 |
|
|
|
Quotidian LivesAn attempt to explain my journey through this Final Project, starting with an exploration of staged versus candid photography and the place of narrative therein, leading on to some thoughts on Subject Matter versus Form, Connoisseurship versus Contextualism, the role of aesthetics and the placing of my own practice within it all. Walter Benjamin considered the camera to be a good tool for an artist to use in the urban environment. In The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction1 he refers to Atget's tendency to remove himself from the more dynamic elements of the Paris street life he photographed, preferring instead to record the deserted, forgotten or seemingly desolate side of the city. Other photographers who use street as their inspiration (Winogrand, diCorcia, Doisneau, Goldin, Frank...) take the opposite route, and choose to record the dynamism and ever-changing theatre of human activity but they all, by definition, use a camera. For this final project, Quotidian Lives, it was necessary for me to place myself somewhere on this street photographer continuum in order for me to feel comfortable (and justified) in the work I was doing. In my preferred style, do I try to remove the personal, human-as-individual element of the street in an attempt to make environmental or socio-historical observations like Beat Streuli:
(C) Beat Streuli Oxford Street 1997 ...or am I more at home operating right in the mêlée, recording life on the hoof with no pre-determined outcome, à la Christophe Agou?: (C) ChristopheAgou Looking at my past work in general, the answer is probably the both. Perhaps the continuum is not so clearly defined after all. In researching the oeuvres of the many and varied photographers of street life (in its broadest sense) it is apparent to me that I gain most satisfaction, and find most to resonate with, images which are un-posed, not pre-meditated and, more often than not, taken without the knowledge or explicit consent of the subject. Thus, I find more to please me in Philip-Lorca diCorcia's Streetwork (which he described in the exhibition catalogue as 'non-events') and Heads series than I do in Atget's images of desolate Paris or, indeed, in the staged work of Melanie Manchot or the conceptualised realism of Jeff Wall.
Philip-Lorca di Corcia, Streetwork. 1996-8
Philip-Lorca di Corcia, Heads #7 2000
Atget, Un Coin, rue de Seine
Melanie Manchot, Park of Economic Achievements
Jeff Wall, Mimic, 1982 One of the key elements in Jeff Wall's work (which is carefully staged managed to recreate everyday incidents using actors) is the way he observes gestures. John Roberts2 suggests that "Wall's photographs take us back to the 'social somatics' of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century history painting, in which the smallest and most insignificant gesture carries something of import for the overall interpretation of the picture." (p188) This has huge resonance for what I am trying to achieve with my project Quotidian Lives, which uses gesture, facial expression and body language as the basis of the abstracted images. Roberts goes on to suggest that Wall uses gestures as signifiers of external social relations. I make no attempt to place any of my subjects in a social context, but it is inevitable that the viewer speculates on type, class and social standing. What the gestures do signify is the interaction between subjects in the images where there is more than one person or, in an individual, the current activity or preoccupation: Click image to enlarge
To return briefly to Oxford Street: Beat Streuli reflects on city life, recording the highs and lows, good times and bad times and the tensions which exist in day to day high density living. Arthur C Danto considers Streuli's Oxford Street (which originated as a soundless slideshow) to be non-narrative: "Oxford Street is a para-cinematic, non-narrative depiction of a crowd." 3 The individual images, though, certainly do contain a strong narrative in many cases. Who is this person? Where is she going? What happens next? Whereas staged photography often contains a strong narrative element, what we are considering here is whether candid images can also do the same, whether the image is strong enough to hold the viewer's attention whilst s/he tries to unravel the story. Streuli's video works, for example this one4 shot in New York in 2001, demonstrates how the moving image can add another dimension to the art of people watching:
(C) Beat Streuli. Broadway / Prince Street 04-01, three screen installation, b/w, some color, 20 min., 2001 (excerpt) I find this video triptych fascinating to watch; one can almost feel transported on to the street in close proximity to the people whilst at no time wanting to become part of the scene - the ultimate voyeuristic tendency, perhaps. Any random screengrab from this installation, such as the one above, offers us three interesting snapshots of the everyday which could in themselves become exhibits. For me, the narrative element is very clear in the overall presentation - the Urban Life story. Staged portraiture, which can be read to include contemporary art photography just as much as it can formal studio portraits, can sometimes be identified by its use of visual clues such as clothing, artefacts, or even the environment. Such images have a narrative element which the viewer is required to construct from what s/he sees. In the kind of spontaneous picture taking I tend to shoot, these referents cannot be contrived - either they are there or they are not. This means that I do not have the option to lead the viewer towards an understanding of my desired intention, as anything which appears in the picture is there by happenstance rather than contrivance. The narrative implicit in candid street portraiture is embedded in what is real, not what has been put there to suit the purpose. (It is important here to acknowledge that a lot of contemporary portraiture, for example that of Thomas Ruff or Rineke Dijkstra, whilst stage-managed, makes a point of not using any form of prop or other material but relies simply on recording the person with no contextual clues whatsoever. These portraits explore the human condition but they do it the hard way, by offering no scaffolding from which to infer meaning.)
