographed and that inherent i8n being published.

I’ve been preparing for Assignment 3 by keeping a diary for the last fortnight. A daily diary doesn’t involve much in the way of remembering. This is not Proust’s “life as it was remembered by the one who had lived it” (3), nor is it Barthes’ memory being jolted by a photograph of his mother. (4) It is more purposeful than that. I have always at the back of my mind that this diary is an exercise for an assignment. I plan ahead with the idea that there will eventually be photographs as a result. In my last assignment the mask slipped when I came out of character illustrating my images for ‘Photographing the Unseen’ with text. The memory and the passage of time were the things ‘unseen’. Referring to the process was a mistake in that piece of work.

For this self-absented portrait for Assignment 3 the process is as informative as the text and the accompanying photographs. The process reveals the thought, interpretation, and the attempt to control the outcome in the same way as Linda Haverty Rugg says Mark Twain and August Strindberg tried so hard to maintain control. Like them, and unlike Proust, I am reluctant to reveal too much when too much will prod the demons that lurk in memory. Even for Art, let alone for an assignment, I will not give these frightful things houseroom, let alone invite them in for a cup of tea.

(1) http://press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/731472.html

(2) https://christopherwlog.wordpress.com/2016/11/10/duane-michals-this-photograph-is-my-proof/

(3) Benjamin, W, (trans 1968) Illuminations. New York, Schocken Books. The Image of Proust

(4) Barthes, R. (2000) Camera Lucida. London. Vintage Books. chapter 25

Project 3. Self-absented portraiture Exercise 1

Nigel Shafran. Washing Up

I had not noticed the gender bias of this section of the course. It did not occur to me that being male or female would be the or a main feature of the way someone expresses themselves. Of course gender is important but it seems to me that the artist’s message is not of necessity defined by it. Is there an assumption in the way Safran’s work is presented that washing up is women’s work? Surely not.

I can’t see how gender might contribute to the creation of an image. Would Trish Morrissey have been able to take her Front series if she’d been a man. Probably, though the way she would have pitched the idea might have been different.

When Shafran leaves people out of his images he leaves us to infer what his life is like and who he might be just from looking at his immediate environment. He allows us to see his surroundings as he does. He invites us to share what is around him and, more importantly, the way he sees it. After a while, though, it becomes clear that each image is a carefully composed and lit still life. Shafran, like so many others who take self-portraits, is hiding in plain sight.

Masquerades. Exercise 2

Recreate a childhood memory in a photograph.

Possibilities:-

1. The house I was born in. Huge ox eye daisies growing over the front wall. The rag and bone man’s horse eating the flowers with commentary.
   Picture of horse and cart at Beamish Open Air Museum perhaps. It’s not far from here.
2. Taking my younger brother to school on his first day. He is only 18 months younger than me.
   Picture of grandchild in school uniform – with commentary.
3. The smell and taste of my yellow table at my primary school in December 1952 during afternoon nap time.
   Yellow square – with commentary.
4. The first time I stood on top of a mountain – Barbon Fell September 1963.
   Picture taken from the top of Barbon Fell from my archive with – commentary.
5. Wearing my Dad’s broken watch to school and playing with it all to learn to tell the time.
   A broken watch if I can find one in the market.
6. Sitting quietly all day one Saturday and Reading The Swiss Family Robinson from cover to cover.
   An armchair
7. Playing with my penknife and carving bits of wood.
8. The first time I ate a banana.
9. The end of sweet rationing in 1953 and Mum giving each of us a caramel as we went out to school in the morning.
10. Watching my parents drive away leaving me at the boarding school for the first time, age 13. I’d had cider with my lunch and I was not entirely sober.

Final choice:

My old penknife.

I don’t know where this knife came from. Perhaps I saw it in a drawer and decided to adopt it. It is very sharp indeed. I don’t think my parents knew I had it or, if they did, they thought I was sensible enough to have it. I never cut myself with it.
Knives were strictly forbidden at my boarding school but I managed to keep this knife with me all the time I was there. Keeping such a thing secret was a victory over a system that I hated. At least in this one small case I was winning.
M says it represents some kind of craft work while I just think of it as messing about with a forbidden knife and getting one over on authority.

Masquerades. Exercise 1

1. Is there any sense in which Lee’s work could be considered voyeuristic or even exploitative? Is she commenting on her own identity, the group identity of the people she photographs or both?

