Couple of months ago a friend asked me, what is culture?

Few days later on, he offered a cold beer and asked me again. I hesitated to reply both times. I think that he mentioned, wondering, those early humans in caves drawing hunting scenes on the walls. Of course, I thought, this was culture. All systems of ideas and practices; all different beliefs and norms are culture(s)… And if anyone attempts to make distinctions between ‘high’ and ‘low’ culture, as if some type of culture is not really culture, this is no more than a cultural imposition itself. Incidentally, but not surprisingly, a distinction that is traditionally loved by both conservative and left viewpoints…

Culture is nevertheless relational. I wanted to point out this. It makes sense in relation to something else and other… thus, we may need to talk about cultures rather than culture… But then I forgot all about his question, lost - as usually - in the multiple threads starting out of another little and ’simple’ question… I am simply not sure what culture is…

Only recently, I came across a published editorial by Ivan Mecl, which made me think about it again and which I want to share here. It was published in the latest issue of Umelec, an international art and culture magazine (English version, Vol. 12, 1-2008, published by Divus.cz)

All photographs accompanying this article are taken during one of my recent ‘cultural’ trips to London.

“We work like old people, yet we behave like children more than ever before. We surround ourselves with mobile miracles, and therefore we have no idea what we are dealing with. We try to live in safety, and yet we do not know what it means to be safe. Many of us have lost time, but acquired “things.” We love “things” and their names sound nice to us. We love them, but they do not love us. We are impressed by their being changed, and unhappy by their loss. We are unhappy and with no time to spare from unrequited love, and always on the move.

[Tate Modern: 'The moment art changed forever'... But what moment exactly was that? Now, then, when?]

So let’s forget about culture. We don’t know what it means. The word culture is at the end of its meamimg-making history, because it has become a crutch for all that is frivolous. Why have a ministry for some abstract culture, we have beer culture, table culture, legal culture, legislative culture, and all kinds of mold and yogurt cultures too. Culture without qualification is fraud.

[Tate Modern: Cafe culture. Welcome, thank you... The cafe (in both Tate Museums) was more than a state of the art establishment competing for popularity against the exhibitions in the other rooms]

Art is trying to become science. It deals with philosophy, sociology, and psychology, and desires to be a pedagogical resource too. It wants to be political, yet maintain the charisma of the underground (that is, by being non-political). It wants to be a commodity. It makes fun of pop culture, a society that desires property, and it exhorts humility while at the same time consuming high-profile grants and taking over entire exhibit halls for its presentation. Contemporary art wants to be everything but still remain unique. Because art itself has little meaning-there is too much of it.

[London streets: rose, tea and appricot tart in Soho]

Contemporary artists are like Switzerland. They are like a country that wishes to remain neutral in the game, while siding with the winning team no matter who that is. Artists need not know a lot, yet they wish to comment on all contemporary phenomena. There is no area where contemporary artists do not stick their noses, but should they act in error, they simply claim artistic immunity. The only concept they are afraid of is art that wishes to fulfil and not make mistakes.

[London streets: advertising slowness in a fast city]

A thought process without tangible results might as well be called laziness. Today, laziness is unforgivable. Activeness is the universal solution for contemporary society; it does not pay to stay in one place. True passivity requires courage.

A living man speaks. A clever man writes. A dead man is silent; a dead, lazy man.

Giving up the term culture offers hope of finding meaning.”

(photographs by Christos Stavrou © 2008 All rights reserved)

]]> http://thinkinpictures.wordpress.com/2008/06/30/art-culture/feed/ thinkinpictures London streets The moment art changed forever... But what moment exactly was that? Tate Modern advertising slowness http://thinkinpictures.wordpress.com/2008/05/17/the-fork/ http://thinkinpictures.wordpress.com/2008/05/17/the-fork/#comments Sat, 17 May 2008 22:02:42 +0000 thinkinpictures http://thinkinpictures.wordpress.com/?p=423

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?

Untitled photograph (nude 2) by Christos Stavrou © 2008

I wish I could send you a chocolate Jesus, maybe that abandoned one which they failed to exhibit last year in New York… But in the end, I guess you’ll be equally satisfied with few mint chocolates in a box and a photograph of an almost chocolate body… It is my easter present of course. Chocolates and one sudden thought, if my bath is running hot enough, make me realise that you are always around here.

* * *

“How did beauty begin? Earth-cult, suppressing the eye, locks man in the belly of mothers. There is, I insist, nothing beautiful in nature. Nature is primal power, coarse and turbulent. Beauty is our weapon against nature; by it we make objects, giving them limit, symmetry, proportion. Beauty halts and freezes the melting flux of nature.” (from the book Sexual Personae by C. Paglia © 1990).

