Category Archive

A photograph of a fork by Andre Kertesz (Paris, 1928). A fork and a plate are transformed, from two simple and overlooked items of everyday life into a new reality - a mysterious experience, a formal poetry.

An image that easily captures attention and stays long in memory. Maybe because we didn’t expect such a performance from the mundane and the taken for granted around us. Maybe because we sense that the fork hides so much about us. A social life and individual self-discipline, entailed in the development of modern manners. 

“My wife remembers vividly her first encounter with Norbert in Cambridge when he talked about the history of the fork and used this simple clue to analyse the process of civilization” wrote A. Glucksmann in an introduction to Norbert Elias’s work.

The famous sociologist, Norbert Elias, investigated the development of the so called civilised personality. By speaking of the ‘process of civilization’ he did not make a value judgement upon the western way of life, not at all. It was a descriptive term for investigating the historical changes in modes of behaviour, in which - the point is - individuals were increasingly expected to exercise stricter patterns of self-control or self-discipline.

Here is a photograph of Norbert Elias taken in 1935 by Gisele Freund (a sociologist and photographer that I promise to investigate more about in the future!). The photograph, which almost surprisingly seems to share something of the same approach found in Kertesz’s ‘fork’, is taken from one of my recent readings: Human Figurations (Amsterdam’s Sociologisch Tijdschrift, 1977).

I think there is no better commentary to our two photographs here, than Elias’ own words about the social history of the fork and western consciousness (taken from an interview to S. Fontaine, published in Theory and Society, 1978).

“First it appeared as an exotic instrument. Five hundred years passed, from the eleventh to the sixteenth century, before the rich and powerful felt the need of its use at table. An eleventh-century chronicle recounts how it caused a scandal in Venice. People were stupefied to see a Byzantine princess bring food to her mouth with ’small golden forks with two teeth’. This novelty was taken to be sinful. The priests invoked divine punishment, and the princess was afflicted with a disgusting disease. St. Bonaventura declared it to be a chastisement from God.

The fork appeared in France at the end of the Middle Ages (coming via Italy), and afterwards in England and Germany. At first, courtiers who made use of it were mocked. They were, it seems, very maladroit, and half the food fell from the fork ‘entre le plat et la bouche‘. The fork was first used, in fact, to pick morsels from the common place. Even in the seventeenth century, the fork (made either of gold or silver) was a luxury item used only by the court nobility and some rich imitators from the bourgeoisie.

- Why then did people come to use an instrument that was so awkward and badly received from the beginning?

The etiquette books of the nineteenth century tried to provide an answer: because “only a cannibal” eats with his fingers, or because it is “unhygienic.” But these are only later justifications. The real explanation hinges on a very slow and profound change in the subconscious of people in a particular society. These people have begun to construct an affective wall between their bodies and those of others. The fork has been one of the means of drawing distances between other people’s bodies and one’s own. One repulses the body, isolates it, feels ashamed of it, tries to ignore it. It’s a considerable change. For many centuries, this wall did not exist.

[...] It is mealtime. Each one plunges his piece of bread into the common plate, takes a bite, and plunges it back again. The room is much too hot; everyone sweats. There are a lot of sick people. Many, explains Erasmus’s informant, are afflicted with the ‘Spanish disease’ and are more dangerous than lepers. “That’s true”, says another, “but brave men laugh at it.” Thus what today would have been intolerable was rendered possible by this absence of distance between bodies. Another person’s body was not embarrassing; one didn’t feel the need to keep one’s distance. One of the manifestations of the civilizing process is precisely the creation of these distances and the multiplication of constraints and prohibitions. The latter, coming out little by little, have become unconscious and thus automatic. They have come to comprise what Freud termed the ’super-ego.’” 

A news photograph of F.D. Roosevelt, circulated in 1928, four years before he was first elected as a president, shows a well-dressed man in a confident posture. It is visually demonstrating his ‘good standing’ to the electorate. But otherwise, it could easily pass as an unremarkable photograph among many other official photos of politicians. ‘Candidate with a cane’ could be the generic title as Sally Stein remarks in a recent article (2006).

But on closer inspection, the viewer might discover a well hidden second cane which provides support to Roosevelt’s impaired body. Since 1922, he was not able to stand or walk without external form of help.

Images are very important in electoral campaigns. The ways that leaders and politicians stand in their representations are heavily invested by visual indications, which aim to convince the viewers that they are appropriate to govern. So, this visual manipulation with the hidden support can be understood within the context of U.S. democracy, which has shown little deviation from the theatrical norm of leader: a male, WASP, heterosexual individual with a very sound mind - though religious persuasions are accepted - and very sound body (Sally Stein, 2006).

Such political manipulation of the ‘inappropriate’ body continued long through his political career and involved a series of tactical decisions. For example, he consistently avoided any photographs together with the fellow patients of the polio clinic which he was regularly visiting… His bright steel leg braces, particularly seen when he was seated, were painted black to avoid reflecting in flash photography… He used others to hold him when walking in public, especially his sons, in order to avoid using canes and wanting to appear as walking by himself… He deliberately gave all his public speeches from a standing position, though the podium was appropriately reinforced so that the necessary support was provided…

An endless effort of appearing active and strong, according to the dominant norms, and against the stigma of disability… was met by a cooperative press and a desperate nation wanting to believe in ’strong’ leaders.

Nevertheless, Roosevelt had a successful political career; although many have argued that this was precisely because his impairment and disability was masked. A convenient collaboration between the politician, the media and a nation wishing to believe to fictions of ’strong’ leaders.

As we enter another election period in U.S. with probably another candidate who deviates from the traditional rigid norm, I’m wondering how Barack Obama will deal with this situation and way of his representation. Will he, for example, play down blackness in his images, and if yes, how? And in the end, how obssessed will the electorate be with maintaining the dominant forms of representation, the appearances…

There is one video - linked in my last post - that keeps coming back in my mind. I am talking about that tv clip showing how the sculptor Cosimo Cavallaro got attacked by a representative of a religious group, who in the name of their version of Catholicism and rigid moral order, launched a series of bullying tactics and threatening acts against everyone associated with Cavallaro’s work: a statue of Jesus made by chocolate.