The question of capturing one’s essence in a photograph was thoroughly explored in Italo Calvino’s short story ‘Adventures of a Photographer’ in 1958. His protagonist, Antonino, wanted to discover the essence of Bice, his model, and to capture it in a photograph. He wanted to see what were the traits that defined her true character. He used an antique box camera with a black cloth and ground glass screen. (Lee typically used a small snapshot film camera) He could find no answer to his question, “What drives you two girls to cut from the mobile continuum of your day these temporal slices, the thickness of a second?” (1) Even when she was naked and even when they became lovers he could not capture the essence of who she was. I think the clue lies in his question – temporal slices cut from the mobile continuum of time. He already knew that everything changes and that in the end he was on a wild goose chase. Lee’s images admit and rejoice in the impossibility of capturing the self in a photograph.

Her pictures show someone who is completely mutable and undefined yet whose character is revealed. She is confident, brave, adventurous, possibly opinionated. Of course this cannot be a complete picture. After all, if we are capable of surprising ourselves whom we assume to know inside out, how can we know another person. Lee explores “the fluidity of individual and group identities.” (2)

Assuming that Lee involves her people in the process and that they understand what she’s doing, she is not exploiting them. She is, however, inviting us to see and perhaps be involved in stereotyping the various groups – this is me as an x, this is me and a y. She presents herself as the opposite of naked.(3) When she does appear naked she is still in disguise, acting a part. Berger’s comment on nakedness only applies to a subset of nudes such as Brotherus’ and Woodman’s images of themselves (and I’m not very sure of that).

2. Would you agree to Morrissey’s request if you were a day on the beach with your family? if not, why not?

The women replaced by Morrissey in her pictures are asked to become the photographer as she takes on their identities. It sounds like fun if you’re up for it. The most important part of each image is unseen: it is the discussion and collaboration between the photographer and her subjects. All that process is hidden from us. All we have is the consequence and the guess at how many people refused her request before she was successful. Are these families complete strangers to her, I wonder. Whatever, people agree to her becoming a kind of cuckoo in their nests.

I would be strongly tempted to go along with her project and then dine out on the experience.

3. In her series ‘Seven Years’ she is more herself but she shifts her age, her gender, her place in the family so much that she is continually in camouflage, hiding in plain sight. We see her and still wonder who she is at the same time. “Morrissey encourages us to read her photographs. August 8th 1982 is every family photograph that makes us cringe. It is the picture we did not want taken and that we most want to lose behind the sofa, but that appears at the most inopportune moments. If it is a poem its subject is adolescence and it perfectly epitomises the uncomfortable emergence of nascent sexuality.” (4) The more she reveals of herself the harder she is to see.

 

(1) http://beauty.gmu.edu/AVT459/AVT459-001/Calvino.pdf

(2) https://nmwa.org/explore/artist-profiles/nikki-s-lee

(3) “to be naked is to be without disguise” Berger, J, (2008) Ways of Seeing 2nd ed. London: Penguin Books

(4) Camilla Brown in  www.trishmorrissey.com/articles/essays/portfolio-2010.html

Part 3. Project 1. Putting Yourself in the picture. Exercise 1

2. Do you think there’s am element of narcissism or self-indulgence in focusing on your own identity in this way?

The typical signs of narcissism are an inflated sense of one’s own importance, a sense of entitlement, and vanity. I don’t think Woodman, Brotherus or Wearing display all of these traits though each displays enough of a hint of all three to warrant the accusation. I think Woodman believed she had something important to say, but it is not ‘Look at me!’ Brotherus similarly tells us about the human condition and not just about her condition. Wearing shows some sense of entitlement and perhaps vanity when she places herself in the same rank as Auguste Sanders. That seems to me to be for others to decide.

3. What’s the significance of Brotherus’ nakedness?

Brotherus lays her pain bare before us. When she’s not presenting her personal experience she’s placing herself in the tradition of art-history. She shows that there is not necessarily a discontinuity between painting and photography. They can both be about light, colour and the relation of objects in spaces.

4. Can such images work for an outsider without accompanying text?

The text, like the title or even simple attribution of a painting gives the viewer a way in. It claims a context for the work. When the author attaches words to an image he does not send the work alone and unprotected into the world. Even calling a work ‘Untitled’ makes you look at who the author was and this is sometimes enough. For example, this image by Tierney Gearon, is called ‘13 – Untitled’, which immediately places it in a context and gives the author some control over the way the work is perceived.

Text can make a huge difference but too much can turn an image into an illustration, unable to stand on its own two feet. For example, this picture of the doctor’s house on Spinalonga is not worth much by itself. Saying who it belonged to and relating it to Victoria Hislop’s book ‘The Island’ changes everything. Without the words the picture is stranded and devoid of meaning.

