Michael Fried - Why Photography Matters As Art As Never Before

introduct io n

Each answer remains in force as an answer only as long as it is roo ted in

questioning. Heidegger, "The Or igin of the Work of Art"

J have always liked photog rap hy, and in a low- key way I was always intereste d in ir. I bough t a Berenice Abbott prim of an Arget bedroo m ar rhe Willard Ga llery in New York Cit y more t han rhirry years ago, and have lived for a long rime with photog rap h s by Evans, Baldus, Frith, and O'S u llivan (a part icular fa vorite). Ove r rhe years, too, I attende d numerous ex h ibit ions of pho to gra phy, th ough rarely wit h rh e sense of urgency rhar I felt with respect to ex hib itions of modern painting or sc ulptur e. Bur unril recen tly I did nor have any strong int u itions abo ut pho to gra phy, an d without such an intuition - some sort of ep iphany, real or imag ined - I have never been mot ivated to write o n anyt hing. Th en several things happene d. First, I got ro know J am es Welling and his work because frie nd s in Ba ltimo re wa lked inro his first show at Metro Pictures and bough t seve ral o f the " Diary" photographs; soo n they became close to him . l found t ha t I liked his p hotographs eno rm ously, an d we, too, became friends . And t hen about ten years ago, by sheer chance, I mer J eff Wall at the Boymans Museum in Ro tterdam and dis covered that, to put it mild ly, we were int erested in many of rhe sam e p ictorial issues . I had been aware o f Wall's work for years an d had even had an in k ling of our share d co ncerns, bur meet ing him and excha nging rhoughrs was galvanizing for me. Fro m that moment on I starred look ing seriously at recent photog rap hy, a process grea tly aided b y major exhibitions of work by figur es s uch as Welling, Wall, Andr eas Gursky, Tho m as St ruth, Bernd and H illa Becher, Tho m as Demand, Rineke Dijkst ra, Ca ndida Hofer, H iroshi Sugim oto, and Luc Delahaye, among orhers. To my surpri se I fairly quick ly b ecame gr ippe d by the though t rhat a ll rhar work, and m uc h else b esides, hung together artistica lly in ways rhat it seeme d to me no one else writi ng ab out the to pic had qui te recognized . At t hat poinr, I bega n dra fti ng whar J hoped woul d be a short book on recen t art photogra p hy that would convey rhe gist of m y think ing . Prett y soo n, though, ir became clear t hat no suc h short book was in the cards . Rather, if I wan ted to do jus t ice to my sub ject, I would have to de a l with the work of more th a n fifteen photogra p hers (and, ir rurne d o ur, video and film makers) in suf fic ient deta il to co nvey a sense of wha t eac h was up to and at rhe same rime to allow th e co n nectio ns I saw among rheir ind ividual projects ro emerge. Thi s is what I have trie d to do in Why Photography Matters as Art as Nev er Before.

introduction

The basic idea behind whar follows is simple. Srarr ing in rhe lare , 970s and 1980s, arr phorographs began ro be made nor on ly ar large sca le bur a lso - as rhe French crir ic J ca n -Fran ~ois Ch ev rier wa s th e firsr ro po inr our - for th e wall; this is widely known an d no one will conresr ir. What I want ro add is rhar the momenr rhis rook place - I am thinking, for example, of Ruff 's passporr-sryle porrrairs (wh ich begin modesr in scale bur are marked fro m the srarr by rhe for-rhe-wa llness thar Chevr ier rightl y regards as decisive), Wall's firsr lighrbo x transparencies, and Jean -M a rc Busramanre's Tableaux issues concerning rhe relationship berween rhe pho rograph and rhe viewer sranding before it became cru cial for phorography as they had ne ver previous ly bee n. M o re precisely, so I wanr ro claim, such photography immediarely inherited rhe enrire problemaric of beholding- in rhe rerms defined in my previous wri t ing, of rhearricaliry and an rirhe atrica liry - rhar had been cenr ral, first, to rhe evo lution of painr ing in France from rhe middle of the eighteent h cenrury unril rhe advenr of Edoua rd Maner and his gene rarion around 1860, an evo lurio n explo red in my books Absorption and Theatricality, Courbet 's Realism, and Manet's Modemism ; and second, co rhe opposition between high modernism and minim a lism in rhe mid- a nd lare 1960s, as expounded in, and perhaps exacerba red by, my "infamo us" essay "Arr and Objecr hood. » 1 Whar rhis has meant in indi vidual cases will become clear in rhe course of rhis book, bur I might as well acknowledge at the outser rhat my mor ivation for wr iti ng abour recent arr photography has every thin g ro do wirh my be lief that issues of rhe sort I have jusr named rhar mig hr hav e seeme d (rhar did seem, ro me as muc h as ro anyone else) quir e po ssibly forever inva lidated by the eclipse of high mode rn ism an d th e t riump h of posrmodernis m borh arr isrically and rheorerically in the 1970s and 'Sos have returned, may I say dialectically, to rhe very cenrer of advanced phorographic pracrice. Pur slightly diff erentl y, I shall rry ro show rhar the mos r characteristic pro ducti o ns of all rhe photograph e rs jusr mentione d (and ot hers as we ll) belong ro a single photographic regime, which is ro say ro a single com plex srrucrure of rhemes, co ncerns, and represenra riona l srra regies, whic h on rhc one hand repr esents an epocha l develo pment w irhin rhe hisrory of art phorography and on th e othe r can only be unders tood if it is viewed in the context of issues of beholding and of what I rhink of as rhe ontology of pictures rhar we re first th eo rized by Deni s Diderot wirh respect to stage dram a and painting in rhe lare 1750s and '6os . This means, among other things, thar rhe chapters that follow co nsta nt ly refer ro my own earlier writings; I declare rhis up front, ro preempt the facile cr iticism rhar I am excessively preocc upi ed wirh my ow n ideas . I am pr eoccup ied wirh those ideas, for the sim ple reason rha r rhey seem ro me ro hold the key ro much (far from every rhing, much less rhan half of eve ryrhing, but srill, a grear deal ) in the picrorial arts of rhe pasr 2.50 years. The qu esrion, in orher words, is no r whe th er in rhis book I am ex plo ring ropics and issues I have discusse d before bur rather whether Ill) ' interpretations of spec ific works by a number of rhe leading phorographers of our rime, and beyond rhar my account of the lar ger project of much conrempora ry arr ph otography, a re or are not persua sive as rhey sran d. (I kn ow ir is roo much ro ask, bur it would be useful if reade rs impatient wirh whar I have done were ro feel compe lled ro offer superior interprera rions of rhe ir ow n.)

why photography matters as art as never before

T he organizat ion of Why Photography Matters as Art as Never Befor e is as follows . Chapter One sketches three possible "beginn ings," each of which involves t hree terms, by way of indicating something of t he scope of the issues to be dealt with in subse qu ent chapters . C hap ters Two and Thr ee are co ncerne d wit h works by Jeff Wall; the first also says some t hing abou t the concep t of worldhood as it is theor ized in Mart in Heidegger's Being and Time {also ab out the not ion of techn ology as deve loped in his later essay "The Quest ion Co ncerni ng Techn ology") and the second abou t the concep t of t he everyday as it emerges in a remarkable ext ract from Ludwig Wittgenstein's note books for 1930, both o f these in relat ion to Wall's pictures . {For various reasons, Wall's work plays a large r role in t his bo ok than t hat of any ot her photograp her.) Cha pter Four comprises a reading of Ro land Bart hes's Camera Lucida, with partic ula r attent ion to his no tion of the /Junctum; my aim is to show that Camera Lucida is everywhere driven by an unacknow ledged antitheatr icalism and that it the refore bears a close relation ship to t he larger argume nt of this boo k. C hapte r Five exam ines T homas Strut h's mu seum pictures, and Cha pter Six a range of works by Thomas Ruff, Andr eas Gursky, and Luc Dela haye. Chap ter Six also includes a br ief discuss ion of Chevrier's account of t he new "tableau form, " on e of the few sign ificant co ntribm ions to a t heo ry of the new art photogra ph y with whic h I am fam ilia r. Chap ter Seven, on photographic portra itur e, co nsiders Struth 's fami ly port rait s, Rineke Dijkst ra's beach ph otog rap hs, Pat rick Fa igenba um's busts of Roman emperors, Dela haye's L'Autre, a boo k of black-and -white photographs made with a hidde n came ra o f passenger s on the Paris Metro, Roland Fischer's portra its of monk s and nuns, and Douglas Gordo n and Phi lippe Par reno's film Z idane : A TwentyFirst Century Portrait . Ch apter Eight, organize d around the the me of st reet photogra ph y, exa mines Wall's Mimic, Bear Streuli's videos and phorographs of crowds made wit h a concea led ca mera, an d vario us pictures and a pho tobook by Philip-Lorca diCorcia. Chapte r Nine looks at wo rks by T homas Demand a nd Ca ndid a H ofer before closi ng with bri ef remarks a bout Hiros hi Sugimoto's "Seasca pes," St ruth's " Paradi se" ph otographs, and two gat herings of pho togra phs of anim als in zoos by Garry Winogrand and H ofer. C haprer Ten, the climax to t he boo k, begins with a few wo rds abou t James Welling's ea rly Polaroid photograph, Lock, by way of sett ing the scene for an interpretat ion of Bern d and Hilla Becher's Typolog ies, one of t he most orig inal and impr essive - also, I sha ll t ry to show, philoso ph ically one of the most profound - artistic achieveme nt s of the past fifty years. Noti on s o f " true " or "genuine" versus "bad" or "spur ious" infini ty as pu t forward by G. W. F. Hegel in his Science of Logic an d Encyclopedia Logic are central to my arg ument, as is the theme of objec thoo d in "Art and Objecthood ." The cha pte r ends wit h a bri ef read ing of Wall's Concrete Ball. Ther e follows a Con clu sion, bea rin g t he sa me title as the book, that at onc e reviews and extends my overall argum ent before closing wit h a discussion of one last work by Wall, Aft er "Spring Snow" by Yukio Mish ima. As t his su mmary sugges ts, philoso phica l texts by Heidegger, Wittgenstein, and Hegel (also by Stanley Cave ll and Rob ert Pippin) are vital to my pro ject; this is because the new arr photography has fou nd itself compelle d to do a certa in amount of what I thin k of as ontolo gica l wor k, and beca use the writ ings of t hose pa rt icu lar philosophers have

introd uction

3

pr oved indispensable ro my efforts ro mak e clear exactly what this has involved. Othe r writer s who figure in thi s book in tex t and not es (apart from numerou s co mm entato rs on my photographer -subjec ts) are C hevrier, Bart hes, Brassa"i on Pro ust an d Prou st himself, the anonymous author of a French eighteenth-century conte, Susa n Sonta g, Clement Greenbe rg, Gertrude Stein in her essay " Pictur es," Heinr ich von Kleist, Robert Musil, Brian O'Doherty, Walter Benn Michaels (whose writing s on photo graph y bear closely on my arguments), and , per haps most surpri singly, Yukio Mishima in several pa ssages in his great terralogy , Th e Sea of Fertility. H oweve r, my focus will be overwhelmingly on th e photograph s I ha ve chose n to discuss. Two more point s. First , in my introduction to Art and Objecthood: Essays and Reviews, I insist that "be tween m)•self as histor ian of the French antirh eati ca l tradition and the crit ic who wrot e ' Arr and Objecrhood ' there loom s an unbridgeable gulf . ... 11see J no way of nego tiating th e differen ce between the priorit y given in [my earl y arr crir icismJ to judgment s bot h po sit ive and negat ive and the princ ipled refusa l of all such jud gme nt s in rhe pur suit of historical und erstanding Jin Absorption and Theatricality, Courbet's Realism, and Manet's Modernism]." 2 This seemed ro me a mat ter of some imp ort anc e, if onl y beca use I did nor want to be unde rsto od as end orsing Diderot's views of individual artist s (for example, deprecatin g Watteau ). Well, as the reader of Why Photography Matt ers as Art as Never Before is about to discove r, th e gulf in qu estion no longer loo ms as it pr evio us!)' did; pu t slightly differentl y, th e pr esent book turn s our to be generica lly mix ed - at once crit icism and history, jud gme nt al and non-judgm ental , engage d and detached - in ways that would hav e been inco mpr ehensible ro me only a short rime ago .J Second , a word about my epigraph . Th e citat ion from Heidegger, " Eac h answe r rem a ins in force as a n answer onl y as long as it is roo ted in ques t ioning ," was previously used by me as t he epigraph ro rhe introductor y essay, " About my Arr C rit icism," to th e 1998 anthol ogy of 111)' arr crirical writ ings, Art and Objecthood: Essays and Reviews. Whe n I plac ed it there , 1 meant to signal an aw a rene ss that th e issues grap pled with in my arr criticism of the 1960s were no longer burnin g topi cs in conte mp o1ary a rr (the introdu ct ion dar es from 1995-6 ), and that I ought nor rob e ima gined as standing behind each and eve ry claim in my ear ly writings as if nothing significa nt had happened in th e intervening years . By using it ag ain here, however , I mean to signal som ethin g almost exac tly op posite: rhar the issues of rhearri ca liry and objecrhood rhar were cru cia l to my arr criticism in J 966-7 a re once aga in, in Heidegger's tremendou s phr ase, "roote d in que stio nin g," nor least ques ti oning conducted with great force and brilliance by the photographers them selves. Inde ed the questioning had begun well befor e I wrote that introduc tory essay, bur I did nor know it then. Now I do.

4

why photography

matters as art as never before

three beginni ngs

1

There are rhree b eginni ngs to rhis book, eac h of which in irs own way pre pares rhe grou nd fo r t he chapt ers th ar follow. The firsr rakes off from a consi deration of rhe Ja pan ese ph otograp her Hiro shi Sugimoto's widely ad111ired black-and-whire photographs of mov ie rhearer s in different ciries in rhe Unired Srares, w hich he began 111 aking in rhe 111 id- , 97os, while he was srill phorograph ing di ora111asin 111u se u111 s of natura l histo ry- his firsr m arure body of wo rk (Figs. , an d 2.). (Sug i111o to, born in Japan in 1.948, came to rhe Uni red Srares in 1970 to srudy arr. Since rhen he has rraveled widely bur lives mainly in New York. I shall have some thin g ro say abour his "Seascapes" larer in rhis book .) He went on mak ing rhe movie rhearer phorogra ph s for another rwe nt y-five years : in the cara logu e to his 2005 - 6 trav elin g ret rospective exhib itio n rhey a re dated 1975 - 2.001. In char catalogue, too, Sugimoto prov ides rhe fol lowing brief intro ductory sra rem enr ro rhose pictures : I am a habirual se lf-inte rlocu tor. O ne even ing whi le raki ng p hotographs fof dioramas ] ar rhe American Muse u111of Na tur a l H isrory, I had a near-hall ucinatory visio n. My internal ques t ion-and-a n swer session lead ing up to rh is vision went so meth ing like rhis: "Su ppose yo u sh oo r a whole movie in a single fra111e?"Th e answer: " You ger a sh ining screen." Immediately I began ex per iment ing in or der to realize rhis vision . One afterno on I wa lked in ro a c heap cine ma in rhe Easr Village wit h a large-formar camera . As soo n as rh e mov ie sta rted , I fixed the s hutt er ar a wide-o pen ape rtur e. When rhe m ovie finished rwo hou rs later, I clicked rhe shurrer clo sed. Thar evening I deve loped the film, and m y vision ex ploded befo re m y eyes.' In orher words, the dazzl ing blank ness, rhe sheer whireness, o f che scree ns in rhe mo vie rhearer photographs are rhe resulr of leav ing rhe shurre r ope n chroug hour an enti re film; by th e same token , there was jusr enough cum ulati ve reflected ligh t fro m the scree n ro make poss ible rhe relative ly dark bur a lso m ar velous ly detai led registrat io n of rhe rhearer interio rs themse lves. Now, I have no wish to challenge the veracity of Sugimoto's accou n t of how he came ro make rhe movie theat er pho tog rap hs. Bur ir s ho uld be noted t har he presents his doing so as rhe ourco me o f a so lita ry brill iant int uirion, as if rhe photographs spran g full y co n ceived ou r of his q uest ioning mind and thus had nothi ng wharever to do wirh any rhing else rakin g place in photography at approximately t he same mo m ent. Maybe thi s rea lly is how t hey ca m e to be m ade. Yer th e facr remains rhar rhe seco nd half of t he 1970s saw ar leasr rwo orhe r n orable iniriarives in "a rt " photography rhar engage d head-on with the quesrion of cinema, and I want to sugges r rhat unless rhose init iat ives are ta ken

three beg,nnings

5

Hir os hi Sugimoto, U.A. Walker, New York, 1978 . Gelatin silver print. u9.4 x 149.2 cm, Negative 213 1

2 Hir os hi Sugimoto, Ohio Theater, Ohio, 1980 . Gelatin silver print. 1 19.4 x 149.2 cm, Negative 205

into conside rarion, one's sense of Sugimo ro's achieve ment in rhe movie theate r photo graphs risks being curio usly abstract, cut off from the contem pora ry histo ry of which it was a part. l refer to the early work of Cindy Sher man and Jeff Wall. Sherman first. The works I have in mind are her famous Untit led Film Stills, modesrsized black-and-w hite photographs which she made between r977 and 1980 .2 T hey are, of cour se, not actua l film st ills but ph otographs imita t ing t he look of film st ills, and in all rhe images (a tota l of eighty-four) t he protagonist is Sherman herself, or rather one or ano t her female "c har acter" who m Sherman is play ing or imp ersonat ing (in a ll the photographs she is alone, no one else appears). There is by now a vast critical lirerarure on Sherm an's work, muc h of it in my op inio n t heo retica lly overblow n,3 bur here are some interes t ing remar ks by Sher man herself: I liked rhe H itchcock look, Anto nion i, Neo realist st uff. What I didn't want were pictures showing st rong emot ion . In a lor of movie photos rhc actors look cute, impish, allurin g, d ist raught , frighrene d, rough , ere., bur what I was int eresred in was wh en they were almost express ion less. Whic h was rare to see; in film stills there's a lot of overac t ing because th ey're trying ro sell rhe movie. Th e movie isn't necessa r ily funny or happy, bu r in those pub liciry photos, if there's one cha racte r, she's smiling. Ir was in Europea n film st ills that I'd find wome n who were more neutral, and maybe the origina l films were ha rder to figure our as well. I foun d thar mo re mysterious. I looke d for it consc iously; I didn't want to ha m ir up , an d I knew rhat if I acted too hap py, or too sad, or scared - if rhe emotio nal quot ient was too high - t he photograp h would seem campy. 181 O ne way of gloss ing rhis might be to say that by her own account, despite rhe fact t hat she was in effect "pe rformi ng" for the camera - dress ing up, mak ing up, arranging rhe scene, and finally playing a role - Sherman at the same time felt impelled to avoid displays of emorio n and by imp licat ion entire scenes t hat might stri ke rhe viewer as theatrica l in rhe pejorative sense of the rerm. (The wo rd is mine, no t hers. T his is nor to say rhar a ll the Untit led Film Stills are eq ually restrained. I need hardly add rhat the issue of t heat r icality looms large bot h in my art critical essay of 1967, "Art and Objecrhood," and in my histo rical studi es of the evol ution of paint ing in Fra nce bet ween the middle of rhe eighteenth cent ury and the adve nt of Ma net and his genera tion in the early , 86os .4 ) Acco rdingly, in most of the Stills Sherman depicts characte rs who app ear absorbed in thoug ht or feeling (Fig. 3); or who look "offscreen" in a man ner that suggests t hat their attentio n has been dra wn, fleetingly or ot herwise, by somethin g or someone ro be fou nd there (Fig. 4); or who gaze close up at their own image in a mirror (Fig. 5); or who are viewed from the rear or the side, from an elevated or "depressed" viewpoi nt, from a co nsidera ble distance, or unde r orher circumstances that ru le out the possibi lity of any implied commu nicat ion between t he per sonage in t he photograph and rhe viewer (Fig. 6). Thro ugho ur the series the bas ic movies co nventio n (or diegeric law ) of never depicting the subject looki ng directly ar the camera is in force,' and in general the cinematic characte r of the photographs co uld hardly be more emp hatic. But there is also a convergence bet ween a numb er of the actional and structural mot ifs char one

three beg innings

7

3 Cin dy Sher ma n , Untitled Film St ill, #53, 1980 . Ge lat in silver print . 16 .2 x 24 cm. M useum of Mod ern Arr, New York . Grace M. Ma yer Fun d

4 Cindy Sherman , Untit led Film Sti ll, #9, 1978 . Ge la tin silver print. 18 .9 x 24 cm . Mu seum of Mo dern Art, New York. Purchase

/

5 Cin dy Sher man , Untitled Film Still, #56, r980 . Gela tin silver print. r6.2 x 24 cm . Mu seum o f Mod ern Art, New York. Acqui red throu g h th e genero sity of J o Carole a nd Rona ld S. Laude r in memor y o f Mr s John D. R ocke fe ller 111 6 C ind y Sherman, Untitled Film Still, #48, r 979 . Gelatin silver print. 16.2 x 24 c m. Mu seum of Mo d ern Arr, New York. Acqu ir ed throug h th e gene rosity of J o Caro le a nd Ron a ld S. Laud er in memory of Eug ene S. Schwartz

7 (righ t and faci ng /Jnge)

Jeff Wall, M nuie Aud ience, 1 979. Seven transpa rencies in thr ee lightboxcs. Eac h tra nsparency 10 1. 5 x 105 cm

finds in the Stills an d mot ifs deployed by eighteenth - and nin eteenrh-cenrury French pa int ers in the inrerest of what l have called a nti t hea trica lit y (as Regis Durand recognizes aprop os o f the t rea tment of the subj ect's gaze in Sherman 's Rear Scree11Projectio11 s of 1980) .6 I sha ll ha ve much mor e to say ab out thi s issue furth er on in t his chap ter a nd in tho se that follow, but I wa nr to stop shore o f characteri zing the Stills as ant itheatric a l pur e a nd simple for tw o reason s. First , it is not clear - at least not at this prelim inar y point in rhe la rge r argumen t of this boo k - w hat such a claim can mean in the rea lm o f ph otograph y or indeed th at of cinema (a sepa rat e topic) and therefore, 11 fortiori, in t he rea lm o f a co nce pti on of ph otograp hy th at o penly presents itself as parasit ic if not on cinema itself t hen on a part icula r cinemat ic a rt ifact, the film st ill. Second , Sherm an 's Stills both individually an d (even more exp licitly) as a group present themselves as having been delib erat ely staged by the photogra pher - and is not ''s tagedn ess" such as one find s in these images a marker o f t hea trica lity, nor its ant ithesis? Th e answer to thi s question, which will eme rge as I proceed, is fairly comp lex, but rhe poinr I want to und ersco re is t hat Sherm an's Stills raise rhe qu estion in a particula rly pressing form {they are not simpl y t heat rical, in ocher wor ds), w hich is also to say that t here is more to them as works of a rt tha n br illiant visua l deco nst ructi ons of fictions o f feminity, which is mostly ho w t hey have been und ersto od .7 Jeff Wa ll, the ot her key figure I want to cite in this co nn ection, made The Destroyed Room, his first lightbox pictur e - a C iba chrom e t rans pa rency illumin ated fro m behind by fluoresce nt bulb s, thro ugh out almost all his ca reer his preferred medium - in 1978.k Fro m the o ut set, his art has involved t riangulat ing ben vcen photog raphy, paint ing, and cinema, as he himself has repeated ly stated in essa ys and interview s. (A pa rtic ularly splend id exa mple of such t riangulatio n, Momi11g Cleani11 g, Mies van der Rohe Fou11 datio11 , Barce/o11 a f r999 J, w ill be the pr incipal wo rk d iscu ssed in C hap ter T hree.) In fact, in Wall's rece ntly publ ished cata logue raiso nne all his work s ar e chara cterized by him either as " docu mentary " or " cinematograp hic" pho togra phs, the latt er rerm implying some meas ur e of preparat ion of t he motif - some meas ur e of "s taging," in other

10

why photography

matters as all as never before

words. As in Sherma n's case, the larger q uestio n of the exact scope and n ature o f Wall's exp loitatio n of movies and the thought of movies lies beyond the scope of this in tro duction - in fact la m aware of scan ting the subjec t in my chapters o n Wall and for that matter in this book generally . However, one early work by Wa ll is especially relevant to Sugimoto's Mov ie Theaters : Movie Audience o f 1979 (Fig. 7), which co mprises seven lightbox portraits of pe rsons seen slig htly fro m below, all of whom gaze towa rd the lcfr as if towa rd a movie screen on wh ich a film is being pro jected, their faces illum inated from the lefr as if by reflected ligh t fro m that screen. Each portrait is abou t one meter high and wide, and the seven have been grouped in three un its depict ing o ne "fa m ily" (" mot her," "ch ild ," and "fa t her" ) and two youthful couples. By cla imi ng that Movie Aud ience is especia lly relevant to Sugimoto 's Movie Theaters l mean tha t whereas the latter with their blan k sc reen s are in almost all cases co mplete ly devoid of an aud ience, Wall's Movie Audience purports ro be a representatio n of members o f such an au dien ce

three beginnings

11

(tho ugh we as viewers do not for a moment im agine that his personages are act ually watc hing a movie und er ordinary co nd itio ns; for one thin g, the light falling on their faces is muc h too stro ng for that to be cre dible). In 198 4, to accompany an exhi bition of t his wo rk in Base l, Wall wrote a text of several pages in a tort uous, post-Adorno idio m t hat contra sts st r ikingly with the exce ptional lucidity of his other wri t ings abou t pho tograp hy (the most disting uished body of writing on the to pic of the past thirty years, in my opi nion). One paragraph suffices to convey the teno r of the whole: W hen we go to the cinema, we enter a t heat re (or what remains of a theatre) which has been re-insta lled in a monume nral isi ng mac hine. Th e hu ge fragmented figures projected on the screen are the magnified sha rd s of the o utm oded thespia ns. This implies that the film spectator has also become a fragment of society which acquires ident ity throu gh its repetitio us accumulat ion ; in thi s process it beco mes an "au dience." The audience is not watch ing the prod uct of t he action of a machine; iris inside a machine and is expe riencing the phantasmagoria of t hat interio r. T he audience knows t his, but it knows ir t hrough t he labour of trying to forget it. Thi s amnes ia is w hat is known cul tur a lly as pleasure and happ iness. On t he other ha nd, the utopia of the cinema consists in the ideal of happy, pleasan t lucidity which wo uld be created by the revolutionary negation and transfo rm at ion of amnesi ac and mon um ent alising cultural forms. Cinemat ic spectarorship is a somnamb uli stic approa ch toward utop ia. 9 At the risk of simplify ing Wall's thought, T might note, first , that the top ic of theater, hence of t heatricali t y, is definitely in play, and second, that Wall is struc k by the fact that a movie au dience (as one might say) " loses itse lf" or, per ha ps more accura tely, "fo rgets itself" in the experie ncing of a mo vie, or rather is led or induced by the apparatus and the situatio n to seek to do so (Wall : "Th e aud ience knows !that it is inside the exper iencing mac hinej, bur it kn ows it t hrough the la bour of tryi ng to forget it"). Thus the " utopia of t he cinema" - which presumably has not been achieved - would be to convert this trop ism toward forgetting into a kind of "happy, pleasant lucid ity" abo ut the whole expe rience, a lucidity that wou ld nor simply be a form of distanci ng and alienat ion. (Wall associa tes the latter condit ions, dista ncing and alienatio n, wit h what he calls "crit ical modernism" jsee below] - Ben oit Brecht and Jean-Luc Godard wou ld be the models here, not Morris Louis or Ant hony Caro.) As for Movie Audience it self, Wall goes on to say that he trie d to make it anticipate, even evo ke, its own mom ent of trial and occl usion as modernist arr, its o wn transfo r mation into tyran nical decor. [In ot her words, its own conscri ption to an experie ntial regime of imme rsion and forgett ing.] T his is greatly facilitated by the lighting techn ology used to make the piece, wh ich itself induces a kind of pri mal specular fascinatio n o r absorpt ion which is in some ways ant ithetical to the cond itions of reflective and artificia l est rangement indispensa ble to the un happy lucidity of critical mode rni sm. [28 11 At the same time, the fact that Movie Audience has been hun g unusua lly high by Wall himself is on the side of est rangemen t rather than fascination - it is har d to lose oneself in an image conside rably above one's head.

12

why photography

matters as art as never before

Here it is wort h gla ncing at some remarks a bou t movies that appear in "Art and Objec t hood": lt is the overco ming of theater t hat modern ist sens ibilit y finds most exa lting an d that it experie nces as the ha llma rk of high art in our time. There is, howeve r, one art rhar, by irs very narure, escapes t heate r ent irely - rhe mov ies. This helps explain why movies in gene ra l, including frank ly appa lling ones, a re acce ptab le to mod ernis t sensibi lity whereas all but the most succesf ul paint ing, sculpt ur e, music and poet ry is not. Because cine ma escapes theater - automa tically, as it were - ir provides a welcome and absorbing refuge ro sensibilitie s at war with theater and rhear ricaliry. Ar t he same rime, rhe auto matic , guaranteed chara cter of th e refuge - more accu rately, the fact that what is prov ided is a refuge from theater and nor a triumph ove r ir, absorption no r conviction - means rhat rhe cinema, even ar its most experimental , is nor a modern ist arr. 10

Today I per haps want to qua lify rhe fina l co ncl usion, but my ba sic claim, char rhe absorption or engross ment of rhc movie audience sidesteps, auro marically avoids, the question of thea rricaliry, st ill seems to me - very broa dly-c or rect. It has much in co mmon, I t hink , with Wall's characre rizarion of t he movie aud ience as ar once "i nside a machi ne" an d as "experienci ng the phantasmagor ia of rhar inter ior," though his emphas is on the au dience's " labor" of forgett ing int roduces a note of complex it y ab sent from my cruder form ulat ion. (l shou ld add rhat rhe adverb " autom atic ally" w as not mea nt by me to impl y that rhe avoidance of rhea t rica liry I associate wirh mov ies results simp ly from rhe natur e of rhe appara t us - the camera and pr ojector - as distin ct from t he dep loyment of a hosr of techni ques of acting , directing , scene-settin g, light ing, photogra phin g, sou nd recordin g, editin g, and so on. T he whole q uesti on w ill ha ve to be taken up again o n a futur e occasion.) All rhis leads me to suggest rhat one way of understanding Sugimoto's Movie Theaters, Sherm an 's Untitled Film Stills, and Wall's Movie Audience is as responding in different ways ro rhe pr ob lematic stat us of mov ies in thi s regard by making pho tographs which, althoug h mobil izing one or anot her conve nt ion of movies (or the rhoug hr of movies), also provide a certa in essenti a lly photographic distance from the filmic experience, a distance by virt ue of w hich rhe automaticity of the avo idan ce of theat ricality l have just evoke d is foresta lled or undone. By t his I mean t hat th e issue of theatricality is allowed to come into focus, as a lmost neve r in narrative film as such, and even to be eng aged with as a problem - though not, I sugges t , unambiguously defeated or overcome. (That had to wai t for Do uglas Gordon's brilliant Deja 1111 [2000), nor discussed in this book. I sha ll have a littl e more ro say abour rhe relat ion of film to pho tograp hy as theorized by Roland Barthes in Camera Lu cida in Chapter Fo ur.) In Sherman's Stills, as seen, this is acco mp lished in part through motifs of absorption, distract ion, look ing "offscreen," distance from rhe camera, and the like. In Wall's Movie Audience, it is done by dep ict ing members of an oste nsibly or rather no t ion ally immersed aud ience from a point of view that virtually ass ur es a cert ain crit ica l distance on the pa rt of rhe viewe r but thar at rhe sa me t ime (accordi ng ro Wa ll) seeks at least somewhat to entra nce rhat viewer by means of rhe sheer allur e of the ba ck lit t ransparenc ies. Viewed in rhis context,

three beginn ings

13

in imp licit dialog ue wit h the work of Sherman an d Wall, rhe blank radiance of Sugirnoto's movie screens present s it self as an abst ract image of spectatorly fascinatio n {think o f t he shiny objects trad itionally ernpl oyed by hypno t ists to fixate a subject 's att entio n), while the fac t t hat in all bu t rhe ear liest Movie Theaters the seats in rhe theate r are empty - there is no audience to be seen - co mes to seem a brilliant figure for, very nearly a represent a tion of, the fascina ted or hypnotized {that is, ab sorbe d or imrnersed) rnovie aud ience's charac terist ic forge tt ing of itsel f and irs positio n w ithin the cinematic "mach ine," to adopt Wall's ter min ology. {The absence of ca rs in Sugimoto's photographs of DriveIns has a co mp ara ble sign ificance .) Ar rhe sarne time, howeve r, the viewer of rhe Movie Theaters and Drive-Ins has no sense of be longing ro t hat {at o nce presen t and absent) movie audience: rather, he or she stan ds conscio usly apart frorn the images in question, and peru ses t heir con t ents in a detached or say disinte rest ed man ner, which in t urn a llows the cornplex relati on to t he filmic ex perience I have tried ro descr ibe to become available on rhe pla ne of critical or t heoret ica l reflection. That pla ne coexists with anot her, shee rly sensu o us one, which conce rn s only the und enia ble and uncanny beauty of t he ph otographs . What I am sugges t ing is that we as viewers oug ht nor ro ler the seco nd ent irely eclipse the first, as of ten ha pp ens in co mrnentaries on Sugimoro's arr; rather, here as elsewhere the case for his irnportance requ ires rhat we take into account the relation of his work to t ha t of his co ntemporaries, a relario n t hat he himse lf in his pub lished st aremen t s seerns conte nt to leave un ack nowledged .

M y seco nd beg inn ing cen ters on t he protracted rnomenr between 1978 and 1981 when three yo un g art ists in d ifferent parts of the wo rld - Wa ll in Vancouver, Th omas Ruff in Diisseld o rf, and Jean -Ma rc Bustamante in P ro vence and nort hern Spain - mo re or less sirnulr aneous ly started to make ph otographs that I am not the first to see as exernplifying a new regime of "art" photography (from now on 1 sha ll drop t he quota tion rnarks), one that the learn ed and acute French cr itic Jean-Fran~o is C hevrier has character ized as the "tableau form." 11 I shall cons ider Chevrier's ideas in greate r deta il at t he start of Chap t er Six, whe re I sha ll also say more about Ruff's breakt hroug h works, his frontal, deadpan, "passport-style" co lor portrai ts of fellow stu dents and ot hers in his immed iare milieu . For prese nt purposes, however, t he t wo distinctive and closely related character istics of rhe new regirne are, first, a tende ncy t owa rd a considerably large r image-size tha n had prev iously bee n thought appropriate to art photogra ph y; and seco nd, an expectatio n or, pu t more stro ngly, an intention that t he pho tograph s in question wou ld be frarned and hun g on a wa ll, to be looked a r like pa intings {hence Chevrier's ter m "ta bleau" ) rather t ha n merel y exami ned up close - pe rhaps even held in the hand - by one viewer ar a rime, as ha d hithe rt o been the ca se. Not that pr evious arr photographs - wo rk s by Carneron, H ill and Adamson, Nadar, Le Gray, Baldus , Emerson, Steic hen, Coburn, Stiegl itz, Strand, Westo n, Eva ns, Rodc henko, Sande r, Carrie r-Bresson, Kert esz, Brassa'i, Wo ls, Levitt, Ada ms, Frank , Calla han, Winogrand, Fr iedland er, Arb us, Brandt, et al. - had no t lent rhernselves perfectly well to being matted, fra med, and

14

why pho t ography matters as art as never before

exh ibited on the wa ll - obv iously t hey did. Yet co mpar ed to the new work, the re had always seemed so methin g a littl e arb itra ry abou t such a mode of display, as if material images tha t had not been made for the wa ll - which often app ear ed to have been mad e to be reproduced in books an d cata logues, w here they co uld be stud ied in private by individual viewers - co uld not be certified as wor ks of arr unless they were so displayed , usually in gallery or mu seum environm ent s w hich furthe r ma gnified their "est hetic " cac her. T he new work, in con t rast, had its desti nation on the wa ll in view from the first on the level of "form," to use the ot her of Chevrie r 's key word s. It is imm ediately appa rent what t his mean s in the case of Jeff Wall' s early lighrbox pict ures such as The Destroyed Roo m (T978; Fig. 8) and Picture for Women ( 1979; Fig. 9) : not only are both works far larger than pr evious art phot ograp hs bad been (roug hly five feet high by seve n and a half feet wide) , they also co ntain a wea lth of minu te derail tha t is cru cial to t heir content but tha t wou ld effectively be lost if the images were sign ifican tl y reduced in size - which is what happe ns when the y are illust rat ed in books or catalog ues. So for example t he ar t historian Ralp h Ubl ha s based a readin g of the role of "co ntinge ncy" in The D estroyed Room on th e place men t of a cluster of gleaming tac ks in th e wa ll near t he " w indow " at the right of the picture; 12 the racks a re all but indis cernible in rep rod uction but , like t he small pieces of jewe lry on th e carpe ted floo r, at t ract one's gaze when

8

Jeff Wall, Th e Destroyed Room, 1978 . Tran spare ncy in lighr bo x. , 50 x 234 c m

three beginnings

15

9 Jeff \Xlall, l'ic ture for \Y/0111eu,1979. Transparency in ligbtbox. 150 x 234 cm

one sta nds before the actual tran sparency. Derai l as such matters less in l'icture for \Y/ome11but the issue of size is even more cruc ial: eve rything depen ds on the viewer's abili ty to respo nd not just intellectually but p unctua lly, in the mo ment of viewing, ro t he int ernal complexi ties of the life-size image as a who le, in part icular ro its carefu lly eng ineered struct ure of reflected gazes - th at of t he young wo man "mo d el" ro t he left; that o f the photogra p her, Wall, operat ing t he sh utter attac hment ro the right ; and chat of t he camera on its tri pod at the exac t cent er of the picture. (As near as one can tell: the mirror in which everyt h ing is reflected is identified with the picture plane; t he actual, not the reflected you ng wo man gazes at a reflect ion o f the camera lens, whi le the actu al, no t the reflected p hotog rap her gazes at a reflection of the young woma n . The actua l camera a lone rakes in the enti re m irrored scene.) Fu rthe rmo re, bo th The Destroyed Room and Picture for \Y/ome11 all ude ro major pa intings in the mode rn French trad ition - the forme r ro Delac ro ix's Destructio11of Sarda11apa/11s, the latter to Manet's Bar at

16

why photography matters as art as never before

the Folies-Bergere - the reby underscoring both works' specifically pictor ial ambitions as well as their adherence ro an essent ially rableau- like mode o f presentation. 13 (More on Wall's use of pictorial "sources" in Chapters Two and T hree. ) As for Ruff's ear ly co lor head-s hots of students an d others (Figs. ro an d , 1 ), they arc espec ially int erest ing in this con nection beca use they d id nor begin large (t hat is, a ll those made between 1981 and 1986 were 24 x 18 centimeters); only from 1986 d id he dramatically increase their dimensions (ma ny to 210 x I65 centi meters), no do ubr part ly in response to Wall's lightbox p ictures and per haps the work of ot hers as well. 14 Never theless, there is an impor tan t sense-on which I shal l expand in Chapte r Six - in which on the level of "form" they were fro m the first imagined for the wall, by wh ich I mean that by virtue of their fronrali ty (with some profi le views a nd obl ique angles thrown in), repet it ive srructure, and psych ic blankness - also of their colored backgrounds - they implied a part icular mode of relat ion to the viewer, one of mu tual facing, indeed con frontation , tha t some how exceeded, in effect subtly negated, the conventions of the tradi tiona l fronta l

10

T homas Ruff, Portrait /8. }ii11ger/,1981. Chromoge nic

processprint. 24 x 18 cm

TT Thomas Ruff, Portrait /K. K11e((el},1984. Chromogcnic process print. 2.4 x 18 cm

three beginnings

17

photograph ic portra it . T heir subsequent increase in sca le therefore seems right, as if only then did rhey assume rhe dimensions and sheer "visual presence" (Valeria Liebermann's phrase) prope r ro rheir idea. 15 Indeed ir was rhen rhat rhe portra its became rigorously frontal and cons istentl y dea dpan . In contrast, Sugimoto's Dioramas or Movie Theaters lose intensity when rhey are printed ar a larger scale, as is sometimes done. (Ler me be clea r: I consider bo rh the Dioramas and Movie Theaters to be early instances of the new art photograp h y, wirhour t heir adhering to the tab leau form as suc h. Sherman's U11titled Film Stills' srarus w irh respect ro t he new art photography featured in this book is a trickier matter, in part because of he r own subsequent development; I find almost all her work after rhe "centerfolds" I 198 1i to be of relative ly little artistic interest.) M ain ly, rhough, I wanr to say somet hing abour Busrama nte's ea rly Tableaux (the designation is his), a series of large color photographs that he made in the outskirts of Barcelona and in various places in Provence between 1978 and 1982 . (Bustamante, born in 1952 in Tou louse to a n Argentine father and a British mother, had worked in Paris as an assistant to the American stree t photogra pher William Klein, a leading figure in the previous generation.) According to Jean-P ier re Criqui, organizer in 1999 of a retrospective exhib ition of Busrama nte's arr, the photogra pher rook the Tableaux wirh a cum bersome 8 x 10-inc h box camera, "whic h, need less to say, ha d to be fixed to a tripod for the me rest shot ." 16 T his was far from standard working procedure for a young photographer at rhar time, but even less so was Bustama nre's decision to print his photographs at the maxim um size then possible . Cr iqui beg ins his introduc tory essay with a brief discussion of an exemplary wor k, Tableau no. r7 ( 1979; Fig. 1 2), which shows, in its foreground, an expanse of trodden earth littered with pebbles and crisscrossed by tire marks . A narrow, dusty road comes to an encl here, hemmed wit h rrees, scrub and some building mater ials - breeze-b locks, stones - waiting for who knows whar. On either side of the strip of earth, two paltry signs announce "Avda de Catalunya ." In rhe distance, hills beneath a lowering sky. In contrast with the anyt hing bu r grandiose characte r of t his scene, the exac tness of t he visua l dara offered by this photograph is notewort hy. This kind of "sharpness" makes the eye waver between afocality and the identificat ion of discrete points, and the roing and froing between these two facto rs presupposes a duration that greatly exceeds any mere ass umption of aware ness . Simply because of the absence of any spectacle and evenr, you have to look for a long time here. T his is how I understand Busramanre's words desc ribing t he Tableaux as "ki nds of slow snaps hots ." [ 163 l A lirtle furt her on, Criq ui rema rks that in the catalogue for a previo us exhi bitio n Tableau 110. 17 is immediately followed by Tabl eau no. 43 (198 1; Fig. 13 ), which makes an arresting contrast wit h its predecessor: T his is a contrast that is sw iftly perceived ra ther in rerms of comp lementarity, for [rhe second of these!, organized around this metal enclosure thar splits the image in rwo (in from, a lick of pa le gravel, like part of a bullring; behind, moved far back beyond this wa ll whic h only lers part of their bodies show, a woman or girl with two children, and a greyish mass of unsightly buildings), forms wirh what goes befo re a sort of diptych in which the entire repertory of motifs explored by the whole series is

18

why photography

matters as art as never before

12

Jean-Marc Busta1i1ante, Tableau

110.

17,

1979.