The scandalous point for that religious group was not its chocolate nature of course. It was its anatomically correct representation.

I’m glad that Cosimo Cavallaro has eloquently exposed the morally and conceptually empty stance of his attacker during the TV interview. Yet, if the latter believes that this is “one of the worst assaults against Christian sensibilities ever”, as reported in the news, which he then conveniently uses to justify a wave of violent reactions, should we overlook him with disdain for manipulating reality and ends, or start worrying about the state of our political thought and the undermined role of art?

I am wondering how to perceive this whole incidence. For example, as evidence of some remaining parochial figures which keep providing a source of identification for easily-led authoritarian personalities? Or, given their apparent capacity to terrorise, to threaten with violence or enforce economic boycotts, is this evidence of the continuing political power and effectiveness of extreme right-wing groups and their discourses?

For many, this represents a kind of anachronism within modern society. Certainly, an example of its current contradictions. Many sociologists, such as Giddens, have viewed these groups in terms of modern fundamentalisms. They try to defend tradition but in a way which refuses public dialogue and examination of their ‘truths’. But, as it is asserted, we live in times and places where truths have to be decided. Consequently, these fundamentalist movements of religious, or national and other traditional discourses, can lead to violence.

Violence is in the air, no doubt about it. Although, I would say that this violence arises, not only from the non-dialogic position of such traditional groups (of religion, nation, sexuality, gender, etc), but also from the emotion-based and non-rationally understood reactions of the threatened individuals which comprise them. (In other words, their intolerance might not be responsive to rational approaches).

Now, whether these individuals of fundamentalist groups face real or imaginary threats to their beliefs and identities, could be the next big question. I leave it to everyone to think about it, whether being one of those individuals or not.

I’ll just continue with three relevant visual traces of thought.

a

The religious representative above was trying at some point to explain what finds offensive by evoking a comparative image, which would show the artist’s mother to the public, being naked with her genitals exposed.

What would be offensive or threatening about that?

A photograph entitled Flesh by Japanese artist Manabu Yamanaka (© 1995) comes to my mind.

Yamanaka, who practiced as a nurse among the elderly for years, shows us a photograph of a naked old woman against a white and empty background. Nothing to soften the image, no beautifying techniques or other trycks. Neither the subject makes any attempt to hide her naked bodily existence.

If the viewers feel, however, an emerging emotion of disturbance or embarrassment, contrasting in fact the subject’s comfortable approach, this owes much more to their own problematic attitudes and fears, rather than the photograph itself. Fears of mortality, or chaos, or secret fascination, or whatever else, can and have to be resolved by the viewers themselves, not the subject or the artist. And if for many the photograph comes as a shock, they should probably question our wider culture which makes images of old age rare and invisible, which is obsessed with health and youth, and which associates nude with young female bodies.

b

Let’s go to Vertigo, one of Alfred Hitchcock’s most fascinating movies. I remembered a point made by the well known scholar Slavoj Zizek.

In the plot of the movie, Scottie (James Stewart) saves Madeleine (Kim Novak) when she fell into the waters of San Francisco Bay. Later we are back to Scottie’s flat where she has been recovering sleeping in his bed and he is waiting for her to wake up.

In the meantime, the camera zooms around Scottie’s flat and shows us Madeleine’s clothes hanging in the little kitchen room. So it makes clear that Scottie has undressed Madeleine off her wet clothes before placing her to bed. (After all she later wakes up and questions what happened).

But just a moment! If we focus carefully into the picture of those clothes we realise that there is no underwear shown. There is a chance that they are further away, behind the wall, and so not shown in the image, but we can also observe a bizarre piece of clothing hanging there.

Zizek has argued that there was a censorship issue there with a particular ideological twist. It was imperative that no underwear should be shown, (thus they were replaced by some irrelevant old cloth), because the regulators were concerned that the viewers would otherwise assume that Scottie had seen Madeleine naked. The image of underwear hung to dry was seen, in other words, as the signifier of a scandalous act. Its omission was rendered as the appropriate way to avoid evoking such a conclusion into viewers’ mind.

But, of course, someone would simply ask: Since we, the viewers, know that Scottie has undressed Madeleine and thus we know that he has seen her naked why do we need this kind of symbolic protection?

In the same way, if people know that their god was at some point an ‘anatomically correct’ man, in terms of genitalia, then why are the regulators of their public morals go to such effort to make sure that an artifact which shows that must not be produced? What, in the end, are we protected from?

c

The absurdity of modern life often hits us in the face fully-clothed and fully-regulated. Whether it is found in its limits or consists its integral core, and whether it is an issue of collective lies, are not a matter of the image alone.

“And there appeared a great wonder in heaven - a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars. Revelation:12″

This was the introductory quote by Diane Arbus in her unpublished article ‘Bishop’s Charisma’ (1964). It included 3 photographs and text written by her. Here’s part of it.

“On a cliff overlooking the Pacific, in a cemetery in the sun, a small lady in damask robes with hair of a phosphorescent pink holds aloft a styrofoam cross encrusted with smaller crosses and raises her eyes till they pale at the vision of Jesus Christ. She is called Bishop Ethel Predonzan of The Cathedral Of The Creator, Omnipresence, Inc. Christ, she declares, has summoned her there to Santa Barbara, California, all the way from Astoria, Queens, to await His Second Coming on December 4th of this year.

I followed the Bishop across the country to hear her story and to listen to God’s voice on a 45 rpm record, as he says to her: “I appeal to you for the future of this earth to lead the people, my dear. You are their Guiding Star. Do not fail Me now that I stand before you. . .” etc. [...]

“He has a gorgeous voice,” she says. “What a diction. There is no one on this earth that can speak the diction of The Father and Christ.” Sometimes while the Bishop is talking, a strange sound interrupts her speech. This is how Jesus kisses her in the throat, she explains, blissfully, “like a butterfly.” Occasionally, she relates, He tells her: “I am going to fly with you tonight. You must be pure like a glass of water.” And then He comes, she says, His wings like a hurricane, and takes her to the Heavens (”Ooooooh, what a feeling”), to the different planets. “My Lord, my Lord,” she cries out to Him, “I’m going to fall,” but He touches something in the back of her neck and she is no longer afraid.”