* * *

Chocolate Jesus by Tom Waits:

Soon after I took this photo above, standing by the entrance of Leeds University, and as I was waiting for a sudden wave of rain to pass - among shiny bikes and a man whose posture and reflection had intrigued me… well, very soon after that a security guard came out from his box running quickly towards me.

He bombarded me with questions, who I am and what am I taking pictures of… My mind was still wandering in search of aesthetic pleasures; how to find the best angle, selecting shutter speed and aperture. I was not prepared and got surprised from his sudden attack. I simply said, I take a photo of bikes and a back-lit silhouette… (Should an aspiring conceptual photographer ever admit these casual things, I thought…)

But the security guard was not friendly. He insisted making questions. I noticed his threatening body language and persistent eye-contact in order to intimidate. Later he revealed that he used to work for some kind of special forces. His glorious and authoritative past, who knows why he was dismissed, was obviously filling him up with pride and nostalgia.

The treatment was unacceptable. After all I had been running the University’s Photosociety for two years in the recent past and we always used to practice making rounds in the campus. Not to mention the hundreds of graduates taking pictures of each other around those areas very regularly. Maybe it was about the beard in my face and my foreign accent didn’t help either… (Should I start shaving every time before using my camera outdoors, I thought…).

But he even used all sorts of lies and excuses trying to intimidate me, about how a special licence is required from the media services (something they denied later when I asked them), about his official orders to follow this procedure with everyone, even threats about calling the police were thrown to me… I replied that yes, he’s welcomed to call the police and look very silly when try to explain the reason of calling them. But the whole incident was not simply redicilous and patronising, it was also offending and very upsetting.

This happened two summers ago. I’m afraid though things don’t get better rather worst. The Metropolitan Police (click at the poster below) has just launched its five-week counter-terrorism campaign asking members of the public to report any suspicious behaviour. Yes, you guessed well. Taking photographs is a suspicious behaviour.

It seems that now you can - or have to - call the authorities every time you feel reporting a suspicious photographer. What exactly is suspicious, what is an ‘odd’ photograph? Well, not easy to answer… Sometimes an act appears odd just because someone looks odd and different, or because of our own preconceptions. And anyway, everyone has their own ideas about it, it cannot really be defined… But, in fact, this is probably the point: To spy and report each other! The poster states it clearly: Report it and “Let experienced officers decide what action to take.”

I know. Many readers have already began wondering in despair: Isn’t this campaign an open invitation to arbitrary and/or selective abuse? Isn’t this another badly disguised excuse for further erosion of our freedoms? Actually, isn’t this quite naive in its assumed counter-terrorist potential, when considering its adverse social effect by increasing fear and paranoia, and posing a high risk of weakening the social bonds, is therefore rather undermining than strengthening the sense of security?

Fear and paranoia.

Remember these words. These were the underlying forces of the security guard’s over-reaction against me, and that was what in turn he wanted to install upon me. Now, with even a seemingly official support in place, the absurdity is reinforced… Photographers of this country be aware and prepared. And resist the identification of terror.

The scary, and final, thought is that these practices remind how the Gestapo used to operate in Nazi Germany. Unlike the general belief, the Gestapo was not a huge and omnipotent organisation. As historian Robert Gellatel (see wikipedia) has shown, it was mainly made up by clerical workers and bureaucrats, who “were for the most part dependent upon denunciations for information about what was happening in German society. The willingness of ordinary Germans to denounce one another supplied the Gestapo with the information that determined who the Gestapo arrested.”

* * *

On Tuesday 11 March 2007, 6pm, there is a relevant and interesting public talk taking place in the Institute of Germanic & Romance Studies, University of London, Senate House, Malet Street, London, WC1E 7HU.

The title is: “How Safe Do You Feel: Surveillance, Photographers, and the Privatisation of Public Space Post 9/11“

It is presented by freelance documentary photographer, writer and researcher, Dr. John Perivolaris (click at his photo above to visit work from his recent documentary project). The seminar is open to everyone and here is the abstract of the seminar as published in the website of the hosting University:

“On the streets of cities in the United States and Europe we are witnessing a dramatic proliferation of surveillance cameras trained on citizens’ every move through increasingly privatised public spaces. For example, the average Londoner is daily caught on camera 300 times. But, while the citizen is constantly watched, they are increasingly restricted from photographing those same spaces. What is the place of independent photography and image-making of public space post-9/11? How are photographers to resist the plethora of restrictions to which they are now subject in the name of security? Is the right to watch swiftly becoming a monopoly of the state? Is democratic citizenship also now a struggle for the right to see as well as to be seen?”