 

 

 

5. Do you think any of these artists are also addressing wider issues beyond the purely personal?

Some issues are more important than others. It is important for people to understand the issues around IVF treatment. It is important to see how people like Francesca Woodman can hide in plain sight. It is not so important but still informative in the world of art to push boundaries if only to discover where they are. For example, Tierney Gearon discovered one boundary and wrote this to describe the experience:

“I looked at my pictures today and tried to see the bad things in them that other people have seen. But I can’t. Some are describing them as pornographic, others are accusing me of exploiting my children’s innocence. I don’t understand how you can see anything but the purity of childhood. When the exhibition opened eight weeks ago, the Observer’s art critic, Laura Cumming, wrote that I had succeeded in capturing the way that a child would look at the world, almost as though I was a child myself. The exhibition got great press, and the whole experience has been positive – until last Thursday, when I went to the gallery to do an interview and found the police waiting for me. I was completely blown away. I even started joking around with the officers because I simply couldn’t believe it was happening. I don’t see sex in any of those prints, and if someone else reads that into them, then surely that is their issue, not mine.”(1)

(1) https://www.theguardian.com/society/2001/mar/13/childprotection

Part 3. Project 1. Putting Yourself in the picture. Exercise 1.

How do these images make you feel?

Gillian Wearing

Wearing asks the question, ‘What role have our family histories played in who we are?’ which is another way of posing the nature or nurture question. She answers it by posing behind the masks of close relatives or people she admires.

It may be hubris or devastating honesty for her to pose behind a mask of August Sanders. Does she identify with a person who was banned by the Nazis and who took pictures of persecuted people?

She is saying something about her character and who she thinks is important in her life. She tells us that she wants to see the world through their eyes and in doing so reveals how she herself sees the world.

Part 3. Project 1. Putting Yourself into the Picture. Exercise 1

How do these images make you feel?

Sally Mann

I see too many naked children in these images. Having been a teacher for many years I have come across so many children whose lives have been damaged by abuse, who have been persuaded or bullied to post inappropriate images of themselves online or who have been exploited for their innocence. I particularly dislike the image of the child with a black eye. I thing Mann is lucky to avoid being treated like another Mapplethorpe. I think Mann understands the issue very well. She said, in an interview for the New York Times, “I’m responding with the only vocabulary I have to ordinary and extraordinary situations that I see around me. I have to slap my hands sometimes not to take certain pictures. But the more I look at the life of the children, the more enigmatic and fraught with danger and loss their lives become. That’s what taking any picture is about. At some point, you just weigh the risks.”(1)

 

(1) http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/19/magazine/the-disturbing-photography-of-sally-mann.html?_r=0

Part 3. Project 1. Putting Yourself into the Picture. Exercise 1

How do these images make you feel?

Elina Brotherus

“I’m talking about the fundamental questions of visual art; light, colour; composition; presenting space and volume; the relation between figures and space.” (1)

Model Study 5

The image presents a framed picture of a crouching nude seen in a mirror leaning against a wall. The mirror image is ‘aged’ by using an old mirror and an old frame. The photograph mimics a generic, traditional ‘old master’. The shutter release cable makes the image about photography. It avoids the irony of Duane Michals’ ‘This photograph is my proof’. This is an honest image.

 

Her honesty is evident too in Suites Française’s where she talks about the difficulties of learning a new language and how that makes the individual an incoherent outsider. “The process of art making is one way in which the artist herself makes sense of the world. ‘Taking photographs is,’ she says, ‘like naming things, a way of taking control of the world’. (2)

I remember the first time I went to Germany and could not understand anything. I could not order a simple meal. I was tongue tied and dumb. All power of speech and thought evaporated. I ended up pointing at a picture of an item – it turned out to be a pizza base scattered with onions. I ate it with a small sense of achievement.

Today I took these pictures to illustrate how that feeling of incomprehension and exclusion still persists. I cannot read this book.

Or this one.

Annunciation 14, 2012

The pain of Elina Brotherus’ failed IVF treatment is almost tangible in this picture. The shadowy figure of the man in the picture/mirror on the right and the dark doorway on the left emphasise her isolation of her involuntary childlessness. This is a painfully honest image.

 

(1) cit. in. Bright, S, (2011) Art Photography Now. London: Thames and Hudson

(2) Diana Yeh, Visiting Arts. http://culturebase.net/artist.php?735