Type C and Cibachrome.

ro3 x

130

cm

summed up. Areas o f wastela n d, per ipheral zones, cons t ructions unfinished o r in the process of being built (or unfinished), roads eng ulfed and faded, dead-ends: everywhere the signs of man, who nevertheless remains aloo f, withdrawn, an d o nly rarely appea rs, blen d ing in with a set tha t he is forever redesign ing. A faint sen se of disaster wafts u p from this paradoxica l comb ination o f invasion and aba ndonmen t. I163 I Cri qui 's observatio n s seem ro me exactly right, as does his recognition that t he "thankless" nature of Bustaman te's motifs is such that the viewer is not invited ro engage with them imagina t ively (the parallel with Ruff's pass po rt-style port raits is ev ident ), as well as his further claim t hat the Tableaux therefore large ly leave it to the viewer to dec ide what ro make of them - witho u t mor e t han a minimum of guidance by the works rhemselves, so to speak. (The t hanklessness of t he motif s is compounded b y what Tar o Amano remarks was Bustamant e's tendency "to take his pho tographs at noon when he wi ll get

three beginnings

19

13

Jean-Marc Bustamante, Tableau 110. 43, 1981 . Type C and Cibachromc. 103 x 130c m

no shadows, so t hat no specific portion will stand out, nor one sub ject - be it a t ree or a perso n ." 17) Interestingly, Bustamante himself describes the places in his Tableaux as being "w itho ut q ualit ies," a reference to Robert Musi l's mo numenta l unfinished novel, The Mau without Qualities (1924-42), 18 a text rhat turns our to have su rp rising reson ance for several of the photogra phers discussed in this book . As Criq ui goes on to say: "Bus tamante o ften a lludes to the t ype of re lationshi p he wo uld like to see introd uced b y his wo rk - a no n-direct ive relatio nship, based o n a form o f fruitful indeterm inacy that he calls 'in between' ('eutre-deux '), and which purs the onlooke r in t he positio n of becoming 'e qually respo nsible for t he work '" (r64 - 5 ). In his images, Bustamante exp lai ns, "t he evenr !more broadly, the mot if! is place d at suc h a dista nce, and contained, t hat these imag es move beyon d the context in wh ich the y were made, t he geograp hic sett ing an d so on, and engage the viewer in a one -to-o ne relat ionsh ip so lely th rough t he ir phys ical prese nce" and "My aim is to make rhe viewe r becom e aware of his or her resp onsibili ty in what he or she is looking at. " 19 A crit ical factor in achieving th e p hys ical presence Busra manre sought is of cou rse size: the ea-rly Tableaux a re all 103 x r30 centi m etres, that is, more rhan th ree feet high

20

why photography

matters as art as never before

by four feet wide, unus ually large for tha t moment, and his later ph otograp hs of cypresses, also called Tableaux, a re even larg er (more on th ose sho rt ly). Another factor, I suggest, is colo r, specifica lly the harshness of the early Tableaux's juxtapositio n s of redd ish ea rt h with green foliage, often in fur t her cont ra st to whi te stu cco unfini shed houses, orange-red ceramic rile roofs, ligh ter colored san dy soi l, a nd fresh ly cast greyish wh ite concre te fou nda tio ns. A third is the sheer density of visua l information contai ned in eac h pri nt , a factor th at far from drawing the viewer "i nto" the wo rk rend s to d istance, in that sense ro "ex clud e," him o r her by virtue of its rnure , unin flecred, un mcrabo lizable chereness . As Ulrich Loock, along with Cri qui o ne of Busramante's most astute co mm entato rs, observes, "The init ial reference o f the photograph co realit y is sec to work in such a manne r char the !d epicte d ] th ings can and must be contemp lated in their silent recessive ness, wit hout consideratio n for their 'mean ing' [signification I. T he beholder is exclude d co rhe extent rhar Bu sra mante's icon ic strategy co nsists in present ing t hings in all their physica lity, as materia l realities, bur , because the gaze is n or allowed to penetra te t he scene, deprived of all (imag inary) bod ily inte ra ctio n wit h them. Th is exclusio n of rhe beholder . .. is one cond ition o f t he appearance of th ings in their intact singularit y."'" (There will be more co say abo ur "excl u sio n " as an artistic st rategy apropos of photographs by T ho mas Dema n d, Candida Hofer, Sugimoro, a nd T ho mas Stru th in Chapter Ni ne. ) A useful contrast might be with any of rhe slightl y older Stephe n Sho re 's su perb color photographs of a wide ran ge of American locales, almost all take n with an 8 x TO-in ch view ca mera between , 973 and , 98 1 and in itially pu blished in t he co111111011 Places in r982 a nd more recent ly in an expanded selectio n (Figs. volume U11 14 and , 5)." Altho ugh Shore's photographs, too, are su ffused wirh visual info rmatio n,

14 Srcphcn Shore, Beverly Boulevard and La Brea Ave11ue, Los A11geles.Califomia,J1111ezr, 1975, 1975. Ch romoge nic

15 Srephcn Shore, Holde11 Street. North Adams, Massachusetts, July 13, 1974, 1974. Chromogcnic process prim.

process print. 50.5 x 6 1 cm

50 .5 x 61 cm

three beginnings

21

his choice of motifs, refined handling of co lor, canny use of "side lighting," as H illa Becher ca lled it,u and met iculous composing of his images bo rh latera lly and- more ro rhe point of the compa rison - in depth 21 combi ne to produce the opposite of the refusa l of imag inary penetra t ion of the scene Loock associates wit h the Tableaux. "\Xlith Shore," Hilla Becher remarked in a conversa t ion with her husband Bernd and Heinz Liesbrock , "every th ing is rendered very affectio nately, it is genuinely gras ped. For me, his pho t os have so mething chat I see as being an idea l in phorogra phy: that one ac tu ally ent ers into the object, t hat one loo ks at in such a way t ha t afterward one has a genu ine love for it" (27). To w hich Liesbrock added, "As a n author, as a perso n, he becomes absorbed into what he is showing" (28). 14 It is worth no t ing t hat the o riginal pri nt s of the U11com111011 Places images were modes t in size; more broad ly, Shore's photograp hic vision in that series belongs ro a historical mo ment im mediate ly pri o r to t he emergence of the "tableau for m," above all in that Shore's photograp hs were not made for the wa ll, a fact that does not prevent H illa Becher from pra ising them for their "pictorial qua lit y" (27). Fina lly, Bustamante affixed his prints to a flat plate of alumi n um and then framed them wit hout surro undin g mats of any kind. 1 ; To quote Bustamant e once more: "I wa nted not to mak e pho t ographs that would be art , but art t hat wo uld be phoro graphy. I refuse d the small for mat and t he craft aspect of black and whit e. I wan ted ro move int o color, in a form at for the wall, in order to give to t he photograp h rhe dimensions of a tablea u, tu trans fo rm it into an ob ject. " 16 There is ambigui t y in this last sentence. On the one ha nd, the not ion of a tableau asserts t hat Bustamante wished to or ient his work to t he nor ms of pai nt ing. As Criqu i writes: '' Th e powe r of such works as t hese" - N o. 9 ( 1978), No. 68 (1982 )- " resides to a cons iderable degree in t he way they minimize [t he interest o f J the ir referents in orde r to att ract our eye in an ex perience whic h can be calle d picto rial" ( 165). On the other, Busta mant e's emphasis in t he remarks just quoted falls equally on t he notion of an objec t and indee d aspects of rhe object-charac ter of h is images beco me only more palpable as his caree r proceeds. So for example his next series of Tnblenux ( 199 1), compr ising t wem y-rwo large photogra ph s of a cont inu ous curt ain of cypresses situated just above and beyond a low scone wall (the latter inrcn n irten rly stepped upward from left to righ t ), gives rhe pictoria lly inclined eye even fewer pa rt iculars ro dwell on t han the earl ier works : virtuall y the ent ire sur face area of each image is taken up by rhe deep green, close ly planted cypresses, and t he viewe r has to loo k hard ro ascertain that the var ious photog raphs, structurally similar, are in fact subtly different from one anot her - witho ur chose differences having the least meaning in themselves (Figs. r6 and 17) .27 The basic relation of one pictu re ro rhe nexr thus comes close to rhe "one t hing afrer anothe r " st ructure of m inimalism (t he phrase is Dona ld Judd 's, cited by me in "Arr and Objecrhood " [r50J) 28 while the cypress curtain itself nearly eliminates all sense of visual dep t h in a manner t hat harks bac k ro t he non-illus ionistic painting t hat imm ediately prece ded rhe a dvent of minima lism, notably Frank Stella's st ripe paint ings (Bustamante has referred to the cypress photographs as " prac t ically monoc hro me" 29 ) . In the cyp ress ser ies, in sho rt , the distancing and "excl usion " of the viewer reac h an apogee in his early

22

why photography matters as art as never before

16 Jean-Marc Bustamante, Tableau Cibachrome. 1 50 x 120 cm

110.

103,

1991.

17 Jean-Marc Bustamante, Tableau Cibachrome. 1 50 x 1 2.0 cm

110.

104,

1991 .

wor k, without how ever the ph o tograp hs raking the fur ther step th at wo u ld fully identify th em wit h min imali st o bject hood , w hat ever tha t wou ld mean in this cont ext.Jo Similarl y, Busrama nre's d esire to mak e the viewer "e qua lly responsi b le for the wo rk " or, as he also says, to ma ke p icture s that woul d " engage t he viewer in a o ne-to-o ne relationship solely thro ugh rheir physica l p resence," wh ile comi ng close to minimalism's insistence that th e view er's experience is the wo rk (mo re on t his in Ch ap ter N ine), neverth eless stops well s ho rt of that insistence; simply put , his notion of " physica l presence" a ppea rs to have mor e in common w ith painti ngs b y C lyffo rd St ill, Barnett Ne wma n, a nd Stella tha n wit h minim a lism itself." Wit ho ut so much as g la ncing here at Busta manr e's sub sequ ent career, I thi nk it is fair to say that min ima lism has remai ned a bas ic po le in his t hinkin g bur thar his wo rk in a vari ety of med ia has consistentl y refused the minimalist op tio n in order to pursue a rang e of bro ad ly p hotog ra phi c aims.31 II am especiall y glad to in sist on Bustama nre's impo rtan ce beca use, of a ll t he photograp hers t reat ed in this boo k, I am least a ble to d o him justice, for the simple reaso n that I have seen on ly a limited sampl e of his oeuvre. N evert heless, I rega rd his Tableaux as o ne of t he most ori g inal and imp ressive p hoto graphi c ach ievement s in rece nt deca d es.)

three beginnings

23

Othe r pho tograp he rs too 111ighthave bee n cited in connectio n with th e e111 erge nce of th e n ew ap proach .33 Ho wever, the exa111plesof Wall, Ruff, and Busta111ant e show beyo nd all question that the pe rt inent develop111ents ca111eabout as if of the ir own acco rd , rath er than as t he ou tco 111 e of a shared background, com m on educa tion, or uniform set of art istic influences. Of course, all thr ee ph otograp he rs were awa re of certain maj or develop111en ts in the a rt world during the p revious ten or fifteen years, includ ing t he rise of mini111alis111,conceptua lis111 , and a ffiliated 111oveme nt s. Throughout thi s book 111in imalism in partic ular will be a constant term of reference for my observatio ns.

My thi rd beginni ng wi ll mos tly be a consideratio n of t hree exemp lary tex ts: an anonymo us French conte or tale of just over two tho u sand words, Adelaide, ou la femme morte d'amour, wh ich a ppeared in the m ont hl y journal Mercure de France in Janua ry 175 5; Yukio Mish im a's The Temple of Dawn, orig ina lly published in r970 {the English tr ans latio n came out fo ur yea rs later); a nd Susan Sontag's Regarding the Pain of Others, published in 2003, a seque l of sorts to her On Photography of 1977. This seems {and is) an odd selec tion , bur it has t he virtue of engag ing wi t h a set of issues th at will be bas ic to m y a rgument in the chap ters t hat fo llow. I first ca111eacross Adelaide, ou la femme morte d'amour (th e wo 111 an who died from love) in the 1970s, in t he course of pursu in g the library research for Absorption and Theatricality. In fact T t houg ht abo ut using it in that book, but quickly saw that it would int roduce a level of com p licatio n that rea ders might find confusing. So I dec ided to set it as ide un t il so111efuture date, which has now arrived, when it wo uld mak e strategic sense to bring it into play. "Th is adve nture cook place in 1678," the first sentence reads, "and will p erha ps app ear incredible in 1755 . Seventy-seven years have brough t about suc h changes in our m oeurs, that conjugal love , w hich then was respected, has today become ridicu lo us; it eve n passes for a chi111era, no one believes in it a ny more. Howev er, the story of Ade la.ide is accom pani ed b y such natural circu111sta nces, it bea rs a character of truthfu lness so striking and so na"ive that it must persuade th e 111 ost incredulous intelligenc e, as surp r ising as it is. T he reader wi ll jud ge: here it is." 14 The plot is si111ple: t he wea lth y Marq ui se de Fe rval, widow of a 111anof qualit y and ret ired to t he counr ryside to raise her famil y, decides co take a beaurifu l a nd virtuous orphan, Adela "id e, into her house hold as a co m panion for her sixtee n-year -old daughte r. Also in the fami ly is a so n ; the inevitable happe n s and h e declares his love to Adela"ide, going so far as co speak of marriage; she, h owever, recognizes that the dispari ty in the ir fo rt unes makes any futur e for the m inco n ceivable a nd does her best ro avoid hi 111.Nevert heless , the ir feeli ngs cannot be concea led, and th e Marquise o n e day teases her so n abo ut them. He is about to tell her the rrut h when she, realizing what is happening, preve nt s hi111fro111saying any th ing mo re by abso lute ly refusi ng to consider Adela"ide in th at light. She goes further: France is a t war, th e Marq ui s is a musketeer, and s he gives him ju st one day to leave for the ca 111 pa ign . He goes, bu t not b efore i111ploring Adela"ide to re111aintru e to him .

24

why photog raphy matters as art as never before

D uring his ab sence a neighb or falls in love wit h Adela"ide and decla res his intentio ns to the Marquise, who welcomes t he opp o rt un ity to pu t her son out of dan ger. The youn g Ferval learn s of rhe plan, returns by post, and throws himself at his mother's feer. She refuses his pleas, bur t he trouble at home reaches the ear of the neighbor, who breaks off the marriage arrangeme nts. This infu r iates the Ma rquise, who expels Adela"ide from her house , in effect d isgrac ing her. Th e Ma rquis mar ries Adela"ide and is at once disinherited; a boy is bo rn an d broug ht to the Ma rquise but she remains inexora ble, and ro make matte rs even more tragic the infant dies. The lovers live three or four yea rs virtually abando ned by the world, bare ly making do, until it becomes necessary for them to separate. Adela 'ide enters a co nvent and the Mar quis goes to Paris to join an austere religious order . Yet forrune was not done persecuting Adela 'ide. Some of the wo men in her co nvent learn her history and ca bal aga inst her so cleve rly t hat she is oblig ed to leave. One of the older religieitses, touched by her state, gives her lett ers of reco mmendat ion to t he religieuse's fathe r in Pari s, a high official who undertakes to seek anothe r retr eat where Adelai'de can spend the remainder of her life. Ho wever, w hile she is wait ing for such a retre at to be found, she sends a message t o the M arqu is annou ncing her arr ival, and asking to speak to him. "The new disgrace that had co me t o Adela"ide is painfu l for him. He conti nues to love her, he fears t he interview rhat she wishes, and asks her to spare him an enco unte r [une vue ] which can be only har mfu l to the repose of each of t hem . Adela'ide, altho ugh dera che d from t he wor ld, is no t detached eno ugh from a hu sband whom she so loved; his refusa l only increases her desire t o see him" (57). Th ere follows the paragrap h that l rak e to be the raison d'etre of t he rale (and one more, bringing the tale to a close): She goes t o the Monas tery, enters t he Church, and the first object that st rikes her is the Marquis her husba nd, occupied in a pio us exerc ise with all his Communi t y. His penitential ha bit tou ches her; she shows herself, he sees her, he lowers his eyes, and no matt er what effort she mak es to at t ract his gaze, he doesn' t so muc h as glance at her. Althou gh she unders tand s the motive behind the vio lence of his act , she finds in it so mething so crue l, tha t she is seized wit h the most ext reme pain . She falls unco nscious; someo ne suppo rt s her, she recovers only to ask for her dear Ferval. Someone runs to tell him t hat his wife is dy ing. H is Sup erior orders him to go an d co nsole her; and she d ies from the force of her seizure, before he reaches her.35 [57-8 J The Marquis wee ps, t hen falls into a profou nd reverie. Finally he return s to his monaste ry, where by the practic e of auste r ities " he tries to make up for his passion, alt hough legit imate, having had in it som ething too vio lent" (58) . O n the face of it, Adelaide is an undistinguished specimen of the sentimenral contes moraux that att racted an enrhu siastic readership amo ng the edu cated classes in France in the 17 50s and 1760s (Marmontel's "novel" Be/isaire f1767J, barely readable today, is the classic of t he genre) . Considered as ficti on, suc h tales are o f scanr interes t ; nothing could be more differe nt from Adelaide, for examp le, than th e brilliant contes D iderot was soon to wri te - Deux amis de Barbonne, Mme Carlier, Ceci n 'est pas u11 conte . The

three beg innings

25

co11tesmoraux' s interes t , I suggest, resides elsewhere: in their pictoria lism, whi ch is ro say in their tendency to evoke literary "p ictur es" which themselves are mosr intere stingly seen in the con text of the pictor ial issues of the rime. ' 6 In th e case of Adelaide, rhe " pictur es" in qu estio n are those "pa inted " from Adela'ide's po int of view in rhe climact ic paragraph just quo ted . I am inte rested mainly in the first and seco nd " pict ures" - the Marqui s in mo nk's raime nt absorbed (th e French is occupe) in a religious exerc ise along wit h all his commu nit y; an d the n, afte r Adela.ide ha s shown herse lf to him (we are nor rold how), t he "pic tur e" of him refusing to look up despi te her efforts ro attract his arrenrio n. Th e qu estion is how to visua lize the secon d " pict ur e," and my thought is rhar although rhe tale do es nor spell rhis our, we are invited to ima gine the Ma rq uis seemingly absorbed once more in his "pi ou s exercis e" along with ot her members of his community , with trag ic conseque nces that need no retelling. Moreove r, alt houg h the ta le as much as states that Adela"ide dies beca use of her hu sband's (if no t just ified, ar least und ersta ndab le) "c ru elty" toward her, we are, I want ro sugges t , furt her invited to int uit rhar - from what might be ca lled a srruc rural or the ore tica l rathe r than a stric tly narrative point of view - the cause of her co llapse an d deat h is a pa rt icular cr isis of representation conce rni ng the rwo " pict ures" just glance d at. H ere some back gro un d is needed. The backg round T have in mind is the central argu ment of my ea rlier books on eighteenth- and nineteent h-century Frenc h pai nt ing. Briefly, starrin g in the mid-r 75os in France a new con ceptio n of painti ng came to the fore tha t requ ired that the perso nages dep icted in a canvas appea r genuinely absorbed in w hatever they were doing, thinking, and feeling, which also meant that t hey ha d to appear who lly unaware of everything other than the object s of t heir absorption , inclu ding - this was the crnc ia l point - t he beholder standi ng before t he paintin g. Any failur e of absorpt ion - any suggestio n tha t a paint ed personage wa s act ing for an audie nce - was co nsidered thea t rical in the pejorati ve sense of the term and was regarded as an egreg ious fault . By th e same to ken, rhe de mand that paint ing defeat t heatricali t y - that it establish what l have called the su preme fict ion or ontologi ca l illusion rhar the behol der did not exist, t hat there was no one standi ng before t he canvas - placed the art of pain ti ng under tremendous pressure for rhe sim ple reaso n that paint ings, more intensively a nd as it were primord ially tha n any oth er class o f art ifacts, are mad e to be behe ld. What this was to mean historically is t hat, t hrough out the century t hat followed, one or another "so lution " to the new requirements cam e so one r or late r to revea l its inadequacy, as the un derlying tru t h about pa inting - that it had the behol der in view from the first - could no longer be denied . (For an accou nt of some of those develop ments see my Courbet's Realism and Manet's M odernism, or, Th e Face of Painting i11the 1860s .) As regard s pai ntin g alone, the new conc eption was at least potentia lly in place in Chardin's genre pa int ings of the 1730s . H owever, it was nor un til Didero t 's wri tin gs on dra ma and pain t ing of t he late 1750s and '6os th at the double st ress on a bso rpt ion and antitheatricaliry received its full art icula t ion , alo ng with a new theo rizatio n of the tableau (itali cized ro mark its use as a period conc ept ) as rhe instru ment of bot h, that is, a deliberate cons tru ct ion dir ected towa rd the beholder w ithin which the individual personages appear ed not just abso rbed in what eac h was doing bur also collectively absor bed in t he overa ll dramat ic act ion

26

why pho tography matters as art as never before

represented by the co nstru ction as a whole. (Obv iously the Diderotian tabl eau ha s a different valence from Busramante's use of the term , thoug h both imply some thin g stro nger, more claim ing of autonomy, than t he English "pic tur e"; I sha ll say more about Chevr ier's notion of rhe "tab leau form" in Chapt er Six.) ln a certa in sense, we as readers are ent itled to think of the enti re paragraph quoted ea rlier as a success ion of tableaux in Did erot 's sense of the term , desp ite the fact that the notio n is first developed in his Conversations on the Natural Son and Discourse on Dramatic Poetry of T7 57 and '5 8 respectively (rhar is, a few years afte r the pu blicatio n of Adelaide). By this I mean that everythin g t he reade r is given to visual ize, includin g Adela.id e's act ions, co llapse, and death (with on e or more persons bending over her?) and the gr ief-stricken Marq uis's falling int o a profound rever ie, is inten sely absorptive, just as the settin g itself, a mon ast ic chur ch interio r, perfectly ex presses th e theme of separat ion from the wo rld of rhe rea der/beho lder. Yet if we co nsider only t he two tableaux seen by Adela"ide, something else co mes into focus: the intim ation - I wo uld like to say rhe "fact," but of course I am extrapolating rather freely from a t heoretically ret icen t text - rhar from Adela"id e's poi nt of view no difference can be discerned between the outward behavior of the Ma rquis whe n he is trul y a bsorbed in his religious observ ances and when, after Adela.ide ha s shown herself to him, he has return ed with lowered eyes to those obse rvances bur is now acutely aware th at his wife has her eyes fixed on him . The abse nce of visible differe nce is what I meant by a crisis of repr esentat ion - thou gh furthe r explanat ion is again called for. I say thi s because from the perspective of Diderot's writ ings on drama , what l have ca lled a crisis is bound to seem illusory : what matter s in his accou nt is not rhat the actor s in a play actua lly be unaware of the presence of the audience - he later arg ued in the Paradox on the Actor that acto rs should not be so deeply identifie d wit h th eir ro les as to lose t hemse lves in the m - but rather t hat t hey deploy all the co nscious sk ills at their co mm and in order to creat e successfu lly th e dramati c stage tableaux that w ill secure the overa rching illusion that th e aud ience has nor been taken into account. Howeve r, what my readin g of t he clim ax of Adelaid e suggests is tha t as early as 17 5 5 - significan tly, t he year wh en Jean-Bap t iste Gre uze's Father of the family Readi11gthe Bible was shown at the Salon, ma rking the official deb ut of the leading French pain ter of his genera t ion an d a key figur e in t he first stages o f the a ntitheatrica l dialectic the n getting un der way - t here was ab road at least a hint of bad co nscience or more prec isely ontologica l uneasin ess abou t the "fa lseness" that t he very stru cture of the tableau could be felt to imply, a "falseness" that it was beyond the power of either paint ing or dra ma to themarize, but that fiction - a part icular genre of fictio n, t he pictorial isr conte m oral - could give expression to in its own characteristically sent imental or (the ano nymo us aurhor's term ) "na"ive" way. Adela.ide dies , in this reading, because the absence of outwa rd difference mentioned above is int o lera ble ro her. This is of course to attach a grear deal of significa nce ro an exceedingly slight literary work, bur before leaving Adelaide I wa nt ro go one step furt her and propose that the issue of " trut hfulness" versus "fa lseness" in t his conn ection alrea dy looks beyond stage drama , with respect to w hich it is essent ially a matter of techn ique, and beyond painti ng, with respect to whic h it makes no sense to ask wha t a personage in a ca nvas is "act ually"

three beg inn,ngs

27

or "truly" doin g, th inking, or feeling, tow a rd the mechanical reprodu ctio n of reality in ph orography, with respect to w hich such que st ions are inescapab le. (Or with respect to which such q uestions have been inescapable; 1 am thinkin g of the adve nt of digitization, the co nseq u ences of wh ich for pho rogr aphic practice an d theor y ha ve yet to become fu lly clear. 37) Th e second text 1 want ro cons ider, Mishima's The Temple of Dawn , belongs to the a uth o r 's late tetra logy, Th e Sea of Fertility, publi shed in J ap an between r968 and '7 1. By the latter date Mis hima was dead, ha ving led t he abo rt ive "u pr ising" that ende d as plan ned wit h his commi tt ing seppu ku im mediately upo n comple t ing th e fin a l volume in Nove m ber 1 9 70. l want ro focus on severa l passages, all of which co ncern the not ion of voyeurism, which l shall go on ro sugges t ma y a lso be though t of as an essentiall y photographic trop e. First, thoug h, I shoul d note th at rhe Diderorian ideal of the "fo rgo tten ," in tha t sen se functiona lly abse nt , beho lder has somet imes been glossed in terms of voye urism, but that has a lways seemed to me wrong. A voyeur of a scene is by definition p resent bu t hidden: fro m a place of secur ity, often of dark ness, he or she sp ies on the scene, which typica lly is ero t ic in natu re, as in a c ruc ial episode in Mishima's earl ier novel, The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea. 38 It is of course nor impossi ble for rhe a rr of paint ing ro convey rhe impr ession rhar a depicted scene has been represented from the point of view of a voyeu r, bur ro do so requires particular means (there are sma ll Fragonards of eroti c su bjects rha r seem as if witn essed th roug h a key hole or from inside a s ligh tly ope n closer), and is nor at all what Diderot had in m ind in his writings on dr ama a nd pai nt ing. Nor for rha t matte r d o voyeu rist ic points of view play a role in the evol ut ion of eightee nth- a nd n ineteent h-centur y pa inting in France ; not hing co uld be less vo yeur is tic , for example, than t he viewe r's implied relation ro David's Oath of the Horatii, Ger icau lr's Raft of the Medusa, Co urb et's Burial at Ornans , or indeed M anet's Olympia (a rguab ly rhe least voyeu rist ic n ude eve r painted). In Mis hima's nove l, rhen, t he fifty-seven -yea r-old protagonist, Shigek uni Ho nda, has placed a peep hole in th e back of a bookcase through which he plans to spy on a guest in his hous e, the beaut iful Thai princess Ying Chan, as she di sro bes in her bedro om . Honda , we read, "had never crave d for any momen t so much as th is. ... [He ] was going to see Ying Cha n in a sta te that as yet had been see n by no one. This was what he wanted more th an anythi ng else in the wo rld . By his act of watc hing, rhis unseen con dit ion was already destroyed . Being seen by a bso lutely no on e an d being u nawa re of being seen were similar, yet bas ica lly d ifferent." 39 (Th e flow of sentences, especially the transi t ion between "This wa s what he wante d .. . " and " By h is ac t o f watchi ng ... , " sho uld bring us up short: th ere seems ro be an importa nt " But" or " However" tha t t he novelist has deliberate ly om itt ed, perhaps by way of suggest ing rh e destru ctiveness o f H on da's inmos t impul ses.) La ter in the novel we are ro ld: " It was certain t hat the Ying Chan one saw was not a ll t here was . For Honda, longing for the Yin g Chan he cou ld not see, love de pended on the unknown; an d naturally per cep t ion was related to the known. If he drove his percept ions on and wit h the m plunde red th e unk nown, t hereby inc reasing the area of t he known, coul d his love be achieved? N o , it wo uld not work rhat way, because his love st rove ro keep Ying Chan as far aw ay as poss ib le from rhe ralons of his perceptio n " (276). Thi s leads ro the followin g:

28

why photography matters as art as never before

Therefore his desire to see Ying C han in the nud e, a Ying C han un known to a nyone, became an unatt ainable desire divided con tradicto rily into perceptio n and love. Seeing alrea dy lay within the sphere of pe rcept ion , and even if Ying C han was no r aware of ir, from t he moment he had peepe d th rou gh t he luminou s hole in the back of t he bookcase, she had become an inh abitant of a wo rld crea ted by her fsic: the sense of the sentence dictates t he pronoun " his" .I percep t ion. In her wo rld, contam inate d by his t he moment he laid eyes on it, w hat he rea lly wanted to see wo uld neve r appear. H is love could not be fulfilled . And yet, if he did not see, love wo uld forever be precluded . . . . fHonda's perception it self therefore] became a screen and was defect ive, an infinitesimal obsr rn crion. Then how would ir be if he go r rid of rhe obst ruct ion and cha nged rhe situ at ion? That wo uld mean t he removal of H onda from the wo rld wh ich he shared wit h Ying C han, in ot her words, his own deat h. It now beca me clear that Honda's ulrima re desire, what he really, real ly wanted to see co uld exist on ly in a world where he did not. In order to see what he tru ly wishe d to, he must die. Whe n a voyeur recognizes that he can rea lize his ends only by eliminating rhe bas ic acr of wa tch ing, this means his dea t h as suc h. [276 - 7] One way of cha racterizi ng Honda's pr edicam ent is as a radicaliz ing or meraphys icalizing of voyeurism, if nor of ant ithearrica liry as such; the cruc ial stat eme nt , from which everyt hing else follows, is: "Being seen by ab solut ely no on e and being unaware of being seen were similar, yet basically diff erent" - rhe word "bas ically" here car r ying onto logical weight . In Adelaide, ar rhe o utset of rhe pictorial evolu t ion that led t o modernism, being tru ly absor bed, t here fore truly unaware of bei ng seen, and (merely) ap pear ing to be thus absorbed and unaw are of being seen a lso prove d "simila r, yet basically diff erent" (if my reading is believed). However, t he diffe rence in t he ea rlier case lay precise ly in the beheld sub ject 's consciousness, which the reader is exp licirly told is not the dec isive factor in the late r one - t he Pr incess will not be aware of being beheld and yet everything w ill have been changed . The shi ft of empha sis between t he t wo tex ts, wr itt en more than two hund red years apart, might be charact erized by sayi ng that in Mishima's novel the situatio n with regard to beho lding has becom e muc h more dire : simply by virt ue of being beheld the Prin cess's "world" (a fascinating not ion in t his context) w ill be fundamenta lly altered - Mis hima says co ntamin ated . Put slig hrly diff erenrly, whereas in Adelaide t he sour ce of mortal di fficu lty is the possibility that being abso rbed and pretending to be abso rbed (or represe nting being absor bed ) ca n be indistinguis hable from each other, in The Temple of Dawn the source of difficult y is beholding it self, and the only solution the tex t im agines is the preemp t ion of beholding through the deat h of the voyeur. My furt her suggestion, in t he sa me vein as my con cludin g remarks ab o ut Adelaide, is that H onda's reflections ma y be read almost as if t heir u lt imate po int of reference were not the figure of the voyeur so much as that of the photogra ph er, wh ose relat ion to his o r her subjec ts has frequently been described in terms of voyeurism and on e of whose tradi t ional a pproach es, in the int erest of t rut h of ex pr ession, has been to depict perso ns who for one reaso n or anot her are unawa re of being photograp hed, often because they are absor bed in wha teve r they are doing, thinking, or feeling. 40 As Susa n

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Sontag puts it in a sta tement l shall return ro more rhan once, "Th ere is some t hing on people's faces when they do n't know they are being obse rved that never ap pears when they do. " 41 It is also tru e, however, that att itudes wit hin pho tography toward that approach have shifted ove r the course of time (Sontag herself cites Brassai"'s " [denu nciat ions ofj pho tograp hers who try to t rap their subjects off-guard, in rhe erroneous belief t hat something special will be reveale d abou t the m " 42 ), and I thin k it is fair to say char by t he end of the 1970s - Sontag's views notwit hstanding - t here took place a widespread reaction against all such practices, a reac t ion em blemat ized by the crisis of confidence that seems ro have overtake n the brilliant Amer ican st reet pho tographe r Gar ry Winogrand in the years shortly before his deat h in 1984 (Winogrand in t he !are 1970s rook t housands of photograp hs rhat he never bothere d ro develop, and seems to have been on the verge of giving up street photography entirely 43 ), as well as by some passages in Roland Barrhes's Camera Lucida (1980), to be discusse d in dera il in Chap ter Four of t his boo k. In ot her words, l propose rhar t here exists an affinity between rhe problemarizing of beholding in rhe cont ext of voyeurism in The Temple of Dawn and certai n deve lopmen ts in photog rap hy and the t heory of photography in rhe 1970s and early J 980s . Indeed I want to go beyond t hese considerations, which remain in rhe realm of the sub ject 's, and by implicat ion t he artist's, puta t ive psychology and suggest that rhere ex ists a more profou nd affinit y between rhe metap hysica l or ontological register in whic h Mish ima's problemat ic of seeing and being seen is cast and some, tho ugh by no means all, of rhe photographic work to be discussed in rhis book : as if what ult imate ly is at stake in rhar work is prec isely the depiction or evocat ion of a separatio n of worlds (" It now became clear that Honda's ultimate des ire, what he really, really wanted to sec could ex ist on ly in a worl d where he did nor"). Mo re precisely, ir is as if some such depic t ion or evocation tu rns ou t to lend itself especia lly well ro rhe construction of rhe new relationship betwee n photograph and beho lder that in my account - also, ar least up ro a po int, in Chevrier's - is at the hea rt of rhe "tab leau form." (The theme of "exclusion" in the strongest com mentaries on Bustamante is a respo nse ro this state of affairs .} Let me add that I shall return to Mishima's retralogy twice more in this boo k, once in relat ion ro Sugimoro's Seascapes and once, more importantly, t owa rd the end of t he Conclusion, in connect ion wirh a recent work by Jeff Wall t hat illustra tes a part icular episode in the first novel in rhe rerralogy, Spring Snow. Finally, I wa nt to glance ar certain passages in Susan Sontag's Regarding the Pain of Others, a book -length essay in which she reconsiders some of the t hemes in On Photography of almost thirty years before. In particula r she reflects in her new book on the efficacy - even, at times, the legitimacy - of images of pa in, violence, suffe r ing, and death as a means of promoti ng po lit ical aware ness, given the countless respect s in which such images lend themselves ro ot her purposes as well, are pro ne ro becom ing overfamil iar, hence polit ically ineffect ive, or risk appeali ng, by the ir very cont ent, ro pruri ent interests on the part of the viewer . So for exam ple she writes: Tra nsforming is what arr does, but photography t hat bears witness to the calam itous and the reprehe nsible is much criticized if ir seems "aesthetic"; that is, too much like art. The dua l powers of photography - to genera re documents and to crea te works of

30

why pho tograp hy matters as art as never before

visual art - have produced some remarka ble exaggerations abou t what photographers ough t or ough t not to do . Lately, rhe most co mm on exaggerat ion is one that regar ds these powers as opposites. Photographs that dep ict suffer ing shouldn' t be beautiful, as captio ns shouldn't moral ize. In thi s view, a beautiful photogra ph dra ins att ent ion from rhe sobe rin g subject and turns it towa rd the med ium itself, the reby co mp romising the pict ur e's sta tu s as a docum ent . The photograp h gives mi xed signals . Stop this, it urges . Bur it also ex claims, What a spectacle! 44 And: Ir used to be tho ught , when rhe candid images were nor co mm on, that show ing some t hing t hat needed to be seen, bringing a painf ul rea lity closer, was bound to goa d viewers to feel more. In a world in wh ich photography is brilliant ly at the service of cosu merist manip ulat ions, no effect of a photograp h of a dole ful scene ca n be taken for gra nted . As a conseque nce, mora lly alerr ph otogra phers a nd ideologues of photogr aph y have become increasingly concerned with the issues of explo itation of senti ment (pity, compassion, indigna t ion) in war pho tograp hy and in ro te ways of provoki ng feeling. (79-80 J O f an ex hibitio n in 2000 of "a trove of ph otogra ph s of black victims of lync hing in small tow ns in the United States between the 1890s and t he 1930s, which provided a shattering, revelato ry experience for the thousan ds who saw t hem in a ga llery in New York in 2000," Sontag rehearses a series of questions t hat were raise d at t he time of the exh ibitio n and when a boo k of rhe photograp hs, Without Sanctuary, was pub lished: "W hat is the po int of ex hib iting these pictur es? To awaken indignatio n ? To mak e us feel 'bad'; that is, to appall and sa dd en? To help us mourn? Is loo king at such pictur es really necessary, given rhar these horro rs lie in a pas t remote enough to be beyond punishment? Are we the bett er for seeing these images? Do they act ua lly reach us anything? Don't they rat her just confirm wha t we alread y kn ow (or want to kn ow)?" (91-2) . Alt hough one senses rha r Sontag does nor share the negative attitude towa rd rhe exhibition and book rhar rhe ques tions imply, she does no t quite co me out and say so, presumab ly because she also feels t he quest ions' mo re t ha n just rhetorical force . Simi lar ly, al though in th e first passage quoted above she appar ently distan ces herself from the "exaggerat ion" rha r would draw a shar p distinction between a photograph's dep iction of suffering and its "aest het ic" q uality, she also wr ites towa rd rhe end of her book: So far as pho tographs with rhe most sole mn or heartre nd ing subject matter are art and rhis is what they become whe n t hey ha ng on walls, whateve r rhe disclaimers rhey pa rtake of the fate of all wall- hung or floor-suppo rt ed arr displayed in publ ic spaces. T har is, they are stat ions alo ng a - usually accom panie d - st roll. .. . Up ro a po int, rhe weight and ser iousness of suc h photograp hs survive berrer in a book, where one can look privat ely, linger ove r rhe pictures, wit hout talking. Still, at some mome nt rhe book w ill be closed . The strong emotion will become a t ransient one. Event ually, the specifici ty of rhe photographs' accusat ions will fade; t he denunciat ion of a particular conflic t and at t ribut ion of spec ific cr imes will become a de nu ncia tion of human

three beginnings

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cruelty, hu man sav agery as suc h. The p hotogra ph er's inrent ion s are irrelevanr to this larger pr ocess . I 121 - 2] At o ne point Sont ag d oes state uneq uivocally: There now exis ts a vast repo s ito ry of images that mak e it harde r to ma intain this kind of mo ral d efective ness [Son tag has in min d someone who remains pere n nially surpri sed th at de pravit y exists, tha r hu man beings are capable of great cruelt y to ward one anot her, ere .]. Let t he atro cio us images haunt us. Even if t hey are only tok ens, a nd can n ot possib ly encompass most o f th e reali t y ro which they refer, rhey still perfo rm a viral function . T he images say: T his is wha t hum an bei ngs are capable of doi ng- 111ayvo lunteer to do, enthusias tica lly, self-righteo usly. Do n 't forge r. [114- 15] Howeve r, these sorts of assertions are few an d far betwee n; one of the stri kin g things about Regarding the Pain of Others (fo r all its lack of a vecto red arg ument, a typical feature of Son tag's wri ting) is its reluctance to take up a sim ple or co nsistent stance towar d the diffic ult q uestions it contin u ally raises. l find it all the more un expected, then, that in her book's final pages Sonrag sing les our o ne "an t iwar" imag e, Jeff Wall's

Dead Troops Talk {A Vision After an Ambush of a Red Army Patrol near Moqor, Afgha nistan, Winter 1986 (1992 ; Fig. r8), as be ing "exe mplar y in its tho ughtf uln ess and p owe r." She expla ins tha t t he pict ur e, "a Cibac h rome tr ansparency seven and a ha lf feet high an d more rhan th irtee n feet w ide an d mo unted on a ligh t box, shows figu res posed in a landscape , a blasted hillside, that was co nstru cted in t he pa inrer's stu dio" ( , 23 ).'' H er con clud ing paragraphs read: Th e figur es in Wall 's visiona ry photo-work are "rea list ic" but, of co ur se, th e image is nor . Dead sold iers don't ta lk. H ere they d o. Thir teen Ru ssian soldiers in bu lky w int er unifor ms an d high boo t s are scattered abo u t a pock ed , b lood -splashed slope lined wit h loos e roc ks an d the litter of war: shell cas ings, cru m pled metal, a boot tha t ho lds the lower part of a leg ... A few still have rheir helmets on. The head of o ne kn eeling figure, talk ing animated ly, foams w ith his red brai n matter. The a tm os p here is warm, co n vivial, fra te rn al. Some slouc h, leani ng on an elbow, or sit, cha tti ng, th eir o p ened sk ulls and des tro yed han ds on view. One man bends over another who lies on his side as if as leep, perh aps encouragi ng hi111to sir up. T hr ee men are h ors ing around: o ne wirh a huge wound in his belly straddl es ano th er, lying prone, who is laughi ng at a third ma n , on his k nees, who pla yfull y dang les befor e him a st rip of flesh. O n e soldier, helmeted, legless, has rurned ro a co mrad e so me d istance away, an alert smile on his face . Below him ar e two who don't see m q ui te up to the resurrect io n and lie supi ne, their b loodied head s hanging down rhe ston y incline. Engulfed by the i111 age, w hich is so accusato ry, w e could fanta s ize thar rhe so ldiers 111i g hr turn and talk to us. But n o, no one is looking o ut of rhe picture . T here's no th reat of pro test. They are no t abo ut to yell ar us to bri ng a halt to tha t abo min at ion whic h is war . Th ey ha ven 't co me bac k to life in or der to stagger off to denoun ce the war-ma kers w h o sent them to kill and be killed. An d the y are not rep resente d as rer-

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why photography matters as art as never before

18 Jeff Wall, Dead Troo/1sTalk (A Vision After a11Amb ush of a Red Army Patrol near Moqor, A(gha11ista11, Wi11ter1986), 1992.. Transparency in lightbox .