So... my work on this project sees me back once more in the public arena, capturing fleeting moments which, whilst unique in themselves, are repeated time and time again across countries and continents as Ordinary People conduct their Everyday Lives. The street is a place of contradictions - it is stable, slow to evolve, in for the long haul, and yet it is the theatre for fast-moving, ever-changing scenes as people go about their daily routines. A thousand incidents a second will occur on any typical high street; countless minor reactions to the situation and inestimable unseen interactions between people, their possessions and their surroundings. The regular players in what Goffman5 refers to as this human stage are on their own 'patch' and can be seen to operate with a sense of propriety and ownership, whereas the photographer may (or may not) be a mere interloper. The key to success in my preferred style is to operate under an apparent invisibility cloak, to move unobtrusively and to appear at all times inoffensive and non-threatening. Once the subject becomes aware of the invasion, the rules change and the performance shifts from Goffman's 'normal' (ie performed) presentation of self to a contrived notion of what the observed thinks the observer would want to see. Hannah Starkey understands this, and, like Wall and Manchot, avoids the shift from candid to posed by involving everyone concerned in a consensual and highly managed process. She reconstructs everyday scenes using actors to explore issues of race, gender, female stereotypes and class.
(C) Hannah Starkey May 1997 1997 In her piece for Art Photography Now6 Sarah Jones, another artist using staged models, shows that she is fully aware of the potential to abuse the photographic subject: "The photograph allows us to look at someone we don't know for what would normally be an unacceptable length of time. It allows a certain kind of intimacy...".(p91) Clearly, for photographers of the staged or managed scene, this protracted gaze has been factored into the negotiations and everyone enters into the process knowing that the models will be scrutinised as part of the exploration of the image. Subjects who are shot unawares, however, do not share this advantage. Photographers who engage fully with their subjects and manage the shoot through consent and negotiation have the advantage of co-operation over those who choose not to engage or reveal their intentions, but the outcome can never hope to record the unrehearsed or unintentional, which is where I tread a different path. All photography of sentient beings involves a power relationship of some form or another; be it consensual image taking or otherwise, the photographer can manipulate the situation in a way that the subject can not by simple control over the shutter. A third party in this relationship is of course the eventual viewer of the outcome. In her introduction to Art Photography Now Susan Bright explains it thus: "Traditionally, the studio and the street have been the most established environment in which portraits have been made. Here there are recognised codes of conduct which result in portraits which we know how to read and understand. These codes and rituals are formed by a triangle of relationships between the sitter, photographer and spectator. On closer inspection the rituals between the three parties involved often become a complex interplay of power, positioning and performance." (p20) I have examined elsewhere the ethics of candid photography and my own feelings about it as a modus operandi, yet in my work for this project I was reminded how much, (as one who photographs without gaining consent,) the power balance was very much in my favour. The onus is on me not to abuse that power.