Now, I have begun to wonder about something else… Why was this article by Diane Arbus not published?

The Rolling Exhibition began as a simple photograph taken while Kevin Connolly was skating down a backstreet in Vienna some time ago. Kevin kept travelling balancing his torso on a skateboard, and now, after rolling through the streets of 31 cities in 15 countries, he exhibits what he collected: the stare.

The stare, or ‘the gaze’, the expression of social power, which normalises and disciplines populations of our times, according to Foucault and other scholars, has captivated and excited - with its conceptual potency - our understanding of society and self.

What is the power relationship here? It is between able-bodied and non able-bodied people as social actors. What does this mean in actual terms? In brief, that the different power these groups have, and had in recent centuries, has heavily influenced and crystallised, or ‘naturalised as they say in sociology, the way that we see or know things. Social norms are constructed, and made to appear as natural, pre-existing our societies; which then used to discipline those who deviate, assumed to breach the ‘natural order’, but also used to regulate all of us.

And any kind of natural and normal able-bodiedness is of course just and only an assumption. That people must have a particular bodily and mental structure, that there is something called ‘normal humanity’ or ‘normal human body’, let’s say something which requires to have two legs, is just the effect of theological, social, political and economical discourses which forcefully and violently have achieved this to be seen as ‘truth’. In brief, any idea of what is a ‘natural human body’ is a result of social processes, not of any natural norms. And to claim the opposite, that yes there is a natural biological body does not stand well to criticism. Not historically (because it changes meaning through time and space), or logically (the metaphysics of western reason), or empirically (the social normalisation of any difference involves, for example, even such practices as those by doctors who surgically shape new-born babies’ genitalia to ‘appropriate’ form, if these do not conform to the dualist social norm male/female).

So, Kevin Connolly has turned the gaze back, he is taking the photos of his viewers. From an object of the gaze - and devaluation - he becomes the active subject. He seems to want to record but also to make people think and narrate the content of their thoughts. Constructing the narratives, approaching the origins of their stories, the viewers -those who were photographed or us who view the photos- may become able to encounter and question one of the deepest and most hidden socially constructed identities, one which people who are entitled to they never even use it to identify with: being ‘able-bodied’.

You might remember an earlier post here presenting a text by Susan Sontag: “Photography is, first of all, a way of seeing. It is not seeing itself.” Kevin Connolly’s photographs is an attempt to introduce a new and different way of seeing.

So, how is this all responded to? I can speak for one source found through Kevin’s website, an article in the ABC News website (1/1/2007): ‘Man without legs harnesses public gaze‘

Pardon? Something is deeply wrong in this article and can be sensed even from the title! Although, it tries hard to leave behind the traditional melodramatic ‘tragic but brave’ attitude to disabled people (oh, how heroic that he can take a photograph!), in the end it sinks deep in the same boring and stereotypical presentation of disability.

Instead of going through an analysis of the photographs and the involved meanings, it focus on the photographer. Certainly, the low viewpoint that characterises Connolly’s photos does not provide much to analyse in terms of originality in abstract, it is all of course in the context that which matters.

But the article fails to talk about this context. It fails to talk about the subjects of the photographs and their projections… or any challenging implications… or the meanings we have analysed above… or how the writer/viewer feels having to identify with the gazers (is this guilt and anxiety coming through?)… or even how ‘lucky’ Kevin is to be able to have access to a photographic project because he actually can use a tool (skateboard) made for able-bodied people… Instead, it talks only and about the photographer, his medical record, his upbringing, his customs, how he deals and manages with his condition etc.

In other words, despite what Kevin Connolly tries to show with his work, the stereotypical response of the media is to refuse the re-arrangement of the stare, and politically return the gaze back!

In all its naivety the article just briefly talks about the viewers’ stares as an example of ‘human nature’ (a concept often used in order to disguise the lack of social analysis), whilst describing how cultures approach him differently, from beggar to holy man. This is something not surprising at all! Actually it confirms how tied is any, changing understanding of ability and disability with its particular society of making (not the human nature).

One final note. I felt very happy to see Kevin Connolly rejecting prosthetic legs and any other forms of normalisation. It speaks something loud and emotive. to me personally and I hope all those currently removing disabling physical barriers from all areas of social life. It’s about how agency and personal ideas, and of course difference, must be accounted and accommodated, for the potential of any new adaptations to ever become effectively enabling.

Here, at left, maybe relevant in its assumptions of a standard uniform body, Le Corbusier’s modular man. It was used as a measuring device for his architectural work and reflects his understanding that ‘man is a geometrical animal’ based upon the conception of a normal biological body. Physiological difference and diversity were simply absorbed into a system of fixed and universal standards of function and performance (Rob Imrie, 2006).

the kiss

How does it feel to know that one of the most romantic images ever made was staged? The famous ‘Kiss by the Hôtel de Ville’ by Robert Doisneau, captured in Paris in 1950, was no other but a manufactured image. Alas, this was revealed by its creator himself in a court trial in the 1990s when, in mid of controversy, Françoise Bornet, a former actress and the woman who was featured with her boyfriend in the photo, sued Doisneau for $18,000 and a share of the royalty in the image.

Her case was dismissed. Doisneau died the next year in 1994. But in the end, few years later, Ms. Bornet sold her original print of the photograph for over $200,000 at an auction (BBC News 25/4/2005) while the rights still remain with Doisneau’s agency.

So does it still feel an iconic image to you, a quintessential Parisian image of passion, a symbol of romantic spontaneity and  desire?

Read the rest of this entry »

“In the early fall, I drank coffee with several generations of the Conner family, the close air of their kitchen settling across my shoulders like a shawl. I explained what I was doing and, as so often happened, their initial suspicion gave way gradually to caution and then to curiosity and a guarded acceptance. They agreed that I could photograph Kelly.