229

x 417 cm

rifying to o t hers, for among them (far left) s irs a whi te-garbe d Afghan scavenger, entirely abso rbed in go ing through so meo ne's kit bag, of whom they take no note, and entering the pic ture above t hem (top righ t) o n the path windi ng down the slope are two Afghans, perhaps soldiers the mse lves, who, it wo u ld seem from the Kalashnikovs collected near the ir feet, have a lread y str ipped the dea d sold iers of their weapo n s. These dead arc supremely uninterested in t he living : in t hose who rook their lives; in w itnesses - a nd in us. Wh y shou ld they seek our gaze? W hat wo uld t hey have ro say ro us? "We" - th is "we" is everyone who has never experie nced any t hing like what they went throug h - don't understan d . We don' t get it. We tru ly ca n't imagi n e what it was like. We can' t imagine how d readful, how terrify ing war is; an d how norma l it beco mes. Can' t unders tan d , can' t imagi ne. Tha t 's what every so ldie r, and every journa list an d aid worker an d ind ependent observe r w ho has pu t in t ime under fire, and had rhe luck ro elud e the death that st ruck down others nea rby, stubbornl y feels. And the y are right. I 124-6 1 Sontag's respon se to Wall's monumenta l pho tograph is framed in terms of her cen tral concern wit h images of vio lence an d their efficacy or lac k of it as a means of conveying rhe horro r o f modern war; rhe exem p lariness of Dead Troops Talk in her eyes co n -

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33

sists in its ability co do just rhis. What I want to ca ll artenr ion ro is rhat for Sontag rhe dec isive feature of Wall's phocograp h is not so muc h the brilliant interplay among rhe slau ghtere d Russian soldier s, as gr ippin g as she finds it, bur rhe facr thar, as she puts ir, " no one is looking out of the picture." For Sontag, of course, whar makes rhar facr mea ningfu l is thar it is pa rt of a large r recognir ion she arrribures co rhe dead Russians ro rhe effecr rhar rhere is no point in rheir address ing the viewer - in add ressing "us" for rhe ir refutable reaso n thar, nor having actually experienced the horror s of war, "we" are incapa ble o f under stan ding or ima gin ing wh ar they have jusr gone rhroug h. This is a perfectly plausible way of thi nking abour whar rakes place in Dead Troops Talk. Howe ver, rhe fact t har none of rhe soldiers is loo king our of t he picture also means rhar Wall's picrure is consistent wirh rhe crucial princip le of rhe Diderorian tableau - the use of absorptive mot ifs and st ru ct ures to estab lish th e ontological illusion rhat rhe beholder does not ex isr. Sontag doe s not exp licitly invoke the no rion of abs orprion in her descriprion of rhe Russians, but she does rema rk on the "w hite-garbed Afghan scavenger [who is] entire ly absorbed in going thro ugh somebo dy's kir bag [and] of whom rhey rake no nore." In facr iris as if Wa ll's pictur e as seen by her rep resents two dist inct "worl ds," that of the dead but risen Russians and that of the living Afghans, which occupy the same pictor ial space but are some how invisib le to one anothe r even as they are both separa te from , though not invisib le to , o ur own. Th ere is a further co mplexity here. As has emerged, no t hing was mo re inimical to rhe oper at ions of the Diderotian tableau than rhe least hint of " pr etense" or "posi ng" on the parr of rhe figures it co mpri sed - indeed, Did erot saw the use of professio nal models, whose job it was to hold var ious more or less co nventional poses, as a source of the dreadfu l mann erism of much of the paint ing of his t ime. (Yet what was an ambitious histo ry painter to do? Say he wante d to rep resent a pe rsonage from Gree k or Roman antiq uit y swearing a morta l oath or consume d with gr ief or dying from poison or engaged in some violent mo mentary actio n; obv ious ly no professiona l model coul d fit rhe bill - but what recourse did the painter have othe r than to depict the personage on t he bas is of his im agination? And was not thar a possible so urce of man nerism in irs own right ?) In co ntra st , it is at once appare nt that all of Wall's soldiers, Russian and Afghan alike, ca n only be per sons hired by him to dr ess up in the appro priate clot hing and assume rhe poses and enact the pieces of bus iness that he had devised for them (compare Sherman's use of herse lf as model in the Untitled Film Stills). What is more, it turns our t hat there was neve r a mome nt in Wall's st udio when the scene before the came ra was as it appea rs in th e ph otog raph; rathe r, he shor his picture one or rwo figures at a time a nd sumre d t he w hole cogerher wirh the aid of a compurer. Sontag may or may nor have known about the piecemeal shoo ting, bur she notes ar rhe start that Wall posed his figur es in a fictive landscape and is not in rhe least t roubled t hat this is so. In fact, I suggest tha t it is prec isely Sontag's reco gnit ion that Dead Troops Talk is nor a ca ndid shor of an actual event bur rat her a work of de liberate and elab orate art ifice rhar - tog et her with the aware ness that none of Wa ll's figures "loo k our of rhe picrure" und erwrites her adm irario n fo r his ac hievement . We mighr say that the facr rhat Dead Troops Talk is rran sparen rly a wor k of high artifice saves ir from rhe risk of "aesrheri-

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why photography matters as art as never before

cizarion" which for Sontag constantly thr eatens non-art phot ogra ph s such as the sho ts of lynchings or the other images of violence and oppr ession she conside rs, even as its (do ubly) absorp t ive int erna l st ructure allows ir to avo id seemi ng to address rhe beho lder directly, a feature she approve s of on na rr ow ly et hical grounds but which l am suggesti ng has a more profou nd appeal to which she also respo nd s - one in keepi ng, l note, w ith her earlier (and probably the n st ill curr ent) preference for photographs of person s unawa re of being observed. Here it may seem as if la m on the verge of accusing Sontag of being inco nsistent, bm nothing co uld be furthe r from my point . Rathe r, my claim in rhe chapters rhar follow will be rhar just suc h a conjunc t ion of what l wan t to call "tobe-seenness" and a Dide rorian thematics of absorptio n has pla yed a significant role in some of the most interesting and impo rt ant photogr aph y of recent decades, and tha t Sontag 's accou nt of Dead Troops Talk, alt houg h nor co ncerned wit h art istic issues as such, is itself emblemat ic in tha t rega rd. Or to pu t thi s in terms harking back to the radicalization of voyeuri sm in The Temple of Dawn, I sugges t that once ir became imaginable that a "wo r ld" cou ld be " contami nated" by the mere fact of being beheld, the situation was ripe for t he emerge nce of an est het ic that would accept suc h "contam inat ion " as the basis of its procedures . Inevitabl y, that estheric found irs hom e in phorogra ph y.

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notes

introduction 1

2 3

The epith et is Mark Linde r's. See Lind er, Nothing Less than Literal: Architecture after Minimalism (Camb ridge, Mass., and London, 2004), p. 102. See also the discu ssion of" Art and Objecthood" in James Meyer, Minim alism: Art and Polemics in the Sixties (New Ha ven and Londo n, 2oor}, pp. 229- 42. H ere I will ment ion rhar in an endnot e to the introducto ry essay in Art and Objecthood I wrote: " It's noceworrhy ... the extent to which photography-base d (or simply pho tograp hic) work of the 1970s and after - for exam ple, that of Cindy Sherm an, Jeff Wall, and Gerh ard Richter - has found itself co mpelled co address issues of beho lding, often by an ap peal co abs orpti ve mean s and effects. Thi s is a large topic" ("A n Introduction to my Arc Criticism," Art and Objecthood : Essays and Reviews (Chicago and Lond on, 19981, p. 74). So I had begun to th ink alo ng these lines as early as t99 5-6. Fried, "A n Intr oduction to my Art Critici sm," p. SJ. My thanks co Molly Warnock for urging me to make this point.

6

three beginnings l

2

3

4

5

H iroshi Sugimoto in Kerry Broug her an d Davi d Elliott , Hiroshi Sugimoto, exh. cat. (Washingto n, D.C. and Tok yo, 2005 - 6), n.p . C indy Sherma n , Th e Complete Untitled Film Stills (New Yor k , 2003). Further page references to th is boo k will be in par enth eses in rhe text. See e.g. the essays by Craig Owens, Do uglas Crimp, Rosa lind Kra uss, et al. in Jo hanna Burton , ed., Cindy Sherman, OCTOBER Files 6 (Cambrid ge, Mass., and Lon d on, 2006); and J. M . Bernstein, Against Voluptuous Bodies: Late Modernism and the Meaning of Painting (Stanfo rd , Ca l., 2006), pp . 253-323 . See Michael Fried, "Art and Objecthood," Art and Ob jecthood: Essays and Reviews (Chicago and Lon don , 1998), pp. 148-72; Absorption and Theatricality: Painting and Beholder in the Age of D iderot (1980 ; Ch icago and London, 1986); Courbe t 's Realism (Ch icago and London, 1990); and Manet's Modernism, or, The Face of Painting in the 1860s (Chicago and Lond on, 1996). See also Fried, "An Introd uct ion to my Art Criticism," Art and Objecthood, pp. 40-54. See e.g. Edwa rd Branigan, Narrative Comprehension and

7

Film (Londo n and New Yor k , 1992), p. 53 : "A glance (in a narrative film] imp lies an interaction with an ob ject. In fact, glances are so important to narrating a scory wo rld that the only glan ce that is genera lly avoided is a glance into the lens o f the camera . A look int o the camera br eaks the diegesis because it mak es the convent ional reverse shot or eyeline ma rch impossible. (Such a matc h wou ld reveal the cam era itself; its absence wou ld be just as revealing.)" For a fuller treatment of the tra nsgression constitute d by "a loo k and a voice addressed co the camera," also charac terized as "a n infraction of canon ical proportions, an affront co th e 'prop er' functioning of representat ion and filmic narrati ve," see Francesco Case tti , Inside the Gaze: The Fiction Film and }ts Spectator, trans. Ne ll Andrew with Charles O'Br ien (Bloom ington and Indianapo lis, 1998 ), esp. ch. 2, "The Figure of the Specrator," pp. r6, 17. My thanks co Dudley And rew for both references. See R egis Durand , " Intr od uct ion," in Cindy Sherman, exh. cat. (Paris, Bregenz, Humbleba ek, Berlin, 2006-7 ), p. 246. Othe r essays in the catalogue are by Jean-Pie rre Criq ui, who int erest ingly emph as izes Sherma n's "d isap peara nce" in favor of her many fictiona l self-images, and Laura Mulvey. More broadly, James Conant has argued in a series of seminars entitled "T he Onto logy of a Movie World," given at the H umanities Center, Johns Hopkins University in April 2007, tha t the requirements for the internal co herence o f such a "wo rld " align close ly with Diderot's account of the proper funct ioning of drama and paintin g in his wr iting s of the 17 50s and '6os . T he key essay in th at regard is undoubtedly Doug las Crimp's "The Photographic Activity of Posrmodernism," first pub lished in October, no. 15 (Winter r980 ): 91-ror. (Cited here from Burt on, Cindy Sherman, pp . 25-37.) At one po int Cr imp describes a phocogra ph y "that is selfconsciously compose d, man ipulated, fictionali zed, the so-ca lled dir ecto rial mode, in wh ich we find such auteurs of ph ot ography as Duane Mic hal s an d Les Krims." He cont inu es:

The strategy of this mode is to use the apparent veracity of photogra ph y agains t itself, creat ing one's fictions thr oug h the appearance of a seamless reality inco whic h has been woven a narrative dimension . Cindy Sherman's phot ographs function with in th is mode, but only in orde r to expose an unw a nted aspec t of that fiction, for the fiction Sherman discloses is the fiction of the self. Her pbocographs show th at the supposed auto nomous and unitary self out of wh ich those other "directo rs" would

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create their fictions is itself nothing other than a discontinuous series of representations, cop ies, and fakes. Sherman's photographs are all self-portra its in which she appears in disgui se enacting a d rama whose particulars are withheld. This ambigui ty of narr ative parallels the ambiguity of the self that is both actor in the narrative and creato r of it. For tho ugh Sherman is literally selfcreated in these works, she is created in the image o f already known femin ine stereotypes; her self is therefore unde rstood as conti ngent on th e possibilities provided by the cu ltu re in which Sherman participa tes, not by some inner impulse. As such, her photographs reverse the terms of ar t and autobiog rap hy. They use art not to reveal the artist's true self but ro show the se lf as an imagi nary constr uct . Ther e is no real Cindy Sherman in these pho tographs; there are only the gu ises she assumes. And she do es not create these guises; she simp ly chooses them in the way that any of us do. The p ost of aut hors hip is d ispensed with not on ly through the mechanica l means of making the image but also through rhe effacement of any continuous, essential persona or even recognizable visage in the scenes. 134-51 The "d ispe nsin g" o r "effacement" of the "post of auth o rsh ip" is a crucia l postmodernist motif, as is the critique of rhe very not ion of a stable identi ty that C rimp 's account puts forward. More recently, Wa lter Benn Michaels has had this ro say about Sherma n's place in postmodern crit icism : [!In an important essay ca lled "Photography afte r Art Photo graphy, " Ab igail Solomon -Godea u could argue that photography had come ro "figure as a crucia l term in postmodern ism" precisely insofar as it had r epud iated the am bition to make photographs into works of art and had tak en instead "an instrum ental approach to the medium." What this involved was "using photography " to mak e art ra ther than making photograph s that were themselves arr, a d ist inction she derives from Peter Bunn ell's rema rk tha t he finds Cindy Sherman "interesting as an artist but uninteresting as a photographer" and that Arthur Da nto's su bsequent analysis of Sherma n "photography is not her medium . It is rat her a means to her artistic end s. Her medium is herself " - mak es perspicuous. In al l these analy ses, it is what the photograph is of that mak es it art . Even a more or less explicitly deconstructive manife sto like Craig Owens's essay " The Allegorica l Impulse: Tow a rd a Theory of Postmod ernism" p ra ises "untitled photos for film sti lls" in terms of Sher man's cleverness as a model: the "perfection of her imp erso nation s," Owens says, turns "d isguise" into "parody" and thus into cr iticism of the "a lienating identifications" of the mass media . Photo graphy is, of course, necessary for this project - without ir there would be no record of Sherma n 's virtuosity and, in fact, there wou ld have been no occasion for the virtuosity: the pose that is recor d ed by the photograph is also produced for the photograph. But thi s doub le functi on of the ca mer a in relation to rhe pose - it both causes and reco rds it - in no

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way detracts from th e primac y of the pose . Instead, insofar as the pose themat izes photography, trans forming the photograph into an element in the history of the pose (subsu ming the photo graph in the narrative of its own ex istence), the photo g raph is even more rigorously subord inated to the pose than it wou ld othe rwise be, for the p ose becomes, in effect, a critique of the pho togra ph. What the photograph shows is an object th at has been called into the worJd by the existence of came ras; rhe pose, as pose, calls attent ion to th is fact and cr iticizes the world rhe camera has made; the camera, then, reco rds this crit ique. Th e parodic elemen t in Sherman consists in her ins istence tha t the object the camera records is an objec t th e camera has made, but th e status of the ph otograp h as record is asserted rather tha n challenged by the parody. [The Shape of the Signifier: 1967 to the End of History (Princeton and Oxford, 2004), pp. 97-8, emp ha sis in origi nal] Michaels's po int in rehearsi ng the pos tmodern account of Sherman's Untitled Film Stills is ro set the stage for a very different, i.e. modernist, reading of the work of the photographer James Welling, in which, as Mic haels puts ir, "Welli ng deploys the shape of the photograph aga inst rhe shape o f the objects photographed in order to defeat the camera's ability to let us see ob jects in the world and to emp loy those objects instead in the mak ing of photographs (to use them like paint )" (100). This scarce ly does justice to his pages on Welling, but my point is that, in the course of contrasting Welling with Sherman, Michaels perhaps too much accep ts th e postmodern readin g of her signature works - at any rate, my suggestion that the film stills bear a significant relat ion ro an antithearrica l problemati c concerns the photographs thems elves, not simp ly or essent ia lly the poses and disguises they record . 8 In the 2005 catalogue raisonne of Wall's work, one r eads : "Th e literature various ly describes the artist's backlit colour transparencies as 'transpare n cy in ligh tbox ', 'c ibachrome in lightbox', 'cibachrome transp arency in aluminium ', 'c ibachrorn e transparency in fluorescent light box ', ere. T he artist has spec ified th at the ter m 'tran sparency in lightbox' be used thr ougho ut ro des igna te these wor k s." And: "T he transparencies are mad e on Ilfochrome Class ic tran sparent mat erial. Ilfochrome was form erly known as Cibachrome ." Theodora Vischer and H eidi Naef, "Introductory Notes," Jeff Wall: Catalogue Raison ne r 978 - 2004 (Basel, 2005), p. 27 L And a few pag es on: "A year before comp leti ng The Destroyed Ro om, Wall produced a tr iptych of transparen cies entitled Faking Death . The left pan el d epicted a set featuring a bed in which th e art ist and severa l ass istants are absorbed in what appe ar to be prepara tions for making a photograph . The central and r ight panels depicted the artist lying in th e bed, actin g as if he were dead. Fakin g Death was exhib ited first at th e Nova Ga llery in Vancouver along with The Destroyed Room, and th en at his solo exh ibition at the Art Gallery of Greater Victor ia. It was exh ibited onc e aga in in the group exhib ition 'Cibachrom e' at Th e Photo

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Gallery in Orrawa in T980. Soo n after , Wall decided to withdraw the work from his co rpus" (p. 275). For an informative d iscussion of Wall's beginn ings as an artist, includ ing his close relations with h is fellow ar tist from Vanco uver Ian Wallace, see Peter Ga lassi, "U northodox ," in Peter Ga lassi and Nea l Benezra,jeff Wall, ex h. cat. (New York, Ch icago, San Francis co, 2007-8 ), pp. 14-29 . Jeff Wall in Vischer and aef, Jeff Wall (Basel, 2005), p. 28!. Further page refere nces to th is book will be in parentheses in the text. Fried, "A rt and Ob jecthood, " p. 164. See also Sta n ley Cavel!, Th e World Viei11ed:Reflections 011 the Ont ology of Film, en larged editi on (Camb r idge, Ma ss., and London, 1979), p. 90: "One impu lse o f ph otog raphy, as imm edia te as its imp ulse to ex tend the visible, is to theatrical ize its subjects. The photographer's co mmand, " Watc h the birdi e!" is essentially a stage d irection. One may object that th e command is give n not to achieve the unnaturalne ss of theater but precisely to give the impression of the natura l, that is to say, th e candid; and that the point of the dire ction is nothi ng more th an to dist ra ct the su bject 's eyes from fronting on the ca m era len s. But th is misse s th e point, for the que stion is exac tly why the impression of natu ral ness is conveyed by an essenti ally theatrical tec hn ique. And wh y, or when, the candid is missed if the subje ct turn s hi s eye into the eye of th e ca mera." And p p . r J 8-19: "Setti ng pic ture s to mo tion mechanically overcame what I earlier ca lled the inherent theatr ica lity of th e (still) phocogra ph. The development of fast film allowed th e sub jects of photographs to be ca ught unawa res, beyond ou r or the ir con trol. Bur they are neve rth eless caught; the ca mera holds the last lanyard of co nt rol we would forgo." See Jean-Fran<;ois Chevrier, "T he Adve ntur es of the Picture Form in the History of Pho cograp h y," tra ns. Mic hae l Gilson, originally publ ishe d 1989, cited here from Douglas Fogle, ed ., The Last Picture Shoi11:Artists Using Photography, ex h. cat. (Minneapoli s and Lo s Angeles, 2003- 4), pp. Tl 3-27 . In the original French text Chev rier refers to " la for me tab leau;" for re aso ns that will become clear, I shall reta in rhe word tablea u (in preferen ce to "p ictu re") in my citations from and discussio ns of his essay. Ra lph Ubl gave hi s lecture, w hich has not been p ublishe d, in co nnection with Wall's retrospect ive exh ibition at Schaulager in Basel in th e lare spr ing of 2.005. My thanks to Ubl for shar ing his thoughts with me. See in pa rt icular Thierry de Duve's discussion of Pictur e for Women in Look, 100 Years of Contemporary Art, trans. Simon Pleasa nce and Fro nza Woods (Bruss els, 2001 ), pp. 243-9 (rev. and enlarged edn. o f th e Fren ch and Dutch Voici, roo ans d'art contempora in (Brusse ls, 2000-or ). I shou ld say, thoug h, tha t I am not persuaded by de Duve 's analysis of M anet's Bar, wh ich p recedes his accou nt of Picture for Women {ibid., pp. 229-44). See Valeria Liebermann, "Annota ted Catalog ue Rai so nne of Works since 1979," in Matthias Winzen, ed ., Thomas Ruff: r9 79 to the Present (New York, 2003), p. 183. Published in conj unction w ith the ex hibition "T ho mas Ruff Fotografier en 1979 -heut e" (Baden -Baden , 2001-2).

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See also Eric de Cha ssey, Platitud es: ,m e histoir e de la photographi e plate (Par is, 2006 ), pp. 172-84. Liebermann , "A nnot ated Catalog ue Raisonn e," p. 183. "Betw een 1984 and T986 ," she writes, "Thomas Ruff kept experiment ing with the size of his Portraits looking for another form at in addition to the 'red uced reality' of 24 x , 8 cm . When he managed to make five print s in L986 on the large st photo pa per ava ilab le, he discovered that a completely new pictu re had eme rged . Through th e enlargeme nt, the look and ex p ression of the sitt ers was inten sified and the visual pr esence o f the ph otograph became d omina nt. The projec t came to a hale in 199 r beca use the p aper he had been using was no longer in production. The new photo pa per had such a great ra nge of colo r and co ntra st that it was no longer suitable for his por tra its." Jean -Pierre Cr iqui, " Bustama n te as Photographer (No tes for an Unfin ishe d Portrait), " tran s. Simon Pleasance and Fron za Wood s, in j ean-Mar c Bustamante: oeuvres photographiqu es .r978-r999, ex h . ca t. (Pari s, 1999), p. 162. Further page referenc es to th is essay will be in parenth eses in the text. See also rhe va luabl e rema r ks on Bustamante's Tableaux as exemplars of "flatness" in de Cha ssey, Platitudes, pp . 163-7 1. Taro Amaro, "I ntersecting Relat ionsh ips," in Jean-Mar c Bustamante: Private Crossing, ex h. cat. (Yokohama , 2002 ), p. 1 59. Also, " ungrat efu lness" is Bustamante' s word - in French /'ingratitud e - in an in terview by Ann ick Co lonna Cesar i in !.'Express, Jun e 9, 2002. T here Bustamante spea ks o f having (in his Tableaux of the late r9 7os and ear ly 'Sos) "i mmer sed himself in the lands ca pes in orde r to realize prints [that would be] ca lm an d hard at the same time" (translat ion mine ). See Mich el Ga uthier , "C on struct ing an Aura," in Alfred Pacqu emen t and Jean -Pierr e Cr iqu i, eds., Jean-Marc Bustamante (Paris, 2003 ), p . 54. As Bustamant e has remarked: " Mu sil cer tainly left his mark on me, a lot of thing s can be traced back to The Man With out Qualiti es. I am tryi ng to produce wo rk 'w ithout qua lities'" (" Fragm ents d ' un entr etien: Jean-Marc Bustamant e, Jan Debbau t et Yves Gevaer t," j ean-Marc Bustamant e, ex h. cat. fEindhoven, 1993 ], p. 14, quoted b y Gauthie r, p. 7 3, n. 4 ). Sophie Berrebi, "Jea n-M arc Bustamant e: 'It's Crap, but in the Right Way,'" inte r view, http ://eyestor m. com/ fea ture / ED2.11_article.asp?article _id= r 4o. In the same int erview, Berrcbi allud es to Bustamante's havi ng said " that Rob ert Mus il's novel The Man With out Qualities ha s had a long lasti ng influence over [him!." Ulrich Looc k, " Out of Focus ," in Jean-Mar c Bustamante (Paris, 2005), p. 13 6, transl at ion m ine. " Long after their m aking, " Jacinto Lageira wr ites in ibid., p. 68, "w hat always str ikes on e in the Tableaux is th e plenitude of these imag es in wh ich everything is give n [/i11reland at the same time withdrawn. Th e supera bun da nce of details is in conflict with what one is temp ted co call a vaca ncy" (" La taille de la m atiere," translation min e) . Step hen Shore, Uncommon Places: Th e Complete Work s (New York, 2004). Thi s book also includes a n exce llent essay by Step han Schmidt-Wulff en, "Step hen Shore's

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Uncommon Places," and a high ly int eres ting conve rsa tion betwee n Shor e and th e wr iter Lynne Tillm an . H illa Bec her in "' H is Pictu res H ave the Qua lity of a First Enco unt er ' : Hilla and Bern d Becher in Conve rsa tio n wit h Heinz Liesb rock," Stephen Shore: Photographs 1973 1993, ed. Heinz Lies brock (M unic h, 199 4 ), p. 2.7. W hat she say s is: " I like th e way he ap pro aches co lor photography , th e way he concei ves of th e colo r and the Amer ica n light, wh ich is ac tuall y q uite d ifficu lt, very hard. Fo r exa mp le, the strugg le with the sky th at a lway s h as to be fought out in co lor photogra ph y, at least in land scape - he has m astered it q uite felicito usly by light ing m os t of t he ob jects from the side, or using thi s side lighti ng. T his has enab led him to avoi d t hat d rea dfu l blue sky th at always looks lik e a slab of sto ne, a nd to so ften th e co lo rs." Furthe r page referen ces ro th is co nversa tion w ill be in parenth eses in th e text. Shore ea rl y on beca m e friends w ith H illa Bec her, and th e Bechers ow ned ph otographs by him tha t we re kn ow n to th e yo un ger Ger m an p ho tograph ers who were th eir stud ents. A recent conve rsa t ion betwee n Sho re an d me, ro be published in a Ph a ido n Press vo lum e on his art, includ es the follow ing:

ss: On e of th e things I did at th e time I was ra kin g [the Uncommon Placesl pictur es was stand next to the tr ipo d and simp ly look. After I had gotten a roug h idea of what I was ph o to grap h ing I wou ld look at what was in fron t

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of me an d liter ally pa y attentio n to as mu ch as I could as far back inro space as I co uld see. And I wo uld dec ide whether there was an y slight adju st ment l wa nted to mak e. M F: Syste ma tica lly? ss : Yes, tak ing into acco unt any perce p tion s that ca me my way. And I wou ld say yes, sys tem atica lly, because if I didn't do it syste matic ally then I wo uld n 't do it. Do es that ma ke sense? MF: Perfect se nse. ss: So it was like a chec kli st . O kay, I have don e all th is, I h ave got the ro ugh framewo rk of th e p ictur e and now I am go ing ro stand here a nd rea lly look at eve rythin g. The me taph or that I had in my mind was th at in a ce rt a in way I am cleari ng the spa ce fo r the viewer. That by m y mo ving my att en tio n thr oug h th e scene and m akin g an y necessa r y adju stm ent to th e pictu re, I clear th e space go ing back into th e scene for the viewer ro mov e h is or her atte nt ion. If I on ly looked fift y feet in, then there wo ul d be a wal l that th e viewer wo uld stop at. One o th er exc hange is of inte rest in th is connect io n: HL : Let 's thin k for a mi nu te ab ou t the subjects in his wor k of th e 1970s. Th ere are a few po rt rait s, very few sti ll life p ictur es, but mai nl y it's ur ban cont exts that are character istic in his work: a rch itecture in th e city cen ters, in th e sub ur bs, traffic scene s again and again, str eet s, espec iall y inters ect ions. Wha t is it th at cre a tes the mag ic in th ese pictu r es? Is it h is special angle of visio n, o r is there already somethi ng in the subjec t itself that radiates u niqu ely?

no t es to pages 2 2- 23

HB: Well, he d iscove red these places . Th e int er-sectio n is w hat America is. Yo u cou ld alm os t say that outside Ma nh att an life intens ifies pr ec isely at the int ersecti on. And he looked for, and fo und, th e right int erse ction s. Ir's a ques tio n of artis tic inte lligen ce to find thi s out , to recog nize what it sy mb o lizes . For us, ou r first tr ips to America we re like a d rea m. You abs or b the cou ntry like a spo nge , lik e a child. Stephe n Shore's photos have someth ing o f thi s qua lity o f a first encou nter . (30) 2.5 Amano , Private Crossing, p. r62 . 26 Fro m interview by Co lonna-Cesa r i, L'Express, tran slation min e. "Je vo ulai s cons ide rer non plus la photograp hie en rant qu'art, mai s l'a rt en rant que ph orog rap h ie. Je refu sais le pe tit for mat et le co te arrisa nal du noir et blanc. J e vo ulais pas ser la cou leur, a u forma t pou r le m ur, afin de d onner la photographie la dim ension du tableau, de la tra nsform er en objet." 27 De Chassey sum s up th e for mal achieve ment of th e cyp ress photo graph s as follow s : "A uron omou s, th e photogra phic image becomes a neutral and pe rfectly flat veh icle, of a flatness th at is active and , so to speak , free of co nstraint s" (Platitudes, p. ,:71, tr anslation min e). 2.8 T he phra se occ ur s in J ud d's landmar k essay, "S pec ific Ob jects" (orig ina lly publi shed in Arts Yearbook 8, 1965) in connectio n with Frank Stella 's shaped stripe pa intin gs. Th e pa ssage rea ds: "S tella 's shaped pai nt ings invo lve several impo rt ant charac ter istics of th ree-di m ensio na l wo rk. T he per iph ery o f a piec e and the line s inside co rrespon d. The stripes ar e now here near be ing d iscre te parts . T he sur face is farthe r from th e wa ll th an usual, though it rem ains parallel to it. Sin ce th e sur face is excep tionally un ified and invo lves little or no spa ce, the para llel plan e is unusually distin ct. T he or de r is not ra tio nalistic and underlying bur is simpl y or der, like that of co ntinuit y, o ne thin g a fter ano th er. A painting isn't an image . T he shape s, the uni ty, p rojectio n, orde r a nd col or are spec ific, aggress ive and powerf ul" (Dona ld Judd , Compl ete Writings 1959-1975 [H a lifax, Nova Scotia, and New Yor k, 197 5), pp. 183 -4 ). 29 Int erv iew by Ca ther ine Francbl in, "Jea n-Marc Bustamant e: le proc he et le lo inta in," Art Press, no . 170 (Ju ne 199 2.): 2.6. Furt her page refere nces to th is int er view wi ll be in parenth eses in th e rexr. 30 In Stationnaire I (J 990), a tightl y framed pict ur e o f th e cypresses is comb ined with sixtee n m od est-sized L-shaped "sc ulpt u ral" elements sta nd ing on th e ga llery floor in front of th e p ho to, th e eleme nt s th emselves recalli ng th e shape of ear ly pieces by Robert M orri s. I have not seen thi s work , but it see ms likely tha t the ju xtaposi tio n of the photograph and th e "scu lp tur a l" elements wo uld be felt to point to a contrast between t he two kinds of element s, ra th er tha n to th eir s imilarit y as ob jects. 3 1 So e.g. Ga uthier co mpa res rhe cypress ser ies wit h its " curtai ns of vegetation cros sed vertica lly by th e lines settin g the di fferent trees apart, with gaps in p laces letting throu gh the blu e sky" to " th ose grea t pa inti ngs o f C lyffo rd Still disrupt ed by jag ged edges of thi s kind ." H e adds: "Havin g sa id that, Busra mante' s photograph s need bea r no form al resemblance in o rd er to recall abst ract paint ing. T he likeness lies

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at a deeper level, chat of rhe viewer's pe rception of the picture" ("Constructing an Aura," p. 61) . Thus Loock wr ites: " In many respec ts, Busramanre's photographs have a para digmatic funct ion for the w ho le o f his work: from rhe point of view of th eir grounding in reality (in the double sense o f th eir wea lth of elements bo rrowed from th e real and of the absence in them of an imaginary 'pene tratio n of the gaze'), of rhe rea lizat io n o f the in- irself of things foreign ro a ll meaning; bur also from rhe po int of view of the exclusio n of the body, even when the latt er is sometimes reintegrated, under certa in co nditions, in recent phorograph ic works . The exclus ion of t he body is the price that must be pa id for the return ro t he rea lity of the o bject and therefore also for the rejection of a mode rn ity defined by its exclus ive character [a dou ble refer ence to minima lism, I chink]. To pur chis differe n tly, Bustamante opposes the abstract io ns of minimal arr, the red ucti on o f the o bject ro irs material ity, its extens ion, its situaredness, to its interaction with a gene ric observer - Andre's metallic carp ets like scenes to walk on , Flavin's lumin ous pieces like atm ospheres - in chat he renders rhe object concrete, objective, sometimes in d irect po lemidironic refe rence co Judd's boxes, all the whi le divesting it of the relation to the bod y" ("Our of Focus," pp. 140-42, translation mine) . For Chevrier in J989, five photographers exemplified rhe eschecic stance he wish ed to stress: Joh n Co p lans, Bill Henson, Craig ie H orsfield, Suzanne Lafone, and Jeff Wall. "Adela'ide," Mercur e de France (Janu a ry r755), p . 49. Reprinted in Slatki ne Reprints, Ge neva, 1970, Tome 68 . Further page references to this edit ion w ill be in pare nth eses in the text. The nam e of the her o ine probabl y derives from chat of the heroi ne of Mme de Tencin's famous novel, Memoires du Comte de Comminges ( r 73 5), as does rhe theme of lovers preve nted by thei r famil ies from marrying rhe person rhey love. Here is rhe French: "E lle va au Co uve nt , entre d'abord clans l'Eglise, & le premier o bjer qui la frappe, est le Marqu is son cpoux, occupc clans un exe rcice pieux avec rout sa Communaure. Cet hab it de penitence la to uche; elle se montre, ii la voir, il baisse les yeux, & quelque effort qu'e lle fasse pour attirer ses regards, ii n'e n to u me p lus auc un sur elle. Quoiqu 'e lle pcnecre le mot if de la violence qu ' il se faic, clle y trouve quelque chose de si cr uel, qu 'e lle en esr sa isie de la plus vive douleur. Elle rombe cva nouie; on l'emporte, elle ne revienr elle q ue pour dem ande r son che r Ferval. On court l'avertir que sa femme est moura nt e. Son Super ieur lui ordonne de la venir consoler; & elle expire par la force de son saisissemenr, avant qu'i l se soi t rendu au pre s d'e lle." On Marmontel 's Belisaire in this connection, see Fried, Absorption and Th eatricality, pp. 147, 1p -2 . On digirizarion see rhe referenc es given in Ch. 4, n. 26. Yukio M ishim a, The Sailor who Fell from Grace with the Sea, tra ns. John Nat han (196 5; ew Yo rk, r9 94), pp. 14852. Yukio Mishima, The Temp le of Dawn, tran s. E. Dal e Saunders and Cecilia Segawa Seigle (r970 ; New York, J975), p. 217. Furth er page references co chis book will be in parenrheses in the tex t.

40

See the photographer Brassa'i's pen etratin g discussion of the scene in The Giiermantes Way in whic h Proust's narrato r observes his beloved grandmother while she is una ware of his presence, an act that P rouse co mpar es to chat o f "the photographer, " quo ted lacer in chis book, Ch . 4, n. t 5. 4 1 Susa n Sontag, On Phot ography (New Yor k, 1977), p. 37. 42 Ibid., pp. 36-7. She cites chis, then immedia te ly adds in a note : "Nor an er ror, really. There is something on people's faces . .. " 4 3 See Russell Ferguso n, "Open City : Possibilities of rhe Street," in Kerry Brougher and Russell Ferg uson , Open City : Street Photographs Since 1950 , ex h. cat . (Oxford, Salfo rd Quays, Bilbao, Washi ngton, o. c ., 2001 ), p . 14, as well as th e br ief discussion of Winogrand 's career in Ch. 8 below . 44 Susa n Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others (New York, 2003), pp. 76-7 . Furthe r page referenc es to th is book will be in parent heses in the text. 45 Acco rd ing to Vische r and Naef, Jeff Wall :

Dead Troops Talk (A Vision After an Ambush of a Red Army Patro l near Moqor, Afgha11istan, Winter 1986) wa s photographed on a set in a temp o rar y studi o in Burnaby, British Co lumbia in winter r 99r -r 99 2. Preparatory work was done throughout r 99 1. It is the artis t's second wo rk using d igital techn o logy. As the title ind icates, the wor k depi cts an unreal vision . The artist has refe rred to the work as a "hallucinat ion" and a "d ialogue of the dead . " Wall wan ted the "ha llucination" to ha ve historical and technical realism . Th e arti st began wor king on Dead Troops Talk in 1986-1987, whi le st udying the development of digital tech n ology and its possi bilities . H e was awa re that compute r montage would be a central aspect in the process of realising the pictu r e. The preliminary work on the projec t took place in the late stages of the Sov iet occupation of Afghanistan and the collapse of the U.S.S.R. The set wa s constructed in wood and covered with a layer of earth. The shape of the rav ine in which the action cakes place was developed usin g drawings and mode ls. The drast ic wounds were construc ted using bod y parts and prosthetics, photographed separately and blend ed o nro the figur es in rhe montage process. Th e models were p hotograp h ed singly or in small gro ups . [338 1

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wal l, heidegger, and absorpt ion "Jeff Wall in Conve rsation with Marcin Schwander," in Je ff Wa ll, Selected Essays and Interviews (New York, 200 7 ), p. 230 . Ori ginally published 1994. Wall's reference is to my Absorpti o n and Theatricality : Pai11ting and Beholder in the Age of Did erot (1980; Ch icago and Lon don , 1986) . Fo r more on Wall's engage ment with my writing, both art critica l and arc histor ica l, see esp. his essay " Fram es of Referenc e," " Interview betw een J eff Wall and Jean -Frarn;:ois Chevrier," and " Post-'6os Photo grap hy and Its Modernist Context: A Conve rsa tion betw een J eff Wall and John

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jeff wall and absorption; heidegger on worldhood

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J eff Wall's Adrian Walker, Artist, Drawing From a Specimen in a Lab oratory in th e Dept. of Anatomy at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver ( 1992; Fig. 19 ), like by far the majority of his works, is a large Cibachrome transparency mounted on a lightbo x, which is to say that it is illuminated from behind by fluorescent light s (Wall's preferr ed medium ). In my opinion and by common cons ensus, Wall is one of th e mo st ambitious and accomplished photogr a pher s working tod ay but, of course, to say that is to say something quit e diff erent from what a comp arab le claim would have ent ailed even twent y years ago. One of the most important developments in the so-called visual ar ts of the past twenty-plus yea rs has been th e emer gence of large- sca le, tableau-sized photographs that by virtu e of their size dema nd to be hung on gallery walls in the mann er of easel paintings, and in other respects as well aspire to what migh t lo ose ly be called th e rhetorical , or beho lder-addressing, significance of paintings while at the same time declaring th eir artifactua l identity as photographs (I touched on thi s in my bri ef discussion of Wall, Ruff, and Bustama nt e in Chapt er One). There will be more to say abo ut all thi s in the pages that follow, but for th e moment my point is simpl y that Wall ha s been a cruci al figure in that development, and th at Adrian Walker is a st riking examp le of such a work. (By no means among the largest of Wa ll's pi ctur es, it measures over four feet high by m ore than five feet wide.) A brief descri ption of Adrian Walk er will amplify th e already consid erable amount of informati on conveyed by its titl e. It depicts a yo un g man, perh ap s in hi s early thirties, sea ted on a moveable desk chair befor e a simpl e table (woo den top , m eta llic legs) on which ha s been pla ced a flayed and preserved spe cimen of a severed human right arm and hand. The latter, red -brown in co lor, rests on a greenish cloth, which itself seems to cover a sha llow tray . An old-fashioned gooseneck lam p sits on a wind ow sill as if bent over th e specim en but the bulb, a fraction of w hich one can jus t glimp se beneath its sha de, a pp ears unlit; instead th e scene is i.lluminated by sunli ght streaming rather coldly in from a window toward the right. On th e table top toward the righthand edge o f th e picture other objects are cluster ed: a coff ee mu g, an erase r, a box of six ty-fo ur Crayo las, a roll of toil et paper, a sp ray bottl e of detergent(?), a piec e of pa pe r bearin g reddish sm udg es. On the window led ge one sees a smaller ta nni sh cloth and a so mewhat battered paperba ck book with slip s of paper between some of the pa ges. (Look ed at closely, th e book turn s out to be Don Quixote.) T he young man , in glasses, is we aring jea ns, a white shirt, and a light blue sweater; his left an kle crosses hi s right knee. Resting at once on his lap an d agai nst the front edge of the table is a dra w ing

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(right) Jean-Bapti ste-Simeon Chardin, Young Student Drawing, c. 1 733 -8 . Oil o n pan el. 21 x 1 7 cm. Kimb ell Art Museum, Fort Worth, Texas 20

21 (facing page, left) Jean -Bapt iste-Simeon Chardi n , The Young Draftsman, 1737. Oi l on canvas. 81 x 67 cm . Staatl iche Museen Preussischer Kulturbe sitz Berlin, Ge maldega lerie

22 (facing page, right) Jean -Baptist e-Simeon Cha rdin , The House of Cards, c. 17 37 . Oil on canvas . 83 x 66 cm. Na tional Gallery of Art, Washington, o .c .

board on w hich has been clipped a sheet of paper that bears a drawin g in sepia of the arm and hand before him. Th e youn g man ho lds a red mechani cal draf ting pencil in his right hand, and his left arm and hand support his chin as he gazes somewhat downwa rd, w heth er at his draw ing or the flayed arm it is imposs ible to say (possibl y he is comparing o ne to the ot her). The wa ll beh in d him is of gleaming white tile, and near the left- han d edge of the picture is a stac k of roun d specimen boxes; th e overall mood of the p ict ur e is quiet, contemp lat ive, matter-of-fact, though th e severed a rm is hard ly p leasa nt to look at . Wall spea ks directly to the question of his intent ions in thi s wo rk in the course of an int erview wit h Martin Schwander in 1994 : Schwander : With Adrian Walker you made a portrait of a young man who is concentrat ing so intense ly on his work that he seems to be removed to ano th er sphere of life. Wall: But I don't th ink it is n ecessari ly clear tha t Adrian Walker is a po rtrai t . I think there is a fusion of a couple of po ssible ways of loo king at the picture generica lly. One is that it is a pi ctur e of someon e eng aged in his occupati on and not pa ying any attention to, or responding to the fact that he is bein g observed by, the spectator . In Mic hae l Fried's interest ing book about absorption and th eatr icality in late eighteen thcent ury pa int ing, he ta lks abo ut the different relat ionships betwee n figure s in pictures and th eir spectators. H e identified an "absorptive mode ," exemp lifed by pa inters like Chardin, in which figure s are imm ersed in th eir ow n world and activit ies and display no aware ness of the co nstruct of the picture a nd the necessary presence of the viewer. Ob vious ly, the "theatr ica l mode" was just the opposite. In absorptive pictures, we are lookin g at figures who appear not be "acting out" the ir world, on ly "be ing in" it. Both, of co urse, ar e mode s of perfor mance . I th ink Adrian Walker is "abso rpt ive." 1

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why pho t ography matters as art as never before

(Fo r th e reco rd , Wall and I met by cha nce in the Boymans Museum in Rotter dam in r996 , which is also w here and when I saw Ad rian Walker for th e first tim e. It quick ly emerged that we had been track ing eac h other's wo rk for years . Since th en we have become friends . Th e conn ect ion betwee n us is part of the argument of thi s book. ) T hree genre pa intin gs by th e grea t Jea n-Baptiste -Simeon Chard in (1699-1777), the a rtist ment ioned by Wall, make relevant viewing in this connection . The first is Young Stud ent Drawing (c. 173 3-8; Fig. 20) . Althoug h Wall 's pictu re dep icts the dr aftsman largely in profi le ra th er th an from behind, we as viewers neverthe less feel we a re look ing somew hat ove r hi s should er (we are slightl y behin d him , in oth er words), an d of course we are show n t he dr aw ing h e is m aking (in so ft reddi sh lead ) jus t as in the Chardi n. The seco nd wor k, The Young Draftsman (1737; Fig. 21) , subtl y dir ects th e viewer's attention to th e chalk -hold er in th e hands of the you ng arti st, just as in Adrian Walker we are given a clear view of the mec han ica l pencil in Wa lker's right hand. T he third , th e ma gisterial (if mi stitl ed) The House of Cards (c. r 73 7; Fig. 22), is discussed in some detai l in Absorption and Theatrica lity, w here I ca ll atte nti on to the co nspic uous juxtapo sitio n of two p laying car ds in the pa rtl y op en drawer in the near for eground. 2 I go on to propo se th at th e face ca rd, appa rentl y a Jack of H eart s, embl ema tizes the fact that th e picture surface itself faces th e beho lder (that is, is entir ely ope n to our gaze) whereas th e dazzlingly blank back of t he second card evo kes the sealed off consciousness of th e yo ung man a bso rbed in his appa rently trivi a l pa st ime. The juxtaposition of th e two cards thu s offers a co nd en sed statem ent of th e stru ct ura l du ality of th e pai nting as a w hole, at once facing th e beholde r as art ifact and close d to him or her as repr esentat ion. I suggest too tha t paintings lik e The House of Cards, Soap Bubbl es (173 5-40), and The Game of Knuck lebon es (c. 1734) repr esent a quietly mom ento us discove ry o n C hardin's pa rt, nam ely that absorption as such is perfec tly indiffer ent to