It is well known that a human subject will pose (however nonchalantly or even unwittingly) as soon as s/he becomes aware that a camera is in range. I return repeatedly to Barthes7, who finds himself at once... "the one I think I am, the one I want others to think I am, the one the photographer thinks I am, and the one he makes use of to exhibit his art" (p13) we cannot help but put on a show for other people, in order to convey a sense of Self as one would have it perceived. How, then, does this impact on the candid subject? Can we assume that everyone walking the street is, as Goffman would have it, already performing for the world (in which case the camera records that performance of the subject being his or her 'self' as s/he wishes to be seen ) or can we rely on the candid camera to give us a true insight into a person given that the subject is unaware and therefore not putting on (another) performance for the lens? By removing the candid subject from the context in which it is shot (by displaying on a gallery wall, or by cropping the background, say), there is a danger - some might say opportunity - to manipulate the viewer's response. Some of the images I have included in this project can be interpreted in several ways without the scaffold of context or textual information. One could argue this as abuse or as a harmless opportunity for the viewer to infer meaning as s/he deems fit. We cannot tell if the people in my images are masquerading 'à la Goffman' because they are out in the public arena, and therefore unconsciously performing, or if they are performing on a more targeted level for those whose company they share. Occasionally, I have captured a subject at the very moment of realisation that there is a camera there - the split second between blissful ignorance and striking the pose. This is arguably the 'real' self being portrayed. For example, this threesome is engaged on conversation about an exhibition:
Click image to enlarge Seconds later, the two people on the right become aware of my camera and immediately adopt a more studious and aesthetically acceptable pose:
Click image to enlarge Which is the real Bryan and Cate? In the first image the subjects are not acting up for the camera - they are behaving as naturally as anyone would at a public function. But by the time they have become aware that they are being watched and, worse, having their behaviour recorded for posterity and potential display (and therefore scrutiny), the body language and facial configurations instantly alter. For me, as observer/recorder, the first image is what was really happening, the second is an aestheticised version of events. (However, if we do this all the time and somewhat subconsciously, then it's a real part of our behaviour... hmmm.)
In her introduction to 'Cruel and Tender'8 - the publication which supports the Tate's exhibition of the same name - curator Emma Dexter refers to the notion of 'quiet photography' when describing the work of artists such as Paul Graham in his series of images called Beyond Caring. This method of straight photography 'does not draw attention itself, allowing the medium to concentrate on depicting the subject.' She refers to such an image as a 'trap for information', full of narrative clues which the viewer can infer all manner of meaning.
Paul Graham, Queue, Paddington DHSS West London 1985 I would like to think that I photograph in this 'quiet' way - straight photographs with a potential narrative - but where I differ in this current project (Quotidian Lives) is that the images do not stop at that point. The thrust of the work is to take images of the everyday and abstract from them something of their essence. I shall elaborate on this in due course, but I feel duly chastened by Walter Benjamin's dire warnings about 'the aestheticisation of the rubbish heap' by which I infer that one cannot make 'art' out of dull, ordinary, everyday events. There may be hope for me though, as Benjamin also felt that: 'where photography takes itself out of context... where it frees itself from physiognomic, political and scientific interest, then it becomes creative... photography turns into a sort of arty journalism.'9 If we accept that photography is inextricably bound up with the real (Hilla Becher: "no photograph without subject matter"... Barthes: 'there is no photograph without something or someone'10) then that indexicality must be present however far an image is abstracted and manipulated to create another. Referring back to Philip-Lorca diCorcia (whose work I greatly admire and find much to resonate with) who says 'I focus excessively and dramatically on that which was never really hidden, but is rarely noticed'11, I can understand that it is possible to extricate the minutiae of the mundane from a photograph and turn it into a meaningful image in its own right, which is what I have tried to do in this project. Thomas Weski's editorial for the 'Cruel and Tender' exhibition catalogue12 provides a helpful model which I have attempted to apply