At dawn at the first day of hunting season they called where the deer were beheaded and hung. As I set up the camera, Kelly appeared, buttoned up, accompanied by her mother, her aunt and uncle, her grandparents, cousins, and a few other family members. Arrayed behind me, they remained watchful and intent.

As I pulled her jacket back, to separate her white-shirted figure from the darkness of the shed, I thought I might have heard a murmur. After few minutes I relaxed enough to identify the prevalence of the V shapes in the scene and without thinking I asked Kelly to spread her legs. This time the murmur was audible, but I could see that the picture was complete.”

Text and photograph (above) by Sally Man; from her book ‘At Twelve. Portraits of young women’ (© 1988, Aperture Foundation).

The British soldiers first saw the lights along German trenches on that Christmas Eve in 1914. Then they heard the music and the songs. Although they might not have known the German language, they recognised the “Silent Night” and responded by singing carols in English that crossed the few hundred feet of No-Man’s Land dividing the two enemies.

And on Christmas Day the British troops learned the flickering lights they’d seen the previous night were burning candles on fir trees. Before long, the two groups of soldiers were exchanging holiday greetings, cigarettes, food and gifts. They collected and burried the dead, they were introduced to each other, took photographs and in one place they even played a football match.

A Christmas truce had broken out.

The term ‘Christmas Truce‘ refers not to a single event but rather to a number of spontaneous expressions of comradeship between the front line soldiers of both sides in December 1914.

This spontaneous truce, which was initiated and apparently confined to the more friendly German units made up by Saxons; which occurred in several and not a sigle place; and was arguably influenced by the proximity of the fighting forces and the uncomfortableness of the trenches; was definitely frowned upon by the higher authorities. Horrified by the news of fraternisation , the leadership on both sides issued orders of condemning and forbidding such tendencies, threatening direct penalties. Such acts were not repeated in subsequent Christmases.

[Sources: i) Christmas Truce: The Western Front December 1914 by Malcolm Brown & Shirley Seaton, Macmillan, London, 1994. ii) Freepress.com iii) H.B. Lee Library of Brigham Young University ]

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The caption of the above photograph, from The Illustrated War News, January 20th 1915, reads:

“A SCENE OF FRATERNISATION : BY ONE OF OUR TRENCHES

Much publicity has been given to the fraternising, at Christmas-time of British officers and men and German officers and men facing one another in the trenches: the German authorities are said to have issued strong orders against such friendliness between enemies. In a letter accompanying our photographs, a private of the London Rifle Brigade writes, from the Ypres-Armentieres neighborhood : “No. … Company went into the breastworks (which have, in most places, round here superseded the flooded reserve trenches) on Wednesday night. Soon after dusk on the 24th the Germans put up lanterns on the top of their trenches and started singing; and their shooting practically ceased. Firing ceased on both sides, and both Germans and English ventured out on the top of their trenches. After daybreak on Christmas Day small parties on both sides ventured out in front of their trenches, all unarmed, and we heard that a German officer came over and promised that they would not fire if we did not.

Apparently during the morning small parties of Germans and English fraternised between the trenches, and when … and I and some of our pals strolled up from the reserve trenches after dinner, we found a crowd of some hundred Tommies of each nationality holding a regular mother’s meeting between the trenches. We found our enemies to be Saxons.

One of the Germans had been a waiter at the Savoy; and another a West-End barber’s assistant. Talk and souvenirs were exchanged. There are those who did not appreciate this cessation of hostilities, even on Christmas Day !”

(source: ‘The Great War in a different light’ website)

— — — — — —

— — — — — —

The Imperial War Museum London will commemorate the 90th anniversary of the Armistice (11 November 1918) with a major exhibition during the next year (September 2008 to March 2009).

According to the museum’s website, In Memoriam: Remembering the Great War will focus on the individual experiences of men, women and children: the front line soldier, sailor and airman; the munitions worker and the nurse; the prisoner-of-war and the internee; the artist and the writer; the disabled and the shell shocked; the widow and the orphan. Their stories will be told through personal objects ranging from a bierstein which was presented to the British captain of a winning football team in the Christmas Truce of 1914 to a rosebud from a wreath which lay on the tomb of the Unknown Warrior in 1920.

That time has come again, at the end of the year, when people buy presents to each other… So, I thought to look at some of the recent photography publications. ‘New’ is not necessarily better, but certainly can tease our senses. And there is one book that has fully captured my attention.

Andre Kertesz: The Polaroids was published just last week. The Hungarian photographer (1894 - 1985), one of the most influential masters, with the poetic vision for the ’simple’ and ‘everyday’ subject, was hardly recognised in public during his lifetime in Paris and New York, but only after his retirement. Actually, this work comes from that later stage of his life.

Kertesz got a Polaroid SX-70 camera after the death of his wife. And he managed “to generate a whole new body of work through which he transforms from a broken man into a youthful artist” as Robert Gurbo, the curator of the André Kertész estate writes about The Polaroids.

“Taken in his apartment just north of New York City’s Washington Square, many of these photographs were shot either from his window or in the windowsill. We see a fertile mind at work, combining personal objects into striking still lifes set against cityscape backgrounds, reflected and transformed in glass surfaces. Almost entirely unpublished work, these photographs are a testament to the genius of the photographer’s eye as manifested in the simple Polaroid. 80 color photographs.”

“Andre Kertesz nearly always seems to have had a genuine affection for what he photographed” is Tim Atherton’s subtle comment in his blog Muse-ings. It is a comment that surely finds most of us pleased to agree with.

Many of these window compositions remind me - in a way - another of the 20th century great photographers, Sudek, when he was forced to stay home during the period of the second world war. He had also focused all his creativity to the simple settings of his window and mere personal possessions. Compositions of glass, eggs and paper, and views of the garden, under reflections and shadows, and through a special quality of light.

These images, however, use colour, vibrant tonalities and rich warm daylight to indicate an affective mood. They make full use of the polaroid effect. The images are often nostalgic, refer to the past, shared moments and places (somewhere there is Eiffel Tower), or more often to the beloved lost person. But they also become reflections of the lonely individual, which we assume is Kertesz himself, although his overall stance appears reflexive, connected with life, both its melancholy and its small pleasures.