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th e ex tra-a bsor ptive stat us of it s ob jects or occas ions: so parti cular ac tions - arra nging car ds, blowin g b ubbl es, play ing knu cklebones - w hich in the previous cent ury the Ja nsenist thi nker Pa sca l wo uld ha ve st igmati zed as mer e distractions from the thoug ht o f a Chri stian life, emer ge instea d as th e veh icle of a new, essenti ally "pos itive" mental o r sp iritua l state, the ultim ate impli ca tions of w hich for a history o f what in anothe r co nt ext h as been ca lled " m ind edn ess" have yet to be fath omed .3 And I argue, not just in Absorp tion and Theatricality but in tw o subse qu ent books, Courbet's Realism and Manet's Modernism, t hat a ce ntral cur rent or tra diti on in French painting from JeanBap tiste Greuze's mo men to us Salon debut in 17 5 5 to the advent of Edou ard Manet and his generat ion aro und 1860 may be understo od in term s of an ongoing effort to make pa int ings th at by o ne stra tegy or an oth er a pp ear - in th e first place by depicting personages wh olly a bso rb ed in w hat they are doi ng, t hinkin g, and feeling, and in multifigur e painting s by bindin g th ose p erso nages toget her in a sing le, uni fied com pos ition to deny tb e pres ence before th em of the be ho lder, or to put this more affirma tively, to establi sh th e onto log ica l fictio n th at the beho lder does not ex ist. 4 O nly i£ this was accomplishe d cou ld th e act ual beho lder be stop ped and h eld befo re th e can vas; converse ly, tbe leas t sense on th e beh o lder's part that th e depi cted pe rso na ges were act ing or, even worse, pos ing fo r th e art ist (and ultim ate ly fo r th e beho lder) was registere d as thea trical in the pejora tive sen se of th e term , and the pa inti ng was judged a fai lure . Wi th Ma net, in works lik e the O ld Musician (1862), Dejeuner sur l'herbe (1 862- 3), and Olympia (1863), that antithea trica l cu rrent or t ra diti o n reac hes the po int of o vert crisis; the pr imor dial convention th at pa intings are ma de to be beheld ca n n o lon ger be denied, even for a little whi le, and abso rp tion in all its ma nife stations gives way to rad ical "facingness." Tak ing my bear ings fro m Ch ardi n's The House of Cards, l might say that in Ma net th e empha sis shi ft s to th e face ca rd in th e open dr awe r (Co urb et is supposed to have described Olympia as the Q ueen of H ea rts aft er a bat h ), th ou gh in view of the notor ious psycho log ica l blank ness of M ane t's perso nages it might be tru er to say that it is as if the oth er card, th e o ne turn ed away from the beho lder, is reint erpr eted as facing him or her as we ll. All t his co uld hardly be more summa ry, but it per haps su ffices to indicate somethin g of th e intri cacy of th e issues at stake in th ese deve lop ments . Re turnin g to Wall and his int erviewer , note to beg in w ith how Schwa nd er, before Wa ll exp lains th e o perat ion of the " absorpt ive m ode," responds to Adrian Walker in precisely th ose terms. "Wi th Adrian Walke r," Schwa n der says, "you made a po rtrait of a yo ung ma n who is co ncent rat ing so intense ly o n his wor k that he seems to be removed to anot her sp here of life ." Thi s is th e abso rp tive effect in its class ic form . As Diderot m ak es clea r, a perso nage en tire ly abso rbed o r engrosse d in an actio n , feeling, or state o f min d is by virtue of that fact w ho lly una wa re of anythin g but the ob ject of his or her abso rpti on, starting with t he beho lder stand ing before th e painting . (ln The House of Cards thi s un awa reness or oubli de soi - lit erally, self-for getting - is signa led by the open drawe r, which , the viewe r senses, goes unp erceive d by the boy . In The Young Drafts man it is imp lied by th e ro se-co lored strin g of th e d rafts man 's po rtfol io that fa lls over the edge of the tab le in the nea r fo regro und. And in Young Student Drawing the implicat ion of obliv iousness is fo rcefull y co nveye d by th e hole in the up per back of the

40

why photography

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student's coat, thro ugh which one glimp ses his red und erga rment. 5 ) It is as if the personage and the beholder inhabit different Worlds, w hich is what Schwander as much as says when he describes Adr ian Walker - the personag e, not th e picture - as seemingly "remo ved to another sph ere of life." Two points are particularl y interes tin g abou t Schwander's remarks. T he first is that Schwander, without prompting from Wall, was moved to describ e Wall's picture in the language I have just quoted , w hich appe ar s to impl y that he took th e p icture to be a candid ph otograph of a draft sman ent irely abs orb ed in conte mplatin g his work. Howeve r, a mome nt 's reflection suffices to sugges t th at th at is un likely, both beca use th e dep icted sit uat ion appea rs pate ntl y staged - it is, in a sense, too good to be true - and because the conspicuousness of th e a pp aratus of displa y suggests a comparable conspicuousness of the photographic appa ratu s as such. (It is hard to ima gine Wall shoot ing the scene unob served with a lightw eight camera like Cart ier-Bresson's or Winogrand's Leica, and in any case had he done so the resultin g image cou ld not ha ve been enlarg ed to Adrian Walke r's dim ension s without loss of clarit y.) As Wall says in the interview, both the absorptive and th e theatrical are for him " mod es of performance." And, in a state ment from 1996 he exp lains that th ere was in fact a real Adria n Walker, who was a draftsman and who had made the drawing on his drawing boa rd in the labora tory specified , but that the pic ture is also a re-enactment, by the art ist in th e pictu re, of his ow n practice. Th at is, he a nd J collaborated to create a com posit ion that , wh ile being strictly accurat e in all det a ils, was neverth eless not a candid picture, but a pictorial co nstru ction. I depicted th e moment when be has just comple ted his dra wing, and is ab le to conte mpl ate it in its final form, and, once again, a t the sam e time, to see its subje ct, the specimen, th e po int fro m wh ich it began. There was suc h a mom ent in th e creat ion of his dra wing, but the moment depicted in the pict ure is in fact not that mom ent , but a reenact ment of it. Yet it is probably indi stingu ishab le from the actua l moment. 6 In an interv iew fo ur years later, Robert Enri ght asks Wa ll w hy a copy of Don Qu ixot e appea rs in Adrian Walker . Wall replies : Th e picture is factua l. The man who is named in the t it le is in fact the person Adrian Walker; that is the corner of th e ana tomy lab where he wo rked. It's all real. The Don Quixo te just happ ened to be there. The pictu re involved a perform ance in th at Adrian was wor king with me, but he didn 't do a nythin g he didn't norma lly do . I visited him occasionally during the tim e he was dra wing there. He was a st udent of min e, and want ed to be more involved w ith dr aw ing the figure. H e a rranged with the depa rtment of anatomy that he co uld work t here for an extended period. I mig ht have moved the lamp over a little bit, but I didn't ch ange anyth ing. Th e picture is an examp le of what I call "near doc um entary. " 7 The second po int wo rth stre ssing is that Schwand er 's readin g of Adr ian Wa lker 's state of mind goes considera bly beyond th e visua l evidence. For Wall seems de liberate ly to have chosen not to depict his sitter in the th roes of a bsorp tion , so to speak . H is mea-

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Gerhard Ric ht er, Reading lLesendel, 1994. Oil o n linen. 23

72 .4 x 10 2.2 cm. San Francisco Muse um of Art . Pur cha sed th rough th e gi fts of Mimi and Peter H aas and He len and Cha rles Schwab, a nd the Accessions Committe e Fund

sured account o f what he tried to do feels exac tly right: Walker is able to contemplate his drawing in its fina l form and at the sam e tim e to see th e spec imen he cop ied, a formulat io n that avo ids positing a definite inner state. (One m ight even say that Walker appears dispo sed to do both th ese thing s, to put matters slightl y mor e stro ngly.8) Moreover, th e cold glar e of the dayl ight on th e whit e tile wa ll, so different from the mid-ton ed, warm ambiences of Ch ard in's canvases, reinforces the sense of expr essive restraint. As does, even mor e tellin gly, the unp leasan tn ess to sight of the specimen itself. So Schwa nder 's rem arks are doubly mis leading with respect to what the picture gives us to be seen. Yet pr ec isely becau se this is so, his com mentar y illustr ates what I have elsew here called the "mag ic" of absorption , wh ich first beca me a sta ple of pictori al art in the West shor tly befor e r 600 when in th e canvases of Caravagg io and his followers absorpt ive them es and effects began to serve as a singular ly effective matrix for an unprec ed ented real ism, an d wh ich cont in ues to hold even the mo st sophist icated viewers in its spe ll down to th e present tim e.9 (In th a t sense Schwa nder is not so mu ch mistaken as deep ly in the picture's thrall. Whether Wall mea nt him to be is a question.) Anothe r recent work who se widesp rea d appea l rests largely on th ese ground s is Gerhard Richter's pai nting Reading [Lesende} (199 4 ; Fig. 23), in which a yo ung woman's appa rent engro ssment in her journa l (th e Ger man magazine Der Spiegel) goes hand in hand with th e man ifestly photograph ic cha racter of the pr esum ed "source" image. Once again, howev e1; a mom ent 's reflection suffices to reveal that thi s pictur e too cannot be a candid representat ion of an actual situ ation. Fo r one th ing, th e (pr esum ed) photograp her's relation to th e reading wo man - the arti st's daught er - feels too near and in th e op en for her to have been unawar e of his presence; for another, the fact that th e painting seems so clearl y to have been ba sed on a photograph throws int o relief the former's part icula r mod e of a rtifactualit y, whic h in its techni ca l perfect ion - I refer to th e absence of

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why pho t ography matters as art as never before

visible brush strokes - conveys a sense of expert performance. Tnother words , both Wall's Adrian Walker and Richter 's R eading mob ilize absorptive motifs that reca ll C hardin, but the y do so in ways that expressly acknow ledge w hat I want to call the " to-beseenn ess" - by which I mean something other than a simple return to or fall into theatric ality - both of the scene of representation and of the act of presentation. (From now on I shall dispens e with quotation marks around th e term.) Yet, as Schwander's remarks show, the a bsorpti ve allure of Wall' s picture, as of Richter' s, is not thereby undon e. (Obv iously, the features of Chardin 's genre paintings T have commented on - the open drawer, the dangling string , the h ole in the young man 's jacket, and so on - also po sit a beholder positioned so as to take them in. However, the operative fiction in Chardin' s canvases is that th eir protag onists are ob livious not only to the features in qu estion but also, crucially, to the pre sence before the painting in the first place of the painting 's mak er and, sub sequently, of the entranced viewer; indeed the purpo se of all those featur es is to reinforce that fiction to the extent of makin g it appear simpl y true. Wall's photograph and Richt er's painting stop far short of such assertiveness, which is why neither one nor the other dep loys anythi ng remot ely like th e toke ns of selfforgetting that C hard in uses so brilli antly.) Let me briefly co nte xtu alize this . Earli er I exp lain ed how the antith eat rica l cur rent in eighteenth - and nineteenth -cent ur y French paintin g reached a po int of overt cris is in the a rt of Manet and his cont empor aries. T he issue of beholdin g was not ther eby dissolved , though , and by th e 1960s it was ba ck in force in the co nfrontation, as l portr ayed it in "Art and Objecthood," between high moderni sm and minimali sm, or as I also called the latter, litera lism. This is not the place to rehearse the story of that confrontation in detail but presumably no reader of thi s book will need to be told that to all inte nts and purposes minim alism/lit eralism routed high modern ism, whi ch in th e terminolo gy of "A rt an d Ob ject hood" meant that by the ear ly and mid -197os th eatrical, behold er-ba sed ar t definitively held the field. (Albe it the crit ical and th eoretical essays most clo sely associated with postmodernism date from the end of that decade and the early 198os. ' 0 ) It is har dly sur pri sing , then, that l ha ve been deeply inter ested in th e new ph otograph y, w hich I see as having reopened a range of questions and issues - a problematic of beholding - that appeared to hav e been closed, for all I knew permanently . Yet reopening that prob lemati c ha s not been accomplished by a simpl e return to the pa st (out of the question, in any case), which is why I have stressed both the similaritie s and the differences between Adrian Wall'-er a nd severa l genre pa intin gs by C hardin. In genera l, I shall argue in this book that the new art photography seeks to come to grips with the issue of beholding in ways that do no t succumb to theatricality but whi ch at the same tim e register the epochality of minimali sm/literalism's inter vention by an acknowled gment of tobe-seenness, just as ambitiou s French painting after Ma net ack no wledged painting' s facingness (not flatn ess, as is usually said) while nevertheles s reserving an ima ginati ve spa ce fo r itself that was not wholly given over to solicit ing th e app lause of th e Salon-goin g p ublic .

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A seco nd , more recent work by Wall throws further light on his tr ea tm ent of the se issues. The work is th e highly amb itious After "Invisible Man" by Ralph Elliso n, the Prologue (I999-20or; Fig . 24), one of three pictures Wa ll ha s made based on literar y tex ts . (T he first of these, Odrad ek, Taboritska 8, Prague, July r 8, I 9 84 fI984 J, is based on Ka fka's short story, " Dearest Fa th er"; the third and most recent, After "Sprin g Snow," by Yukio Mishima , chapter 3 4 l2000-05], is taken from the first volu m e of Mi shima's Sea of Fertility tetra logy, his culminati ng masterwork. I shall disc uss th e latter in th e Conclu sion to this book.) The situ at ion described in th e Prologue of Invisibl e Man 11 is locate d tempora lly aft er the act ion of the novel proper has been concluded: the nameless protagonist , a black man who claims to be in visible to whit es (hen ce the book 's title), has temporarily settled down in an underground "hole," that is, in a " shut off a nd forgotten" section of a basement of a bui ldin g rent ed str ictly to whites in a neighbo r hood borderi ng on Harl em. The narrator exp la ins that althoug h h e calls his ho me a " hole," it is not cold but on the cont ra ry is warm . And som ething mo re: My hole is warm and full of light. Yes, full of light . l doub t if ther e is a br ighter sp ot in all New York than thi s hole of mine, an d I do not ex clud e Broa dway. Or the Empire Stat e Building on a photographer's dream n ight . But that is taking ad vant age of yo u. Thos e two spots a re among the darkest of our w hole civilizatio n - pa rdon m e, our whol e culture (an imp ortant distinction, I've heard ) - whic h ma y sound like a hoax , or a contrad ict ion, but that (by contradictio n, I mean) is how the wor ld moves : No t like an arrow, but a boomerang. (Bewar e of those w ho spea k of the spi ral of histor y; th ey ar e preparing a boomerang. Keep a steel helmet hand y.) I k now ; I ha ve been boomeranged across my head so much that I now can see th e darknes s o f lightn ess. And I love light . Perhaps you'll think it strang e that an invisibl e man sh ould 1-1e ed light, desire light, love light. But maybe it is exac tly beca use I am inv isible . Light confirms my reality, gives birt h to my form . .. . Without light l am no t only invisible, but form less as well; and to be unaware of one's form is to live a death . I myself, after ex isting some tw enty years, did not become alive until I disco vered my invisibility. That is wh y I fight my battle with Monopolated Ligh t & Powe r [from which he siphons off the electricity needed to illuminate his " ho le" ]. The deepe r rea son, I mean: It a llow s me to feel my vita l aliveness. I a lso fight them fo r takin g so much of my mone y befor e I learned to prot ect myself. In my hole in the baseme nt the r e ar e exactl y I,369 lights. I'v e wired th e entire cei ling, every inch of it. And not with fluo rescent bulbs, but w ith th e o lder, more -exp ensive-to-ope r at e kind, the fila ment type. An act of sabotag e, you know. I've already begun to w ire the wall. A ju nk ma n T know, a man of vision, has suppl ied me with wir e and sockets. N othin g, storm o r flood, must get in th e way of our need for light and eve r more and bright er ligh t. The trut h is the light a nd light is the truth. When l finish all four walls, th en I'll sta rt on the floor. Just how that will go, T don 't know . Yet when you have lived inv isible as long as I ha ve yo u deve lop a certain ingenuity. I' ll solv e the problem. And ma ybe I'll invent a gadget to place my coffee po t on the fire w hile I lie in bed , and even invent a gadget to warm my bed - like the fellow I saw in o ne of thos e picture mag az ines who ma de

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24

Jeff Wall, After " Tnvisible Man" by Ralph Ellison, the Prologue , 1999- 200 1. Transparency in lighcbox. 17 4 x 250 .5

cm

himself a gadget to warm his sho es! Thou gh in visible, I am in th e great American tra dition of tink ers. That make s me kin to Ford , Edison and Franklin. Call me, since I have a theo ry and a concept, a "t hinker-tinker. " Yes, I'll warm my shoes; they need it, they're usually full of hole s. I'll do that and more. [6- 7l

It is hard not to instantly assoc iate Ellison' s theme of electric light w ith Wall 's lightbox technology - Wall too ha s a theor y and a concept and might be called a " thinker-tinker" as well as an artist - but rath er tha n dwell on th e conn ection I wa nt to concentrate on th e work itself, w hich is both like and unlike Adrian Walker . What the two have in common is that each is " a picture of someone engaged in his occupation an d not pa ying any att ention to, or responding to the fact that he is being observe d by the spectator. " In Af ter "Invisibl e Man" the prota gonist, a burly black man of indet erminate age (in his thirtie s?) and wear ing bro wn trouser s w ith suspender s, a sleeveless undershirt, and in ba re feet sits leaning forward on a met al folding chair while he dries a metal p ot - note the wet spot s

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on th e floor where pre sumably water has dripp ed from the p ot as he wal ked fro m th e sink to the chair. M o re th an in Adria n Walke r th e protagoni st is turned into the picture-space, with the result that his fac ial expression is mostly unreadable (jus t enough of his profile is seen for the viewer to im agine that he is deep in thought or reverie ), and h e is farth er away than Wall's draft sman - ten or fifteen feet rather than three or fo ur - wh ich grea tly incr eases the viewer's sense o f hi s separate ness an d alo neness. After "Invisible Man" is a lso larger th an Ad rian Walker - more th a n five feet high by mo re th an seven and a ha lf feet wide - and, m o re impo rtant, it depicts not a sparsely furni shed co rn er of a contemporary laborato ry but an expans ive if w ind ow less int erior cra mmed with misce llaneous objects all of which, to a greater or lesser degree, belo ng to a specific "his torica l" moment: aro und 19 50, ro ughly the time of t he w riting of Invisible Man . In terms of the implied narrativ e fram e of the image con sidered as a fiction , a ll th ose things are seen as havi ng been deliberat ely acquir ed by th e protagonist in order to furni sh his " hole" in a wa y tha t make s it a miniature reflection of the upper world from w hich, for th e tim e being, he has cho sen to retr ea t. But in term s of the impli ed narrati ve of th e pic tur e's productio n, the sam e item s are und erst oo d to ha ve been collect ed painstakingl y by th e artis t o r his agent s fo r th e purpo ses of constructing thi s wo rk. M y sense is that the viewe r cannot but think - and p ro bab ly is meant to th ink - of that acti vity of co llection as he o r she stand s before the pictur e. An ex hau stive inv entor y of th e contents of the roo m seem s beyond the view er's capac ity, but one can at least mention th e unco unt a ble array of ligbtbulb s, lit and unlit , that hang dow n from fixture s att ac hed to the cei ling (it is impossible to know wheth er there are in fact 1,369 of th ese, but it would not be sur pris ing if there were), an improvised mantel , vari o us ill-m atch ed pi eces of furniture , severa l brai ded rag rug s, miscellaneou s pieces of k itchen eq uipment (dishes, bowl s, pots, bottl es, mugs, cups ), a ceramic go lliwog (o n the mant el), a lucky rabbit 's foot (ha nging from the mantel), a lea th er bri efcase that figur es import antly in the novel, sever al po rta ble reco rd pla yers, items of clo thing and a few hangers (also a jur y-ri gged po le on w hich they hang), boots, sho e-trees, a tr as hcan and severa l oth er galvan ized iron can s, dis h cloths hun g up to dr y, a red -a nd-wh ite can of Co lgate toot h powder, a shav ing bru sh, a small American flag with forty-e ight sta rs, a numb er of small black- an d-whit e photographs (like the flag, affixed to th e card boa rd -covere d mak eshift wa ll), multi ple elect ric outlets, a few books a nd at least one reco rd , sca tt ered peanut shells (on th e low tabl e to the In visible Man's left) , and finall y, resti ng on the top of the back of a gree n padd ed chair , sections of w hat ap pear s to be a manuscript - pres um ably the manuscript o f inv isible Man. (Significantly, the Prol og ue says nothing abou t th e cont ent s of the " hole, " apa rt from the refer ence to the lightbulb s, the wi re and soc kets need ed to support them, and one "radio-phonogra ph." As Wall ex plains: "M y pict ure suggests th at, like Ellison, th e nar rator took if not seven years at leas t so me considerab le tim e to writ e his book , and tha t he has lived in th e cellar all that time. Th e room ha s been furnis hed a nd even clutter ed w ith his possess ions, some purc hased, some fo und, so me fabric ate d, a few saved fr om the tim e befo re he went undergroun d . The text does not go into int o great descriptiv e deta il ... " 12 ) Cons idere d so lely as rep resent atio n, th e domin ant impre ssion co n veyed by the p ictu re is at o nce of the In vis ible M a n's qui et absorption in his simp le tas k (also in tho ught or reverie) - his profil e may be largely los t to view but th e behold er is in no doub t of the

46

w hy photography matters as art as never before

import of his body language - and of the enve lopin g, all but stupefying profuseness of his immediate environment, to which he appears, for the time being, more or less obliv ious. A further impr ession , harder to make precise, is of th e connectedness of the two: as thou gh th e Invisible Man's absorptive state, hence unawareness of his surroundings, is an enabling condition if not of that profuseness itself at any rate of its appearance as such in the picture. Earlier I suggested that the link between absorption and realism is one of the unacknowl edged stap les or "opera tors" of Western painting since the midI 590s. Simply put, I believe that there exists a strong affinity or mutual attunement of: I) a thematics of absorption and hen ce of a depicted personage's seeming obliviousness to his or her surroundings; 2) the implied temporal protractedness of such a state; an d 3) the pictorial project of close and detailed description as well as, following on from that, 4) the spectato ria l project of close and detailed loo king. More precisely, the first two factors (absorption-plu s-temporal dilation ) larg ely enable the third and fourth (th e pictorial and spectatorial project s) by giving both artist and beholder the time and so to speak the psychic freedom needed for the successful enactment of th eir respective tasks. (A related factor is chiaroscuro, which enhances the effect of absorptive motifs even as it contribute s to the sculptural illusionism of the resulting pictur e. Caravaggio , again, is the decisiv e initi at ing figure. ) Some such affinity or attunement is, I feel, in force in After "Invisible Man", thou gh whether or not Wall consciously reco gnized the separate terms in the picture's synthe sis rema ins unclear. In an important sense, of course , exactly how and why Wall came to do what he did ha rdly matters; what doe s matter is how the picture works, which in this context means how to characterize its impact on the viewer. These are delicate issues conceptually, but as far as Wall's art is concerned, both the impr ession of a bsorption and the illusion of "reality," even in photograph s th at the reflective viewer recogn izes ca n only have been staged, turn out to be surpri singly ro bust. (No t that an awareness of stage dness play s no role at all in the viewer's ultimat e respo nse to the work - far from it. More on this as I proceed.) Another way of putting the above might be to say that Wall's picture goes far beyond Ellison 's prologue in seek ing to recrea te the world of the Invisible Man - this is how I unde rsta nd the eno rmous effort of co llectin g period item s and arran ging them so as to create a plausible environment for EIJison's (and Wall's) protagonist - and th at it turns out to ha ve been inherent in that endeavor that the Invisible Man him self should appear "not to be 'acting out' hi s wor ld, only 'being in' it, " to adapt Wall's words quoted earlier. As if on ly by virtu e of th e Invisible Man's seem ing obliviousness to his wo rld cou ld the latter have yielded itself up to depiction - I wo uld like to say : only thus could the world ha ve manife sted itself - as it do es here. (This is a stron ger vers ion of something alrea dy said in the previous paragraph.) The concepts of "wo rld" - and even more to the point, of "being in" the world- are centr al to one of the major philosophical texts of the tw entieth centur y, Martin Heidegger's Being and Time (1927),u an d my conte ntion is that up to a point (I will show where that point lies) After "Invisible Man" is a stro ngly "Heidegger ian" work. Nat ur ally I cannot begin to do justice to the German ph ilosopher's noto riously difficu lt ma sterwork in a few sentences, but I might begin by saying with Robert Pippin that central to Heidegger's atte mpt to construct a phenomenologi cal ont ology is his "emphasis on the ro le of unthematic , practical engageme nt as essen-

Jeff wall and absorpt ion; heidegger on worldhood

and t echno logy

47

tial, even prior , in any relatio n to a nd within th e wor ld." 14 That is, Heidegge r stands oppo sed to th e notion that primordiall y D ase in (ro ugh ly, human being 15) confronts a world of o bjects in an d of th emse lves (in w hat he ca lls the mode o f "pr esent -at-h an d"). Rath er, H eidegger imagin es Da se in as continually "abso rbed" (his wo rd; the German infiniti ve is aufgehen) in pract ical acti vity, which is to say as co ntinua lly putt ing things to use, in the mod e of "e quipm ent " or " rea din ess- to -han d," for part icular pu rposes. Onl y w hen th at relation ship is suspe nd ed, either because a piece of eq uipm ent breaks down or for so me ot her reason (in H eidegger's lan g uage, when the re is a "de-ficiency in o ur havin g-to-do w ith th e world concern fully " r88] ), 16 d oes D ase in ent er "t he sole remaining mod e of Being- in, the mode o f just tarrying alongside . ... T his kind of Being towards the wo rld is on e which lets us encounter entitie s w ithin -the-wor ld pure ly in the way they look, just th at; on the basis of thi s kind of Being , a nd as a mode of it, looking explici tly at wha t we encounter is possible" (88 ). 17 (Even the n , howeve r, such a relatio nship is not o ne between a subj ect and objec ts. He idegge r writes : "T his pr esence-athan d of so methin g that ca nnot be u sed is sti ll not devoid of a ll readiness- to- hand w hatsoeve r; equ ip ment wh ich is p rese nt- a t-h and in this way is still not just a Thi ng whic h occ ur s so mew here" [10 3]. 18 ) Ind eed his subse qu ent analysis of mod es of presenta t-h and co nt in uall y disc ove rs o ne o r an other "deficient" relation to mode s of concern, in spec ific resp ects that need not co ncern us here . 19 Moreover, the primordia lness of abso rption in practica l act ivity is cruc ial to understandin g what Hei degger ca lls " th e wo rldhood of th e world," whic h he unders tands as somet hin g like the to tality of "refer ences" o r "assignments" that determine the nature o f th e activity in question (105-7, r14-2 0 ; 69 - 71, 77 - 8 1). Thus for example we use a hammer in ord er to join board s toge th er; w e do th at in order to mak e a wa ll or a Aoo r; we do that in o rd er to co nstruct a hou se; we do that in order to find shelter from the elements; all this rakes place in th e contex t of becomin g part of a community of housedwellers; an d so on. In additi on, the very need for shelter discovers " the environing Natu re. " H eidegger continues: " In roads, str eets, brid ges, bu ilding s, our concern discov ers Nature as hav ing some definite dir ecti on " ( LOo),20wh ich is to say th at ultimately Na tu re itself is disclose d to D asei n by the latter's a bsorpti on in practical activity. Once aga 111 th e assignments them selves are not o bser ved; th ey are rather " there" when we concernfull y submit ourselves to t hem. But when an assignment has been disturbed whe n so meth ing is unu sab le for some purpo se [e.g., when a ha mm er breaksl - then th e assignment becomes expli cit . ... When an assignment to some partic ular " towar ds-thi s" has been thus circ um spec tly aroused, we catc h sight of th e "towa rd sthi s" itse lf, and along w ith it every thi ng connect ed with th e wo rk - th e whole "workshop" - as that wherein concern always dwe lls. The co ntext of equipm ent is lit up Ian exp ression to w hich I shall return l, not as somet hin g never seen before, but as a totality constant ly sighted befor ehand in circum spection. Wi th this totali ty, however , the worl d announc es itse lf. 105]2 1

r

More succ inctl y: "In anyt hin g read y-to-hand th e world is a lways ' th ere'" (114). 22

48

why photography

matters

as art as never before

Things that are ready-to-hand are also fundamentally dose, de-sev ered, located m "regions" and "plac es" keyed to structures of concern. The alternative is stark: When space is discov ered non -circumspectively by just looking at it, the environm ental region s get neutraliz ed to pur e dimensions. Places - and ind eed the w hol e circu mspectively or iented totality of places belonging to equipme nt ready-to-hand - get reduced to a multiplicity of positions for random Thin gs . Th e spatiality of what is ready-to-hand within-the -world loses its involv ement-character, and so does the readyto-hand. T he world loses its specific aroundness; the environm ent becomes the world of Nature. The "world," as a totality of equip ment ready-to-hand, becomes spa tia lized to a context of extended Things which are just present-at-hand and n o more. The hom ogeneous space of Nature show s itself only when the entities we encounter are discovered in such a way that the wo rld ly cha racter of the ready-to-ha n d gets specifica lly deprived of its worldhood . [14 7 J23 The claim I want to mak e about After "In visible Man" is that w hether or not its mak er had Being and Time in mind (1 consider it unlikely), Wall's picture is to say the least open to being understood as an attempt to picture the Invisible Man's immedi ate environment in someth ing like th e Heideggerian terms just adumbrated, that is, as distinctly ot her than or prior to "a context of ext ended Things which are jus t pres ent- athand and no more." The uncountable array of lightbulb s, lit and unlit, wh ich dominat es th e picture , is in relation to the novel a p erfect example of the structure Heidegg er calls "in-order-to" - as the prologue explains, in order not just to light the Invisible Man's secret domain (a Heideggerian "region" if ever there was one ) but also to commit "a n act of sabotage" aga inst the unseeing society outside his "ho le." More broadl y, virt ually all the objects in the picture, down to the snapshots an d th e American flag, ha ve been shaped or reshaped to human purpos es (to structur es of "concern") in wa ys that scarcely requir e further commentary. Seen in these terms, the Invisible Man's absorption - like Adrian Walker's befor e him - assumes particular significance. Ind eed there is a suggestive analogy, of which until coming to grips with this picture I was only partly aware, betw een H eidegger's anal ysis of Being-in-the-world, with its stra teg ic emp loyment of the concept o f absorption, and my own philosoph ically much less developed proposals concerning the affinit y betwe en absorption and realism in Western painting from Caravaggio on. As if realism, or absorptive rea lism, has from the first been Heidegg erian in its impli cit ontolog y, or as if Heidegger in Being and Time develops philosophically an insight tha t had belonged to Western painting - more precisely, to a major current within Western paintin g - for mo re than thr ee centuries . In any case, all this seems to me of interest for several reasons. In th e first place , it amo unts to one mor e demonstration of the philosophical - specifically, the ontological - depth of which painting is capable (1 am deliberately holdin g off mentioning photography - but wait). Th is is a genera l point but one wort h under scoring in view of the usual intellectual assumptions governing the history of art as an academic discipline. In the second place, the concep ts of world and wor ldhood will play an important albeit

Jeif wa ll and absorption;

he 1degger on worldhood

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49

intermittent ro le in this book; it is beyon d my powers here to offer a full theorization of eith er in relat ion to the photography th at I sha ll be discussing (nor is it clear that such a theorization is precisely called for), but I ca n at least say that Heidegger's emp hasis on abso r bed prac tica l activ ity, hence oblivio usness to one's surround ings beyond the im mediate sphe re of such act ivity, as revelatory of wo rldh ood wi ll be relevant to much of what follows in th ese pages. 24 Mo re broadly (in the third place, as it were), considerations of absorpt ion such as those I have been rehea rsing direct atte ntio n not only to certain ontologica l dimensio ns of Wall's (and others') ph otograp hs bu t also to a zone of cont inuit y - of sha red concerns a nd resources - between painting and photograp hy (that was Wa ll's poi n t in his conversation with Schwander). Yet there is an important sense in whic h the Heidegger ian issues just summa rized a lso present a spec ial cha llenge to photog rap hy. For what is ph otography, wh at has it been (and been celebrated for being) since 1839 whe n Daguerre's inventi o n was ma de availab le to all part ies, if not a techn ology for automatically depicting "the 'world' ... as a cont ext of extended Things wh ich are ju st present -at-han d an d no more"? It is as if photography in its inmost nature h as from the first been a profoundly anti- or at least un- Heidegge rian medi um or enterprise (refe rring to the He idegger of Being and Time), muc h more so than painting in oi ls, wh ich virtually fro m the start has had th e capabi lity of the matizing the fact that a fin ished picture is inevitably th e produc t, and in cer tain respects the record, of tbe pa inter 's sustained absor pti o n over time in the act of painting . (Some painters have been particu lar.ly brilliant at suggesti ng th is.) In contrast, photography, not being in that sense a work of the ha nd, finds it vas tly more difficult, n ot to say imp oss ible, to produce images th at " read" unequivocally in those terms. Yet precisely because that is the case, the stage has been set (so to speak) for certa in photographers, Wall preeminen tly, to work aga inst the gra in of photographic spatia lization and world-deprivation - of its address to a subject who " looks exp licitly" at th e photograph and all it depicts - in the He idegger ian direction I have been tr ying to evoke. The result will inevitab ly be a comprom ise; th ere ca n be n o sheer ly H eideggerian photograph, o ne that makes "direct ly" accessible to the viewer a par ticula r Dasein's practical absorpt ion in the wor ld . Indeed it is a bove all the viewe r 's aware ness of the fact that Wall's Invisible Man is posing for th e camera and tha t his surro un dings have been laboriously co nstruc ted by the photographer - in other words, that the picture as a who le has been deliberately and elaborately staged - that on the one hand reduces to a minimum any tendency on the par t of the viewer to "i dentify" with th e pro tagonist and on the other actively promotes the kind of imagin at ive engage ment with an d philosophical reflection on the larger import of the picture that I have been pursuing here. In ot her wo rd s, After "invisible Man" is no t an image of the protago nist's mind, his fantasy wo rld , his private vision of rea lity; it is a picture of a sha red world, inflecte d individua lly. But it took all th e photographer's artis tr y to make such a rea ding availab le to the viewer. And a crucia l aspect of that art istry involved an ack nowle dgment of to-be-seenness, w hich emerges in this co ntext as a necessary con diti on for th e successful depiction of world-mea nin gfu lness in contemporary photography.

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why photography

matters as art as never before

25

Jeff Wall, Untangling, 1994. Transparency in lightbox. 189 x 250.5 cm

What there is not, obviously, in After "Invisible Man" is any attempt to evoke the sort of breakdown in equipment that, in Heidegger's metaphor, "lights up" for Dasein the totality of assignments "constantly sighted beforehand in circumspection," and along with that totality the worldhood of the world. 25 (Here it is worth noting the parallel between th is figure of speech, which Heidegger uses repeatedly, and Wall's lightbox technology.) But an otherwise enigmatic photograph of the mid -199os, Untangling (1994; Fig. 2 5 ), invites being seen in those terms. The action takes place in a tool -rental shop with a cement floor and wooden ceiling; pairs of fluorescent bu lbs on the latter illuminate the scene. In th e shelves at the left are lawnmower-type engines and engine blocks, perhaps awaiting reconditioning; elsewhere one finds paint sprayers, compressors, wheelbarrows, little cement mixers, _small backhoes, drills, and so on. 26 Toward the right and perhaps twenty feet away a standing workman in a blue bas eball ca p seems to be looking for something on an upper shelf; and in the left foreground, much nearer the viewer, another workman with a moustache, light brown hair, and blue overgarment

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26 Jeff Wall, Rainfilled Suitcase, 20or. Tra nsparency in lightbox. 64 .5 x 80 cm

27 Jeff Wall, Peas and Sauce, 1999 . Transparency in light box . 49 x 6r cm

grasps in his gloved ha nd s two lengths of thick blu e-paint ed rope whic h quickly lead to a seemingly intractable tangle of heavy, tub e-like cab les and ropes of other co lors. The title of th e wo rk suggests th at he has em barked or is about to em bar k on the job of untangling all those ropes; I put matters this way because it is not clear whether the process of untan gling has actu ally begun: th e wor kman - no doubt pos ed by Wa ll looks dow n on the m ass of ropes befor e him w ith a frown ing, absorbed-seeming expression, but the viewer instinctively senses that the task itself hove rs on the brink of imposs ibi lity, in which case th e workman will soo n be encou n terin g the tangled ropes "pure ly in th e way they look, " if he is n ot already d oing so . (No ne of this quite depends on th e evoca tion of the wo rkm an's stat e of mind; on th e contrary, it is hard not to feel that the picture wou ld be stro nger if both men we re absent.) Also to the point are three sm aller works roug hl y cont emporary with After "Invisible Man" and in fact exhibited along with it on at least one occasion : Rain-filled Suitcase (2001; Fig. 26), a downward view of an aba ndoned su itcase (at first glance it seems mor e like a dresser dr awe r) partly filled with ra inwater a nd sur round ed by scraps of paper, discarded paper cup s, and other bit s of ur ba n detritu s (the impression is of stuff aba ndoned in an alley); Peas and Sauce (1999; Fig. 27), a sm all, mos tly empty tinfoil conta iner of peas, partly bent out of shape, that seems to have been cast down on the same a lley floo r; and Diagonal Composition No. 3 (2000; Fig. 28), on e of thr ee pictures with th e same basic title , wh ich comprises a view from above of an interior floo r cove red with cracked a nd dirty lino leum, a met a l pa il on four ro llers co nt ainin g rusty slop water, and, on the floor beside it, the filthy head of a many-st randed mop. In Ro lf Laut er's wo rds:

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why photog raphy matters as art as never before

28

Jeff Wall, Diagonal Composition No. 3,

2000.

29 Jeff Wall, Diagona l Composition, 1993 . Transparency in lightbox . 40 x 46 cm

Tran sparency m lightbox. 74 .5 x 94 cm

30 J eff Wall, Diagonal Composition N o. pare ncy in lightbox. 5 2 . 5 x 64 cm

. ,,

2,

199 8. Trans-

The collection of objects leaves no doubt as to the content of the picture. We are looking from above at a still life of cleaning implements such as can be found anywhere in the United States. However, their appearance and condition is [sic] io conflict with the function of the objects. The dirty, dri ed mop and slop bucket with th e water standing in it seem not to have been used for a long rime. The place, possibly a cellar or clea ning room in an office building, has not been cleaned in some time, and perhaps not even entere d. The room is abandoned, th e objects forgorten. 27 Lauter may go coo far in his spec ulation that th e room has not been enrered (what can that mean in the light of the picture itself?) but his claim that there is an apparent conflict between the present condition of the mop and pail and their normal functioning is suggestive, and although he does not quite say so, the viewer's sense of such a conJlict is made more intense by the sharply downward view of those objects and, especia lly, by their eccentric, Rodchenkoe sq ue framing (one is shown a surprising extent of floor relative to the mop and pail). An earl ier work, Wall's first Diagonal Composition (1993; F ig. 29), a downward, close-range view of pare of a seemingly dry and dirty sink on the ledge of which there rests a cracked and dirty (also dry) piece of soa p, appears in retrospect to set the terms for the later pictures of malfunction with respect both to the choice of subject matter (in the Diagonal Compositions at any rate} and to the adoption of a point of view that ca lls attention to th e photographer's activity, thereby con firming a cer tain phenom eno logical (and ontological?) distance from th e ordinary use of the objects depicted (as Lauter recognizes 28). Oddness, verg ing on perversity, of point of view is even more palpable in Diagonal Composition No. 2 (1998; Fig. 30), a picture that seems designe d to frustrate the viewer's impulse to see more than a bare minimum of the obj ects it depicts (a sink , a rag and stick on the £Joor to the low er right, a patched greenish wall, the wooden floor itself). Yet just for chat reason, the weight of the image falls all the more strongly on the "look" of the total ensemble. Then there are three other pictures, A Sapling Held by a Post (1999; Fig . 31), Clipped Branches, East Cordova St., Vancouver (I999; Fig. 32), and Cuttings (200 .L), that may perhaps be read in a com plementary spirit as figures of "care," Sorge, the phenomenon in terms of which "the Being of Da sein in general is to be defined" (157) .29 (Related terms are "concern," Besorgen, and "so licitud e," Fursorge;30 it is not usefu l to try to distinguish more sharply among these in the present con text.) Of A Sapling Lauter writes: "The supported sapling becomes a symbo l of the socia l necessity to support chjldr en, young people and the weak in some form or other. Without help they cannot dev elop, strengthen, and look after their own natural or socia l balance" (3 5 ). As a readin g I find this a bit too "symbolic," but the basic idea is doubtless correct, and I understand the pictures of cuttings in much the same light, with the clipped branches as the residue of equ ipm ent -using, care-givin g activity. For Lauter, however, the second work ar least has a critical dimension, depicting the integration of chose nat ural elements within an "urba n space that only serves as a place for dogs to urinate or as a receptacle for people co deposit the small, invisibl e Litter of prosperity, such as casually discarded medicine packaging, cigarette stubs or other urban consumer remnants" (35). This is the so rt of sociological reading chat Wall's art is routinely subjected to, but for

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why photography matters as ar1 as neve r befo re

31 Jeff Wall, A Sapling Held by a Post, 1999. Transparency in lightbox. 56 x 47 cm

3 2 Jeff Wall, Clipped Branches, East Cordova St., Vancouver, 1999. Transparency in lightbox. 72 x 89 cm

me the overall feeling of Cuttings is not at all critical in this sense. (By the same token, my reading of those works in terms of "c are" risks imparting its own apolitical pathos to Heidegger's ontological notion. 3 1) A recent and, to my mind, altogether compelling wor k that stands in a more comp lex relation to Heideggerian matters is Staining Bench, Furniture Manufacturer 's, Vancouver (2003; Fig. 33), where the inference of repeat ed use of equipment over a period of time is inescapable. Thus the neatly arrang ed cans of stain, the brushes and thin painter's gloves resting on the lid of the nearest can, and the wooden stirrer leaning against that can, although not shown in actual use, are, I think, not presented as marked by a "deficiency in our hav ing-to-do with the world concernfully." Rather, they are depicted in a way that thematizes both the purposes to which they have been put and the work-world - the "reg ion " - within which they have been employed. (And will be again, no doubt: one senses that the very meticulousness with which the cans have been resealed and arrange d belongs to a certain routine of work.) The image itself, at two-and-a -half feet by just over three feet, is not large . Yet it is so remarkably replete, so richly tactile, so densely layered with material traces of practical activity (the gloves, once noticed, seem almost like shed skin, while the table cover impregnated with stain appears sticky to the touch) that it might be said at once to confirm and to escape H eidegger's categories, as if the photograph represents equipment, thing s in the mode of readiness-to-hand - only not for us viewers . Or perhaps one might say that Staining Bench discovers a strictly photographic eq uiva lent of "readiness-to-hand" that in the end chiefly brings into focus

jeff wa ll and abs orp tio n; he idegg er on wo rldhood and tech nology

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3 3 Jeff Wall, Staining Bench, Furnitur e Manufactur er's, Vancouver, box. 77 .5 x 96 cm

20 03.

Transparency in light-

the Heidegge rian theme in relati on to the photo grap her' s use o f the cans of stain and associated item s to make h is picture.