* * *

At the same time that these important questions are posed here, in another country Greece, left over surveillance equipment from the Olympic Games, costing over $250 million, has divided the country over its use to spy citizens. As reported by the BBC (see below), the emerging debate is around not only the question whether Greece will be following Britain’s example of spying its citizens, but whether it can resist the powerful march of the cameras. The costly surveillance equipment has taken its own reified form of existance. Note that Olympics are coming to Britain in few years time.

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?

Arguably, what does it all matter? Iconic images have the capacity to capture attention and provide the visual space for the collective investment of our imagination and emotion, in such way that someone could say that it’s not really that important, anymore, whether these were made up or not.

But, the issue of authenticity seems always pertinent and capable to motivate public discourse. For example, see the comments made in this article (N.Y.Times, 6 Aug 2007), which mainly deals with another famous kiss, though a bit different one, being a ‘public’ rather than a ‘private-moment-in-public’ kiss: Alfred Eisenstaedt photograph of a sailor kissing a nurse in Times Square on Aug. 14, 1945, during the celebration to mark the end of World War II (left).

So, why such a fuss about authenticity? It seems that we should not forget the general idea surrounding photography, that it does shape our understanding of life and events, of the world in general. Or, at least, this is what we secretly hope for!

But the images enter into and work through a wider social discourse of constructed both, myth and reality. And the photographs are supported by pre-existing, mediating assumptions of reality, which in turn they reproduce back in particular ways. For example, we may identify a mixture of myth and reality about Paris as the legendary city of eternal love and passion, or, the exuberant celebration and welcoming of the end of war as national and universal. These are the themes underpinning these photographs, but the photos, in turn, are there to support such pre-given expectations and already constructed understandings -against of course other, alternative, equally plausible or valid understandings. My personal experience says, for example, that Paris has burnt and haunted my romantic heart, but was also capable to shock me - as any other visitor I expect - with its contrasting, racialised and impoverished periphery, or the commodification of every human sense in its core.  

The really ’special’ photographs, the iconic images as those above, those with the highly pleasing aesthetic arrangement and a functionally complete content, (because we must realise that there have been thousands of photographic kisses in Paris, and there were a dozen and more -now forgotten- different soldiers’ kisses published in that Life issue which did not raise to the iconic level); these icons enter the public domain as fashion, or even, as part of social rituals, altogether in a symbolic function - being more than what they depict.

The New York kiss, which according to the art critic Michael Kimmelman (from the article cited above) “it combined all the right elements: the returning soldier, the woman who welcomed him back and Times Square, the crossroads that symbolised home”, and I would add a successful black versus white formal play of contrast, was apparently to be re-enacted in 2005.

the bullet

On 5 September 1936, during the Spanish Civil War, a bullet kills a man of the Republican forces fighting the fascist army.  The renowned photograph above, entitled ’Loyalist Militiaman at the Moment of Death’ (© Magnum) was taken by young Hungarian photographer Robert Capa (initially called Andre Friedmann). It was published next year, in the 12 July 1937 issue of Life, with the caption “Robert Capa’s camera catches a Spanish soldier the instant he is dropped by a bullet through the head in front of Cordoba” (italics added).

The photograph soon became an icon of war. Even more, the falling Republican soldier became an emblem of aspiration in the fight against fascism across the globe. But in 1975 when Phillip Knightley suggested in his influential book ‘The First Casualty’ that the photograph was fake, taken during pre-staged manoeuvres especially arranged for the photographers, there was an immediate response from R. Whelan, Capa’s biographer, to restore the truth against the allegations.

On one side, Whelan wrote that “…the picture’s greatness ultimately lies in its symbolic implications, not in its literal accuracy as a report on the death of a particular man.” However, on the other side, he also went all the way to research and identify the identity of this man (reported in The Genius of Photography by R. Badger, 2007). So now, we know him to have been Federico Borrell Garcia, aged twenty-four, who came from Alcoy in southern Spain.

The efforts to clarify the authenticity of this photograph shows, as R. Badger points out, ”how much we want to believe in photography” and given the uncertainty of our times, it shows that we want to “be able to trust the most iconic of war images.”

2 things

There are two things attracting my thoughts in this discussion so far.

First, I have come to believe that iconic images, such as those above, by the same nature and context of their production and consumption, escape the need to be absolute and truthful fragments of an unmediated reality. Yet, we seem, as viewers and society, in almost contradictory way, to demand this. One reason for it might be, linked to photography’s and our society’s modernist roots, that their rising status as collective symbols demands that they reflect ’truth’.

Of course someone could note here that we particularly ’demand this truthfulness’ from the more really documentary genres of photography, such as war photography. It was Barthes (1977) who argued that a photograph contains both a denoted and a connoted message. The first referring to the literal reality and the second to the symbolic message which makes use of socio-cultural references. Can we have, though, an image - a documentary photograph that is -with simply and only a denoted message? Is there indeed such thing called a ’denoted’ message?