The shapes tend to clarity and the compositions retain a realist form, as ‘’slices of life’ in the modernist tradition which Kertesz had been foundational to establish himself. Yet, this time the sliced life is his own, the reflection is personal. There are several self-portraits and references to a photographer within the collection.

All the same, however, the images captivate us with a dim emotional power and a kind of dreamscape quality. Even the subject - not the rather lucid subject-matter - is never clearly established, if it is about himself and his own literal experience or a wider concept and a product of his mind. I believe it is true that Kertesz was so much a modernist as much he expresses a strong surrealist side.

These photographs and all the Polaroids portfolio is property of the Andre Kertesz Estate and can be viewed there.

“From the beginning of the [20th] century the perceptual field in Europe was invaded by certain signs, representations and logotypes that were to proliferate over the next twenty, thirty, sixty years, outside any immediate explanatory context, like beak-nosed carp in the polluted ponds they depopulate. Geometric brand images, initials, Hitler’s swastika, Charlie Chaplin’s silhouette, Magritte’s blue bird or the red lips of Marilyn Monroe: parasitic persistence cannot be explained merely in terms of the power of technical reproducibility, so often discussed since nineteenth century. We are in effect looking at the logical outcome of a system of message-intensification which has, for several centuries, assigned a primordial role to the techniques of visual and oral communication.

On a more practical note, Ray Bradbury recently remarked: ‘Film-makers bombard with images instead of words and accentuate the details using special effects. … You can get people to swallow anything by intensifying the details.’

The phatic image - a targeted image that forces you to look and holds your attention - is not only a pure product of photographic and cinematic focusing. More importantly it is the result of an ever-brighter illumination, of the intensity of its definition, singling out only specific areas, the context mostly disappearing into a blur.

During the first half of the twentieth century this kind of image immediately spread like wildfire in the service of political or financial totalitarian powers in acculturated countries, like North America, as well as in destructured countries like the Soviet Union and Germany, which were carved up after revolution and military defeat. In other words, in nations morally and intellectually in a state of least resistance. There the key words of poster ads and other kind of posters would often be printed on a background in just as strong a colour. The difference between what was in focus and its context, or between image and text, was nevertheless stressed here as well, since the viewer had to spend more time trying to decipher the written message or simply give up and just take in the image.”

Excerpt from the book ‘The Vision Machine‘ by Paul Virilio (p.14, 1994, Indiana University Press).

Dinu Li is a UK based artist born in Hong Kong and now living in Manchester. Today at 5pm he will be giving a talk at 42 New Briggate Gallery in Leeds, looking at the work he is currently showing, ‘The Mother of All Journeys‘.

It’s free to attend and will include a session of questions and answers, as well as plenty of Chinese beer and green tea. I know because I was there and enjoyed them few weeks ago during the exhibition’s opening!

[Dinu Li's exhibition in Leeds © 2007 Christos Stavrou]

Dinu Li’s work has been described as one that addresses the construction of individual and collective identity in an increasingly connected, but at the same time fragmented global village. The Mother of all Journeys is an exploration into the memories of the artist’s 80-year-old mother. Through a series of colour photographs Li charts her journey from China to England.

[photograph from 'The Mother of All Journeys' © Dinu Li]

The exhibition consists of some impressive, high quality colour prints of large and smaller sizes depicting places where the artist’s mother and family have been. They are accompanied by few personal belongings and several pieces of text on paper, written by an old type-writer (another referent to the interplay of old and new, now and then). For example, near the photograph shown above it is written: “By coincidence, your dad and I both had jobs making underwear. He worked in a factory stitching English words into the waistbands on men’s pants. I would bring work home, cutting loose treads from bras. Chun Yu was the one being breast-fed at the time. Sometimes his legs would kick out, causing me to cut the bra straps.”

A warm and deeply human story unfolds in the exhibition room. The viewer is called to connect the pieces, as in a puzzle. Through traces of time and space, through someone’s experiences and feelings. Photographs, texts and sound, (a music theme keeps playing in the background), are elements which never reveal a straightforward reality but rather in co-operation with the viewer’s imagination succeed in reconstructing, or rather reinterpreting, time and personality within the individual trajectory of a loved person.

Through the images we revisit unique spaces in the mother’s journey. We can view them as they are now. A mental transformation of those spaces takes place. It’s a trip backwards in time. Ultimately a trip depending on us. The texts help us to connect with those visual representations of present and past, what we see and what we imagine, but what they evoke has an independent existence in itself. We interact and learn, both personal and collective, stories of diaspora, ethnicity and family. We become active readers and listeners, not just distant viewers, almost like the family’s far relatives. We become participants because, after all, our experiences may partially overlap with what is revealed in front of us. One piece of text reads in a familiar to me tone: “Nobody dared try their English out at the cornerstore. Eventually you ran over and came back with a pack of salted peanuts.“

[Dinu Li's exhibition in Leeds © 2007 Christos Stavrou]

At the background there is a small TV set and a song is playing repetitively. The same song can be heard through a CD player mounted on the wall. At first, it appears as a pop soundtrack from the 60s. It adds to the dreaming quality of the exhibition. But also it invites the visitors to construct the identity of Dinu Li’s mother. Was that her favourite song? Maybe it was his mother’s and father’s special song?… Somewhere there is another text that could be relevant, the careful viewer would have noticed, one where Dinu Li’s mother describes her engagement and refers to her new house as socially distinct, being the only one which had a record-player…

The exhibition reveals social divisions and cultural rituals intertwined with individual experience and personal memory. Humans do not appear over-determined by social processes. Little moments become humorous and lyrical. The interaction and eventful meeting of multiple signs of ethnicity, culture, and migration, but always under a framework of personal perspective -including the viewer, becomes one of the main characteristics. The exhibition song, for example, clearly reminds an old and famous western musical but after few seconds or minutes someone realises that it’s sang in Chinese. Issues of the relational, both inclusionary and exclusionary nature of culture are raised. The visitor becomes a consious part of this of course. There is a photo of the entrance of a cinema theatre. It makes you think whether this is Hong-Kong, or Britain, or somewhere else. And the nearby caption, that “Your brothers were taking you to see movies of Tony Curtis” points out to the global village we increasingly inhabit. But keep reading the same text and it offers a personal and emotional dimension too: “I would always take you to see love stories. Whenever the stars kissed I had to cover your eyes.”