There is one even more rcccnr work by Wall, A View from an Apartment (200 4-5; Fig. 34), th at I wan t to approach in th e light of Heidegger's wri tings. The settin g, as in many of his works, is Wa ll's na tive Va nco uver, a city bu ilt aro und a magnificent natural h arbor. For years Wall had wan ted to make a picture based on a view of th e harbor thr oug h a window, and finally he decided co do so . Th is is whar doin g so entailed. First, he searc hed extensively for an apartment that wo uld hav e the kind of view he wan ted; this rook a long time (Wa ll spend s many hours dr iving a roun d Vancouve r looking for settings an d subjects) but eventually he found what he was after and rented th e apa rtment for an indefinite period. Second, he held casting tryouts to discover a young woman wh o would suit the sort of pictu re he had in mind. His cho ice wa s the mod el for the walking figure to the left, a former art student in her ear ly twe ntie s. Wall discu ssed the

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project witb her at length, exp laining that to all intents and purposes she wou ld be his coUaborator rather than simpl y the subj ect of a photo. Toward that end he gave her money to furnish and decorate th e apartment accor din g to her tastes (and according to the financial level they agreed a yo ung woman like herself would be living at). Over a period of weeks and months she did that . In add ition, Wall encouraged her to spend as much time as possible in th e apartment, so that it wou ld come to feel famil iar to her. She did that also. Further conversati on led to the decision that she vvould not be alone in tbe photograph but would have a friend for company; the frien d, chos en by the youn g woman, was also encouraged to spend time in tbe apartment, wh ich she did. It was then necessary to determine wh at the two wo men woul d be doing in the pic ture; Wall told me that the on e thing he knew he wanted was for one of the women to be engaged in iron ing napk ins or some similar activ ity. (ln his 200 5 catalogu e raisonne Wall comments on his interest in the theme of cleaning , washing, and housewor k - a ll everyday act ivities involved in rhe maintenance, the keepin g up , of our common world -in "care , " I am tempt ed ro say.32 ) Eventually a basic scenario was decided on and the shooting began; ir lasted about rwo weeks, as Wa ll ha d the wom en rep eat these and other actions again and again in an attempt to ach ieve an effect of naturalness. It also became clear to Wall that the ideal hour for the picture was dusk, when street lamps and oth er lights came on outside . This meant that photographically speaking there was an obviou s mism atch between the interi or illumination of the apartmen t (itself the resu lt of lights not depict ed in the photograph) and the crepuscular scene through the win do w, a mismatch that Wall hand led by shoot ing the two separately and then re concil ing th em with the aid of a com puter (this would have been require d even if the hour chos en had been earlier in the day}. In fact the picture as it now stands is the product of nw11erous shots chat hav e been seamlessly blended to gether digitally. The entire project from start to finish - fro m rent ing the apar tment to th e fina l image - rook more than two years. A View is not very large in comp,H·ison with ocher mu lti-figure works by Wa U:,roughly five and a half feet high by eight feet wide. It is also somewha t different in feeling from bot h Adrian Wallur and After "Invisible Man" in that one is given a more or less fronta l view of the principa l young woman as she turns from her ironing- o.r perhaps from the table beyond? - and begins to cross the room in her stockinged feet . Mor ever, she is caught in motion, which is not true of eith er of the ocher works (or of absorp tive paint ing general ly ). Howev er, like Adrian Walker's and the Invisible Man's action s only more so, hers is not unambiguously readable in narrative terms . She ho lds a cloth napkin in both hands, her head is tilted slightly downward, and her abstracted gaze is directed downward and to her right (toward the laundry in the basket? }- but what exac tly is she doing with the napkin and wh ere is she going? Here too I emphatically do not regard this lack of tota l clari ty as an artistic flaw; on the contrary, the ambiguity- or resistance to reading - seems on the side of reality, so to speak: it is as if Wall welcome d a moment in the act ion chat on the on e ha11d was perspic uous as regards its ove.rall significance but on the other refused total comprehensibility, as mom ents in reality often do . As for the picture as a whole , I ha ve no idea whether Wall had Eugene Delacroix's Algerian Women (r 834; Fig. 35} in mind as an implicit term of refe rence , bur the wa lking

jeff wa ll and absor pt ion; heidegge r on world hood and t echno logy

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34 Jeff Wall, A View from an Apartment, 2004-5 . Transparency in lightbox. r67 x 244 cm

woman's dancelike grac e, a ll the more moving for the "uncool" look of her short grey socks, recall s it to me, as does th e gener al sense of a femininized int er ior, as different from one anoth er as th e two interior s an d their occupa nts are - and of co urse it is impossib le to forger that Wall began his mature photographic career with The Destroyed R oom (1978), an inspired free variatio n o n Delacroix's Death o( Sa,·danapalus. (Anot her pos sibl e reference, keyed to the notion of an int ernally framed view, is Gustav e Ca illebotte's Young Man at a Window [1875 l.) By now it is hardly necessa ry to remark that neither woman appears aware of the presence of the photographer . M ore accurately, the wom an sea ted o n the couch - who has been drinking tea a nd eatin g a snack- appears ab sor bed in her magazine (unprobl ematica lly, so to sp eak), w hile the wal kin g woman, although facing the camera, does so with averted gaze. Yet, precisely because the rationale for th e wa lkin g woman's moveme nt s rema ins obscure, th e possibility can not be rul ed out that she is delib era tely avoiding m akin g eye -cont ac t with th e camera. In any case, t here is no question of the women having been photographed withou t the ir knowl -

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3 5 Eugene Delacroix, Algerian Women, 1834 . Oil on canvas. r8o x 229 cm . Musee du Louvre, Paris

edge, besides which the composi tion as a whole conveys an unmistakable sense of deliberate constructio n th at belongs to what I have called to-be -seenness and have associated with the pres ent impossibility of any unproblematic or "naive" return to the absorptive strategies of the pre -modernist trad ition - or rath er, to the impossibility of any such return count ing ar tistically in the present situa tion. (Interest ingly, Delacroix's Algerian Women sta nds apart from that tradition, as does his oeuvre generally.) Tben there are what for want of a better term may be called the self-referential aspe~ts of Wall's photograph, in the first place because the view throug h the window inescapably presents itself as analogous to the lightbox image itself (Fig. 36) . In part this has to do with the similar physical proportions of the two "p ictures." Plus there is the fact of dusk, wh ich calls attention both to the lighting of the int erior scene and of the pr esence of artificia l illumin ation in places in the exterior scene as well . Finally and cruciall y, there is an obvious {but not, I th ink, too obvious) thematization of the modern global ized technology on which the lightbox image relies for its existence, from the television set in the left foreground (an image-making device, needless to say) to the cellphone rest ing on some magazines on the low table to the left of the seated woman, and reach ing a climax, so ro speak, in the exterior scene: traversed by power lines, with a ship docked in the harbor bearing on its side the name "Han jin " (a Korean shipp ing company) in large white letters, spidery orange cranes beyond it, and the spectra l mod ern Vancouver skyline in the far distance, the whole offering a condensed image of global izat ion that the viewer registers as at once contrasting w ith an d as subtending- one might even say supporting - the domestic inter ior.33 That neither of the two you ng women tak es in the view from the w indow mak es the juxtaposition of interior and exte rior spaces only more compelling, as do the hovering reflections of light sources, the originals of wh ich are evidently located inside the apartment, in the double-glazed

je ff wall and abs_orpt1on;heidegger on wor ldhood and techno logy

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36

Jeff Wall, A View from

a11Apartme11t, detail

window itself - the window glass standing in for the Cibachrome transparency, or say for its " inv isibl e" surface. (R eflections are a conspicuous motif throughout the picture, involving not only t he window but also the tel evision screen an d th e polished wooden floor.) Nor surpr isingly, in view of thi s chapter's engagement with Heideg ger, the treatment of the t heme of techno logy in A View from an Apartment recalls for me the philosopher's power ful albeit prob lema tic essay, "T he Qu estion Concerning Technology," first given as a lecture in 1955. 34 (Two other essays, "Th e Age of the World Picture" [1938] and "The Turnin g" l19 501, are pertin ent as we ll.35 ) For the lacer H eidegge r, whose thought undergo es a shift away from fundament a l on tolo gy- "the ana lysis of Dasein's understanding of being and t he world it opens up" - coward a more cultural -hisrorical project- conceiving of "world disclosing as D asein's receiving of a succession of clearings" 36- technolo gy under stood as En-framing, Ge-stell, and the related notion of {technologized) natur e, more simply the rea l, as "standing reserve," are dete rminin g of modern scientific cult Uie. In Heidegger's words, technology is a challenge "wh ich puts

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to na tu re th e unreasonable demand that it suppl y energy that can be extracted and stored as suc h " (" Qu estion,'' p. 14). Whatever else Wall 's pictur e is "a bout,'' it surely depicts th e every day use of stored ene rg y, as well as, thr oug h the w indow, so met hing of th e opera tions that ma ke th at possible. By "Enframing" Heidegger means to sugges t that such a stance toward nature involves a kind of distanc ing, or as he puts it in ''T he Age of th e World Pictur e" an "objec tifying of whatever is, [tha t] is accomplished in a sett ing before, a represent ing, tha t aims at br inging eac h particular being before it in suc h a way tha t man who calculates can be sure, and that means be certain, of that being" ("P ictLLre," p . 1 27) . More succinctly, "the worl d is transformed into picture and man into subjectum" ("Question," p. 133), the being for whom the En-frame d p ictu re has been set up . H eidegger is deeply troubled by this state of affai rs, above all beca use in his accoun t Enframing blocks access to "a more original revealing and hence to experienc[ing] the call of a more prim a l truth" ("Q uestion," p . 28) . H oweve r, perhaps surpri singly, th ere is hope, for the "rule of Enframing canno t exha ust itse lf solely in blocking all 1ightingup of every revealing, a ll ap peari ng of truth. Rather, precisely the essenc e of technology must harbor in itseLfth e grow th of the sav ing power. But in that case, might no t an ade quate look into wha t Enfra niing is as a destining of revea ling bri ng into appearance the saving power in its aris ing?" (ibid. )37 This is said in the cours e of glossing two lines by Holderlin: "But where danger is, grows/The saving pow er also" (a sta tement with a somew hat equivocal resonance in the light of n-ventieth-century Germ a n history) . Fmther on Hei degger w rite s: The coming to presence of technolo gy threatens revealing, thr eatens it wi th the pos sibility tha t a ll revea ling will be consumed in orde ring and that everything will pr esent itself only in the unconcealedness of standing-reserve . Human activity can never directly counter this dange r. Hum an ach ievement alone can never ban ish it. But human .reflection can ponder the fact that all saving power mus t be of a higher essence th an what is endangere d, though at the same rime kindred to it. But might th ere not perhaps be a more primally grante d revealing that cou ld bring the saving power into its first shining for th in the midst of the danger, a revealing that in the technological age rather conceals than shows itself? l"Q uest ion," pp. 33- 4J This "mor e pr imall y gra nted rev ealing" was the accomplishment of the arts in anc ient Greece, w hich also bore the name techne and whic h "bro ught the presence [GegenwartJ of the gods, brought th e dialogu e of divin e and human destinings, to radiance" (34). (At th e risk of simp lifying his thou ght, the lat er Heidegger grants abso lut e p rior ity ro "the pre -Socratic interpretat ion of all reality as presencing ." 38 ) This in turn leads to the concluding qu estion : "Cou ld it be that t he fine arts [i.e. the ar ts in our time] are called to poetic revea ling? Co uld it be that revea ling lays claim to the a rts most primally, so that they for their part may expressly foster the growth of the saving power, may awaken and foun d anew our look into that whic h grants our trust in it ? Whether art may be granted t his high est possib ility of its essence in the mid st of th e extr eme dang er, no one can tell" ("Question,'' p . 35) .

jetf wall and absorpti on: he1degger on worldhood

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61

Naturally, I do not mean to claim that Wall's A View from an Apartment fulfills Heidegger's hopes, roughly seventy years after the writing of the words I have just cited ("The Age of the World Picture" was first given as a lecture in x938} . In the first place, there is no reason to think that Heidegger' s later texts , any more than Being and Time, have been important to Wall. Furthermo re, apart from other considerations, A View is uncomestably a picture (with another picture "ins ide" it), which presumab ly would invalidate it as a work of poetic revea ling in Heidegge r's understanding of the concept. Or perhaps not: think of the significance attributed to Van Gogh's unspecified painting 19 of peasant shoes in "The Origin of the Work of Art," written just a few years before. Fina lly, it is certain that Heidegg er would have found in the act ions of the two women, not to mention the appearance of the apartment itself, an image of routinized banality - what might be called a "bad" everyday - rather than of a largely pos itive mode of domestic intimacy - a "good" everyday -which is what I have no doubt the artist intended. 40 (More on the topic of the everyday in the next chapter.} Indeed what Wall's picture may be taken to reveal is precisely the at-homeness of the two young women in the present technological world, or say the way in w hich technology in its current globalized incarnation provides the framing structure for a mode of being-in-the -world, of everydayness, toward which, at least seen from "o utside," the artist feels positively drawn. Not that A View is devoid of any critical dimension: it cannot be taken as endorsing every aspect of the lifestyle it depicts - the ubiquitousness of television, for example, or the ro le of Vancouver in the new global economy. Yet whatever implicit cr i6cism may be at work goes unstressed and in any case A View, like all Wall's Ligbtbox pictmes like all his photographs, lightbo x or other wise - is technological to its core . So A View is anything but Heideggerian in its deepest content (no imp lied harking back to the preSocratics, fostering of a "saving power," or invocations of "extreme danger") even if, as I believe, "The Question Concerning Technology" and related texts prov ide a uniquely product ive basis for engaging with Wall's long -plotted, artfully constructed , yet also mysterious and lyrical tableau. 41

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why photogr aphy m atte rs as art as neve r be fo re

jeff wa ll , wittgenstein,

and the everyday

3

Wall's involvement with absorption and with what, following Heidegger, I have been calling the worldhood of th e world is closely related to his longstand ing interest in the ordinary, the commonplace, or, his preferred term, the everyday, a topic that comes up frequently in his many interviews. ' For Wall, the importance of the everyday for modern art goes back at least to Baudelaire and the idea of the painting of modern (jfe, another theme that Wall has spoken of in interviews, though .mainly in earlier ones. lt is not my purpose in th is chapter any more than in the previous to survey Wall's development since r 9 78, the date of The Destroyed Room, his first lightbox picture, but I think it is fair to say that he has moved from works whose fictional or staged or otherwise construct ed aspects are in different ways positively announced (such as Picture for Women [r979], Double Self-Portrait [1979], Stereo [1980], Woman and Her Doctor [1980-81), Doorpusher [1984], Bad Goods [1984), The Thinker [1986], Outburst [1989], and The Drain [1989)), through a phase of far more spectacular or indeed " theatrical" produc tions (notably The Vampires' Picnic [1991] , The Stumbling Block [1991], The Giant [1992], Dead Troops Talk (A Vision After an Ambush of a Red Army Patrol near Moqo1~ Afghanistan, Winter r986) [1992), and A Sudden Gust of Wind (after Hokusai) [1993]), toward a quieter, mor e "realist ic," above all more ordinary-seeming though nevertheless carefully construct ed kind of picture that Wall has characterized as "neo -realist " (Adrian Walker, After "Invisible Man," and A View from an Apartment are three such works) . In his 2005 catalogue raisonne Wall divides his oeuvre into "cinemacographic" and "documentary" pictures, depending on wheth er or not the image was prepared by him in any way/- significantly, all the works just cited fall into the first category . Of course, the term "neo-realism" is a cinematic one, as Wall exp lains in a 2003 interview with Jan Estep: "I use the term 'neo-realism' in the sense the Italian filmmakers of the I94os and after used it. It refers to using non-professional performers in roles very close to their own lives, photographing events as if you were doing reportage, and recognizing good subjects in the everyday." 3 (1 should add that my thr ee-part chronolog ical and them atic division is at best approximate. The internal structure of Wall's oeuvre is much more complex than it suggests, and throughout his career there are significant works, such as The Storyteller [r986], Restoration [1993], A Hunting Scene [1994], and A Man with a Rifle [2000), that resist being neatly p laced.) Another way of putting all this would be to say that in recent years Wall has become increasingly interested in making works that evoke the appearance of documentary or "straight" photography (hereafter I shall drop the quotation marks), the criteria of which, he explained co Jan Tum lir in 2001, "have always had a lot to do with all my

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wo rk, even if I've argued aga inst th e esthetic principle s of stra ight photo gra phy." 4 At th e sam e time, Wall ha s tended to distance him self from the o vertly politi ca l conce rns th at ar e front an d cent er in works like Mimic (1981), Bad Goods (198 4 ), and Eviction Struggle (1988) an d th at were an important attr actio n for social historian s of arc early in his caree r. Not that Wall 's recent wo rk has lost all concern for th e marginal, neglected, and overlooked in co nt emporary life - far from it - but he ha s tended to ex press tha t co ncern a rtist ica lly in a more understated mann er than pr eviou sly, just as in interviews he ha s more and more emp ha sized the primac y for him of notion s of beaut y, pleas ure, and quali ty (citing not just Kant but Greenberg in support o f his views) ,5 while also insisting on the co ngruence between th ose notions and an art of th e everyday. "You can make bea utifu l p ictur es o ut o f common thing s," Wa ll remarks to Ro bert Enright in 2000 . "Ba udelair e was right when he said that th e most fascinatin g element is th e commonp lace. " 6 And to Tum lir: "T he everyday, o r the commonp lace, is the mo st basic and riches t artist ic category . Altho ugh it seems famil iar, it is always surp rising and new. But at th e same time, there is an openness th at permit s people to reco gn ize what is there in t he pi ctu re, because they have already seen som ething like it somew her e. So th e everyday is a space in w hich meanings acc umul ate, but it's th e pictorial realization that ca rries the mea nin gs int o the realm of the pleasurable" (114) . 7 H eid egger, too, cru cially deplo ys a notion of th e everyday in Being and Time, where it is associated w ith th e notio n of Das Man, a term often trans lated as "the they" but w hich Hub er t Dr eyfus conv incing ly argues shou ld be rendered as "the o ne," the struct ure of norms and und ersta ndings in which Dasein is soc ialize d and wh ich in effect ultimately determines all "refe rences" an d "ass ignmen ts," thereby subj ectin g Dasein to its "ave rage ness" (another key concept) .8 "Dasein' s every da y possi bilities of Being are for the Oth ers to di spose of as they please," H eidegger wr ites. 9 Also : T he Self of everyday Da sein is the one's-self which we distingui sh from the authenti c Self- that is from the Self which has been taken ho ld of in its ow n way . As a one'sself, the part icu lar Dase in has been dispersed int o the "o ne," and must first find itself. Thi s dispe rsal characterizes th e "s ubj ect" of that kind of Being whi ch we kno w as co ncernf ul a bsorption in th e wor ld we enco unt er as closes t to us. If Dasein is familiar wi th itself as a one's-se lf, this mea ns at the sa me time that th e "one " itself prescr ibes th at way of interpr eting the world and Being-in-the -wo rld which lies closest. l167 ] 10

In ot her wor ds, the stru ctur es of rea din ess-to-hand and equipm ent th at Heide gger has been analyzing are over looke d, o r as he puts it, "t he ph eno m enon of the world itself gets passe d over in this abso rption in the worl d ," an d what takes its p lace, as in the co mmon und ersta nding, is "w hat is pre sent-a t-hand within -t he-wo rld , nam ely, Things" (168). 11 Or again, the "very state of Being" that has been H eidegger's foc us, "in its everyday kind of Being, is what proximally misses itself and covers itself up" (168). 12 All this is well known but two po int s may be stresse d. First, for Heidegg er the everyda y, along w ith abso rpt ion, are in a certain sense "negat ive" concepts. Granted, Heidegge r exp licitly sta res that th e " fall ing " of Da sein wh ich " belongs" to everydayness "does not expr ess a ny nega tive eva luation" b ut he also writ es:

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why ph otograp hy matt ers as art as nev er befo re

This "absorption in . . . " has mos tly th e character of Being-lo st in the publicness of th e "one." Das ein has, in the first instance, fallen away from itself as an authentic potent iality for Being its Self, and has fallen into the "wo rld." "Fallenness" into the "wor ld" means an absorption in Being-w ith-one-a nother, in so far as the latter is guided by id le talk, cmiosity, and ambiguity. Through t he Interpretation of falling , what w e have ca lled the "inauthent icity" of Dasein may now be defined more pre cisely ... [220] 13 More to the point, Dreyfus observes, Heidegger at times confusingly conflates ontologica l "fall ing" wit h psyc hological fleeing from anxie ty, which has the consequence of suggesting that Dase in's absorption in the world "is the result of fleeing its unsett ledn ess" (225-37, 229 ). As Dreyfus also says, this "would mak e Das ein essentially inauth ent ic" (229) - a "negative" consequence if eve r there wa s one. However, He idegger goes on to claim that there is an alternative to the above, which he calls "resoluteness," and which involves an or ientation toward death that acknowledges, rather t han flees or overlooks, Dase in's fundamental nullity . "[ l]t is only in the anticipation of death that reso lut eness, as Dasein 's authentic trut h, has reached the authentic certainty wh ich belongs to it" (3 50) , he writes. 14 The imp lica t ion is that both absorp tion and everydayness are ther eby transfo rmed, even as their content remains unchanged. 15 (Another implica tion is that answer ing the "ca ll" to "r esolu teness " is an exceptiona l event .) The question that now arises is what bearing if any t hese considerations have on Wall's involvement in the everyday as an artistic category . On this topic 1 want to say three things: first, it may seem as if rhere is 110 shortage of p icrures by Wa ll in which som ething lik e a "negative" understand ing of th e everyday appears to be in play - Untangling is a case in point , as is Night (20ox), t o be d iscussed later in th is chapter - but one has only to call r.o m in d Adrian Walker, After "Invisible Man," and A View from an Apartment to recognize how d ifficult if not imposs ible it is to locat e them firmly in rela tion to th is aspect of Heidegger's thought. This in turn leads one to suspec t t hat t he ''nega t ive " valence that one might wish ro apply to certain of Wall's pictures is more soc iological than onto logica l. Second, there is 110 meaningful way of connecting th e idea of the "posit ive" transformation o f the everyday in and through "resoluteness" and "authenticity" to Wall's art. Third, perhaps most important of all, Dasein's absorp tion in the "bad" everyday (my epithe t , not Heidegger's) is imagined by Heidegger as total and unreflective . (" Reso lureness" does not come about t hrough any sort of choice or ind eed action on D ase in's part. As Dreyfus writes, " Phenome nologically one can think of th e transformation from inauthentic to authentic exis tence as a ges talt swicch," 16 which is to say that until that switch occurs - if in a part icu lar case it ever does - inauthentic existence and the "bad" everyday preva il abso lutely.) Th is too does not ho ld for the three p ictures just mentioned, in which the personages not only have been posed by the artist bur also, as seen earlier, invite recognition by the viewer as having been so pose d ; the pictmes thus comprise images of absorption that imply the dep icted subjects' awareness of their respective situations, situations chat inevi tably includ e an a,vareness - however atten uated by repeti tion - of performing absorp tion. (Put slightly differentl y, the depic ted subjects are recogn ized by tbe viewe r to be split or divided, at once them -

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selves and the "roles" they are performing .) This is not precisely Robert Pippin's point when he writes apropos of Being and Time : "Some richer dialectical notion of not simply being immersed in the wo rld of concern, but also, in some sort of co-original way, always taking onself to be immersed in a concrete way, self-conscious ly situat ing oneself, as well as merely 't hrown' [into death ], might have made possib le a richer and less critically suspect account of existence. " 17 Yet th ere is at least a partial analogy between Wall's photographs and the spirit of Pippin's critique. At this point Being and Time ceases to be useful to the present discussion.

Another way in which Wall describes his intentions w ith respect to the everyday involves an esthetic ideal he calls "near docum entary." "That means," he wrote in 2002, that they are pictures whose subjects were suggested by my direct expe rience , and ones in which I tried to recollect that experience as precisely as I cou ld, and to reconstruct and represe nt it precisely and accurately. Although the pictures with figures are done w ith the collaboration of th e people who appear in them, I wan t them to feel as if they easily could be documentary photographs . In some way they cla im to be a plausibl e account of, or a report on, what the events depicted are like, or were like, when they passed without being photographed. 18 "What the events depicted are like, or were like, when the)' passed without being photographed" - by now it sho uld be clear that this is, fundamenta lly, an a ntitbeatrical ideal, which is to say that it amounts to a kind of continuation or reprise, though with subtle but decisive differences owing to the difference in medium, not only of the Diderotian pro ject as I described in Absorption and Theatricality and related books but also - a far more contentious claim - of the project of high modernist abstract painting and sculpture as I characterized it back in 1966 - 7 in essays such as "Shape as Form: Frank Stella's Eccentr ic Po lygons" and "Arc and Objecthood." 19 Here I want to consider a monumental picture that is for me one of WalPs masterpieces, Morning Cleaning, Mies van der Rohe Foundation, Barcelona (1999; Fig. 37). The building in which the picture is set is the famous German (or Barcelona) Pavilion that Mies together with Lily Reich built for the German section of the Exposici6n Inter nacional in Barcelona in 1929 - or rather, since the original building was subsequently destroyed, a reconstruction comp leted in 19 86. 20 The Pavilion features a radically open plan (conceived "as an analogy of the socia l and politica l openness to which the new German republic aspired") 21 that dissociates space -defining elements from structural columns and merges interior and exterior spaces by means of transparent and trans lucent walls. Morning Cleaning- mor e than eleven feet w ide by just over six feet high depicts such a merger of spaces. At the rear, the ma in, interior space is partly closed off by floor-to -ceiling glass panels, beyond which one sees a reflecting pool; the floor of the main space extends , however, past those panels to the edge of the pool. At the far side of the pool there rises abruptly a wall of alpine green mar ble, divided into large rec-

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tangles, beyond the top of which one glimpses a band of tree bran ches and sky. The room is closed off at the left by a spectac ular freestand ing wa ll of onyx dare, warm brownish yellow in color, divid ed into even la rger rectangles, and full of splendid stri at ions. Th e floor is travert ine marble, and on th e floor there rests a long black carpet oriented roughly left to right (rather than near to far). The carp et, in fact the entire "room," is angled slightly relative to the picture plane, the right-hand portion seeming nearer the viewer than the left-hand one. The effect of this is subtly to dynamize the seemingly emp tier left half of the composition. Six of Mies' s "Barcel ona" chrome-and leather couches, designed for the Pavi lion, sit at the two end s of the carpet (three at the left, tliree at the right), and two matching chairs sit just beyond th e partly turn ed-back carpet, the one at the left bear ing several cloths folded across its back. On e of th e Pavilion's characteristic cruciform -sectioned steel columns punc tuat es the compos ition slightly to the right of cente r. lt is cut off by tbe top of the picture but one sees it penetrate the floor. The column thus stops short of th e bottom of the pictu re, but this does not prevent it from playing a vital structural role both compositionally - it provid es a strong vertical accent wh ere one is needed - and spatiall y, at once declaring its nearness to the picture pla ne and throwing the space beyond it into measmed relief, not least by partly blocking from view the righ tmost of the two cha irs . At th e extreme right of Wall's pictur e another glass wa ll recedes sharply into depth, along with a red curtain that has been partly drawn . (The curtain is reflected in the glass, as are part s of two of the three nearby stoo ls, bur looking closely we rea lize that we are a lso given a surprising glimpse through the angled glass toward a car park ed outsid e. We realize too, however , that no amount of close looking can resolve the complexities of transp arency and reflection in this portion of the pictur e.) Fina lly, beyond the carpet and to the right of the almost central steel column, in blue tro users, sandals, and a white T-shirt, a dark -haired w indow cleaner bends at the waist over a large yelJow bucket on wheels as be man ipul ates a long-handled squeegee in a way that suggests that he is affixing a new head onto the hat1dle, a suggestion confirmed by Wall in a personal communication (Fig. 38). The cloths folded over th e back of one of the chairs are evidently his. The quality of th e window cleaner's movement is at once natur al and elegant, and ind eed we quick ly realize that for all the richness of his surroundings and the artful lateral spread of tl1e composition, he is the principal focus of the wor k. At the sa me time , his apparent engrossment in h.is task positively libera tes us to lo ok elsewhere, and when we turn our attention to the floor-to-ceiling glass panels beyond him we observe that they are partl y streaked with suds (the cleaning is underwa y); as we scan the pa nels toward the left, which the composition with its leftward spat ial bias encourages us to do, we not ice, on a pe desta l rising from the poo l, blurred by the suds or because slightly out of foc us, a scu lpture of a standiog female nude with sway ing hips a nd arms raised above her head - a wo rk entitled Dawn by Mies's German contemporar y, Georg Kolbe (Fig. 39). 22 Only one thi ng more remains to be mention ed, and that is th e warm sunlight that streams into the room at a descending a ngle from right to left, i!Jurninating the carpet in a ll its blackness, the thr ee couches, and most of the bot tom half of the left-band wall (tbe sunl ight falls short of the floor beyond the carpet and therefore a lso of the clean er), there by confirming the

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37 Jeff Wall, Morning Cleaning, Mies van der Rohe Foundation, Barcelona, 1999 . Transparency 351c m

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Jeff Wall, Morning Cleaning, Mies van der Rohe Foundation, Barcelona, deta il

subtle privileging of the left-hand ha lf of th e compos ition desp ite th e p resence of the cleaner on the right. Morning Cleaning is a work of great simplicity and directness but also of consider able them at ic richness. Wh at precisely, for example, are its politic a l resona nces, if any ? As menti o ned, Mies des igned the Pavilion on conunission from the Weimar government, partly as an arch itectural sta tement of th e political principles the latter repre sente d. Within five year s the republic was dead, the Na tional Socialist s were in power, and Mies foun d it necessary to leave Ger many for th e United Stares. (Kolbe, an immense ly gifte d and accomplished sculptor, remain ed and moreover tried co adapt to the new reg ime,

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39 Jeff Wall, Morning Cleaning, Mies van der Rohe Foundation, Barcelona, detail

with disastrous consequences for his art. 23 ) To what extent is the viewer of Wall's picture invited to bear this knowledge in mind, or for that matter th e furth er knowledge that the room depicted in Morning Cleaning- like the Pavilion as a whole - is a fairly recent reconstruction, which is to say the product of an effort to "repair" history at least to a certain extent? In any case, Mies's Barcelona Pavilion is not just any modernist building- though the fact that it is, or was, a key work of architectural modernism is surely to the point (I mean that Wall would not be averse to being considered a modernist artist) . A related question might be to what extent Morning Cleaning may be und erstood as referring back, in a general way, to seventeenth-century Dutch paintings of

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Pieter Janssens Elinga, Interior with Painter, Reading Woman, and Sweeping Maid, 166 5-70 . Oil on canvas. 82 x 99 cm. Sriidelsches Kunstinstitut und Stiidtische Galerie, Frankfurt -am -Main 40

ordinary persons performing everyday tasks in domestic sett ings - not that Mies' s Pavilion qualifies as domestic; nevertheless the affinity between Wall's picture and a painting such as Pieter J anssens Elinga's absorptive, partly shadowed, partly light-struck Interior with Painter, Reading Woman, and Sweeping Maid (:i:665-70; Fig. 40) in Frankfurt is food for intense thought. 24 "The histo rical image I want to create is one which recog nizes the complexity of the experiences we must have every day in developing relationships with the past," Wall has stated, 25 and in mor e than on e respect Morning Cleaning (not yet made when he said this) exemplifies some such recognition. Then there is the issue of reflexivity, as Wall terms it. "Because l grew up at the time I did, and exp erienced the art I did," Wa ll tells Tuml ir in 200 1, referring to his early formation in the wake of minimalism and early conceptualism (also high modernism), "I've always felt that good art has to reflect somehow on its own process of coming to be. I have never really been convinced that this reflexivity had co be made explicit, though . . . I've always tho ught that if th e work is good it will automaticall y contain that reflection, but you won't be able to see it immediatel y. It wi ll flicker into view in some subtle way" (n7). (Note, in Elinga's Interior, through the doorway at the left, a paint er at work on a canvas one cannot see, as well as, on the wall above the seated woma n a bsorbed in reading, a mirror tilted downward so as seemingly to reflect a portion of the black -and wh ite paved floor of the room. Reflexivity in Wall's sense of the term is by no means solely a feature of modernist art.) In the same interview Wall acknowledges that in earlie r wo rks by him , pr esumably including pictures as different from each other as Picture for Women and Dead Troops Talk, he had operated pol emically in a mannered, forced, or exaggera ted way "in order to provoke internal prob-

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!ems, to stimulate the kind of reflexivity we were just talking about. But I don 't think this is the only way, or even the best way, to do that. It's just one possible, interesting way. What I think of as a Neo -Realist strand of my work is just as good, and I'm a bit more interested in that these days" (117). (Wall then characterizes his close yet also critical relatio n to straight photography in the statement cited earlier in this chap ter.) [n this regard too Morning Cleaning seems a case in point, not simply in its thematization of light falling on surfaces as if to make the picture - I might add, in wh ich blackness, like that of the inside of a camera or of a darkroom, p lays a vita l rol e - but in other respects as well . In a brief, dazzling essay of 1989, "Photography and Liqu id Intelligence," Wall alludes to "a confrontation of what you might ca ll the 'l iqu id int elligence' of nature with the glassed -in and relat ively 'dry' character of the institution of photography." H e continues: Water plays an essential par t in the making of photographs, but it has to be controlled exactly and cannot be permitted to spill over the spaces and moments mapped out for it in the process, or the picture is ru ined. You certainly don' t want any water in your camera for examp le! So, .for me, water - symbolically - represents an archaism in photography, one that is admitted into the process, but also excl ud ed, contained, or channelled by its hydraulics. This archaism of water, of liquid chemicals, connects photography to the past, to time, in an important way . By calling wa ter an "archaism" here I mean that it embodies a memory -trace of very ancient production-processes of washing, bleaching, dissolving an d so on, w hich are connec ted to the origin of techne - like the separation of ores in prim itive min ing, for example. In this sense, the echo of water in photography evokes its prehistory. I think tha t this "prehistorica l" image of photography - a speculative image in which the apparatus itself can be thought of as not yet having emerged from the mineral and vegetable worlds - can help us understand the "dry" part of photograp hy differently. This dry part I iden tify with optics and mechanics - with the lens and th e shutt er, eith er of the camera or of the projector or enlarger . This part of the photographic system is more usua lly identified with the specific technological int elligence of image -making, wi th the projectile or ballistic nature of vision wh en it is augmented and int ens ified by glass (lenses) and machinery (calibrators and shutters) . This kind of modern vision has been separated to a great extent from the sense of immers ion in the incalculab le which I associate with " liquid intelligence ." The incalculab le is important for science becaus ~ it appears with a vengeance in the remote consequences of even th e most contro lled releases of energy; the ecological crisis is the form in which these remote consequences app ear to us most str ikingly today. 26 Wall goes on to note that electronic and digital systems are in the process of replacing photographic film, a nd while he considers this in itself neither good nor bad, he recog nizes that if it happens "there will be a new displacement of water in photography. It will disappear from the immed iate production -process, vanishing ro the more distant horizon of the generation of electrici ty, and in that mov ement, the historica l consciousness of the medium is altered . Th is expansion of the dry part of photography I see

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metaphorically as a kind of hubris of the orthodox technological intelligence which, secured behind a barrier of perfectly engineered glass, surveys natural form in its famously cool manner. I'm not attempting to condemn this view, but rather am wondering about the characte r of its self-consciousness" (no). He concludes: "ln photography, th e liquids study us, even from a great distance" (no). The pertinence of the above to Morning Cleaning scarcely needs spelling out; in fact my main concern about citing Wall's text is that it risks making his piccme, produced with the aid of digital means, seem more progranunatic - calculated, not incalculable than I believe it is. My guess is that Wall did not intend his picture as an allegory of "liquid intelligence ," or of the tension between "liquid" and "dry" aspects of photo graphy (folly ten years separate essay from picture). However, it does not follow that the vision of the medium so brilliantl y ar ticulated in his essay was not somehow active in his later choice of subject matter, and who can say to what extent it may have con ditioned the final image as well? 27 One ind ex of the incalculable - also the photographic - in Morning Cleaning is the way in which the curving cnrorne legs of the three stools to the left partly disappear in relation to the black carpet. If Morning Cleaning were a painting, I want to say, that would be a flaw (in fact no painter would so depict them). Bur it is a photograph, and that is simply how the legs and caTpet were registered by Wall's camera . Of course, back in Vancouver he could have modified the legs digitally to make them stand out more distinctly but chose not to, a decision that show s how intertwined the issues of calculation and its opposite - accident or contingency- are in his work. 28 Finally, though, I want to return ro the linked issues of absorption and the everyday that receive in Morning Cleaning perhaps their most profound treatment to date in Wall's oeuvre. For there can be no doubt that the window cleaner is meant to be seen as absorbed in his daily task - a task, it is worth noting, that involves using specific pieces of equipment and th e dailiness of which is itself a further expression of the everyday. Once again, however, the picture is not candid; as its cinematic scale and proportions suggest, the photographer did not instantaneous ly capture a scene exactly as it happened. Rath er, Morning Cleaning involved perhaps a month's work in Barcelona, "a coup le of weeks organizing practical things with equipment, and another two weeks shooting." As Wall explains (in the persona I communication referred to earlier): Maybe it was more than two weeks shooting, I am not sure now. When the shoot began, I wasn't certain whether it would be sunny weather or cloudy . After a few days, it got clear and sunny and I rea lized that that was the best light for the picture. So then I was committed to staying and shooting for as many sunny days as were requir ed to do what I had co do. Luckily, the summer weather there is pretty consistent, so once it got clear, it staye d clear almost without interruption for the whole remaining time. [ think I shot for about twelve da ys. The light was right only in the early morning, from about 7 co 7:35. I had only about seven minutes each day to photograph the space as a whole, because the shadow patterns change so quickly in th e morning. I

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had to be ready for those seven minutes each morning, and during them I made the "m aster" views, without the figure. He was standing by, and as soon as the masters were done, L readjusted th e camera and photographed him changing the end-piece of his mop-squeegee. Since he is in shadow, and since that shadow did not cha nge shape and brightness as quickly as some of th e other areas did, I had ma ybe twent y to twent y-five minut es to wo rk with him each day. Onc e his shadow are a changed, the shoot was over. That was about 8 a.m. I'd get the film back around 4 or 5 p.m ., and spe nd some hours eac h evening studying it, tryin g to determine what I had and what f still needed, then got ready for the next morning's shoot , getting up at 5. It is a litrle stressf ul to be shoot ing for digital assembly without being able to make some test assemblies becaus e I am usually uncert ain about various possib le problem s. Most of these have to do with hard technica l things, like depth of field, focal plane, exposure and so on, things that need to be very consistent if the different pieces are going to go together properly. L had to examine all the film from each day extremely carefuJly, looking for problems and making certain that key pieces wer e compat ible with othe rs. Th e com pur er work was done later that fall 1999 I, back home. 29

r

Yet, as in the other works by Wall I have disc ussed , th e appeal to absorption, which is also to say to the implication that the ·1.vindow cleaner is unaware both "of th e construct of the picture and th e necessary pr esence of the viewer, " to cite \Vall in his interview by Martin Schwande r onc e more, is not tl1ereby nndone. Rath er, the impression of absorption and unawareness is to my mind cons ider ably strong er - less obviously qualifi ed than in any of the others, both because of th e prec ise practical reality of th e window cleaner's act ion and becaus e of our sense of his separation from us, by which I refer not merely to his physical distance from the pictur e p lane bur also, equally importantly, to his loca tion beyon d the zone of direct sunlight. The viewer is mad e to feel that th e man bending ove r his squeegee is ob livious even to the one indisputably great event, itself an emblem of dailine ss, depict ed in Morning Cleaning - th e dramat ic influx of wa rm morning light - and what mak es h is unawareness a ll th e more plausib le is the fact that the light does not fall directly on him . (In Elinga's interior, too , neither the maid nor the reading woman notices the bright trap ezoids of sunlight falling on the wall and Aoor roward the right .) On a lesser not e, which become s more sa lient the longer one look s, the window cleaner also app ears unaware of the light.struck Kolbe nud e displaying herself- sho uld one sa y th eatrically? - above the pool. Then , too, the division of the internal space into two zo nes, one brightl y illumi nated and the other not, is reinforced by the contrast between the relative ly forma l placement of the nvo trios of couches and the way in which the two chairs have been mo ved from the ir normal position s to make room for the cleaning of th e glass wall. (That is why the carpet has been partl y ro lled back .) Th e result is a composition of great pictorial and inrellectua l sophistication, one that exp loits the "mag ic" of absorption to induce the viewe r to accept as verisimilar something that he or she "k nows " to be improbabl e at best, and what is worth und er-

1elf wall. wittgenstei n, an d the everyday

7E,

scoring is that according to Wall's narrative of his picture's genesis, the sw1light was not part of the conception at the ou tset but rather emerged only in the process of shooting as the weather cleared - a further instance of the incalculableness that Wall welcomes in his art .

At this point I want to introduce another philosophical text , one that goes further than Being and Time and "The Question Concerning Technology" toward providing a conceptual fram ewo rk not just for a crucial aspect of \v'a!J>sart but also for the work of other photographers to be considered in this book . The text is the whole of a long extract from Ludwig Wittgenstein's manuscripts for the year J930. lt appears in the volume Culture and Value, first edited by Georg Henrik von Wright, which gathers a number of remarks and observations dealing with topics outside technical philosophy . It reads: Engelmann [Paul Enge lmann, Wittgenstein's close friend and faithful correspondent] told me that when he rummages round at home in a drawer full of his own manu scripts, they strike him as so glorious that he thinks they would be worth presenting to other people. (He said it's the same when he is read ing through letters from his dead relations .) But when he imagines a selection of them published he said the who le business loses its charm & va lue & becom es impossible. I said this case was like th e following one: Noth ing could be more remarkable than seeing someone who think s himself unobserved engage d in some quite simple everyday activity. Let's imagine a theatre, the cuna in goes up & we see someone alone in his room walk ing up and down, light ing a cigarette, seating himself etc. so that sudden ly we are observing a human being from outside in a way that ordinarily we can never observe ourselves; as if we were watching a chapter from a biography with ow: own eyes, - surely this would be at once uncanny and wonderful. More wonderfu l than anyth ing that a playwright could cause to be acted or spoken on the stage . We should be seeing life itself. - But then we do see this every day & it makes not the slight est impr ession on us! True enough, but we do not see it from that point of view. - Similarly when E. looks at his writings and finds them splendid (even though he wou ld not care to publish any of the pieces individu ally), he is seeing his life as God's work of art, & as such ir is certainly worth contemplating, as is every life & everything whatever. But only the artist can represent th e individual thing [das Einzelne] so that it appears to us as a work of art; those manuscripts rightly lose their value if we contemplate them singly & in any case without preiudice, i.e. without being ent husiastic about them in advance . The work of art compels us - as one might say - to see it in the right perspective, but without art the object [der Gegenstand] is a piece of nature like any other & the fact that we may exalt it through our enthusiasm does not give anyone the right to display it to us. (I am always reminded of one of those insipid photographs of a piece of scenery which is interesting to the person who took it because he was there himself, experienced something, but which a third parry looks at with justifiabl e coldness; insofar as it is ever justifiable to look at something with coldness.)

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But now it seems to me too that besides the work of the artist there is another through which th e world may be captmed sub specie aeterni. It is - as I believe - the way of thought which as it were flies above the world and leaves it the way it is, contemp lating it from above in its flight . 30 This is arguably Wittgenstein's most original and sustained contribution to esthet ic thought, though it may be only now , in the wake of developments in photography since the late 1970s, that it can be taken in that way. The following points shou ld be stressed : 1) The thought experiment Wittgenstein proposes - imagin ing a man who thinks he is unobserved engaged in some quite simple everyday activity as if in a theater - belongs to rhe cast of mind J have been calling antirheatr ical. Although Wittgenstein does not actually refer to tbe man as absorbed in the performance of that activity, it seems fair ro say that it is implicit in his words, bearing in mind tha t in Diderot's writings on painting and drama abso rption goes hand in hand wi th unawareness of being beheld . (No t the least interest of the 1930 extract for me is that it forges a link between th ese two largely unplac eable thinkers. This is also to say chat the significance for esthe tic thought of that extract can be made our on ly aga inst the background of the issue of antithe atrica lity.) 2) The thought experiment a lso expl icitly involves what T have been ca lling - in part basing myself on Wall - the everyday, which turn s out to be an immensely privileged esthetic category for Wittgenste in as well. M or e precisely, the everyday is here imagin ed by him as avai lab le only in an antitheatrica l (and implicitly absorptive) form, with artistic consequences that go beyond anything previously known: we shou ld be observing something "more wonderful than anything that a playwright could cause to be acted or spoken on the stage . We sho uld be seeing life itself" - a ne plus ultra of realism, it seems . 3) Wittgenstein (or one of his voices) immed iately objects, "Bur then we do see this every day & it makes no t the slightest impression on us!" and then at once counte rs the objection by saying: "True enough, but we do no t see it from that point of view." I take this to mean that in the course of our ordinary dea lings with other persons we no t infrequently come upon someone who, at least for a few moments, is unaware of being observed, and that we are far from regarding such a turn of events as "uncanny and wonderfu l." Bur our point of view - or to use Wittgenstein's subtler term, our perspec tive -when this occurs is not at a ll the one posited by th e though t experiment. The question, then, is how to characterize the latter perspective, which he associates wirh seeing the scene in quest ion as a work of arr (as he says Engelmann, without quite realizing it, is led at moments to see his own life as God's work of art), and my suggestion is that Wittgenstein imagines it as fundamentally - not just contingently - separate from that of the person being observed {as God's perspective is separate from Engelmann's), as if, ro put it strongly, tbe person a nd the observer inhab it different wo rld s (a formulation that came up in the previous chapter, in my su mmary of Schwander's response co Adrian Wallier).Or so it seemed to me for a long time. What has become clear, how ever, is that it would be more faithful to Wittgenstein's thought to say that he is evoking two radi cally different perspectives on the same world, one "wi thin " that world and the other

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in some sense "outside" it. 3·1 Even as the account of Engelmann's changes of heart suggests that the two perspectives are not absolute ly sealed off from one another; rather, the y are different ways in which the world "discloses" itself, to use Heideggerian language in a Wittgensteinian context. 4) In this connection the extract deploy s an unexpected distinction between (the repres entation) of "the individual thing," das Einzelne, and, in the absence of art, "the object," der Gegenstand- a "mere" object, I am tempted to say (probably the tempta tion should be resisted). Wittgenstein leaves the distinction untheorized, which on the one hand is a pity but on the other is a goad to furth er thought. As I understand it, the distinction joins up with certain claims in "Art and Objecthood," and it will also prove relevant to the discussion of the work of Bernd and Hilla Becher in the last chapter of this book . To anticipate: I shall want to make a distinction between "good" and "bad" objecthood somewhat along the lines of Hegel 's distinction between "good" (or "genuine") and "bad" (or ''spurious") modes of infinity in the Science of Logic and Encyclopedia Logic and to associate the first terms in those distinctions with the typological depiction and presentation of industrial objects in the Bechers' photographic "rab leaus." I shall go on to suggest that the distinction between "good" and " bad " modes of objecthood can be said to hold, to be intuitable, onJy in the latter (and more broadly in photographs), not in reality "as such.'' As seen, Heidegger in Being and Time drew an ontologically charged distinction between equi pment and things, wh ich is to say between readiness-to-hand and presence -at-h and; mor e than two decades later, in the essay "The Thing," be put forward a different but not unrelated distinction between things (near to us, therefore "good") and objects (distant from us, therefore "bad"). 32 As is perhaps apparent, neither of Heid egger's distinctions lines up with Wittgenstein's, which operates in a different, in the end more powerful register. 5) The last few sentences in Wittg enstein's long first paragraph turn on yet another distinction: between looking at something "w ithout prejudice" - the Kantian term wou ld be "disinterest edly" - and looking at something "with coldness," which emerges as a (perhaps inevitable) failur e of humanity. This too may be new to esthetic thought, though the distinction is fully as ethical, perhaps even religious, as it is esthetic. " [IJnsofar as it is ever justifiable to look at something with coldness" - one way to take this tremendous and unexpected qualification is not simply as a rebuke, in the first instance to himself, but also as an intellectual caution, lest one assum e that absence of prejudic e or esthetic disinterest simply is a kind of coldness. At the same time, Wittgenste in is clear that nothing gives someone th e "r ight" to display to another person insipid objects or fragments of nature - photographs of scenery are the example he cites - in the expectation that the y could possibly mean to a second party what they do to the 33 first. Interestingly, Wittgenstein wrote in a notebook entry of about I929, "My idea l is a certain coolness Inor coldness]. A temple providing a setting for the passions without 34 meddling with them" - a statement that I cannot help but read in relation to the extract of I930 as well as, stretching the point, i11relation co Morning Cleaning itself. And of course photography has often been described as inherent ly cool, as in Wall's remarks cited earlier in chis chapter about "the orthodox technological inteJligence which . ..