to my work in this project. He refers to the opposition of Form and Subject Matter - the two opposing camps which took sides in the 'pretty picture' versus 'factual representation' debate on the purpose of photography: '... unless we make a clear distinction between the two main forms that this kind of photography took, we will do neither side justice; neither those who were content with the simple capacity of the medium to produce a likeness, nor those who were creating a subtle artistic construct of fictive fact that takes us much closer to the essence of the reality in question than a straightforward replication of the visible... if the photographer succeeds in penetrating more deeply into the object, then we can relish the realisation that what at first seemed familiar has been charged with additional meaning by the photographer's perception...' (p23)
I would like to think that I can take the best of both worlds and abstract from an image which starts life on the right hand side of this model to make another which sits more comfortably on the left. A slightly different model, referring to Connoisseurs versus Contextualists, was put forward in an article by Andy Grundberg for the New York Times in 198313:
In this model, Grundberg suggests that the Contextualists - those who see photography merely as a vehicle for carrying social meaning, are often perceived as the underdogs to the Connoisseurs, who aestheticise the photograph as an embodiment of the artist's work. Contextualists see no place for photography in the art market or on the gallery wall; the Connoisseurs see that as the rightful arena for a valid art form. Falling into one camp or the other must lead the practitioner (if not the viewer) to favour a particular type of photograph. A crude example might be an image of social deprivation in a mining village, taken by a Contextualist, compared with an exquisitely presented fine art nude, shot by a Connoisseur. Both can be found on the gallery wall. Where, then, does that leave the work of Don McCullin or Chris Steele-Perkins? Whilst these photographers shoot factual rather than fictitious images, there is no doubting the aesthetic and creative element which underpins their approach to imagery:
(C) Chris Steel-Perkins From African work. Feeding centre. Ethiopia. 1983. Writing in the context of photojournalism, Julianne Newton14 touches on the thorny issue of turning trauma into art: "The work of the photojournalist abounds with an apparent realism that refuses to be subverted by conventions visible only to the educated elite. The result is an everyday, seemingly transparent, aesthetic realism dropping into our homes in a steady drip of blood, smiles, tears, triumph ad sorrow. The point of visual reportage is realism, not art. Yet, often, art is created in the process ... and is what makes an image of photojournalism compelling. And although one can pick apart claims to realism in terms of perceptual subjectivity, this aesthetic realism of photojournalism may be the closest a person can get to recording the real. In fact, the lens of aesthetic realism can help see with vivid clarity what would be lost without its unique filters. The photojournalist watches for the moment of 'deeper purpose' ... latent in the everyday life of the world." (p50)
Helen Levitt's photographs, especially from her 'A Way of Seeing' and 'Crosstown' work, take commonplace, everyday occurrences and endow them her acute sensitivity towards gesture, expression and humanity. In this image of some boys in New York (1940) for example, the lads are clearly posing for the camera, but in the most natural 'boys-will-be-boys' way. No staging has taken place here, no direction from Levitt, just a connection with her subjects. Other works from Levitt are show her ability to capture a scene without anyone being aware of her doing so:
From Crosstown: Photographs by Helen Levitt In his introduction to Levitt's 'A Way of Seeing'15 James Agee refers to the notion of 'lyrical photographs' (p2). He argues that other art forms transform reality via the artist into a different form - aesthetic reality - whereas the photographer (like Helen Levitt, but not necessarily those from other genres) 'reflects reality accurately and perceives the aesthetic within the world'. In other words, a painter might interpret a scene using his creative skill, whereas a photographer records the scene creatively and teases out the aesthetic qualities through composition, choice of timing and so on. Agee makes a distinction between 'static' and 'volatile' work: static images have a meditative quality, are rich in perception and show attention to materials and objects... volatile images are rich in emotion and are thus 'lyrical'. I think a lot of Levitt's work demonstrates both these attributes (viz. the image above of the boy in the mirror frame). Levitt had no doubt that her images were not merely documentary but 'art': "And I decided I should take pictures
of working class people and contribute to the movements," she said.