Second, I have come to believe that iconic images, such as those above, manage to proficiently conceal almost all the social and economic relations around and behind them.

We can talk, among many other things, about the role of art institutions, the prevalence of male photographers, the context in which the political or cultural messages here were received and appreciated. In the case of Capa’s photograph, we can even analyse specific historical, technological and artistic processes associated with this photograph. For example, the covering of the Spanish Civil War was the first major conflict where 35mm cameras were used. Unlike the past, the cameras now were able to get close and capture fast-moving action. Capa emphasised these elements and even supplemented with a new aesthetic purpose: A fuzziness which actually was to sugest the fear or immediacy of war.

In the case of Doisneau’s kiss, (see article in NY Times 29/4/1993), the actors were paid 500 francs, there were so payments and contractual relationships reflecting the particular social and economic relations of the period. There were particular personal interests involved too; she maid a claim for part in the earnings of the photo, her ex-boyfriend did not (maybe he did not need the money or the attention).

There were other social and financial consequences to be legally negotiated regarding the claims or rights of people featured in thousands of photographs. Doisneau’s lawyer in the case referred to the “disastrous consequences” for photographic agencies if “obscure and anonymous people” were given the right to claim a share of the subsequent sales of photographs in which they appeared. The agencies’ economic interests might have been actually a major factor in influencing the final decision taken for this case, apart any moral complications.

Keeping in line with the initial photo of this article, these are the days of celebrating St. Valentine after all, and talking about hidden social and economic relations, I felt closing this article with an image/poster by Victor Burgin ’What does Possession mean to you? (1974).     

“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).

A major photographic exhibition is coming to the North. Representing the first half of Henri Cartier-Bresson’s career (which spans from 1932 to 1946), a photographic material which was carefully selected, printed and mounted to a scrapbook by himself after the World War II, will be shown in the National Media Museum in Bradford from 7th of March to 1st of June 2008.

As the museum’s website reports, “these photographs documented both his extensive travels and his encounters with Surrealism and modern art. They were conceived as an initial selection for a major exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, a show that would catapult Cartier-Bresson onto the world stage and bring him international recognition. All the original photographs have now been brought together for a new exhibition, showing for the first time in the UK.” (photo left: Henri Cartier-Bresson, Mexico, 1934)

The story about the scrapbook’s making entails few very interesting twists. During World War II, and following Cartier-Bresson’s capture by the Nazis, the curators of the Museum of Modern Art were making arrangements for a posthumous exhibition of his work. But Henri, after three years in prison camps and two unsuccessful attempts, he managed to escape in 1943 and then survived in hiding. Few years later, he found out with pleasure about the MoMA plans and decided to collaborate and curate the exhibition himself, bringing 300 self-made prints glued in a scrapbook to New York!

Cartier-Bresson began photographing the world in 1930, first with a brownie box camera and then, two years later, with his trademark Leica. His photos from expeditions in several countries were published in major journals and he had his first exhibition in Madrid in 1933.

Henri Cartier-Bresson, Madrid 1933

Cartier-Bresson was also drawn to the cinema and worked as an assistant director in Jean Renoir’s film ‘The Rules of the Game’ (1939). He also became interested in documenting the Spanish Civil War. At the outbreak of World War II, he was drafted into the French army where he was a corporal in a film and photo unit captured in the Vosges Mountains in June 1940.

The MoMA exhibition, celebrating his survival, opened on February 4, 1947. (Note that the same year he also joined Robert Capa and David Seymour in founding Magnum).The collection includes portraits, such as of Matisse, Picasso and others, as well as street photography, assigned photo essays and reportage of France’s war years.

Henri Cartier-Bresson, Gestapo Informer, Dessau, Germany, 1945.

The ‘Scrapbook’ has been published in its entirety for first time last year by Thames & Hudson. Cartier-Bresson turned his attention to it in the 1990s again, realising its great importance - especially since the selection of the photos was his own choice. In fact, he rediscovered it in a suitcase in his parents’ house after his mother died. But he was not really ‘a man living in the past’ - as described in the interview below - and left it in the bookshelf. Following his death in 2004, the Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson, the present owner of the prints, finished the job of restoring the photographs, and made their wider publication available.

Llisten here to Martine Franck and Agnès Sire of Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson talking about the history of the Scrapbook. This is an interview hosted in the website of the International Centre of Photography, New York, where the Scrapbook was exhibited last year.

All photographs by Christos Stavrou © 2007. All rights reserved.

Suggested soundtrack: The Art Of Driving by Black Box Recorder…

or Little Honda by Yo La Tengo…

or even better, There is a light that never goes out by The Smiths

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