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surveys natural form in its famously cool manner" ("Photography and Liquid Intelligence") or Sontag's characterization of the "habit of seeing" induced by photography as "both intense and cool, solicitous and detached. " 35 6) In view of Wittgenstein's distaste for the promiscuous displaying of snapshots, it is perhaps only fitting that, more than fifty years later, it has devolved upon photography- some photography - to take up the artistic challenge that his extract adumbrates. In Wall's Morning Cleaning, this involved shooting aspects of tbe same scene over twelve consecutive mornings for about half an hour starting at 7 a.m., while bright sunlight streamed into the large, glassed-in space at more or less tbe same angle during each session, as well as working collaboratively with the window cleaner much as he had done with the real Adrian Walker, and then combining the various images digitally back in his Vancouver studio. For this is my strong est claim, as well as my deepest reason for adducing Wittgenstein 's remarks in the present context. I take Wittgenstein to be inviting one to imagine an artistic medium significantly different from anything available to him (or others) at that rime . Obviously the theater could not supply what was wanted, even though he begins by asking us to imagine a curtain going up on a stage such as had never - he seems to think - actually existed. I have suggested, however, that the dramaturgy of hjs thought experiment is extremely close to that of Did erot 's writings on drama and painting of the 1750s and '6os. What 1 have not said is that the Diderotian dispositif of the dramat ic tableau with its "invisible" fourth wall provided a model for stage realism throughout much of the nineteenth century, but that by r 930 (indeed by well before) such a dispositif no longer sufficed, for avant -gard e playwrights and directors, to produce the impression of metaphysical aloneness t.he extract seeks to evoke. Or perhaps one should say that the very stage ideal of metaphysical aloneness bad lost its attractiveness, no doubt largely because in the post-Ibsen era it had become a bourgeois cliche. 36 In that sense the extract may be read as rediscovering, as i.f on new grounds, the spiritual and artistic depth of such an ideal (for Wittgenstein the two dimensions are one). What about film? In the decades after r930 Wittgenstein often went to the movies, usually accompanied by friends . Yet I serious ly doubt that movies, even Italian neo real.istfilms of the postwar period, or the masterpieces of Bresson and Ozu, would have fulfilled for him the terms of the thought experiment of 1930. Needless to say this cannot be proved, but Wittgenstein's famously total immersion in movies, of which there is ample testimony, would have worked against the ideal of disinterested and in effect distanced contemplation implied by the extract. (Whi le Wittgenstein was staying in Newcastle during the Second World War, he "went frequently to the cinema - 'every night' according to Mis s Andrews [someone who knew him] - to watch 'westerns or frankly bad films with happy endings and when asked about them the next morning, he could not remember details.' ") 37 In fact it may be that what is at stake here is pre cisely that aspect of the movies that led me in "Art and Objecthood" to claim that it was not a modernist art (see my discussion of Sugimoto's Movie Theaters, Sherman's Untitled Film Stills, and Wall's Movie Audience in Chapter One). In any case, I suggest that certain photographs by Wall, Morning Cleaning foremost among them, may be

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understood, if nor as wholl y realizin g the ter ms of Wittg ens tein's simpl e but exalted vision , at least as coming clo ser to d oing so than any other works of pictori a l art wirh which I am familiar. "O h a key can lie for ever wher e the locksmith placed it, & never be used to open the lock for which the master forged it," Witt genstein writes in anothe r extra ct in Culture and Value.1x Does it go to o far co imagin e that th e extr act of 1930 amount s to such a key? 7) An elabora tion of the pr evious point as well as of the earlier one about dispar ate perspectives . Wittgen ste in writ es : "Bue only th e ar tist can represen t th e individual thin g so that it appears to us as a work of art." In ocher words, only a work of art, precisely becau se it "compels us to see it in th e right perspective ," can make " life itself," in the form of a bsorpt ion , ava ilabl e for est heti c contemplation. I want to assoc iate thi s ack nowledgment of art ifice (fo r that is wh at it is: think of the theat er and its curtain) with th e frank acknow ledgm ent - th e foregrou ndin g- of photographic and dramaturgica l art ifice in Wall's pictures, the first via the light box app aratus itself, th e seco nd via the imp lied pain stak ing collaborative staging of the depicted ac tion, and in some works the implied painstakin g construction of the depic ted set ting. What mak es th at association pertinent, of course, is the depth of Wall's com mitm ent to thi - may one say Wittg cnstei nian ? - everyday in the m ode of "near docu ment ary,'' th at is, co the antithe atrical project of making pictures that " in some wa y ... claim ro be a plausib le account of, or a report on , whar th e events depicted a re like, or were like, when th ey passed with ou t being pho to graphed." By now it shou ld be clea r that the entire purpose of Wall's la bors in Barcelon a a nd back in Vancouver was to produce such a picture. (As yet Wall has found no mean s of acknow ledg ing in his a rt th e sheer pro long ed and/or repetiti ve labor that go es inro the making of a work like Morning Cleaning, though perhaps rhe imag ery of digging a we ll, a grave , or a n anthropological site, as in The Well [198 9 1, The Floode d Grave [r998 - 2000J, and Fieldwor k [2003J may be viewed in that light. 39 I shall have some thin g ro say abo ut th e last of these shortly. ) 8) Fina lly, l read the brief concluding par ag raph in Witt genstein' s ex tract, with its image of co nt emplatin g the world fro m ab ove (and in flight , lest one think s he is envisaging a fixed pos ition of divin e omniscience) w hile leaving it the way it is (not in co ldness or indiff erence bur so co spea k disinceresccdly), as an early intuition of what would become in th e Phi losophical Investi gat ions the noti on of perspicu o us repr esent a tio n (iibersichtlich e Darstellung) and th e vision of phi losophy as leavin g the ac tu al use o f langu age as it is, rathe r than "cor rect ing it" in the spir it of tr adit ional phil osop hy - an ideal linked, as Stanl ey Cavel! has demonstr ate d, to notion s of th e or din ary a nd th e everyd ay.~0 Thi s sugg ests that between the enterpr ise of th e Philosophical ln vest igations and th e seemingl y mor e narr o wly esth etic concerns of the 19 30 ex trac t th ere ex ists an affinit y as fruitful to think ab o ut as it is - at least at first- su rpri sing . To sum up: I have tried to show th at in post-1990 works such as Adrian Walk er and Momi11g Cleaning Wall has mov ed decisively toward a n a ntitheatrica l a rt in and thr ough a focus sed con cern wit h the everyday an d an esrheti c strategy he ca lls " near docum entary." (The rela tion of After 'Invi sible Man ' and A View from an Apartment, both a lso a ntith ca trical works, to the notion of " near do cumen tary" is an open question; certain ly

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why pllotography matters as art as never before

4I Morris Louis, A lpha-Pi, 1960 . Acrylic on canvas . 260 x 449 .7 cm. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Arthur Hoppock Hearn Fund, 1967 (67 .2.32.)

the lengths ro which Wall went in acclimatizing the young women in the latter to the apartment and the entire situation of shooting are on the side of such a notion .) I have done this in part by bringing Wall's pictures into close contact with wr itings by two of the twenti eth century's foremost phi losophers, Heidegger and Wittgenstein - writings that seem to me to bear an intimate relation to what rakes place in those pictures rather than merely to offer a basis for intriguing but essentially fanciful associations. At th e same time, Wall's interest in absorption and antitheatrica lity links his work with the Diderotian tradition as I have presented it in my books on eighteenth - and nineteenthcentury French painting. However, there is a further possibility touched on earlier that 1 wanr to raise more vigorously here: that a picture like Morning Cleaning also amounts ro a kind of reinterpretation or say renewal, across a jagged breech, of the antitheatrical aims of certain high modernist painting and scu lpture as I interpreted those aims back in 1966 - 7 in "Shape as Form," "Art and Objecthood," and related texts. To speak personaLly, from my first encounter with Morning Cleaning in Frankfurt in 2002, I have not been able to get Morris Louis's multi-rivulet "Unfurl eds" of 196 0- 6 1 - Alpha-Pi (1960; Fig. 4 1), for example - our of my mind. 4 1 I am deliberat ely stopping short of spelling out all th e reasons for this. Suffice it to note the simi larity of overall format and dimensions ; the grouping in both of crucial elements near the right-and left-hand edges of the picture together with the openness of the composition as a whole; and the suggestive analogy between the liquid flow of Louis's color rivulets and the w as hing of the windows in Morning Cleaning. ls there not also a parallel of so rts betw een the daz zling blank expanse of the bare canvas in the Louis and the irradiated black expanse of the carpet in the Wall? Not that Wall is likely to have intended the connection, any mor e than he was thinking of Elinga's exquisite Interior or, more broadly, of seventeenthcentury Dutch painting of quotidian scenes when he began shoo ting in Mies's Pavilion in Barcelona. Yet it will be a central claim of this book that some of the most important and vital recent initiatives in photography turn out to have been renewing, even

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81

43

Jeff Wall, A Wall in a Former Bakery ,

2003.

Transparency in lightbox. xx9 x

1 51

cm

As for Fieldwork's larger mean ing, I suggest that it is above all an attempt to repre sent, to make visible, the historicalness of the everyda y. For consider: look ed at close ly the excavate d hole reveals multiple strata, each of which represents a particular period of time an d a particular mat erial reality (one darkish stratum, part way down , may be what is le.ft of the roof of the dwelling that once stood at that spot) .43 A commonplace abo ut photography, about which there will be more to say, is that it depicts surfaces, and traces on surfaces . No doubt Wall would agre e - a p icture roughly contemporary with Fieldwork, A Wall in a Former Bakery (2003; Fig. 43), depicts nothing else. How ever, what I find in Fieldwork is more importantly a themat ization of the thickn ess and layeredness of the wo rld, by which I mean the way in which material traces deposit ed day by day in earlier epoch s ar e part of the very texture of reality, and the thematization too of a certain patient labor of recove ry, which one is allowed to witn ess only from a respectfu l distance and with which Wall, in this spellbinding and reflective image, plainly wish es to assoc iate his arr. A number of oth er, mostly recent pictures, including severa l large black -and -white photographic prints, further exp lore the territor y I have been surveying . In Chapter Two

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w hy phot ography matters as art as neve r befo re

I quoted a passage from the prologue to Ellison's Invisible Man in which the protago nist develops the theme of his own invisibility in relation to whites; from the pr esent perspective it is clear that invisibility is an antitheatrica l trope, even as the the Invisible Man's obsession with light invites being read in relation to Wall's lightbox technology. In other works of the past decade or more the trope of invisibility gives way to themes of exit and departure, as in the large black -and-white photograph (not a tra nsparency) Housekeeping (1996; Fig. 44), in which a uniformed maid who has just finished cleaning and straightening a hotel room (a characteristic subject) is depicted leaving the room through a door in the wa ll farthest from the viewer and closing the door behind her as she goes; the effect is candid, but Wall has described shooting for two weeks, five or six days a week, before coming up with the image he wanted. 44 In another large, par ticularly impressive black -and -white photograph , Untitled (Forest) (2001; Fig. 45), a man and a woman are (bare ly) captured hurrying from a clearing in which they have been cooking food on a small grill. This is one of the works that Wa ll describ ed in 2002 as depicting "moments or events from obscw-e, unswept corners of everyday life, covert ways of occupying the city, gescuses of concealment and refuge," and the impression conveyed is indeed that th e man and woman are fleeing the scene - there is a note of

44

Jeff Wall, Housekeeping, t996. Gelatin silver print . 192 x 258 cm

•

Jeff wall, wi tt genstein , and the everyday

85

45

Jeff Wall, Untitled (Forest), 2001. Gelatin silver print. 239 x 30:r.5 cm

urgency about their departure which gives the entire picture an anx ious, unsettling aiJ:. (They have left their pot on the boil- why?) In fact I want to go fur ther and suggest that the man and woman are fleeing no one other than the photographer/viewer, who in any case has arrived too late to catch more than a glimpse of them: the long-haired woman, bent slightly at the waist as she climbs a slight rise, is sufficiently turned away so as to hide her features, and it is easy to miss the man entirely, so obscured is he by trees and branches to the left of the woman. Note, too, the nearness of the branches in th e left foreground, which seem almost to threaten one's sight as one approaches the photograph, as in effect the viewer is invited to do, at the same time as numerous small "scars" on the bark of the tr ees give the impression of being so many eyes looking back at one (aggressively, or at least nor at all reassui·ingly).

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w hy pho tography matters as art as never before

46 Jeff Wall, Untitled (Night) , 20o r. Gelatin silver print. 239 x 301 .5 cm

Anoth er superb large black-and-white photograph, Untitled (Night) (2oo r ; Fig. 46), depicts in the foreground a body of water, perhaps the result of flooding or rainfall {though it might equally be a pond that has partly dried up}; beyond it ar e a patch of dry ground, a low wall, and a hillock with bushes and trees; and beyond that a fence and, at the top .left, part of a bridg e. The picture is extremely dark and takes a long time to read; only after a while does on e become aware of two persons and a dog seated or reclining against the wall at the extrem e left and realize that they or rather their "covert way of occupying the city" is the true focus of the composition. The overall effect, a tour de force of nocturnal lighting an d close-value printing, is of a sustained impeding of vision that forces the viewer to work hard for all that he or she is able to perceive, an impeding that thereby divests the imag e of the least suggestion of display

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47

Jeff Wall, The Burrow, 2004. Gelatin silver print. 161.5 x 189 cm

- put more strong ly, that establishes the picture as a whole as resistant to being beheld.

Untitled (Night) was elaborately staged by Wall in a property in Vancouver rented for the purpose, bur a fourth black-and-white work , The Burrow (2004; Fig. 47), depicts an actual structure he came across one day in that city, an underground space mostly covered up by large sheets of wood and cardboard . Wall at once fetched a camera and rook his photograph, which therefore belongs to the "documentary" category. The question is what made this particular subject instantly attractive to him, and my suggestion is that it was the (Kafkaesque?) idea of the burrow itself, an enclosure (a "ho le") in which a person might hide himself or herself from view, that drew his attention. In his 2005 retrospective exhibition at Schau lager in Basel, the last four photographs were hung in a single room; the cumulat ive impression of a profound antipathy to vision of antirheatrical desire - was palpabl e. Two other works, Untitled (Overpass) (2oor; Fig. 48) and Woman with a Covered Tray (2003; Fig. 49), both transparencies, thematize the motif of persons wa lking more or less directly away from the photog ra pher/viewer (Housekeeping was a version of the

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why photogra phy matters as art as never before

48 Jeff Wall, Untitled (Overpass), 2001. Transparency in lightbox . 214 x 273 .5 cm

same idea). Again, I see this as an antitheatrical motif, one that goes back to the early nineteenth century, as for examp le in Theodore Gericault's great lithograph Entrance to the Adelphi Wharf [182I; Fig. 50], one of the supreme black-and-white images of th e period. (Gericault's Raft of the Medusa [18 19], with its vict ims of shipwr eck striving to be beheld by a ship on the far horizon, is also pertin ent her e - more on that work in relation ro one of Thomas $truth's museum photographs in Chapter Five.) A more complex offshoot of the same idea is Passerby (i:996; Fig. 51), a black -and -white night scene powerfully illuminated in the right foreground by a light source evidently located "this" side of the picture surface. The event depicted - instantaneous ly, indeed with a show of instantaneousness - is simple yet takes a further instant to construe: a man in jeans and a shor t jack et about to ex it the pictur e at th e lower right glances back over

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89

Jeff Wall, Woman with a Covered Tray, 2003 . 49 (above)

Transparency in lighrbox . .164 x 208 .5 cm

50 (right) Theodore Gericau lt, Entrance to the Adelphi Wharf, r82 .r. Lithograp h . 25 .3 x 3X cm

51 Jeff Wall,Passerby,1996. Gelatin silver print. 250 x 339.5 cm

his left shoulder at another man who has just run past (the second figure can be made out immediately to the left of a tree, the cast shadow from which partly falls on him). It is not just that the nearer man appears unaware of being photograph ed but that the running figure draws the first's attention away from the camera (and the lights and th e viewer), so that the picture as a whole combines a manifestly amitheatrical "actional" motif with the fullest possible acknowledgment of photographic artifice (no te in particular the reflected light from the stop sign toward the left), hence to -be-seenness. Finally, there are two lightbox pictures that Wa ll calls Blind Window No. I (2000; Fig. 52) and Blind Window No . 2 (2000; Fig. 53), both of w hich belong to th is infor mal and by no means inclusi ve gathering of ant itheatrical works . L1 Abso1·ption and Theatricality I remark on the prominenc e of the subject of blindness in post-1750 French painting and suggest that its importance derived from the fact that a blind person is

j eff wa ll, w ittg ens t ein, and t he eve ryday

91

52. Jeff Wall, Blind Window no. r , 133 cm 53 Jeff Wall, Blind Window no.

2, 2000.

2000.

Transparency in lightb ox. ro9 x

Transparency in lightbox . r34 x

1 70.5

cm

54 (left)

Paul Strand , Blind, 1916 . Platinum print . 34 x 25. 7 cm.

5 5 (below) Walker £vans, Untitled /Subway Passengers, New . The Metropoli tan Museum of York], 193 8. Film negative, 3 5111111 Art, New York, Walker Evans Archive, 19 94 (1994.253 .5ro .2)

easily represented as wrnware of being beheld. 45 As it happens, blindness is also the subject of one of the most powerfu l and influentia l p hotographs of the early twentiet h century, Paul Strand's Blind (I9I6 ; Fig . 54}, a work later identified by Walker Evans, one of Wall's particular admirations, as the decisive early influence on his art; indee d Evans's volume of "Subway Portraits," to be discussed later in this book, ends with a ph(?tograph of a blind accor dion ist (1938; Fig. 5 5).46 I take Wall 's two p ictures as highly original restatements of the sub ject of blindn ess (the titles underscore the po int), and I find especially in the second a singularly empathic version of the theme, as if for a fleeting perceptual moment - before the image "naturalizes" itself - the imp licit analogy between dwelling and body underwri tes an evocation of blindness as experienced /;om

within.

jeff wa ll, wittgenste in, and the everyday

93

"I under.ttoodat once that thi.t photograph'.t'adventure' derived from the co-presenceof two elements ... " KOBN WBSSING: NICARAGUA. 1979

56

Koen Wessing, Ni caragua, 1979 . From Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida

barthes's punctum

4

At the crossroads of the entire oeuvre, perhaps the Theater ... Roland Barthes, Roland Barthes 1

Roland Barthes's final book, known in English as Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography, was originally published in France in 1980, the year of his tragic death, and was trans lated into English in r 981. 2 From the moment it appeared it has been a dominant point of reference for writers on photography, at least in the United Stat es and Great Britain . Above all Barthes's central distinction between what he calls the studium and the pun ctum has been enthusiastical ly taken up by countless critics and theorists, who almost without exception have found in it princ ipally a contrast between the ostensible subject of a given photograph, or rather the general basis of that subject's presumed interest for an average viewer (the studium), and whatever that photograph may contain that engages and - Barth es's verb s - "pricks" or "wounds" or "bruises" a particular viewer's subjectivity in a way tbat makes the photograph in question singularly arresting to him or her (fro m her e on I shall stay with "him") . T b.is is not wrong- as will be seen, it is pretty much what Barthes explicitly states - but I want to suggest that placing all the emphasis, as is usua lly done, on the viewer's purely subjective response to the punctum ends up missing Bart hes's central thought , or at any rate failing to grasp what crucially is at stake in his central distinction. A further question, w hich will arise mor e tban once in what follows, is to what extent Barthes himself was aware of the ultimate implications of his own argument. Barthes 's announced approach in Camera Lucida is nothing if not personal. "I decided to take myself as mediator for all photograph y," he writes early on in Part One (8/21-2). Also: "I have determined to be guid ed by the consciousness of my feelings" (10/24). Ar greater length: I decided then to take as a gu ide for my new analysis the attract ion I felt for certain photographs . For of this attraction, at least, I was certain . What to call it? Fascination? No, this photog ra ph which I pick out and which I love has nothing in common with the shiny point which sways before your eyes and makes your head swim [a reference to hypnot ic suggestion]; what it produces in me is the very opposite of hebetude; some thing mor e like an internal agitation, an excitem ent, a certain labor too, the pressure of the unspeakable which wanes to be spoken. [18- 19/37] Further on in the same paragraph Barthes says that the best word for the attraction he feels for certain photographs is "advenience or even adv entur e. T his picture advenes,

barthes's punctum

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that on e do esn't " ('t9/3 8), but typically Barrhes mak es little use of the se words in th e rest of his book. Fina lly, he comes right out and says th at in his present investiga tion he "borrowe d somet hin g from phenomenology's proj ect and so met hing from its langua ge" (20/40 ). But Barthes's h euri stic or "va gu e, ca sual , even cynical " (20/ 40) phenome nol ogy is one th at , unlike classical phenomeno logy, atta ches p rimary impo rtance to desire and mourning. "The anticip ated essence of the Phot ograph," he writes, "co uld not, in my mind, be separated from th e 'pathos' of which, from the first glance, it co nsists " (21/42) . And in th e ne xt sec tion of th e book (nj11eof forry-eight; th e book compri ses t wo part s o f tw enty-four sections each) , he at last m oves cowar d introducing his central d istinction by way of ana lyzing an exemplary photograph, Koen Wess ing's Nicaragua ( 1979; Fig. 56). " I wa s glancing through an illustrated ma ga zin e," Barth es begins. A photograph ma de me pause. Nothing very extraord inary: th e (photogra phic ) banality of a reb ellion in Nicaragua: a ru ined str eet, two helmeted sold iers on patrol; behind th em, two nuns . Did thi s photograph p lease me? In terest me? Intrigue me? No t even. Simp ly, it ex isted (for me). I understood at onc e th at its exis tence (its 'adv enture ') derived from th e co-pre senc e of two disc ontinuous elements, hete rog eneou s in that the y did not be long to the sam e world (no need to proceed to the poi11t of co nt ras t ): th e so ldiers an d th e nun s. I foresaw a stru ctural rul e (conformin g to my own obs ervation), and I imm ediat ely tri ed to verif y it by inspecting other phot ographs by the same reporter (the Dutchman Koen Wessing) : many of t hem attracted me beca use th ey included this kind of dua lity which I had just become awa re of. [23/4 2-4] By th e beginning of the nex t sec t ion Barthes at tempts to cha rac terize a nd name rhe "two element s whose co-presence establi shed, it seemed, rhe particular interes t l roo k in these photographs" (25/47) : The first, obviously, is an ex tent, ir ha s rhe extension of a field , which I perc eive quire famili a rly as a co nseq uence of m y know ledge, my cu ltur e; th_is field ca n be more or less sty lized, more or less successful , depending on t he photo gra pher's ski ll or luck, but it a lways refers to a classical body of information: rebellion, Nicarag ua, and all th e signs o f both ... Th o usands of photo gra ph s consi st of this field, and in these photographs I can , of course, rak e a kind of ge neral interest ... What I feel about th ese photographs derives from an average effect, almo st from a cert ain tr aining. I did not kn ow a Frenc h word whi ch mig ht account for this kind o f hum an interest , but 1 believe this word ex ists in Latin: it is studium, which doe sn't n1ean, at leas t not immedi ately, "study," but application to a thing , taste for someo ne, a kind of genera l1 enthu siastic commi tment , of co ur se, but without special acuity. It is by studium that I am int ereste d in so many ph oto gra phs, wh et her 1 rec eive them as po litical t estimony o r enjo y them as good historica l scenes: for it is cult ur ally . . . chat I participate in the figures, the faces, th e gestures, the settings, the act ions . [25-6/4 7- BJ Then (introdu cing the second term , which has prov en a lmo st as pop ula r as Wa lter Benjamin's "a ura ") :

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why photography matters as art as never before

The second element will break (or puncture) the studium . This time it is not I who seek it our (as [ inves t the-field of the studium with my sovereign consciousness), it is this element wbich rises from the scene, shoots our of it like an arrow, and pierces me. A Latin wo rd exists to designate this wound, this prick, this mark made by a poimed instrument: the word suits me all the better in that it also refer s to the notion of puncruarion, and because the photographs I am speaking of are in effect punctuated, some times even speckled with thes e sensitive po ints; precisely, these marks, these wounds, are so many points . T his second element which will distmb the studium I shall therefore call punctuni; for punctum is also: sting, speck, cut, little ho le - and also a cast of the dice. A photograph's pimctum is that accident which pricks me (but also bruises me, is poignant to me). [26-7/48-9] Barthes glosses this basic distinction by noting that th e studium "is of the order of liking, not of loving," and further, crucially, that "to recogn ize the studium is inevitably to encounter th e photographer's intentions, co enter into harmony with them, co approve or disapprove of them, bur always to understand them, to argue them within myself, for cultur e (from which the studium derives) is a contract arr ived at between creators and consumers" (27- 8/50-51:) . Or as he also says, the studium endows tbe photograph ''with functions, which are, for the Photographer, so many alibis . These functions are: to inform, to represent, to surpr ise, to cause to signify, to provoke desire. And I, the Spectator, I recogn.ize them with more or less pleasure: l invest them with my studium (which is never my delight or my pain )" (2.8/5 r ). Most photographs, Barth es strong ly impli es, are in effect all studiwn; he thinks of them as "unary" and says of one type, the news photo gra ph, that it can shock or "'shout'" but is powerless to dist u rb or "wound" (41/70) . Standa rd pornography is also "unary," hence banal. A few photographs are different . "In this habitually miar y space," he writes at the stare of section eigbreen, "occas ion ally (but alas all roo rarely) a 'detaiJ' attracts me. I feel that its mere presen ce changes my read ing, th at I am looking at a new photograph, marked in my eyes with a higher value . This 'deta il' is the punctum" (42/71) . H e goes on: lt is not possible to posit a rule of connection benveen rhe studium and the punctum (when ir happen s to be there). Ir is a matter of a co-presence, that is all one can say: the nun s "happene d ro be there," passing in the background, when Wessing photographed the Nicaraguan soldiers; from the viewpoint of reality (which is perhaps that of the Operator), a who le causality explains the presence of the "detai l" : the Church implanted in these Larin-Am erican co untri es, the nuns allowed to circulate as nurses, etc.; bur from my Spectator's viewpoint, the detail is offered by chance and for nothjng; the scene is in no way "co mpos ed" acco rding co a creative logic; the photograph is doubtless dual, but this duality is the rnoror of no "development," as happens in classical discourse. In order to perceive the punctum, no analys is would be of any use to me ... it suffices that the image be large enough, that I do nor have to study it (chis would be of no help at all), chat, given right there on the page, I should receive it right here in my eyes. r42- 3/71 - 2]

barthes·s punctum

97

In the remainder of Part One Barthes explores the notion of the punctum with characteristic panache, stressing among other features its "power of expansion" : so for examp le in an Andre Kertesz photograph of a blind gypsy violinist being led by a boy (1921; Fig. 57) what pr icks Barrhes is the recognition, "with my whole body, [ofl the straggling villages I passed through on my long -ago trav els in HLtngary and Ru mania" (45/ 77) . (Barthes qualifies this expansion of the punctum via persona l memory as "Proustian," for obv ious reasons . More on Proust shortly.) It is hardly surprising , then, that commentators on Camera Lucida, when glossing the punctum, have stressed the importance of the indivi du al viewer's sheerly p ersona l response. As Victor Burgin writes: "It is the private nature of the experience which defines the punctum. " 3 ln fact almost all of Part One of Barthes's book is written from tha t point of view, while Part Two, largely devoted to the mystery of the so-called Winter Garden photograph of Barthes 's mother as a young girl, carries the subjective emph asis to the farthest pos sible extreme. However, one short section in Part One (twenty), comprising a single page of print , embodies a rad ical shift in perspective: Certain details ma y "prick'' me. If they do not, it is doubtless because the photographer has put them there intentionall y. LRemember, for Barthes "to recognize the studium is inevitably to encoun ter the photographer 's intentions."] In William Klein's Shinohiera, Fighter Painter (1961), the character's monstrous head has nothing to say to me because I can see so clearly that it is an artifice of the camera angle. Some soldiers with nuns behind them served as an examp le to explain what the punctum was for me (here, quite elemen tary ); but when Bruce Gilden photographs a nun and some drag queens together (New Orleans, 1973), th e deliberate (not to say, rhetorical) contrast produces no effect on me, except perhaps one of irritation. [Neither the Klein nor the Gilden photograph is reproduced.] Hence the detail which interests me is not, or at least is not strictly, intentional, and probably must not be so; it occurs in the field of the photographed thing like a supp lement that is at once inevitable a nd delight ful [the French reads inevitable et gracieux, whjch is not the same thing; see note 32 below]; it does not necessar ily attest to the photograp her's art; it says only that the photographer was there, or else, still more simply, that he could not not photograph the part ial object at the same time as the total ob ject (how could Kertesz have "sepa rated" the dirt road from the violinist wa lking on it?). The Photographer's "second sight" does not consist in "seeing" but in being there. And above all, imjtating Orpheus , he must not turn back to look at what he is leading - what he is giving to me! [47/79-80) That is it; that is all Barthes has to say, with respect to the punctum, about the point of view, the activity, of the photographer (the "Operator") as distinct from the response of the viewer. But 1 think it is enough. By that I mean it is enough in order to situate Camera Lucida in relation to the central current or tradition of anti theatrical critical thought and pictor ial pract ice that I have tried to show (in my tr ilogy Absorption and Theatricality, Courbet's .Realism, and Manet's Modernism 4 ) runs from Diderot and Jean-Baptiste Greuze in the 1750s and

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why pho tography matters as art as never before

"I recognize, with my whole body, the straggling v illages I passed throttgh on my long-ago travels in Htmgary and 'l{ttmania ... " A . KERTESZ : THE VIOLINIST'S TUN E. ABONY, HUNGARY, 1921

57 Andre Kertesz, The Violinist's Tune. Abony, Hungary, Camera Lucida

19 2

r. From Roland Barthes,

1760s through David, Gericault, Daumier, Courbet, Miller, Legros, and Fantin-Latour among others, a long with a matching list of arr cr itics, until it reaches a crisis of unsusrainability in the art of Edouard Maner in tbe 1860s and 1870s . Thereafter it undergoes a fundamenral change (of orienracion, rather than of purpose) that on the one hand indicates char the .Diderorian project - of effectively deny ing the presence before the painting of the beholder - was no lon ger feasible in any of its classic forms but on the other suggests that the problem of the beholder - of acknowledging 11-ispresence while not address ing him in the wrong way - was now absolutely fundamental to advanced painring and sculpture, in rhe first place in France, where the anrithear rical tradition arose, and eventually, decades lat er, in the United States . (The chief cr itica l cext in the latter regard is my "Art and Objecrhood," which I shall suggest has certain points in common with Barches's little book.) Understood in this context, Banhes's observatio n in section twenty of Camera Lucida char rbe detail char strikes him as a punctum could not do so had it been intended as such by the photographer is an antirbeatrical claim in chat it implies a fundamental distinction, wh ich goes back to Diderot, between "seeing" and "being shown. " 5 The punctum, one might say, is seen by Bart hes but nor because it has been shown to him by the photographer, for whom, literally, it does nor exist; as Barthes recognizes, "it occurs [onlyl in the field of th e photographed thing," which is to say char it is a pure arti fact of the pbot0graphic event- "[the photographer] cou ld not not photograph the partial object at the same rime as rhe total ob ject," is how Barthes phrases it- or perhaps more precisely it is an artifact of the encounter between the product of that event and one particular speccat0r or beholder, in the present case Roland Barrhes .6 This is in keeping with Diderot's repeated i11junction that the beholder be treated as if he were not there, standing before a painted or seated before a staged tableau, or to put this slightly differently, char nothing in a painted or stage d tableau be felt by the beholder ro be there for him. Works of painting or stagecraft char failed ro meet this experiemia l criter ion were pejoratively cbaracter ized as theatral, theatrical, which wou ld be one way of parap hr as ing Barthes's irritation with the too cleliberarely contrastive photograph by Bruce Gilden of a nun and drag queens that he compares unfavorably with Wessen's Nicaragua, in whic h, it is implied, the presence of the nuns appears fortuitous, Lutintended, as if they entered the photographic field withou t the photographer being conscious that they were there. (I do not deny that this seems an unlikely scenario; my point is simply that something of the sort follows from rhe argument of section twenty .) By no means coincidentally, Did erot also sha rply criticizes the too obvious use of contras t on the pan of the artist .7 At one othe r moment in Part One of Camera Lucida (section fourteen) Barthes considers bis topic from the point of view of the phorographer: [ imagine (this is all I can do, since l am not a photographer) that the essential gesture of the Operator is to surprise something or someone (through rhe little bo le of the camera), and rhat chis gesture is therefore perfect when it is performed unbeknownst to the subject being photog raphed . From thi s gesture derive all photographs whose principle (or better, whose alibi) is "shock"; for th e photographic "shock" (qu ite different from the punctum) consists less in traumatizing than in revealing what was so

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58 Walker Evans, Untitled /Subway Passengers, New Yorlil, r938. Film negarive, 35mm . The Metropolitan Museum of Arc, New York, Walker Evans Archi ve, 1994 (r994 .253 .502. 3)

well hidden that the actor himse lf was unaware or unconscious of it. Hence a whole gamut of "surprises" (as they a re for me, the Spectator; but for the Photographer, these are so many "performances"). [32/57] Barthes goes on to discuss severa l different kinds of "surprises," none of which he likes, but unfortunately he says nothing more about the large class of photographs taken of persons who are unaware of being photographed . The latter is a major element in twentieth-century (and for chat matter tw enty-first-century) street photography,8 as for examp le in Walker Evans's "Subway Portraits," made with a hidden camera on the New York subway in r938-4r (Fig. 58),9 in many of Garry Winogrand's street photographs from the r96os and r97os (see Fig. 148), or as in the contemporary Swiss artist Beat Streuli's telephoto videos of moving crowds on thoroughfares or street corners in different cities of the world, the film ing tak ing place without th e knowledge of th ose being recorded (Streu li also makes photographs of indivi dual pedestrians on th e same basis [see Figs c52 and r53l) . 10 Evans's, Winogrand's, and Streuli's projects may be understood as attempts to realize an ideal of natura lness chat goes back to Leonardo's note books and was restated in no uncertain terms just a few years before the publication of Camera Lucida. "T here is something on people's faces when they don't know they are being observed that never appears when they do,'' Susan Sontag writes in On Photography (1977), a statement already c ited in Chapter One. "If we didn't know how

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Walker Evans took his subway photographs (riding the New York subways for hundreds of hours, standing, with the lens of his camera peering between rwo buttons of his topcoat), it wou ld be obvious from d1e pictures themselves that the seated passengers, although photographed close and frontally, didn't know they were being photographed; their expressions are private ones, not those they would offer to the camera." 11 This is, of course, an anrithearrical ideal, and the projects of all three men are iJJ different ways updated versions of the Diderotian project of depicting figures who appear deeply absorbed in what they are do ing, thinking, and feeling, and who therefore also appear wboJJy ob livious co being beheld (that is the crucial point, as it was for Wittgenstein in r930) . In their work as in that of other street photographers, absorption often shades into distraction, a less "deep" form of mindedness, but the same fundamenta l problematic is in fo rce. As seen in connection with Wall and Richter - and Sontag on Wall's Dead Troops Talk at the close of Regarding the Pain of Others - manifestly abso rptive motifs continue to exert their powerful spell down to the present day. Now one of the most original features of Camera Lucida is that Barrhes has no interest whatever in scenes of absorption or distraction - or more broadly in the capturing of personages mm ware of being photographed- as a representationa l strategy for the simple reason that such a strategy not onJy does not seem to him on the side of antitheatricality, it strikes him, on the contrary, as quintessentially theatrical in that although the ''actor'' - the subject being photographed - appears unaware of what the phorograp h has revealed about his or her state of mind and/or body, for the photographer the images that result "are so many 'performances'" - obvious ly a pejorative notion in this context (as is "actor," J suppose) . 12 In short in order for a photograph to be truly antitheatrical for Barthes it must somehow carry within it a kind of onto log ical.guarantee that it was not intended ro be so by the photographer - a requirement that goes well beyond anything to be found in Diderot or for that matter any eighteenth- or nineteenth-century critic or theorist. 13 The punctum, [ am suggesting, functions as that guarantee. 14 Or consider Barthes's contention (in section twenty-two) that sometimes the punctuni lis] revealed only after the fact, when the photograp h is no longer in front of me and I think back on it. I may know better a photograph I remember than a photograph I am looking at, as if direct vision or.iented its language wrong ly, engaging it in an effort of description which will always miss its point of effect, the punctum. [s 3/87] This is a surprising claim, but it leads to a stilt more remarkable one: "Ultimately - OJ' at the limit - in order to see a photograph well, it is best to look away or close your eyes. 'The necessary condition for an image is sight,' Janoucb told Kafka; and Kafka smi_ledand replied : 'We photograph things in order co drive them out of our miods . My stories are a way of shutting my eyes'" (53/88). "The photograph couches me," section twenty-two concludes, "if I withdraw it from its usual blah-blah: 'Technique,' 'Reality,' 'Reportage,' 'Art,' ere.: to say nothing, to shut my eyes, ro aUow the detail to rise of its own accord into affective consciousness" (55/89) . Nothing could better illustrate the extremity of Barthes's anritheatricalis(n in his final book {at least in Part One of that

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book) than the hyperbolic removal from the scene of response of the actua l photograph, the visib le material artifact, itself.