This kind of ‘familiarity’ of the visual and textual material, the interactive quality of the presentation, and the feelings of love, care and endurance that the whole work brought into surface, were for me what I found as so successful and rewarding in this exhibition. The intercrossing of time feels life and the intercrossed spaces sense culture.

[Dinu Li in his exhibition in Leeds © 2007 Christos Stavrou]

At some point, I managed to find the artist alone and ask few questions, a conversation that I’ll try to recreate here:

First, I wondered how important was the thinking about the compositions to his project. He said, not that much, more important was for him to be in the right place, which was not always easy. “I usually had to ask my mother: was that the right tree mom?.. Or the other one over there, etc..”

“Yet, what did you particularly try to include or exclude”, I asked again. He replied that he mainly tried to exclude any people from his frames, the viewers could read different things, if there were people in the scenes. Another question regarded what equipment did he use and why. He pointed out that the whole project started by finding one very small and old square photograph of his mother, a picture that himself did not know about. In order to reproduce that square format he used a Hasselblad.

[photograph from 'The Mother of All Journeys' © Dinu Li]

“I found a photo of my mother in her things” Dinu Li said. ‘There she was, a young woman holding my brother as a baby. It was the first time I saw that picture.. I hadn’t seen my mother looking this way before…”

So, I continued, your idea for this project started by you realising that your mother had not many physical evidence of her past but memories… and then you travelled with her to so many different places, recreating reality in a way…

Yes, it was all in her mind.. Dinu explained. Many stories of her past, our past.. I knew much of it already from stories that she had told me.. In one level, this project is about the journey of her life, in another level we may question if what is shown here is reality…

I made a final thought that didn’t express that day. Dinu Li’s work, as Roland Barthes did in Camera Lucida, asserts the referential power of photography. And as another Barthes insists of his mother’s knowable presence in the world based on a photograph he found of her as a child. But he develops and builds upon it by revisiting the traces of the past and the places she has been. It is rather another accomplishment of what Barthes describes as achieving “utopically, the impossible science of the unique being” (Barthes, 1981, p.71).

[from Dinu Li's exhibition in Leeds © 2007 Christos Stavrou]

The Mother of All Journeys (which accompanies Opera North’s production of Madam Butterfly) will run until 10 November 2007, at 42 New Briggate Gallery, Leeds.

This is a photograph (above) of staff members of WBAI (an anti-war, non-commercial New York radio station of the 60s) including Bob Fass, Larry Josephson and Steve Post. It is a photograph made by Richard Avedon in 1969.

And this is a photograph (below) by Brian Griffith from a massive corporate photography project he has just completed for his client London and Continental Railways. He has produced a wide and impressive range of portraits of the people who built the Channel Tunnel’s high speed rail link.

The final work, a collaboration with art director Greg Thorton called Teamphoto, is exhibited right now at the German Gymnasium, 26 St Pancras Road, London until 19 November. You can view more of these photos here.

In a recent interview in BJP (3 October 2007, p.28) Griffin points out his influences, which were Avedon’s classic ‘In the American West’, Russian constructivism, Edward Hopper, David Lynch, 17th century painting and 1960s fashion photography.

Griffin, as seen in the photo above, depicts the men in suits in a rather humorous way, emphasising something of the egocentricity or conceitedness of the management. It is in fact a contrasting approach compared with the glorifying images of workers and labourers as seen in his other work.

Avedon’s influence nevertheless is stark: Both, in the formal arrangements (use of frame lines to crop figures and faces, merged bodies, lack of three dimensional space by removing foreground and background elements), and in the emotional impact of the photo, capturing something of isolation and egocentrism, nonetheless creating a sense of rather irritating but interesting, intense context.

Through a bizzare series of mental associations and following the viewing of these ‘workplace’ photos, I went seeking in my room for an old jazz record by John Coltrane, The Africa/Brass sessions. I played the second track, ‘The Song of Underground Railroad’ based on folk tunes from the past of African people in America. The songs of the underground railroad refer to the slavery period and had coded meanings to bring the slaves to freedom.

Photograph by Gary Winogrand, World’s fair, New York City, 1964.

“The crystalline clarity of Garry Winogrand’s awareness of a photograph cutting through motion and time makes this image of people interacting on a bench absolutely riveting. The quality and intensity of a photographer’s attention leave their imprint on the mental level of the photograph. This does not happen by magic.”

This is what Stephen Shore writes in his book ‘The Nature of Photographs‘ (2007 Phaidon) about Winogrand’s celebrated picture above. And these comments, with their simplicity and power, have captured my attention. More than any debate whether this was a posed or unposed photograph, especially given the artist’s preference for a casual and rather poorly executed pictures.

A catalogue of the Museum of Modern Art stated about this photograph, according to this review, that “in addition to the physical description the work provides - the pattern of legs, the leans and whispers - it also alludes to broader human relationships and suggest the coexistence of two parallel worlds: the specific and intimate reality of the women clustered on the park bench and the anonymous presence of the crowds visible in the distance.”

Besides all and any meanings found in this image, those first words about perception keep coming back… ‘the awareness of a photograph cutting through motion and time’…

Bill Callahan or Smog in a recent photo by Joanna Newsom (left).

Lee Friedlander’s ‘Shadow Play’ from 1966 (below).

Who is the main subject? In both cases, as the photographer’s shadow is projected upon the depicted person, a new analogy and relationship emerges. Lee Friedlander’s shadow head acquires hair by carefully ‘falling’ upon the woman’s hair. Her coat button becomes his mouth. Ultimately he is the main subject there. Bill Callahan, in the first photo, is embraced by the stretched arm of a shadow-figure in a warm and sensitive gesture of co-existence.

Watch a video of ‘Rock Bottom Riser’ below with Smog and Joanna Newsom at the Parish (Sept. 2006)

Today’s photo comes from a lonely page left behind in the train. (It has become a habit of mine lately to base my interaction with the happenings of this world upon the poetic and ironic powers of chance).