"Whatever movements there were -- Socialism, Communism, whatever was
happening. And then I saw pictures of Cartier Bresson, and realized that
photography could be an art -- and that made me ambitious." Elsewhere, Andy Grundberg16 says of Levitt: [She] "combines intuition and intellect to forge sophisticated, lyrical compositions from commonplace events." p71(1995) One can see from her work that, whilst her images are often pure candid shots, she is able to focus on gesture as much as facial expression. Grundberg puts this more poetically: "... body language provides the vortex around which the picture spins." p71 (1995) This resonates with the choice of images I made for Quotidian Lives. I wanted to record 'nothing out of the ordinary' in order to tease from it something which illustrates 'the awkward humanity' of people going about their daily lives. So, referring back to the previous models, Helen Levitt is undoubtedly interested in Subject Matter, but she also has a keen eye for Form. Does that makes her a Constructivist Connoisseur? There is no easy partition of the two camps, which is reassuring for me as I feel my practice takes something from both approaches.
Another photographer worth mentioning in the context of recording humanity is of course Garry Winogrand. Amongst his vast archive of undeveloped film and unedited contacts, not to mention his published work, thousand of images record life on the streets of mid twentieth century New York:
(C) The estate of Garry Winogrand World's Fair, New York City 1964 Like Helen Levitt, Winogrand homed in on gesture and body language. His 'concupiscent voyeurism' (to borrow Grundberg's wonderfully apt description in the Crisis of the Real p78, 1995), resulted in an unrivalled record of life in the public domain at the time. It is debatable whether or not the work of Levitt, Winogrand and others can be described as beautiful, or even to have an aesthetic element at all. From a philosophical viewpoint, Robert Adams17 argues that 'the discipline of aesthetics seems to artists to inhibit creation', from which one could infer that the more thought is given to whether or not an image is aesthetically pleasing, the more likely the artist (or photographer) is to grind to a halt creatively. Adams goes on to say 'The job of a photographer ... is not to catalogue indisputable fact but to try to be coherent about intuition and hope'(p24). He is concerned with Beauty in photography; (indeed, he reminds us of the definition of Aesthetics as 'a branch of philosophy dealing with the nature of the beautiful'). He seems to be saying that, whilst not getting distracted by the finer points of aestheticism, the photographer needs to eschew what might be termed a straight record shot in favour of one which is sufficiently robust in form, composition and presentation to convey to the viewer a sense of Beauty, whatever the subject matter. By way of example, Adams refers us to Robert Capa's iconic photograph of the Spanish soldier Federico Borrell García in the moments after he has been shot:
(C) Robert Capa Loyalist Militiaman at the Moment of Death, Cerro Muriano, September 5, 1936 What is the aesthetic element in this image? Where is the beauty? The subject matter is not beautiful, to be sure, but there is beauty in the composition, in the pathos, in the drama. The question remains therefore as to whether or not the aesthetic element of this image qualifies it as 'art'. As something of a palimpsest one can argue that the superficial reaction of the viewer to this image should be followed up with a consideration of the deeper meaning and intentions to be inferred. Jean Baudrillard18 does not feel comfortable with the perceived need to endow all photography with aesthetic attributes: "What I bemoan is the aestheticisation of photography, its having become one of the Fine Arts, culture having taken it to its bosom. The photographic image, by its technical essence, came from somewhere beyond or before aesthetics, and by that token constitutes a substantial revolution in our mode of representation. The irruption of photography throws art itself into question in its aesthetic monopoly of the image. Now, today, things have turned around: it is art which is swallowing up photography and not the other way about." Perhaps Jean Baudrillard the philosopher is as odds here with Jean Baudrillard the photographer. A look at some of his photographs shows very clearly that he has an eye for the aesthetic, and that many of his images would sit perfectly well in a gallery or exhibition setting. If Baudrillard does not care to embrace the art world with his photographs it is to the art world's loss, as there is much to find aesthetically pleasing in his work.
References All URLs linked to above tested and working 29/8/07 1. Benjamin, W. The Work of Art in the Age of
Mechanical Reproduction 1936
|
|
(C) Helen Williams 2007 |