Part Two of Camera Lucida begins immediately follow ing a short section {twenty-fo ur) in which Barches abruptly and without warning gives up the project h e had been pur suing on the grounds that I had not discovered the nature (the eidos) of Photography. I had to grant that m y pleasure was an imp erfect mediator, and that a subjectivity reduced to its hedonist project could not recognize th e un iversal. I would have to descend deepe r into myse lf to find the evidence of Photography, that thing which is seen by anyone looking at a photograph and which distinguishes it in his eyes from any other image . I wou ld have to make my recantation, my palinode. [60/95-6] Thar recantation or palinode rakes place under the sign of Barthes's love for his deceased mother, wi th whom he had lived for much of his adult life, and finally focusses on a single image, a faded sepia print of his five-year -old mother and her seven -year-old brother "standing together at the end of a litt le wooden bridge in a glassed-in conservatory, what was called a Winter Garden in those days" (the year was x898; 67/106). This is tbe so -called Winter Garden Photograph, a photograph, he writes, that for once "gave me a sentime nt as certain as remem brance, just as Proust experienced it one day when, leaning over to take off his boo ts, th ere suddenly came to him his grandmother's true face, 'w hos e living rea lity I was experiencing for the first time, in an involuntary and complete memor y'" (70/109). 15 Yet Barthes wi ll shortly remark, "The Photograph does not call up the past (nothing Proustian in a phorograph). The effect it produces upon me is not to restore what has been abolished (by time, by distance) but to attest that what I see has indeed ex isted" (82/r29) . As he says later on : "Not only is the Photo grap h never, in essence, a memory . . . but it actually blocks memory, quickly becomes a counter -memory" (91/142 ). Barthes 's willingness to let these passages chafe against one another is puzzling (how could he have failed to note tbeir irreconcilability?) 16 but I tak e that chafing as an indication that the logic or analogy that binds Camera Lucida to Proust 's immortal masterpiece and even more pointedly to the preface of Contre Sainte-Beuve was in the end beyond his grasp. 17 Let me spe ll this out: in the preface Proust discovers and then expla ins the mode of action of what he calls involuntary memory, the almost magica l operation of which is dramatized in the famous madeleinedipped-in-tea episode in Du cote de chez Swann, volume one of A la recherche du temps perdu. But the preface insists on an insig ht that to the best of my know ledge is never made exp licit in the novel: that any delib erate attempt on th e part of a subject to imprint a contemporary scene on his or her memory wi ll not only fail to capture its reality,.it will actua lly render th e latter irrecuperabl e in the future by the action of involuntary recall. 18 Put more strong ly, on ly sce nes and events that escape the subject's conscious attention iJ1 the present are eligible to be recovered in the future, and thus , according to Proust, to be trul y experienced for the first time. The analogy between this claim and

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Barthes's notion t hat th e effect of a punctum on a viewer depe nd s on its non ex iste nce for the photographer is obvious; conversely it is as though Proust's deliberately imprinted image - the product of volunta ry memory - were itself " unary," hence powerless to resurrect the past. N ow, as no reader of Camera Lucida needs to be cold, Barrhes never reproduces the Winter Garden Photograph. 19 H e explains in a parenthesis: "I cannot reproduce the Winter Garden Photograph. Tt exists on ly for me. For you, it would be nothing but an indifferent picture, one of the th ousand manife stat ions of the 'o rd inary' . . . at most it would interest your studium: period, clo thes, photogeny; but in it, for you, no wound'' (73/ 1 r 5 ). Th is makes perfect sense as far as it goes, bur l want to go a step farther and suggest that Barthes's declaration of the Winrer Gar den Photo graph's stru ctura l unre producibilicy shou ld be understood as st ill another measure of the not quite exp licit antithearrical animus of his overall argu ment - as thou gh for Barthes that unreproduc ibility epitomjzed hi s utter rejection of th e "ex hibiti on-va lue" th at Walter Benjami n famous ly associated wit h the photographic in "The Work of Arr in th e Age of i ts Technological Reproducibility . " 20 Not that Barthes mentions Benjamin, who was doubtless a less imposing figure in 1980 than he is today, bur nor does he mention a famous text by a great Fr ench w rit er rhac climax es with the revelation of a pa intin g of a be loved woman that cou ld be seen as such only by its creator, Balzac's Le Chef-d'oeuvre inconmt . It is hard to believe that the author of S/Z was unawa re of rhe laner con necti on.!' With the Winter Garden Photograph at the cente r of his reflections, Bart hes proceeds to zero in on t he assoc iat ion, as he sees it, between the photograph and the past and beyond that between the phocograph and death - in the first instance, the futur e death of the photograph's hum an subject (that is, furure relat ive ro the "rime" of the photo grap h): at th e epoch of the writing of Camera Lucida Barrhes's mother was dead, as was Lewis Payne, photographe d in prison by Alexa nd er Gardner in 1865 (Fig. 59}, soon thereafter to be hanged for his role in Linco ln 's assassination ("The photograph is handsome, as is the boy; tha t is the studium. But the punctum is: he is goiug to die" [96/148 50]); and in the secon d insta nce, or u ltima tely, the future death of one particu lar viewer, Barthes himself. 22 "lam the reference of every photograph," he writes, "and thi s is what generates my aston ishm enr in addressing myself ro the fundamental question: why is it that I am alive here and now?" (84/ 13 L). Of cou rse, being alive here a nd now inescapab ly impli es chat a day w ill come when he will no longe r be alive, which is why, in Barthes's words, "[EJach photograph ahvays conta ins this imp erious sign of my future deat h " (97/r51). All this is to say that in addit io n to the pullctum of the detail, the main concern of Part One, there is anothe r punctum, "no longer of form bur of intens ity," name ly "Time, the lacerating emphas is of th e noeme ('that has been'), its pure representation" (96/148) . An obv iou s conclusion follows, one that Barrh es himself docs not dr aw, eith er beca use he prefers his rea de rs to do so for themselves or, as l suspec t, because his thought here coo stop s just short of its farthest impli catio ns. Time, in Barthes's sense of the term, functions as a punctum for him precisely because the sense of someth ing being past, being historical, cannot be perceived by the photographer or indeed by anyone else in the present . It is a gua ran tor of ancicbeatrica licy that comes

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"He is dead and he is going to die ... " ALEXANDER GARDNER: PORTRAIT OP LEWIS PAYNE. 1865

59 Alexander Gardner, Portrait of Lewis Payne, 186 5. From Roland Barches, Camera Lucida

co a photograph, that becomes visible in it, onl y after the fact, apres-coup, in order to deliver rhe hurt , th e prick, th e wound, to futur e viewer s that Barthes fears and cher ishes. Thi s has th e somewhat un exp ected consequence th at an)' phocogr aph of a present scene will undergo that development - hence Barrh es's claims that he is the reference of "eve ry " photo graph and that "each" photograph contains an imperiou s sign, the pun ctum of int ens ity, of his furure death - though his discuss ions o f pa rticular images, such as Gardner's pri son portr a it of Lewis Payne and a fortiori the Winter Garden Photo grap h , indicate that some phot ographs are far mor e wounding than ochers in thi s rega rd. On e such clas s of photograph s, Ba rth es recognjzes, are those tak en in and of ear lier epochs . "This punctum," Barth es writes, " mor e or less blurred beneath the abundance and th e dispa rit y of contempo rary photo gra phs , is vividl y legible in histo rical photographs: there is alway s a defeat of Tim e in th em : that is dead a nd that is going to die. These two litrle girls looking at a primitive airplan e above th eir village (they are dressed like my mothe r as a child , they are playing with ho ops) - how a live they are ! Th ey have their whole lives befor e them; bur also they are dead (today ), th ey are th en already dead (yeste rday)" (96/r50 - 51). 2J Actua lly, th e word " blurr ed " isn't quit e faithful to the Frenc h here; th e origina l wor d is gornme, which might better be tra nslated as "e rased" or "rubbed o ut. " In eith er case, however, the thou ght itself seems slightly errant; it would be truer to Barthes' s less than fully articu lated argument to think of the punctum of deat h as lat ent in contemporary photographs, to be bro ught out , developed (as in the photographic sense of th e term), by th e inexorabl e passage of time .24 More broadly, there is at least the hint of a contr adiction , if no t in logic a t any rate in th e realm of feeling, betw een the abso lut e uniqu eness of the Wint er Gar den Photograph ("Some thing like an essence of the Photo graph floa ted in thi s partic ular picture " l73/r I4 l) and the claim th at all photo gra phs , virtu a lly regard less of subject matter, are potentially carriers of th e punctum of time aJ1d deat h. W b.ich ma y have some thing to do with Barthes's hy perbolic (or H eideggerian? ) pronounc ement , a page or so ea rlier, th at modern society has made of th e Pho tograph precisely a means of "flatte ning " cfeath: "so that everythin g, tod ay, prepares our ra ce for this impot ence: to be no longer able to conce ive duration, affec tively o r symbolically : the age of th e Phocograph is also the age o f revolutions, cont estation s, assass ination s, exp losio ns, in short , of impati ences, of every thi ng which denies r ipening . - And no doubt, the asconis hment of 'that has been ' will also disapp ear. 1t has alr ead y disapp eared : I a m, J don 't know why, one of its last wit nesses .. . and this book is its archai c trace" (93- 4/l46-7) .25 Barth es thus comes co und erst and himself as commenting o n a n image-making or perhaps mor e acc urately an image-consuming regime that is all but def unc t, not because of any mat erial alterat ion in th e photographic artifact but because of whar he ta kes to be a profound transfo rmation of society - the wor ld - ar large. In fact two significant development s "w ithin" th e realm of the photographic were already taking place: digitization , which by th e 1990s wou ld be widely th ought to have tra nsform ed the o ntology of the phorogra ph ,26 and a considerable increase in th e size of arr photo gra phs, which already by 1980 was enabling work s such as Wall's lightbox tra nsp are ncies and Bustamant e's Tableaux to addr ess mor e than a single beho lder at the

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same time. Intimately related to the increase of size was the disp la y of those photographs on ga llery and museum wa lls, or rather the fact that photographs like Wall's and Bustamante's were made with the intention of being so displayed. (The last two points were discussed briefly in Chapter One and will be pursued at greater lengtb in Chapter Six.) lt should be obvious that both developments are at odds with the vision of photography in play in Camera Lucida. In th e first p lace, the advent of digitization, w .ith its impJjcation tl1at tbe contents of the photograph hav e been significantly altered or even created out of whole cloth by its maker, threatens to dissolve the "a dherence " of the referent to the photograph that undergirds the claim, basic to the punctum of the detail, that "the photogr apher could not not photograph the partial object at the same tim e as the tota l ob ject ." 27 (A partial object in the photograph that might otherwise prick or wound me might never have been part of a total object, which itself might be a digital construction .) In the second place, as Barthes specifies in connection with the punctum of time and death: "[P]hotographs ... are looked at when one is alone . I am uncomforta ble during the private projection of a film (not enough of a public , not enough anonymity), but I need to be alone with th e photographs I am looking at'' (97/r52) .28 bi both respects Camera Lucida has something of the character of a swansong for an artifact on the brink of fundamental change . (Perhap s the frontispiece illustration, a color Polaroid photograph by Daniel Boudinet of drawn turquoise linen curta ins with a pillow and presumably a bed in the foreground [Fig. 60] - an image unment ioned in the text- may be read allegorica lly in terms of th e first of these changes : the curtain is only barely transparent to the day lit scene beyond it, as if screening the viewer from whatever referent might lie our there. Alternatively, one might think of the weave of the curtain as an inadvertent figure for a digital photograph's pixe ls.) A further, and to my mind crucial, dimension of Barrhes's antitheatricalism emerges when one considers his engagement with the pose, the theatrical element in photography par excellence. Early on in Camera Lucida, in section five, he speaks of his considerable exper ience of being photographed whi le aware that that is taking place. Specifically, he describes the alteration that comes over him when this happens : "Now, once I feel myself observed by the lens, everything changes: I instantly constitu te myself in the process of 'posing,' I instantan eously make another body for myself, I tran sform myself in advance imo an image. This tran sforma tion is an act ive one: I feel that the Photograph creates my body or mortifies it, according to its caprice ... " (rn-rrh5). Further on :

In front of the lens, I am at the same time: the one I think I am, the one T want others to chink ] am, the one the photographer thiJJks 1 am, and the one he makes use of to exhibit his art. In other words, a strange action: I do not stop imitating myself, and because of this, eac h time I am (or let myself be) photographed, I invariably suffer from a sensat ion of inauthen ticity, sometimes of imposrure (comparable to certain nightmares). [13/29-30] This sense of theatrica lization, for that is what it amounts to, wou ld seem to be an inevitable consequence of posing, for Barthes and for anyone, but consider:

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DANIEL

60

BOUDINET.

POLAROID. 1979

Dan iel Boudin et, Polaroid, 19 79. From Roland Barrhes, Camera Lucida

r) Not just the Winter Ga rden Photograph but every photograph of his mot her

manifested the very feeling she must ha ve experienced eac h time she "le t" herself be photographed : my mothe r "lent" herse lf to th e photograph, fearing that refusal wou ld turn to "a ttitud e;" she triumphed over th is ordeal of p lacing h erself in front of th e lens (an inevitable action) with discretion (but without a tou ch of the tense thea tricalism of humility or sulkiness); for she was always able to replace a moral value w ith a higher one - a civil va lue. She did not stru ggle with her image, as I do with min e: sbe did not suppose h erself. [67/ro5 l The quorarion marks, like th e italics, show how difficu lt Barthes found it to charac terize his mother's relation to th e camera; in the end th ere scarce ly were words for what he wished to say. As for th e Winter Ga rden Photograph,

ft]he distinctness of her face, the 11a·1ve att itude of her hands , the p lace she had docilely taken without either showing or hiding herself [emphasis added !, and finally her expression, w hich distinguished her, like Goo d from Evil, from the hysterica l litt le girl, from the simp ering doll wh o plays at being a grownup - all this constituted the £igme of a sovereign innocence . . . all this had transformed the photographic pose into tha t untenab le paradox whjch she had nonetheless maintained all her life: th e assertion of a gentleness . I69/ro7f 9 In the rares t of instances, then, it is possible to neutralize the theatricaliz ing effects of the pose by a kind o f gift of nature on the part of the sitter, which is also tO say wi th out any intention to do so on her part . 2.)Toward the end of Part Two Barthes ret urn s ro the topic of his mother's charac teristic expression and generalizes it in the concept o f "the air (the expression , the look )" (107/167). 30 " Th e air of a face is unan alyza ble," he goes on to say. " Th e air is not a schematic , intellectual datum, the way a silhou ett e is. Nor is th e a ir a simple analo gy however exte nded - as is ' likene ss.' No, the air is that exorb itant thing which induces from body to sou l - animula, littl e individua l sou l, good in one person, bad in another" (107-9/r67) . And after a sho rt digression on photographs of his mother: "The a ir (I use this word, lacking anything better, for the expression of truth) is a kind of intractable supplement of identity, what is given as an act of grace [emphasis added] , stripped of any 'importance' : the a ir expresses th e sub ject, insofa r as th at subject assigns itse lf no importance" (109/r68). (In Richard Avedon's photogr ap h of th e recently deceased leader of the American Labor Party , A. Philip Ran dolph [1976; Fig . 61 J, Bart hes reads "a n a ir of goodness (no impulse of pow er: that is certain)" [n:o/I69 i.)31 What espec ially intrigues me in these formu lations is the phrase I have itali cized : the air as "given as an act of grace ." (The French rea ds: cela qui est donne gracieusement .} "Art and Object hood, '' not oriou sly, ends wi th th e sente nce: "Presentness is grace." Is it po ssible th at th e essential, all but ineffable qualities that Barthes and I believed we found respectively in certa in photographs an d certain abs tract painting s and sculptures are at bottom th.e same?32 3) Also in Part Two Barthes goes so far as to propose that "wha t founds the nature of Photography is the pose" (78/122), a claim that on th e one han d is consistent w ith

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"'No impulse of power'' R. AVBOON: A. PHILIP RANDOLPH (THB FAMILY).

61

1976

Richard Avedon , A. Philip Randolph, 1976 . From Ro land Ba rrhes, Camera Lu cida

his previously expressed distaste for the "performance" of phorographing "acrors" unaware of the presence of the photographer bur on the ot her appears to install an essen tially theatrical relationship a t the very heart of the photographic project. He goes on to expla in {brilliant ly, to my mind): The physical durat ion of this pose is of little co nsequence; even in the interval of a millionth of a second (Edgerton's drop of milk) there has still been a pose, for the pose is not, here, the attitude of the tar get or even a technique of the Operator, but the term of an "intention" of read ing: looking at a photograph, I inevitably include in my scrutiny the thought of that instant, however bri ef, in which a rea l thing happened to be motionless in front of the eye. I project the present photograph's immobility upon the past shot, and it is this arrest which constitutes the pose. l78/r22] The pose, in instantaneous photographs, is thus an artifact of the encounter of the product of the photograph ic event an d the viewer - just like the punctum . Barrhes continues (equally brilliantly): This explains why the Photograph's noeme deteriorates when this Photograph is animated and becomes cinema: in the Photograph, someth ing has posed in front of the tiny hole and has remained there forever {that is my feeling); but in cinema, something has passed in front of this same tiny hole : th e pose is swept away and denied by the continuous series of images: it is a differen t phenomeno logy, an d therefore a different art which begins here, though deri ved from the first one . (78/r22-3] One might expect Barthes to prefer cinema precisely on the grounds that it thereby escapes or avoids theatricality- mechanica lly, automa tically- but that may well be the deep if unacknowledged reason why he attaches a greater value to photography: because the latter is faced with the cask of overcoming theater in and throu gh the punctum, or in the case of the Winter Gard en Photograph through his mother's sheer innocence of nature . {Mechanica lly escaping or avo iding theater is not so much antithe atr ical as, merely, non-theatrica l.) This chimes wit h a similar claim about the movies in "Art and Objecthood," already broached in Chapter One in connection with Sugimoto's Movie Theaters, Sherman's Untitled Film Stills, and Wall's Movie Audience. Here too a certain closeness between the rwo texts, obv ious ly not the result of any influence of the American on rhe French, is suggestive .33 4) A final reach of Barthes's th ematics of the pose concerns his preference - too mild a word - for photographs that look him, as he puts it, "straight in the eye" {:rrx/J72). (Avedon's portrait photographs are exemplary for him in that regard. T he great missed encounter among the photographers of the 1960s and '70s, however, is with the work of Diane Arbus; one wou ld like to know what Barthes would have made of her often disturbing images of fronta lly posed subjects. 3 4 ) This corresponds to a major strain, which I call "fac ingness," in modernist painting since Manet, 35 and is said in conn ection with a further avowa l of his lack of interest in photographs that seem to ignore him, in particu lar news photographs of scenes of "death, suic ide, wounds, acc idents" (nr/I7r) .

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No, nothing to say about these photographs in which I see surgeons' gowns, bodies lying on the ground, broken glass, etc . Oh, if there were only a look, a subject's look, if only someone in the p hotographs were look ing at me! fBut w hat of Kercesz's The Violinist's Tune or Stieg litz's classic The Horse-Car Termina l, another image Barthes admires, neither of wh ich conta ins such a look? Yet there are facing figures in Wessing's Nicaragua p hotographs, William Klein's Mayday, Moscow, and indeed in most of the other images Barthes illustrates.] For the Phocograph has this power which it is increas ingly losing, the front a l pose being most often cons idered archaic nowadays - of looking me straight in the eye (here, moreover , is another difference : in film, no one ever looks at me: it is for b idden - by the Fict ion ).f rr r/171-2 l Barches is right about th e diegetic structure of film, or at any rate of traditional narr ative film (that is, movies} with its implicit inju nction agains t all direct sol icitation of the viewer (compare the bri ef discussion of this aspect of Sherma n's Untitled Film Stills in Chapter One}, but turns out to ha ve been wro ng about photography's abando1unent of the frontal pose . Apart from Avedon and Arb us (and Robert Mapp lethorpe, two of whose portrait photographs h e reproduces}, reliance on such a pose was already implicit in Bern d and Hilla Becher's documentary photographs of industrial bu ildings and constructions, wh ich they had begun to make in 19 59 and which by 198 0 were becoming widely know n, and in the early portrait work of Ruff, a student of Bernd Becher in Dusse ldor.f. Other photog raphers such as Thomas Stru th (an ot her Becher student}, Patrick Fa igen baum, Ro land Fischer, and Rineke Dijkstra soon fo llowed, an d in general the frontal pose came increasingly to play a vital ro le in the new art pbotograph y as the latter claim ed for itself the scale and so to speak the address of abstract painting. (Bustamante's photographs of cypresses also belong to this development, as does Wall's Picture for Women, perhaps his most important ea rly work .) So perhaps one shou ld say that Barches was forwa rd -loo king in his attachment to the frontal pose, even if his caste for Avedon in particular is at odds with recent developments. Th e question, of co ur se, is how, with in the logic of the arguments I have been track ing, photographs based on th e fronta l pose, th ereby foregroun ding the subject's awareness of the fact of being photographed, can succee d in defeating theatrica lity in the case of subjects who are no t, like Barth es's five-year -old moth er or A. Philip Randolph, human ly exceptional. Barthes's attempt at a solution (in section forty -six) takes off from a rea I-life situation in which a yo ung boy entered a cafe and looked at bim wit hout his being sure that the boy was seeing him. This leads to the proposa l char the Photograph separates attention from perception, an d yields up on ly th e former, even if it is impossible without the latter . . . [I]t is tl1is sca ndalous movement whkh produces th e rarest qua lit y of an air. Th at is the paradox: how can one have an intelligent air witho ut t hinking about anyth ing intelligent, just by looking into this piece of black p lastic? It is because the look, eliding th e vision, seems held back by something interio r. ln 1- 13/r72 - 4 ]36 This coo is brilliant in an ad hoc sort of way but , appealing as it does to th e photog raph as such, it fa ils to explain w hy only some fronta l portrait s are fel 1 by Barthes to succeed in this respect (is that rea lly wha t is at sta ke in Kertesz's great portrait of the fiercely

why photog raphy matters as art as never before

"How can one have an intelligent air witho11,tthinking of anything intelligent? ... " A.

KERTESZ. PIET MONDRIAN

IN HIS STUDIO. PARIS, 1926

62 Andre Kertesz, Piet Mondrian in His Studio . Paris, I926, 1926 . From Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida

intellectual Mondr ian [1926; Fig. 62], which Barthes illustrates in this co nnect ion?), and it appears to have nothing to do with the ontologica l and affective themes of what has gone before. At this point the imp etus of his discourse gives our and th e book is near its end. Yet one can at least say that Barthes 's avowed ta ste for photographs of the fronta l type, precisely because of the difficult ies the latt er seem inevitably to present for an antitbeatrica l est het ic, furth er suggests that for him overcoming , no t avoiding, theat rica lity is what has to be accomplis hed, and perhaps also that success in that endeavor can be imagined ro take plac e on ly aga inst the grain of the photog rapher's intentions. 37 (I shall have more to say about the issue of intentionality in Camera Lucida in the conclusion to this book.) The present chapter as a whole raises a broader question, namel y the sta tus of antitheatrica lism elsewhere in Barthes 's oeuvre . A serious attempt to answer that question wou ld have to consider at leas t his early writings on the theater both before and after bjs epocha l 19 54 encounter with the Berliner Ensem ble and the plays and theori es of Brecht (a high ly ambiguous figure with respect to the issue of theatrica lity); t he arti cles "Baudel aire's Theater," "Rhetoric of the Image," and "Diderot, Brecht, Eisenstein "; his more covert involvement with Artaud; the essay "The Third Meaning : Research notes on some Eisenst ein stills," which anticipa tes several points in Camera Lucida; and the exhilarated pages on th e bunraku puppet theater in The Empire of Signs.38 It is not to be expected, given the several intellect ua l peripeteias in Barthes's career, and also in view of the fact that even in Camera Lucida h e remains incomp letely awar e of the ultimate import of key distinctions an d arguments, that the story would be simp le.

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thomas struth's museum photographs

5

Thomas Scruth, born in L954, belonged to Bernd Becher's first group of photography students at the Dusseldorf Academy, along with Andreas Gursky, Candida H ofer, Axe l Hi.itte, and Thomas Ruff. 1 Later on in this book I sha ll examine some of his fam ily portraits and sha ll glance as well at his early cityscapes an d his later "Pa radis e" photo s, but in this chapter I want to look closely at a num ber of the so-called mu seum photographs that he has been making at inter vals since 1989 . Thre e series of these will be considered . The first, by far the best known and most widely admired, comprises twentyodd large color photographs of people looking at paintings in museums and churches in Europe and, in a few cases, the United States . (I shall call them th e classic mus eum photographs.} Amo ng these are Louvre 4, Paris (1989; Fig. 63), featuring Theodore Gericault 's Raft of the Medusa; Kunsthistorisches Museum 3, Vienna (r989; Fig. 64), depicting a wh ite-hair ed man in a dark blue coat wi th hands clasped behind his back looking closeJy at a Rembrandt portrait of a muc h you nger man in a white ruff, one of a pair of portraits of a married coup le; Galleria dell'Accademia I, Venice ( r992 ; Fig. 65), dominated by Veronese's monumenta l Feast in the House of Levi; Art Institute of Chicago 2 (r990; Fig. 66), perhaps the best-known of all the mus eum phot ogra ph s, centered on Gustave Ca illebotte's Paris Street, Rainy Day; Stanze di Raffaello 2, Rome (1990; Fig. 72), a view of a milling crow d in th e Stanza della Segnatura i_nthe Vatican with parts of Rapha el's frescoes visible on the wa lls a bo ve the visitor s' heads (one can just make o ut pare of The School of Athen s at the left}; San Z accaria, Venice ( i:995; Fig. 70), the cen tra l painting in which is Giovannj BelLini's late a ltarpiece bearing th e name of the chur ch; Alte Pinakothek, Self-Portrait, Munich (2000; Fig. 73}, a frontal v iew of Diirer's great Self-Portrait of r500 with Struth himself slightly out of focus and partly cnt off by the edge of the photograph in the n ear righ t foreground; and National Gallery 2, London ( 2oor; Fig. 7r), a sho t of Vermeer's Woman with a Lute tak en from a resp ectfol distance and at an angle, so that it seems to han g alone on the right-hand wall, wit h no one looking at it. (The date s suggest that Struth began photographing in museums and the Vatican and moved on to churches somewhat later.} In most though by no means all o f the museum photogr aphs viewers are dep icted wholly or partly from behind as they sta nd before th e vario us canvases; the only photogi:aph w ithout a viewer is National Callery 2, London, and it cannot be an accident that it comes at the very end of the museum sequence (also that it depicts a Vermeer - but I am gettin g ahead of myself). A second series, comprising just six photographs, was made in the Pergamon Mu seum in Berlin between 1996 and 2oor. A third , somewh at large r group of works, known as the" Audience" series, was shot in Florence at the Galleria dell' Accademia in th e summer

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of 2004. 1 shall discuss both of these after considering the class ic museum photographs at some length .2 A fourth and a fifth series, the former shot at the Prado and the latter at the Herm itage (both in 2005), became known to me too late to be included in this chapter, though I shall say just a word about them in the conclusion to my book. Perhaps the best way to begin is by noting the tendency of many of Strut h 's commentators to equate the painted figures in the canvases and frescoes with the actual viewers (the visitors to the museum or church in quest ion) stand ing in front of the works of art. So for example the dist inguished art histor ian Hans Belting, in an essay first published in I993, claims, "It is the museum visitors, not the pictures, who are the first to enter our vision, and they deny us direct access to the photographed paint ings, even though they do not obstruct our view, as they would do if they were standing in the same place we are. They irritate us, howev er, because it is they who are look ing at the pictures instead of ourse lves." 3 Nevertheless, he takes it as obv ious that "Struth prefers to trace the consonance between the paint ings and their viewers rather than the contrast between them, because he is interested in putting the peop le in the pa intings and tbe people in front of the pa intings on the same level" (1r2). This leads to the further claim that "we begin to see the pictures as dramas in which the acto rs are in search of an audience, and the audience, for its part, is in search of an exper ience, or in search of itself" (n3). Farther on: Willy-ni lly, we are using dua l vision: one to view the painting , and the other ro glance at our contemporaries; or rather, we have one eye for art and another for everyday life, the latter of wh ich is being questioned and as a result transformed . fo comparison with the painted figures, our comemporar ies - most of whos e faces we do not even see- assume a visua l quality that po ints to photography as a medium. My awar eness of their poses and the colou rs they wear becomes more intense as r measure them against the very different poses and colours in the paintings. I suddenly begin to see photography in the same way I see painting. [n4] Lndeed the re emerg es in Belting's account almost an ambiguity as ro what lies inside and outside the painting. Thus the red check dress of the woman with the stroller who has paused in front of Cai llebotte's Paris Street as if she was hesitating to go out into the painted rain with her child's push -cha ir, complements the clothing colours in th e painting to such a degree that one no longer knows what is inside the painting and what is in front of it. Struth is using diiferent means to cont inue his game wi th the boundaries of art . ... We feel like rubbing our eyes when th e space in front of the painting transforms itself into a picture that is not sepa rated from the painting. [II 5 I Belting also says that precisely the opposite can happen, as in a photograph of crowds in front of N apoleonic pictures that seem like "windows whose curtains have been drawn" (1I5 ).4 But this is presented as an exceptional case, and even in a more than usually complex reading of Louvre 4 the emphasis comes down on the side of conn ection, not disconnection . Standing before the Raft of the Medusa, he writes, the viewers

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why photography matte rs as art as never be fo re

63 Thomas Struth, Louvre 4, Paris, 1989 . Chromogenic process print. 137 x 172.5 cm; 187 x 2II cm framed

seem to be eyewitnesses of the human drama in the painting, within which almost every gaze out of the picture is directed toward a distant signal of rescue. The gazes of the viewers follow the gazes of th e shipwrecked sailors, but our own eyes have already tak en in th is double sequence. In the picto rial parallels between the photo graph and the painting, we experience both as a window, and windows are of course phys ica l obstacles, but not visual ones . In the colour ing, the space, and the lighting, the two media are as much consp iratorially bound together as they are self-confidently contradictory. [II5] Similarly, referring to what he sees as a silent "dia logue" between the actual white -haired man and the depicted younger man in the Rembrandt portrait in Kunsthistorisches

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64 Thomas Struth, Kunsthistorisches Museum 3, Vienna, 1989 . Chromoge nic process print. 143 x 99 cm; 187 x 145 cm framed

Museum . 3, Belt ing writes: "Eac h of the int erloc utor s in the dialogue remain s enclosed within his own biography, no matt er when he lived," which is inco ntestabl e, but then adds : " everrh eless, they seem to be co mmuni ca ting w ith eac h other acr oss th e chasm of hist ori ca l, supraper sona l tim e .... The per so n painted and th e pers on photographed ... are in the m iddl e of a conversation with each other" (1 L9). As for Galleria dell' Accademia r, which for Belting brin gs th e mu seum cycle to a dramatic clim ax, "Now here else," he writes, " do th e co lour s in the paintings and in the photograph coa lesce so effo rtl essly, and the multitude of to urist s in th e museum seems to mi x casu ally wi th the guests at Veron ese's Feast in the House of Levi" (122 ). In that sense the pa intin g suppli es add itiona l mu seum guests, and a continuation of the mu seum room in the painted palace o f a Venetian ar istocrat . . . . If we reca ll that Veronese plac ed his own contem pora ries in the paint ing, we can reconstruct the virt uo so interpla y between real ity and illusion which the paint er, matching Struth's int enti ons exact ly, was enactin g eve n then. The painter was questioning the boundari es of rea lity, just as Struth is questioning the bound aries between painti ng and photography. [122] My point in citing Bel tin g at length is not to take issue wi th h im personally but rather co prepare the gro und for a far different reading of Stru th 's museum pictures (also to

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why photog raphy matters as art as never before

6 5 Thomas Struth, Galleria dell'Accademia 1, Venice, 1992. Chromogenic process print. 184.5 x 228 .3 cm; 184 .5 x 228.3 cm framed

suggest why such a reading is called for) . My reading, like Belting's, will be based solely on the photographs but I shall also be relating my reading of particular images to certain larger issues of a sort that have no place in Belting's commentary. My basic claim is this: that in the most compelling - to my eye and mind, the strongest - of the museum photo graphs, the persons dep icted in the paintings and the actual persons who have come to the museum to interact with those paintings in one way or another, far from taking part in a sophisticated game in which the boundary between painting and photography is continua lly breached, belong absolutely to rwo disparate and uncommunicating realms or, as I want to call them, "worlds." Take Struth's Art Institute of Chicago 2: is it rea lly true that the woman pushing a stroller (mostly hidden from our view) who stands gazing at Caillebotte's Paris Street appears to inhabit a space that is continuous with the depicted space within the paint ing? Or that her red plaid dress is felt to be anythiJ1g but anomalous with respect to the painting's intensely atmospheric color scheme? Or that "one no longer knows" whether she stands in front of the painting or w ithin it? For me the answer to all such question s is no, a no that is particular ly emphatic both for the way in which the strong ly perspectival space of the painting might be held to beckon the viewer into the depicted scene and for the unconventional relation to the picture plane of the three figures in the

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66 Thomas Strurh, Art Institut e of Chicago cm; 1 84 x 219 cm framed

2,

1990 . Chromo genic process print. L3 7. 5 x r7 4.5

right- hand half of the composi tion - the man and woman sharing an umb rella and glancing to the ir right (our left) as they wa lk directly toward the picture plane , and the tophatt ed man hold ing an umb rella to their left (our right) who not on ly is seen from behind but who is meant to appear to have just entered the depict ed scene from "our" space, in effect traversing the pictur e plan e as he did so. In other words , Caillebotte's canvas seems to pro vide an ideal test for Belting's acco unt precisely because it delib erate ly and consp icuou sly engage s the idea of the physical permeability - no t just the photograp hlike "transparence" - of the p icture plane , and my conte ntion is that despit e that fact, or ra ther because of it, $truth's photograph makes it especially clear that such perm eability is not hing more than a pictorial :fiction - that far from visua lly subsumingthe woman standing befor e it, th~ pa intin g_in the pl1orog1~p h is not on ly closed to ~er but -in the end almos t actively indiff erent to her very ex istence (and a f ortior i co oms as ; iewers of $truth's pl1otogra ph ). Ind eed if there is any ambiguit y at work in $truth's photog raph , it concerns the difficulty of determ ining how much of that sense of exclusion is based on the actions of the figures in the painting and how much on thos e of the persons in the photograph: so for examp le Caillebotte's man and woman sharing an

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matters as art as neve r befo re

mnbrella appear mom entar ily absorbed in someth ing or someone to their right, hence unaware of anyone who happens to be before the canvas, but it is also true that the young woman with long braids standing wi th her hands clasped behind her back immediately t0 the painting's right and who perhaps is reading a wall text that we cannot see - she is p lainly not looking at the painting - underscores the sense of uncommunicating realms (all the more so in that purely formally she offers an approximate analogy to the top-ha tted man seen from the rear) . Again, looking at Struth's Kunsthistorisches Museum 3, I am not inclined to imagine that the white-haired viewer studying the Rembrandt portrait and the younger, whiteruffed, gesturing man in the portrait are "in the m iddle of a conversation with each other ." As regards the painting itself, in contrast to th e _painting as it appears in the photograph, this is not an implaus ib le not ion : Rembrandt's sitter looks directly out of the portra it so as to seem to address a beholder standing directly before it. However, if one shifts one's position to the side the sitter's gaze appears to follow one, and my sense is that the photograph positive ly makes a point of this fact by depicting both portraits from an oblique angle as well as by capturing a moment in which the white-ha ired man has approached the portrait closel y without at all seeming co draw the painted man's atte ntion . (It is important to realize that Srruth proceeded by taking numerous shot s in a particular spot , in the hope that one of them would turn out to yield a picture worth preserving. Evidently Scruth found somethi ng he wanted in this photograph's implied contras t between the dose-range scrutiny of the portrait by che white -hair ed man and the seeming indifference of Rembrandt's sitt er to his _presence.) The further fact that the man in the ruff gestures toward the porrrait of his wife while she appears to be looking appreciatively at him only reinforces one's sense of both pictures' closure to the whitehaired viewer. Something slightly different takes p lace in Galleria dell'Accademia I, dominated by Veronese's Feast in the House of Levi, but the end resu lt is similar . The Veronese occupies almost the entire facing wall, but only a few visitors - a young couple and a somewhat older man - are shown lookiJ1g up at it; in the near foreground other visitors, large in size owing to the effect of photographic parallax, are blurred from having been caug ht in motion and in any case are looking elsewhere (to the right or the left); farther back and to the right, stand ing on both sides of a long blue radiator, one glimpses another half dozen visitors of all ages who for the most part appear to be looking toward paint ings on the left-hand wa ll, most of which lie beyond the left- hand edge of the photograph; and still fart her back and to the left several visitors look up and to che left as well. (A correction: one dark -haired young man in jeans at the rear left a lso turns out to be looki_ng at the Veronese but it takes close study to find him.) One effect of this internal diversity - of scale of persons, of their sharpness or blurredness, of their spatia l distribution, of the direct ion of their gazes - is to isolat e Veronese's g iant painting, or at least to underscore its separateness from the "wo rld'' of tourist hwnanity , most rep resentative s of which are not even taking it in. As for the painting itself, no ma tter how meticulous the extreme perspective foreshor tening of its floor tiles or how spectacularly illusionistic the render ing of the arch itectural loggia in wh ich the feast is taking p lace,

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its blatantly scenic character- the sense it conveys of being spread out laterally before the viewer, hence resistant to penetration - is somehow heightened by photographic depiction. (The painting's elevatio n above the actual floor plays a role in this as weLI.) In any case, nothing could be more at odds with Galleria dell'Accadernia r as I see it than th e suggestioD that its hum an subjects are sh own "mix[ing l casually" with Levi's gues ts. I do not know know whether or nor Struth would agree with my account of his museum photographs, but some of his remarks in interviews suggest that he might. For example, Phyllis Tuchman quotes him as saying, "I wanted ro remind my audience that when art works were made, th ey were not yet icons or museum pieces." And: "When a work becomes fetishized it dies." She adds: "$truth feels th e paintings in his museum photographs regain aspects of their origina l vitality when seen anew in the context he renders so seam lessly. " 5 It is not bard ro see why $trut h or indeed anyone else might feel this, though the word "seamlessly" is somew hat misleading . For if my account of the strongest of the museum phorographs is correct, it would be more accurate to say th.at the photographs make perspicuous - or at least intuitable - an otherwise invisible (and in an important sense nonexistent) seam forever separating the represented "worlds" of th e paintings they show from the actual world of the spectators, and that it is the work of that sea m (more broadly, it is rhe ontological work of the photographs) to create rhe impression that Strut!, tried to put into words to Tuchman - as if the photographs th ereby evoke an imaginary "moment" before the paintings were given over to beholding. I have already offered a few suggestions about why, in particular images, this might be the case . There is a further, general consideration that bears on the issue: $truth's photographs depict not one but two "worlds" (from no\.v on I shaU dispense with quotation marks), that of the painting or paintings featured in a given image and that of the 01usew11 or church in which it or they hang, and although as viewers of the photographs we rend co assume char the second, publk wor ld is ours, we do not in fact inhabit it. (The famous "transparence" of the photographic smface is what misleads us here, a.long with the very force of photographic realism as such .6) Instead, that second world is manifest only in the photographs, which is to say rhar w hat Struth's photographs give us to see, if my claims so far are co rrect, is the disconnectedness - the onto logical disparateness or separateness - of the respective wor lds of the painting or paintings they depict and of the phocographs themselves, neither of wliich wor lds can be ident ified with our own. A passage from Wittgenstein's Philosophical Remarks, a long-unpublished work sub mitted to Cambridge Univers ity in May 1930 as part of an application for a renewal of his research grant, is suggestive here: That it doesn't strik e us at a ll when we look around us, move about in space, feel our bodies, ere., etc., shows how natural these things are co us. We do nor notice that we see space perspectively or that our visual field is in some sense blurred coward its edges. Jr doesn't strike us and never can strik e us because it is the way we perceive. We never give it a thought and it's impossible we shou ld, since there is nothing that cont rasts with the form of our world .7

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A few paragraphs later he writes : Time and aga in the attempt is made to use language to limit the world and set it in re lief - bu t it can' t be done. The self-evidence of the wor ld expresses itself in the very fact that language can and does only refer to it. For since language on ly derives the way in which it means from its meaning, from the wo rld, no language is conceivab le that does not represent th is world . [80] Adapting Wittgenstein's thoughts to my account of Struth's museum photographs, what is suggestive is the idea that the latter make visible a certa in contrast or set of contrasts between the world in wh ich we live, perceive, and move - between what Wittgenstein also ca lls "the given'' 8 - an d another, mechanically depicted world which on the one hand in strictly visua l terms resemb les ours extreme ly closely (albei t imperfectly in many regards : for example, photographs are not normally blurr ed toward their edges, and of course we see wi th continuous ly self-adjus ting binocu lar vision) and on the other is separate from us or closed to us in fundamental ways. Indeed the crucial cont rast is that between the separateness or closure of the world depicted in the museum photographs and the structura l openness of our actual, lived world as described by Wittgenste in; to use two others of his formulat ions, th is is precisely the contrast that the photographs make striking to us, that they set in relief. (The photographs, one might say, perform a kind of ontologica l work that language as such canno t. ),,. ,. Also pertinent he re are paragraphs 600-05 in W ittgenstein's Philosophical investigations, rr. G. E. M. Anscombe (Oxford, r958), pp . 156e-57e: Docs everyt hing tha t we do not find conspicuous make an impression of inconsp icuousness? Doe s whar is ordinary a lways make the impression of or dinariness? When I talk about this cable, - a m I remem bering that th is object is cal led a "tab le"? Asked "Did you recoga ize your desk when you ent ered your room this morning?" - 1 shou ld no doubt say "Certa inly!" And yet it wou ld be misleading to say that an act of recognition had raken place. Of course the desk was not strange to me; 1 was nor surprised ro see it, as I shou ld have been if another one had been standing there, o r some unfam iliar kind of object. No one wi ll, say chat every time I enter my room, my long -famil iar surroundings , there is enacted a recognition of all chat I see and have seen hundreds o f t imes before . It is easy co have a fa lse picture of the processes called "recogn izing"; as if recogniz ing a lways consisted in compa r ing two impressions with one another. 1r is as if 1 carried a p icture of an object with me and used ir to

perform an ident ification of an ob ject as the one represented by t he picture. Our memory seems to us co be che agen t of suc h a compar ison, by preserving a picture of w hat has been seen before, or by allowing us to look into tbe pas r (as if down a spy -glass) . And it not so much as if I were comparing the object with a pict u re set beside it, but as if the ob ject coincided with the picture . So l see on ly one thing, not two. [Elllphasis in orig inal. ] W ittgenstein means ro be calling this way of understanding "the processes called 'recognizing'" into question, and what is fascinating about h is remarks in the present context is chat they ra ise the further possibility - at any rate, this is my thought - that the p icrure he imagines us imagin ing we carr y w ith us co compare with actual objects in the world is itself a kind of pbocograph. 1f true th.is would make it a ll t he more likely that we would cake the concems of an actual photograph to "coinc ide" w ith suc h a picture. Sec also Wittgens tein 's discuss ion of what he calls the "'v isua l room'" in the same work, para graphs 398-402, pp . 12.oe-2.2e, as well as the following from "The Blue .Book" : Now when in the so lips istic way I say "This is wha t 's rea lly seen," 1 po int before me and it is

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lo one sense , of course, what I ha ve been describing is a property of photographs gen era lly. Hmvever, $trut h's mu seum p hot ograp hs subtly bur insistent ly thematize rhat prope rty by dir ect ing attent ion to a crucial similar it y between look ing at paintin gs and look ing a r pbocogra phs , namely that tb e viewer is no more invit ed co ent er the space of the ph otograph than be or she is invited to ent er that of a painting. Ar the same time, the mu seum phot og raphs make visib le only in the most atte nuat ed way a vita l, even a defining, difference between o il paintings and pbotograpbs: I mean that paintin gs have worked, ofte n physically o bdurat e surfaces an d typica lly phoco graphs do not. " Pai nting h as to do with touch ... . T ha t's th e eros specific ro painring . . . . Photogr ap hy is about distance, th e inability to to uch, maybe," Jeff Wall has sa id. 9 Yet attenuation is not elision , which is to say th at it is as if th e non-"tra n spar ent" character of the paintings' surfaces is inevitab ly registered in Struth 's photographs at th e sa me time as the vie'vver'ssense of remova l from all pos sibilit y of direct contact with thos e sur faces a llows the "world- likeness" or say "wo rld-apartnes s" of th e paint ings as representat ions to be app rehe nd ed w ith particu lar force . (As the discussion in Chapter One of Bustamante's Tableaux demonstrated, and as will emerge a t gL"eater leng th far th er on in this book, the beholder-"excluding" aspect of photography can lend itself to much mor e aggressive for ms of rhematization than is found in the mus eum photographs. 'By the same token, ph otographe rs can strive acti vely against that aspect of the medium , as Stephe n Shore d id in his Uncommon Places.) All this implies a subtl e balancing act, an d in one phorog rap h, National Museum of Art, Tokyo (1999; Fig. 67), featuring Delacroix's brightly illuminated L iberty at the Barricades behind a protective transparent screen, th e balance is p la inly off: the painting seems to have no m ore rea lity than a pr ojected ima ge woukl have, and the relationship betw een it an d the dark, barel y differentiate d a udience of viewers looking up at it is \-vithout m ore than journalistic interest. (Poss ibly the point of the photograph for

essential rhar I point visually. If l poi nt ed sideways o r behind me - as it we re, ro things which I don 'r see - the pointing would in this case be mean ingless ro me; it wou ld nor be po inting in the sense in wh ich I wish to point. Bur this means that when I point before me saying "this is what's really see n," a lthough I make rhe geswre of poi nt ing, l don't point co one thing as oppose d to another. T h is is as whe n travelling in a car and feeling in a h m ry, T instinctively press aga inst someth ing in from of me as rhoug h I cou ld push th e car from within. (Ludw ig Wittge nste in, The Blue 11nd Brown Bouks [Oxford, 19601, p . 71, emphasis in o r igina l) This paragraph occurs as part of a longer discus sion of the prob lematic nature of rhe concept o f "sense data." My thanks ro James Conant and

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Richard Mo ran for helpin g me grapple wit h these issues. There is, however, another possibility tbar should be ac kno wledge d : nam ely, that the force of Wittge nste in's insistence in Philosophical Remarks upon rhe necessary fa ilure of a n}' att empt to use language ro limit rhe wo rld and sec it in relief is that 1101/Jingcould do that, includ ing phocograp h y (wh ich of co urse he does no r ment ion) . T his is che view of Robert Pipp in , who also wishes ro say that $truth's museum photograph~ show us rhe paintin gs in o m wor ld, che world rbe museum-goers and Srrurh and we all inhabit. To rhe ex tent that the paintings cou ld then be seen as ignoring rhe museum-goers, and more broadly as resisting the casual tourist world environ ing chem, a certa in anr ith ea crica l rheme would sri ll be in play. However, L am nor persuaded by this .