Photograph by Pawan Kumar / Reuters

It is the ‘image of the day’ published in The Times yesterday, October 2 2007. Children dressed as Mahatma Gandhi during celebrations in Lucknow, northern India, marking the 138th anniversary of his birth.

There is something ambivalent and strange that I feel looking at this photo. Maybe it’s about the way that we teach the young generations history and identity, in a ritualistic way that appears too limited, that suddenly reminds for me those words from Genesis, that ‘God created man to his own image’. Or maybe of course we created God in our own image… and now, all the same, we socially reproduce the future too. Amid childish innocence and loughs, we are moulding our own cultural image upon the placid unwritten space of the new generations.

Where all these thoughts lead me… do they mean and imply that culture -despite all the recent celebrations- is (also) a limitation? In particular when culture actually means enforcing a restricted national ‘We’?

Maybe the photo becomes ambivalent and strange for me after all, because it awakens memories of my childhood, being dressed to resemble the national heroes of my own country. It reminds me the absolute faith and pride of those years, although so tarnished and contrasted by the later critical ideas of growing up. And there is still a national ‘we’ that keeps struggling with the critical ‘I’.

Those social rituals, nevertheless, are not fixed-end processes, neither are reduced to a mere self-centered enforcement. They depend on the meanings invested upon them. The Times accompany the photo with Gandhi’s words in bold letters about how to achieve peace: “If we are to teach real peace in this world, and if we are to carry on a real war against war, we shall have to begin with the children.

As much as I aspire in the paper’s universalised approach on general peace and the world’s general youths, a quite idealised and harmless approach, so much I think that it misses one further point, maybe a stronger one; and probably it misses it because of its own national bias. Gandhi, as well as my own national heroes who I was dressing up to resemble when I was kid, apart for peace and tolerance, they fought for independence and what this means is mainly freedom.

In 1937 photographer Margaret Bourke-White and Southern novelist Erskine Caldwell published the book ‘You Have Seen Their Faces‘ (Viking Press). It was a collaboration, she made the photographs and he wrote the text, about the rural American South and its troubles, the despair of a ”worn-out agricultural empire” (p.2).

Margaret Bourke-White had already established herself as a skilled industrial photographer, but in the 1930’s adapted to a photojournalistic style and worked in a more socially committed documentary photography.

Margaret and Caldwell received praising but also critical comments. Dorothea Lange who few years later published a similar book about the problems of share-croppers was critical to them for writing the captions themselves rather than quoting the words people actually said.

See for example the picture below. It was accompanied by the caption “McDaniel, Georgia, I get paid very well. A dollar a day when I’m working”

I find amazing that 70 years after the taking of this photograph the caption reveals that we have managed to export our immiserated working-classes abroad. The line still sounds too familiar, although we know that now it doesn’t come from our own national backyard, but some worker in South-East Asia or South America, or elsewhere in the ‘developing world’ whereby our big Western corporations have found fertile ground to produce cheap and cost-effective products.

Nevertheless, important questions about the photojournalistic practice are raised, which remain pertinent today as much as back then: Was their photographic work a type of propaganda and did they exploit their subjects? Ultimately, what is the nature of ‘documentary’ photography?

Is a document, and thus a photographic document, something that states objective facts, or could also be something that helps us understand a human situation emotionally?

Maybe it could help to know the following story, taking place during the making of the ‘You have seen their faces’ book. The story is published in Susan Goldman Rubin’s ‘Margaret Bourke-White‘ (1999, Abrams Inc.).

“Once [Margaret] took a picture of a woman combing her hair at a bureau made out of a wooden box. Before taking the portrait Margaret rearranged the objects on top of the bureau. Afterward, Caldwell scolded her. He told Margaret she should have left everything just the way she found it to reflect the woman’s taste and personality instead of her own. ‘This was a new point of view to me‘ Margaret wrote in her autobiography. ‘I was learning that to understand another human being you must gain some insight into the conditions which made him what he is’ (italics added).

Paul’s Place is a voluntary charity for physically and cognitively impaired adults, aged 18-59, that helps people in and around Bristol. “They had decided to do a nude calendar to raise awareness of their work. They had done all the work, they just needed a photographer to come in and shoot it for them and I feel very privileged they asked me..” writes portrait and PR photographer Theo Calmers (British Journal of Photography 12/09/2007, p.31)

A preview of all the photos for this calendar could be seen here (in Paul’s Place website) where can be purchased too, and here (in the artist’s website). Two of those photos are presented in this article, accompanied by Theo Calmer’s comments regarding the completion of this special project. The second picture (below) was also included in the AOP Open exhibition 2007.

“I used a large former TV studio, because it was easy for the models to access. Access isn’t something I ever really thought about before but doing this project really opened my eyes. The most important thing was making sure that the models were happy and comfortable. Getting naked was a big deal for many of them. They had complete control over who was around. If they wanted their carer or assistant it was fine, if not it was just me and my assistant. Each shoot took 10 minutes to an hour.

…I created the environment to fit the project. I used low watt lights - 100W or even 60W - with soft boxes plus a big bounce board to give the models a bit of privacy. I also had some music playing, and encouraged them to bring their own CDs. It was helpful for smoothing over what were sometimes awkward silences.

I used a Colorama backdrop called Snow White, which is a soft rather than brilliant white, but we achieved the colour in post production by adjusting the saturation and curves. I didn’t want it to be sentimental sepia, but at the same time I didn’t want it to be harsh. It was about achieving a balance.” (BJP)

The last comments introduce us to some of the artistic ideas behind the project. Although, Theo’s words that “they had done all the work, they just needed a photographer” leaves unclear who was the conceptual author for each of the particular photos dealing altogether with issues of disability representation.

Overall, it is so enjoyable to see such approaches dealing with and challenging contemporary social taboos.

One final thought that keeps a more critical stance, however, regards my observation that the picture at left, which was chosen for the AOP exhibition and was also published in the BJP relevant article, is probably the less challenging of all in the project and rather the more conforming one with today’s mainstream social norms of beauty, body and sexuality.

But this of course has to do not with the project itself, but with how ready or not a society is to embrace such new ideas.

“I first saw him from across the street bending over screwing in a prosthetic forearm that had fallen off his upper arm onto the pavement. Before I could come to his aid, he had re-joined it and was off crossing the street toward me. The elderly gentleman represents the British character quality of making do and going on no matter what. Stiff upper lip…”

Bruce Davidson talking about his photograph above in London 1960. Taken from his book ‘England/Scotland 1960′

William Eugene Smith (1918-1978) expressed without compromise the responsibility of a photographer not to distort the truth. A strong belief that often brought strain in his relationship with editors. In the 1940s he became a war reporter and was so famous about his courage and his dramatic reports were so honest that both the US press and Japanese magazines were publishing them.

On May 22, 1945, during the invasion of Okinawa, he was hit in the face and hand by granade fragments. A fragment passed through his left hand before entering his cheek just below the eye. “I forgot to duck but I got a wonderful shot of those who did… my policy of standing up when the others are down finally caught up with me” he said later in the hospital.

Almost two years and thirty operations after that incident, it was still not certain that he could use a camera again.

“The day I again tried for the first time to make a photograph I could barely load the roll of film into the camera. Yet I was determined that the first photograph would be a contrast to the war photographs and that it would speak an affirmation of life. Thus I took a picture of two children. My children.”

W. Eugene Smith, The walk to Paradise Garden, New York 1946

This image was chosen by Edward Steichen to close the famous exhibition ‘The Family of Man‘

This photograph above (Seelin 1981, by Sybille Bergemann) is part of the sensational exhibition ”Do not Refreeze: Photography Behind the Berlin Wall’ which I visited recently in the Gallery Cornerhouse in Manchester. This touring exhibition (which will be visiting Hartfield, Southend-on-Sea and Wolverhampton during the next winter and spring) brings together 9 artists who developed their practice in the former East Germany during the Cold War.

Bergemann took this picture for GDR’s fashion magazine Sibylle. She asked the models to appear as if they were annoyed by the weather. The photo was published in the magazine but was retouched showing the girls loughing. The editor had said, “Our girls don’t look like that”. The GDR authorities, ”insisted their citizens always had to be depicted happy and smiling” (’Black & White Photography‘ May 2007, issue 72)

PS: On the other hand, remember: no smiles are accepted if you appply for a passport. Ironically, you need to pose with a neutral expression so new biometric scanners can accurately read your facial features.

I have just received an interesting email from the lovely and smiley Jessops’s employee, portrayed in the first photograph of my last post about Jessops. Apart of thanking me for his 15′ of fame, he also informed me that he is a music producer and photographer, and his website is jonstanleyaustin.com

Looking at his pictures I really liked this one below and asked to know more:

The image has an obvious Holga feeling, nevertheless it is a digitally made photo with a very interesting technique involving some.. gravy too, yes indeed! Here’s what John wrote to me:

“I’ve been experimenting with “texture layers” on photoshop, to give the pictures a bit more depth.

For this picture, there are two layers: the original image, and a texture layer.

For the texture layer i basically took a picture of some paper with gravy poored over it. I then took this picture and put it on top of my original picture, then set the blending mode to multiply, and reduced the opacity. The detail from the texture layer now shows through onto the image. Details like the creases in the paper, and the brown from the gravy. I believe it gives the image a sort of aged feel.

But other aspects of the image totally contradict this. Like the extreme blur and extreme vibrancy of the green in the grass. These aspects were applied within photoshop also, as they are two traits that a “holga” camera is known for. I have a Holga, and i like it alot, and i like the images that it produces. So i just tried to recreate its magic on my digital images.

It’s not exactly the same as a holga image, if i wanted that i would of used my holga. I just like experimenting with my digital pictures. There’s a lot of possibilities, so you may as well try them”

Does it make sense? Yes, I think so. And although there might be other, digital ways to recreate texture within a picture, I find his technique fascinating.

Oh and something else, (following a previous point made in this blog, that many film vs digital arguments are sterile and misleading), it’s so interesting to see how people mix and reproduce film, digital files, ideas, food.. Creativity is endless!

In 1935 Man Ray photographed Coco Chanel, the doyenne of the French fashion world who, by the 1910s, had already adapted sportswear to daily life and capitalised on feminizing masculine fashion. Her pose in the “little black dress” became the hallmark of 1930s fashion.

The image of the New Woman, an ideal of fashion and glamor -following the widespread ‘modern’ textiles and avant-garde new clothing designs, was closely associated with the image of the Modern Woman, a symbolic identity which stressed woman’s sexuality and youth and was reiterated in market publications during the 1920s and 30s.

But the question is how much this image of New Woman had to do with changing the actual conditions of most women? Did it serve anyone else’s ends outside the circle which advanced a fusion of art with commercial enterprise?

In fact, it could be argued, that the act of popularising such images concealed the complexity of women’s real lifes (it also surpressed another emerging identity of the Modern Woman as a lesbian); and the idea that it derived from art circles masked profound economic and cultural changes (see W.Chadwick Women, Art & Society 1990).

Daido Moriyama’s most famous photograph is of an almost rabid dog. As twinned outcasts, this dog has become the alter-ego of Daido himself. He explains in his memoirs that “I had taken a photograph of a stray dog showing the whites of its eyes and snarling, on the streets outside a US air base in the town of Misawa in Aomori Perfecture in northeast Japan… Thereafter that dog and I came to be seen and talked about as if somehow superimposed on each other. Also the figure I cast during that time, roaming around town and in the backstreets, carrying my camera, appeared in others’ eyes very much as a stray dog”.

Read a special interview of Daido Moriyama here, from a coffee shop in Shinjuku, a place in Tokyo where Daido made his name as a photographer. “My work is endless” he says. “As long as the world exists, I want to take snapshots.”

An introduction to his work can also be found in a well-written blog about Japanese photography, under a post about his exhibition in Foam Museum last year

Finally, not better place to start by flicking over photographs in the artist’s gallery in his website.