67 Thomas Strurh, National Museum of Art, Tok) 10, 1999. Chromogenic process print. L69.5 x 267 cm; 179 .5 x 'l.77 cm framed

Struth concerns precisely t~ p~inting's transmogr ification under "foreign" conditions of exhibition.) Other museum photographs fall short of evoking the separa tion I have described for other reasons: in Musee d'Orsay r, Paris (1989) the seven Van Goghs are coo small and distant to provide anything but a foil for the absorbed att itudes of the tourist viewers; in National Gallery 1 , London (J9 89; Fig. 68) the featured picture, Cima de Conegliano's Incredulity of Thomas, aims too conspicuously at a kind of sunlit illusioniscic projection "this" side of the picture surface for an effect of separat ion to take hold (it may have been prec isely that qual ity that intrigued Struth, however); in Museo del Vaticano 1, Rome (1990), the crowd of young visitors in parkas and with notepads 10 is simply too "prese nt" rela tive to the painted figures in the two gold-ground pan els; whi le in Rijksmuseum 1, Amsterdam (1990; Fig. 69) the way in which th e young woman seated on a meta l benc h in front of Reinbrandt's Syndics turns away from th e painting, apparently directing her gaze at an unseen person or object to our left, detaches her too co nspicuously from the canvas for ontological considerations to come into play. lt is an appealing photograph but with too obvious a scenario, I feel, and indeed it turns out 1 to have been posed by the photographer. t Finally, it is in relat ion to questions of "world -likeness" and "world-apartness" that I understand the self-restriction of the museum photographs to repr esentationa l paint ing. "Although Strutb loves the work of Pier Mondrian," Tuchman writes in the article cited abov e,

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68 Thoma s Scrutl,, National Callery 1, London, 1989. Chrom ogenic process print . r34 x 152 cm; 180 x r96 cm framed 69 Th omas Scrurh, Rijksmus eum r, Amsterdam, 1990. Chrom ogenic process print. u8 x 168cm; 164 x 2r2cm framed

he wasn't satisfied with his views of people looking at abstractions by the Dutch Modernist master. He also didn't like what he got when he worked with the bright, co lor fields of the American abstract expressionist Barnett Newman. He's come to realize he needs figures to respond to other figures. That's a major part of how he achieves a dialogue between two med ia - painting and photography . Possib ly, but my own explanat ion would stress the sense in which an abstract painting, for all its material rea lity and formal self-sufficiency,_falls short of picturing a world; or perhaps the point is that this is what becomes of abs tract paintings in photographs, at any rate in Struth's photographs, and that the photographer, being an acute observer of his own work, saw what was happening and drew th e correct conclusion. (The latest edition of $truth's Museum Pictures includes a photograph of one abstract canvas, Pollock's One: Number JI, I950 [1994 ] in the Museum of Modern Art; significantly, the viewers are blurred and the emphasis falls squarely on the painting. Moreover, not just abstract paintings are missing from Struch's museum photographs; so are major .figurative works by early twentieth-century modernists such as Matisse and Picasso. I suspect that the reasons for this are the same.) I have said that there are larger issues with which my reading of $truth's museum photographs engages . The se have mainly co do with the core argument of my Absorption and Theatricality, which (as outlined in Chapter One and touched on again in sub sequent chapters) maintains that a central current or tradition in French painting and art criticism from the middle of the eighteenth century up to Manet and his generation had for its guiding aim the project of establishing the ontologica l illusion that the beholder did not exist, that there was no one standing before the painting - a project which, if successful, wou ld in fact stop and transfix the actual beho lder precisely there . This was chiefly to be accomplished by the representation of figures so deeply absorbed in what they were doing, thinking, and feeling that they appeared unawar e of being beheld; the impre ssion conveyed was that they inhabit ed a worl d of their own, a wor ld in that respect - so to speak metaphorically - distinct and apart from that of the beho lder. (I noted the pers istence of this idea in Schwander's description of the young man in Wall's Adrian Walker as "concentrating so int ensely on his work that he seems to be removed to another sphere of life," and it came up again in the discussion in Chapter Three of Wittgenstein's 1930 extrac t.) It follows then that the depiction in Struth's museum photographs of non -communicating wo rlds - those of the pa intings, that of the museumgoers - harmonizes w ith crucial aspects of the Diderotian (or Diderotian/Wittgensteinian) ideal. What now needs to be remarked is, first, that some of the museum photographs that fit this acco unt do not represent scenes of absorption. This is plainly true of the Rembrandt portraits, while in the case of Feast in the House of Levi although none of the figures look directly out of the picture, the expans iveness of variou ;;gestures and more broadly what I have called the "scenic" quality of the canvas as a whole militate aga inst the idea of absorptive closure. Second, that other museum photographs do indeed depict works either in th e modern French absorptive 12 tradition or that may legitimately be seen in absorptive terms, at least up to a point.

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Exa mpl es of the first includ e Cai.llebotte's Paris Street, w ith its two pri ncipal .figures, the couple sharing an umbr ella in the right foreground, whos e atte ntio n appears momentaril y to be engaged by something - a person, thing, or event - off-canvas to the left. In an essay on Caillebotte, I have tried to show that he was consistently an a bsorp tive pa int er, with the proviso that his work also characterist ically registers the impact of Man et's ant ithetical assertion of facingness, which is why in Paris Street th e absorbed coup le is shown walking directly to war d th e pict ure plan e (that is, why the two figures face us with all but their gazes). 13 In any case, my suggestion is that our intuition of their absorption, hence of their cut-offness from whatever migh t be taking place in the world of the museum-goers, cont ribut es to the effect of distancing and sepa ration betwee n wor lds I ha ve associated with that photograph. Th e other museum photograph that features a work belonging centra lly to th e French antith eatrical tradition is Louvre 4, in which eight or nin e spectators (counting body part s), most or all of them Asian, stand at a respectfu l distance fro m Gerica ult's stupendo us - but a lso, one feels, to them somew hat disconcerting - Raft of the Medusa. In my account of th e Raft, first in Courbet's R ealism and afterward in an independent essay on the paint er, I call attention to its altog eth er origin al comp osition and in particular to the fact that wit h the obv ious exception of the older man griev ing over the corpse of a yo unger one in the left foreground, mo st of the ot her figures take part in a tremendous co llective effort to attract the attenti on of a passing ship, the brig Argus, on the far horizon . 14 (If they can succeed in this, they will at last be rescued after two hor rendous weeks und er th e tropical sun; th e effo rt fails, but later the same da y th e Argus spo ts th e raft and the men are saved . The sub ject of the pa intin g was based on an actual shipwreck.) In the text s just cited I gloss thi s structu ral tour de force by suggesting that it was motivated by th e need to overcome the presence of the actu a l beholder before the painting - the depiction of "mer e" absorption or indeed a bsorbi ng drama being no longer sufficient to achieve thi s, so that stron ger meas ur es were called for. And what could be st ronger than in effect stra nding 150 shipwrec ked men on a ma keshift raft under a blazing sun for two weeks, subjecting them to hun ger, thir st, madness, ca nnib alism , an d other horror s, and then revea ling to a handful of despairin g survivo rs, at the farthest limit of representationa l space, a ship that wou ld surely rescue them if only they cou ld succeed in attracting the attention of tho se on it. Viewed in th at light , the efforts of the men on the raft to make themse lves beheld by th e men on the Argus may be understoo d, at a deeper level, as dir ected as well toward escaping being beheld by the museumgoers (.initiall y the Salon- goe rs) pausing befor e Gericault 's canvas, wh ich is to say that Strutb 's project in the strongest mu seum photo graph s to thematize the sepa ra tion betw een worlds turns out to coincide with Gericault's project in his masterpiece. (Co mpar e my discuss ion of Wall's Untitled [Forest} and related photographs in Chapter Thr ee.) With this qualification : what is striking to anyone familiar with the or iginal pa intin g is that beca use in the photograph th e right -han d half of Gericau lt 's ca nvas, or a t least the upper right quadrant, is mor e th an a little out of focus, the Argus, under the best of circumstances a minu scule item on the hori zon, is particu la rly hard to make

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out. (The blurring is deliberate: the view camera Struth used in the makin g of the museum pictures allowed him to manipulat e the plane of focus in relation to the plane of the resulting picture. ) This only slightly compromises the impression of a collective bodily effort in the direction of pictorial depth, but it obscures the specific rationa le for that effort, and yet - to my eye - what might be called the "world-apa rt ness" of the painting relative to the actual spectators in the Louvre seems unmistakable. Among the factors working to this end are the olive-green ish cast of the chem ically unsta ble painting as a who le, the simp le but massive light gold fram e sett ing the canvas apa rt from the redd ish wall, and especia lly the implied contrast between the collective action of the muscular, partly naked black and white bodies in the painting and the altogether different mode of behavior on the part of the crisply show n, neatly dressed spectators. That most or a ll of the spectators are Asian plays a role in this as well. 15 So also doe s the fact, noted by Belting, that they face in the same direction as most of the figures on the raft: I read that sameness of orientat ion not as qualifying the distinction between th e world of the painting and that of the spectators but rather as underscoring the starkness of the gulf between th em. (The formal structure of or ienta tion alone is ~e utral in this rega rd ; what ma tt ers is how one reads that structure, and that dep ends on one's sense of th e meaning of the picture as a who le.) Even the blurring of the upper right quadrant of the canvas and indeed the less than perfectly sharp focus across the whole of the picture surfa ce have the consequence - aga in, for me - of rein forcing a sense of the metaphysical separation between the painting and its viewers, but of course my memories of countless hours spent transfi xed before the Raft are so intense that my impression on this score perhaps shou ld be somewhat discount ed. I mean that I can imagine someone less satura ted than me with looking at the Raft coming to feel that the lack of sharp focus some ho w devalues the painting. But my convictio n is otherw ise. One other museum photograph, among th e finest in the series, bears closely on my argum ent. In San Za ccaria, Venice (Fig. 70), the camera has been set up almost but not qu ite dir ectly across t he nave from Giovanni Bellini's late masterwork , the epo nymous altarpiece. Witho ut laboring the point, it seems clear that Struth's photograph emphasizes both the pa intin g's superb ly authori tative rendering of light and shadow, or rather its remarkable combination of light/dark atmosp herics with areas of inten se, saturated co lor, and its overall mood not just of repose but of profound inwardne ss, perhaps most pow erfully felt in the stand ing figure of St Jerome in red absor bed in reading in the right foreground. At least in the photo graph, the painting's illusioni sm is so persuas ive that all sense of the pictur e plane is lost - it is as thou gh a rounded , literal space were excava ted below the semi-circular arc h - and yet the convict ion of a separate rea lm could scarce ly be more powerfu l, in part because of the painting's elevation and arch itectura l frame, in part because of its near-juxtaposition left and right to two large canvases wit h which, ot her than th em atically, it has nothing to do. Anot her factor is the dominant left-to-rig ht or ientation of the nave, which means that most of the tour ists in the chur ch are not looking at the Bellini; a coup le who do look - standin g respectfully at its low er left - ar e overmatched by its deep color, prodigious ca lm, and

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70

Th omas Struth , San Za ccaria, Venice, I99 5· Chromo genic process print. I SO x 228.5 cm; I 82 x 230 cm framed

vastly sup erior "prese nce." Th en there is th e day light flood ing the chur ch int erior from somew here at th e upper left: alth ough the direction of th e light is consistent with that in Bellini's a lta rpi ece, th e viewer gr adu ally become s awar e of a subtle discr epancy between th e inten sity of the actu al relat ive to th e dep icted illumina tion . (O ne more significant deta il is the blond e girl to th e right of the alta rpiece w ho is blurred because of having been cap tured in th e act of sittin g down in one of the pews - or standing up, it is impo ssible to know which. In any case, th e sense of movement makes a furth er con tr ast w ith Bellini 's canvas .) Finally, ther e are three pictu res tha t for me explore the limits of Strut h's pro ject as a w hole. The first of these, National Gallery 2, London (Fig. 7 1), depicts Vermeer's

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71 Thomas Struth, National Gallery cm; 148 x 170.4 cm framed

2,

London,

2001.

Chromogen ic process prin t.

IIO

x 134 .4

Woman with a Lut e alon e on a wall with no one look ing at it. As in th e case of th e Rembr andt portr aits in Kunsthist orisches Museum 3 (see Fig. 64 ), th e Vermeer is p hotograph ed not frontall y but somewh at from the side; its placemen t towa rd the right-h and edge of the photograp h furth er heightens one's sense of its isolat ion, already und erscored by its br onze-colored sculptural frame and by th e fact that pa inti ng and frame are spot lighted on a shadowed bluish-gray wa ll. Mo st of all, tho ugh, it is Vermee r 's lut e-p layer's seemin g absorp tion in tun ing her instrume nt as she gazes abstractl y towa rd her rig ht in the direction of a near by window represent ed in extreme foreshort enin g, hence closed to our view, that so effect ively seals th e impr ession tha t she inh ab its a world of her own th at there is no need for mu seum -goers to dri ve th e point home. Anoth er factor in thi s is th e surpri singly small scale of the figure of th e woman, which adds a note of remoten ess to that of separati on. A third is pr ecisely th e o blique ness of the po int of view, which subtly them atizes t he non-transparen ce of the pa inted surface th at so to speak co mes "betwee n" the wo man in her wo rld and any possible viewe r, inside or outside th e photograp h.

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72 Thomas Struth, Stanze di Raffaello cm; 171 x 217 cm framed

2,

Rom e, 1990 . Chromo genic process print. 125 x 173

The first of the other two, Stanze di R affae llo 2, Rome (Fig. 72), depict s a packed crowd of tour ists in the Stanza della Segnat ura milling about und ern eath th e on ly partl y visible frescoes surroundin g th em (one can just make o ut th e School of Athens in th e sha dow s at th e upper left) . Belting rightly ho lds that this and another p hotogra ph in the Stanza d'Eliodoro repr esent the end of Strut h's proj ect in th at "in the Vatica n roo ms, the interp lay betwee n pa inting an d viewer cannot be developed any further. Th e location that belongs neither to the painting nor to the viewer has been lost and thu s the meeting betwee n t he two cann ot take place" (r22). 16 But what Belting mean s by interplay betwe en pa intin g and viewer is the calling into qu estion of the bound ary between the two, whereas in my reading of Struth 's project th e sharpn ess of th e separa tion betw een the wo rld of the fr escoes (in this case on ly dimly limned) a nd that of the milling tourists thr eatens to brin g the series to a close pr ecisely by literalizing th e distinc tion between them. In fact one's first impre ssion is that the photog rap h is basica lly a study of the crowd, juxtapos ing as it do es person s who are blurr ed because mov ing with oth ers, th e neares t, wh o are out of foc us, and isolated faces th at emerge w ith sudden clar ity (not ab ly the youn g man with bro wn hair and dark eyebrow s just to the right of cent er), the entir e jostlin g, p ointin g, guid eboo k-read ing mass at th e farthest pol e from evoking a not ion of co ntempl at ive loo kin g. Yet the relatively fade d an d unimpressive

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73 Thomas Struth, Alte Pinak othek, Self-Portrait, Munich, print. u6.5 x 147 cm; 158.5 x 184 cm framed

2000

.

Chromogenic process

fresco at th e right, a depiction of Gregory rx on his papal throne, turns out to retain just enough illusionistic force to attract and hold one's attention, and th us makes th e image as a whole yet one more revelat ion of ontological, not merel y literal, separateness . Th e third and last work I want to glance at in this connection is Alte Pinakothek, Self-Portrait, Munich (Fig. 73 ), a confrontation, if that is the word, between Durer' s glorious Self-Portrait, wh ich has been photographed head-on at fairly close ran ge, and Struth himself (so the title of the photograph inform s one), wearing a blue jacket and with his left hand in his pocket, stand ing not directly in front of the painting but somewhat to the right, as if to concede priorit y to Durer's panel - and, impl icitly, to the camera . Indeed being near the latter the figure of Struth is somewhat out of focus and is severely cropped by the edges of the print, wher eas the splendidl y framed pa int ing is in the sharpest imaginable focus and is show n in its entirety . Of all the paintings that appear in the museum photographs, Dtirer's Self-Portrait goes farthest toward seeming directly to address the viewer, a featur e that places the notion of separat ion betwee n worlds under unusual pressure. And of course the intimation of a special relat ions hip between Durer and Struth, more precisely between the pain ter in the painting and the photographer in the photograph, further cha rges the space (or spaces - phy sical, chrono-

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logical, ontological) between them. 17 Let me leave it an open question to what extent th e separatio n between worlds that I ha ve claimed to detect in the other photographs I have discussed is secure ly in place in this one as well. 18

Between 1996 and 2 00I Struth also mad e photographs of visito rs look ing at classical scu lptu ral and ar chit ectural remains in the Pergamon Museum in Berlin (Figs. 74-6) . Th ese follow on from the . class ic museum photo graph s while differing from them in several respects. In the first place, because there are no paintings in th e Pergamon Mu seum photographs the whole qu estion of separate worlds never arises. Then, too , Struth app ea rs to ha ve been as inter ested in the monumental scale of the viewing spaces as in the character of th e objects being viewed, an emphasis that gives these pho tograp hs as a group an architectural or environment al cast not pre sent in the earlier serie s. Fina lly, whereas the actua l per sons in the museum photograph s were almost always caught in the act of viewing or of mo ving into po sition to do so (in tha t sense the photographs are candid, in the usual sense of the term ), the viewers who inhab it the Pergamo n Mu seum photograph s were gather ed and set in place by Struth himself. 19 Apparentl y thi s came about becau se ordin ary visitors to the Pergamon Museum, most of w hom were equipped w ith he adset s, moved too quickly to provide the stati onary, abso rpt ive ensemb les that Struth soug ht ; mor eove r, consi dera tion s of depth of field meant th at he required ex posure s of ten to fifteen second s, far longer than would be pract ical under normal circumstances. Consequently Struth invited as man y as I40 persons to the mu seum on M onda ys, when it wa s officially closed, and more or less positioned them w ithin a part icular room. 20 Hi s intent, it seems clear, wa s to empha size the them e of the viewers' contemp lation - their a bsorb ed beho ldin g- of the mon ument s around them. As Wo lf-Dieter H eilmeyer notes, "No ne mak es eye-contact with the came ra, and Struth remain s, so to speak, a cland estine pr esence within the elevated viewpo int . " 2 1 By now I need hardl y und ersco re the Did erotia n implication s of suc h a mise -en-scene; the Per gamon Museum photo graph s are still anoth er exa mple of th e co ntinuin g fasc ination w ith abso rpti on on the part of a rtists and audien ces. What I find str ikin g, howeve r, is that certain critics who ordin arily admire Struth's work hav e been put off by the Perga mon Mus eum pictures precisely beca use they were posed . On the occasion of their ex hibition at the Marian Goo dman Gallery in New York in 2002, for exa mp le, Peter Schjeldahl - one of Struth 's mo st ardent supp orters - w ro te that the show suggests hubri s. After failing to get sa tisfactor y pictur es of ordin ary mu seumgoers, Struth brought in a crow d of his ow n choosi ng. Th e pictures are gra nd and bea utiful, but th e subtle self-consciousness of the "v iewers" proves de adening. Th ere is an ineffab le but fatal differe nce in attitude between people behaving naturall y and people behav ing natur ally for a ca mera. (l 'm co nfident of this jud gment beca use I felt the off-puttin g effect of these pictu res before learnin g its ca use.)22 Similarly, Micha el Kimm elman wrote apropos Strut h's retro spective exhibition at the Metropo litan Museum of Art:

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74 Thomas Scruch , Pergamo n Museum I, Berlin, 2oor . Chromoge nic proc ess print . 188.4 x 239 .5 cm; 197 .4 x 248.5 cm frame d

75 Thomas Struth, Pergam on Mus eum 3, Berlin, 2001. Chrom ogenic proc ess print. 171. 5 x 21 1.8 cm ; 180 .5 x 220 .8 cm framed

76 Th omas Strut h, Pergamon Museum 4, Berlin, 200 c. Chromogenic process print . 144.4 x 219 .8 cm; 15 3.4 x 228 .8 cm framed

Mr. Struth 's failures have been contrivances: dep loying friends aro und the Pergamon Mu seum in Berlin or the Pantheon in Rom e, or posing himself beside Diirer 's selfportrait. Comp are th ose stagy photograph s to his pictur e of an old man in front of two Rembr andt portrait s at th e Kun sthi stori sches Mu seum in Vienna. Th e exc hange of glance s is sly mag ic. You ca n't simulate such a thin g. Photograp hy, a hypersensitive mediu m, show s wh en you're fak ing.23 It is not hard to see what both crit ics are drivin g at. But severa l points are worth makin g. First, Schjeldahl's and Kimmelman's responses are furth er evidence (if it were

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needed ) of ho w unr eflective th e ongoing commitment to ab sorpt ion and a nt ith eatr ica lity often is. By this I mean th at for both criti cs there is not th e slight est qu estion tha t indi ca tions of self-con sciou sness on th e part of ost ensibly a bsor bed subj ects are an ar tistic flaw; put sligh tly differ ently, neith er criti c seems aw ar e that his dista ste for selfcon scio usnes s or stagine ss or simp ly pose dne ss where po ses ar e not ex pected has a long histor y, ind eed tha t similar feelings pl ayed a cruci al rol e in th e developm ent of premod erni st painting fr om th e m id-175 os in France to th e ad vent of Mane t an d his generation in th e r 86os. ("Wh ere po ses ar e not expected" is th e cruc ial qualificatio n: it is as if, faced with seemin gly stra ight photo grap hs dea ling with a bso rptive themes, viewers unthinkingl y crave th e sedu ction of th e human sub ject s' expect ed ob liviousness to bein g beh eld. Wh en that craving is frustrat ed, they reac t badly.) I do not mean to suggest that h ad Schj eldahl and Kimm elman been alert to th ese considerat io ns, their assessments of the Perga mon Mus eum pictur es wou ld have been po sit ive. Yet it wo uld surel y have co lored th eir respon ses to tho se work s - it wo uld h ave mad e t heir respo nses more co mpl ex, mor e th o ughtful - had th ey und ersto od th at th ere was mo re to th e issues in qu estion th an their persona l taste. Seco nd , th eir comm ent s seem to ass ume t hat Struth int end ed the Perga mon Museum photo graph s to be ta ken as showing peop le tru ly ab sorbed in what th ey were seeing, feeling, and thinking , o r at th e very least un awa re of th e presence of the photogra pher. W hat if his int ention s we re oth erwise? Ju st as Wall in A drian Walk er, After "Invisible Man ," Morni ng Cleaning, and Fieldwo rk cannot be held to h ave intend ed an y of tho se work s (not even th e last) to be tak en stri ctly as a ca nd id photog ra ph of a perso n or perso ns absorb ed in an ac tivity and th erefor e o blivious of being beh eld, it seems likely tha t fr om th e o utset Struth ex pected t he Perga mon Mu seum phot ographs to be seen as what th ey ar e - truthful pictur es of museumgoers deliberately perfo rming a bsorption (as Wall might put it). For one thin g, non e of th e viewers is sho wn wa lking; especia lly in th e photo gr aph s with num ero us figur es (Pergamon M useum r , 3, and 5 ), this is highly imp ro bable, as Struth was bo und to have recog nized. Th en too there are pa rticular incid ent s, not ab ly th e ex am in ation of a small classica l fragm ent (I assume th at is what it is) by the whit e-coate d member of the museum staff and the tall visito r towar d the right -hand edge of Pergamon Mu seum r , th at go beyon d anyth ing one woul d actually exp ect to see und er o rdinar y circum stances.24 Furt herm ore, the same perso ns turn up in o ne image af ter an oth er, som ethin g that happens not at all in the classic museum photo gra ph s . In general all th e Pergam on Mu seum ph otogra p hs have a st ati c, set- piece qualit y th at di stin guishes them sharply from th eir pred ecessor s; inde ed it is prec isely that qualit y that app ear s to have tro ubled Schjeld ahl and Kimmelm an. On ce aga in, ho weve1; I am n ot suggestin g th a t had both writ ers th ought m ore reflective ly a bo ut the gro und s of th eir disaffec tion they wo uld have been mo re likely to admire the photograp hs. But "ove rreachin g," " hubris," and "fakin g" are pe rhap s not th e mo st useful terms for com ing criti ca lly to grips w ith th ese challeng ing - these interes tin gly pr o blematic works . Fin a lly, both critics ta ke it for grant ed that th e ca mera infall ib ly reg iste rs th e leas t sign of self-con sciousness o n th e pa rt of its hum an subjects . To repeat : "Th ere is an

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matters as art as never before

78 Lee Fried lander, Omah a, Nebraska, J99 5. Gelatin silver print. 38.r x 36 .8 cm

77 (left) Lee Friedlander, Canton, Ohio, 1980 . Gelat in silver print. 28. 5 8 x 19. 5 cm

ineffabl e but fatal difference in attitude between peop le behaving natur ally and people behaving nat ura lly for a camera" (Schjeld ahl) and "You can't simu late suc h a thing [the "exc hang e of glan ces," presumab ly between the white-haired viewer and the man in the Rembrandt portrait in th e Kunsthist or isches Mu seum in Vienna - but do es any such "exc hang e" take place?]. Photogr ap hy, a hyper sensitive medium, show s whe n you're J..aking" (Kimmelm an ). Th ese are, of course, bedro ck assumpti ons a bou t the medium. To cite Sontag once more: "There is some thin g on peo ple's faces when they don't know they are being observed tha t never appears when they do . " Yet are these ass umpti ons tru e? Consi der, for exa mpl e, a selection of photographs of men and women engaged in different kinds of work from Lee Fried lander's 2002 book At Work (Figs. 77-9 ).25 The book compr ises six series of such phot ograph s com missione d between 1979-80 ("Factory Valleys" in Ohio an d Pennsy lvani a) an d r995 ("Gu nd" in Cleveland an d "Telema rketing" in Omaha) an d what almost all th e images in the various series have in com mon is that they were shot at close range, apparen tly with not th e slightest effort

thomas struth's museum

photographs

137

79 Lee Friedlander, Boston, Massachusetts, 1986. Gelatin silver print . 20 .3 x 30.4 cm

having been made to hide from the individual subjects the fact that they were being photographed. Indeed not only are many of the photographs shot more or less headon, in numerous cases the viewer can detect evidence of the strong illumination that seems have been necessary for them to be made. The question therefore arises: are Friedlander' s sitters " behaving naturally or behaving naturally for a camera"? Put somewhat more brutally, are th ey absorbed in what they are doing or just "fa king" being so? If photograph y were th e "hyper sensitive medium " Kimmelman takes it to be, thi s should be an easy question to answer. It is not, and no matter what one's personal intuition in this matt er, I take it to be significant that no one ha s ever suggested that Friedlander 's subjects were not truly engaged in th eir respective occupations. 26 In short , Friedlander 's At Work photographs turn out to be more complex with respect to issues of absorption and theatricality than they are usually regarded as being. I will add only that th e date s of these photo graph s, 19 79 -80 to 1995, belong to the span of years that is th e focus of the present book. This suggests that there may be far more continuity betwee n the work of a "traditionalist" like Friedlander (but who else is like him? ) and that of younger figures like Struth than has previously been imagined. 27

I come now to the "Audience" series of photographs made by Struth in Florence in the 28 summer of 2004. Struth was one of several artists commissioned to create works of art based on Michelangelo's monumental Da vid in that city's Galleria dell'Accademia. What he chose to do was set himself up with an 8 by 10-inch camera on a tripod near the ba se of the statue and to photo graph tourists - of all ages, dressed lightly in shorts, slacks, occasionally a skirt, feet in sneakers or sandals - as they came and went. In severa l photograph s, Audience 2 (2004; Fig. 80), for exam ple, the space is crammed and th e range of behavior and facial expression is fairly wide . In th e family to the left of

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matters as art as never before

80

Thomas Stru th , Au dience z, Florence, 2004 . Chromogenic process print. 178 x 234.5 cm; 179 .5 x 234.5 cm fram ed

cent er, th e fath er gazes upw ar d respectfu lly, the moth er leafs throu gh a cata logue, the younger son gazes up war d as we ll, and th e older son, baseba ll cap in hand, stands with lowe red eyes wa iting to move on. A second fam ily to the right is livelier: the blond e, youthful parents seem happ y to be th ere, th e daug hter plucks at her str iped sundr ess in exc item ent, and th e somewh at older son is caught reach ing into his mouth as if to dislodge somethin g from between his teet h . Still further t o the right a han dsome (Europ ean?) wo man in chic black slacks and sleeveless cop with a yellow sweate r tied aro un d her waist ben ds almost protec tively over her daughter - I am guessing at all these re lat ionsh ips - as both gaze upwar d with ap pare nt intens ity. (To my eye they are the "stars" of thi s photograp h and it helps th at one does not noti ce them at first - they are

th omas str uth 's muse u m photographs

139

81 Thomas Struth, Audi ence 3, Florence, 200 4 . Chromo genic process pr int . 17 8 x 297 cm; 179 .5 x 29 7 cm framed

our rewar d for taking time and looking closely.) In th e backgro und other figures look up at th e sculptur e or talk among themselves, and toward th e left-hand edge of the pictu re still ot hers wa lk aro und or appear to cluster in small groups. O ther photogr aphs are less densely occup ied, an d in some - Audience 3 (200 4; Fig. 81), for instance - the ra nge of behavior an d expression is mor e restr icted, to th e extent tha t th ere app ear alm ost com ic accord s between th e pr incipa l figures (feet splaye d, heads cocked to the side, the two central young women resting their we ight on opposite legs). I hesitate to describ e such figur es as deeply absorbe d in th eir contempl ation of the David , but for th e mom ent at leas t th eir atte ntion is held by it. Th is is true as well of man y if not most of the persons in Strut h 's series - as in Audience I and Audience 6 - and in a ny case all but a handful of Struth' s museumgoers app ear ob livious or at least ind ifferent to being photo graphed . Th e " Audi ence" series thus differs fundam enta lly from bot h Stru th's classic museum pictur es, in which facial expression is minimi zed an d beho lders are often dep icted from behind, and hi s " Pergamon Mu seum " series w ith posed visitors . In th e Florence photo gra ph s we sense intuiti vely that the actions and express ions of the touri sts - also their distr ibution in space - are genuin e, spontaneo us, Did ero t might say "naive," one of his highest terms of esth etic prai se. (We sense thi s, I say, but we might be mista ken: since the advent of digitization it has become possible for scenes such as these to be staged, gro up by group and if necessary figur e by figure, and then assembl ed int o persuasive ensem bles. In actual fact that is not true of the "A udience" series. Howe ver, techno -

140

w hy pho t ograp hy m atters as art as never befo re

logically we are forever now on insecure gro und , and as Friedlander's At Work photos suggest, the ground was never absolutely secure.) At the same time, whereas in the strongest of the classic museum pictures the emphasis falls squar ely - so I claim - on the separateness of the world of individu a l paintings from that of the museumgoers, and ultimately upon the separateness of both those worlds fro m our own, the structure of the Audien ce photographs reconceives (or reframes) the issue of closure in two related respects. First, the photographs are intelligibl e only to the ext ent that we recognize th e implied - which is also to say the " invisible" - presence of Michelangelo's towering David "t his" side of the picture surface and somewhat to the right of the right-hand edge. (In several of the photographs Struth seems to have shifted his position to the right, so as to depict viewers gazing upward but not beyon d the right-hand edge of the picture.) Second, th e Audience photographs thematize, call attention to, the presence of the photographer in a way that is not true either of the classic museum photographs, in which it is in effect taken for granted, or those of the Pergamon Museum, in which the photographer is present mainly , an d to some critics obtrusively, as off-camera metteur en-scene. In contrast, the Audience photographs powerfully suggest that th e photo grapher was in no way concealed from his sub jects (though of cour se he might have been; but the very exposure of his subj ects is felt to redound on the photographer himself, as if the simpl e ethics of the situation called for him too to be in the open), and in actual fact Struth - shooting with multiple flashes - could not have been more exposed, stand ing alongside his instrument in th e roped off area surrounding the base of the sculpture. (Near the center of Audience 7 [2004; Fig. 82] a dark-bearded man in

82 Thoma s Struth, Audience 7, Florence , 2004. Chromogenic process print. 178 x 288 .3 cm; 179.5 x 288.3 cm framed

thomas struth's museum

pho t ographs

141

a broad-brimmed hat stares dir ectly at th e camera with a quizzical express ion on his face; app ro achin g more closely, we notice th at the statue is reflected in the sunglass es clipped to the neck of his shirt .) Indeed much of the quiet drama of the series consists in the ten sion, the balance of forces, between the photographer's impli ed lack of co ncealment and the seeming ob livious ness of his presence on the part of nearly everyone in th e photo s. T his is w here it matters that the engage d visitors are loo kin g upward, far above the photograp her's lens, and it doubtl ess matters too th at the masterpiece at which they are gazing is a considerably larger th an lifesize marbl e statu e of a supe rlative spec imen of psyc hically co ncentrate d, physically nake d virile hum ani ty. The viewer of the photo grap hs cannot but be aware of the profound contrast - whic h to me carries on ly the sca ntest charge of iro ny - between two very diferent stages of the sa me "c ivilizat ion," th e first associated with th e David, arche type of milita nt male heroism in th e mod ern Western traditi on as we ll as of an unemb a rr assed artisti c herois m character istic of its epoch , an d the secon d that of the internat ion al touri sts in their often awkward but invar iably resp ectful attitud es and cas ual summer dre ss. I speak of stages of a "c ivilization" rather than of wo rld s both because there is no equiva lent in sculp tur e or the p hotograp hy of scLilpt ure to the effects of clos ure I have associated with paintings in Strut h's classic mu seurh photographs (but see th e discussion of Patrick Faigenbaum's photog ra ph s of marble bu sts of Roman emp erors in Cha pter Seven), an d also beca use some kind of communi catio n, however limited or baffled, appea rs to tak e place between the stat ue an d its viewer s. More precisely, one is led to feel that even the least sophisticated-seeming viewers in Struth 's pictures are aware that the David incarn ates an ex istential cha llenge that today can not be fully understood, mu ch less answe red. The particular achievemen t of the "Audience" series is to have found a wa y to express th at awareness photographically without giving way either to mo ckery or to de spair.

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why photography

ma tt ers as a rt as never before

6

j ean- fran c;ois chevr ier on th e "t ablea u form" ; tho rnas ruff , andreas gu rsky, luc dela haye

Arguahh · the mosl ded,,vc dcvclopmenr in the rise o f rhe new an phor<,gt:lphr h~s beeo the emergence, srarring io th(• hue 197os and g:iining imr,.-tus in the 1980s and afrer, of wlr.11the rrench cricic j1.-'lln -l-ran~is Chc\'rier has 1.-11111.'d Mrhe 1ablra11fom,." Apropos n i;roup of photographers who were making la rite photoia:raphs,Chevrier wrote m 1989:

Their im:;1gesore nm mere prims - mobile, n11111ipul:1blc sheers tl111tnrc fr:11ned(lOd mount·l·d on II w:ill for 1he durr11ionof :111 exhibi1ion 3Dd go back inLOrhcir boxes cd and pr()duced for rhe wnll, summoning n confronta:iftcrward . They arc desig11 tionnl exper ience 011 die 1)nrt o f che spcctocor rhnc sharply comras ts with rhc habit ual processes of :tpprop riation ;ind projection whereby phorogrnphic imngcs are normally received and ''.:rmsumed." The restitution of rhc tableau form (ro which the on o( dw 196os nncl , ~:17os,ir will he rec.11lcd,wa$ largely opposed) has the primary ,um c>( r1.~toring the d[smm :c to the f.>bjecr-iniagc necc~sary for the confronracional c,pcricnce, bur implies nn nosrolgi:1 for p;1iming and no spccificnlly "reacrion.iry~ co the w:111:mJ ilS auron impulse. The fronrnli1y o( the picture hung rm or nffi"
me

Th is pnssnge come.-;from nn importa nt essay, '''l' hl: Adventures of rhc 1hb lt:au Porm in rhc I lisrory of Phowi,:raphy" (in fact lhe Entli~ h rr:msl:irioo gives .. picwre" for "rablenn," bnr l prefer rhc French word for re.1sons rhot will become clcar1). Chevrier's

remarks dcsi::n·ea brit:f glos). hrsr, :1hhougb Chevrier says not hing here about cnnsiderarions o( ~i7.c:or scale, they ace implici1 iu hi,; claim th.u 1hc UC\\wock is ..dt:!,iµnetl:md protlul-ed for chc wall- -and that 1t i!. inrendeJ ro summon ..:t ronfronc:aaonal c.xperience on the pan of rhe spectator."' Only works of n ccrrnin SIZC could self-evidently hold tbc wall rn this way; this is why. for example, Thomns Ruff in 1986 was lcJ 10 l'nlargc the sfac of his portrairs of fd low srudc nrs, which hl' hntl heg1111 makini; on a much smaller sca le five years before - and wh)•, moreover, die enlarged porrrairs have complcrcly displ:iccd the earlier ones

1m111 •l f;Jn~o 1s chr,vr ler 01, 111 0 " wbt e au forri1 '' , 1homf.1s 1ult , andreos FJlllll ky, Ili c del&haya

111 3

i11 the public nw11rcncs$ of his work A~ was noted in Ch.1p1< :r One, the early light-box crnnsparcncil·~ of Jeff Wnll, smr ti11 g with T/JeDestroved R11 w 11( 1977; see Fig. !l), a work iuM under live feet hiAh by over M·vcnand a half feet wide, pnnl)' inspired thiQdcvdopmcm. (Al,o pertinent wns rlw 11ew ;tvrulabilir)' of h1rge--sizcnegatives .mcl ~>rn,ittve prinrin.g 1,,1per.) Secon,l, Lhcvnl'r·~ i:mphasts on the importance of ~die confrtlnr:nional CJ..pcncnce~ is correct a~ far ,h it gll¢S,~ i~ his clai m thac s-uch .1111•xpericnce marks a bre.1k with cradiciunal mode, of phorogrnphic n·ccprion and con~umptiun. (For &rthC5 in C mwro1 Lucida, :1~ I nureJ, phoroiraphic images arc ty pictll)' cncountcrcJ in a book or mnb'llzinc.) lr had nlwnys bC\:n possible rn frame phocogr.iph,, images :md hang them nn .1 walJ, hur rhcy ~till demanded to he seen up dose by one viewer nt n time, whi,h mcnnr thm their cxhibirioo on a wall w:is a purely exrcmal m;m cr, as Chevrier a~ 111111 :h ns · say~. (.Jeff Wi1II on his feelings i11the 1960s and '70s: "eve n while I loved pliorogmphy, I ofte n. didn't love lcJoki11g at phowgrnphs, pani c11l al'ly when they weye hung on wnlls. I felt thr.'ywc1·croo small for rh.1t formnt iind lookNI bcucr when seen in br,(lkS c)r as leafed rhrough ill albums." ') 'rhc new wo rk, however, ls conceived for the w:ill from the stare - or l11rhe ca~e of Ruff\ port raits, he soon c:imc to feel thnc the sm:111 formnt he b:iJ lxogun wit h was ina dequate for his purposes - wid, the result rhm it enters into a 11cwkind o f rcl.irionc;hip with 11, \'l~wc~, who ;ire thcmsclvt•s trJnsfornwd, rc,·onfigurcd vic1wrs, in rhc procc,<,s.,\ l'mci .il aspt'Ctof the new rcl:ition~hip, Chevril·r righth~ suggt."Sts,i, an enforced diSUJ1cebetween wor.k and viewer. wirhour which rhc mutu.11 facing off of the two rhat unclcrlie1,rhr 11onoo of confron1J tion wm1ld nor be pcmiblc. Third, Chevrier ,pe:tks uf a .. ,esriru11on- of-tht' 1nhlt<:111 form and says rhar the ,1rt or the. 191\o~ anJ '70 s wns 1:argd y opposed to char form. By tht' arr of rhosc de.cad~ he has in mind tht' u,;cs of phoc,,~mph)• rhat were made by rht' wn..:t-'j1tunlisr~, use" chat a1tugcrher downplnyed the :irtifoctunl or say nrcisricm,pects of tl\t' photographs themselves. t\ :; Chcvril.'rwmc s earlier in his essay:

as

Jc wM 011l y with ~he emcrgcn.:c of the Com:eprualisr nppro:1dwsof the hue 1960s tha~ the op11<1~ltio 11between ,irtlst~ usi11 g photography anJ phorogrnphers became explicit. . . . Wirh rhc dJa llcmging in the lotc I y{)os of the vci·y uorion of an arrwork, nnd the shifr in fo,·11sto idea and process, it was unclersrandahlc rhut reference w the pninrcrly o( tht' 1.;1hl e,1u as :u\ auto 11omou~ form £hould los,· tbl· ascensubjecr and the p:1radi&111 dancy they h:id cnjoyc,1since the c..-.irlies c days Clfmodern an ., when B~udclnirc, in the Salon ti<' 1846, J~~·rre01\11 terms. -Pain1i11i; has bu t one poinr uf 1•1rw;it is exclusive and .1h"'1lu1r. ~ In the U11i1«!Stares the n:actmn :1i;:11nsLrhe don11nn111 model of d1e rablcuu form wa, cveo more .rnirrnu ed hecau~c or 1hl' :J5Ccnda.11cy or the modernist theory forged hy Clement Grt-c11he rg ru1d hi$ form.1list circle. Michael rricd'~ cs.,ay "Art and OhjccthooJ," which denounced the rhcmricaliry of MlnimaJisr sculpnm·, appc;-iredin Ar1{()rt1t11 in 1967, It hnd cornt1 111response to Rohen Morris's "No rcs 011Se1ilpt11r e," p11blished .1 year e:1rlil'r in rh~ : radict1I u11ri -illu~ionis111or Lil<'thre1i-dlnwnsio1111 I object sume journal, which used 1111

14.d

he believed was va riable, of the new '\ 1nirnr)'" forms of J'v[inimalism. "The betrnr new \vork ," Mo1'ris remarked, "cakes relatio nsbips Ollt of t'hc work ,111dmakes them a function of space, light, and the viewer~~field oF vision . . . . One is mo re aware rban before ~hm he him$d Fis cstablishi,ng .relationships as h e ap 1we htnds t he (1.hjcct frurn varivus posit ions ,1nd und er v
(The best account of rhe ~rse of phorogrnphy by concepr11 alists is Wall's m~gistcrial essay of 1995, " 'Mflrks n f lndifforencc': Aspects o.f Photography .in, or ·as, Conceprnal Arc:.''") Chc;vricr's poi{lt is thnr by ,;989, wh en his essay appeared, all rhcse issues he.longed to rhe pa st: And if, around 1970, photoi;rnphy, ,1s used by rhe Conceptua_lists, broke the_tnirr or of pail1ting- or, rat her, of rhe tab leau .. . rhe evo lmi on of a rtist ic el(plonltion and expetimerm1tionhiis, since then, 1\lrgdy restored the model that h:id previously b.:en overrnrned. Many _arrisrs, h;wing a$simjfared rhc Conceptualistt explorat ions to varying degrees, have reused the paint:e rly mocli:I and u.se photograph )', quite conscim1sly and sysren,ar.ic: ,lly, t<.>produce works that srnnd nlone und cxil)t as ''photographic painrings" . . . l 1:1;4] Polltth, th e restinuion of the ta.hleau form that Chc:vder'scssa)' signals i$ undersrood b.y him as S(>rnet hi.11 g other than a simple return to a previous state of affairs, or inc.l ecd a n atte mpt to give to photograp hy rhe prest ige of painting by 1:1s tu:ping or sharing the lartc r''S po~iti(>n on the w~ll. Rarhe1-,he .sees in the new developments an attempt "to reactivacc a thinking based on fragmencs, openness, and eontr.idi.L-rion" - the opposite Jespeccively of whc1lcnc~s, cornj,os itional clcmm:, and internal cm1sisren.cy, all of -.vhich might it)()scly lw understood as high modernist ide()ls, This i~ also r.heforce of rhe ~ratt·men t that ncirher rhe fronrJ.1 licy of the new photogrnphs nor rbeir ,rn.tonomy as an arrwork is ''suf ficient" as an nltim atc; ~lesideratur\i. rt is not hard to grasp why Chevrier insisrs on these points, aJlCIonce. aF,uih some of what he si1ysis ~urcly cQn cct as fa r as it goes . However, as sccn in th(; ptcvious chapters 011Wa ll and Strut h, issues of absorp· tion and antitheatri.:ality are plainly at stake in some of tbeir mosr charadc risrit: works (indeed Srl'llth's museum pictu1·cs, ·in 111)' re,uling, are cr.uda lly ;tbout the closure to the photographed viewers of the paindngs being looked ar, while notions of ,:sthc.:t ic autonomy are ingeniously exp lo red i11 the f\11dir.:m;r.: ~cri1:s), 1vh ich is to say t har .between rhe works in ,111 <:stion and che body of pai nting examined in Absorption and Theatrii'ttlity, Coi1rl:,ct's.Realism, and Mqnet's Modernism, as well as rhe high modernist painting and $CL11 pturc ~bampioned ag.i in.st minimalisrn/lttera lilim in "Arr and Objecrhood" and related CSSll)'S, there exists a11 affinity as imponant as it ha.s been alrrrost cvmp lete ly uiu·ecognized .3 T his i.n tL1 1·n i~ nor ti) ckny the _pertinence of Chevrier'S'claim that the new work has been "med iat ized by the use of exrrn-pa inter ly models, h~tcwgeneous with canonical art histot y;" ~rn1ot1gthose n19dds C:hevrit:lr t.:ites ''ph ilosophic11 l analysis,'' 11 ch1i111 rh~,t bc:Hs a suggestive relation to the cliscussioi1 of Wt1ll's aJ'uin rel.Hinn ro Heidegger and \'{/ircgenstein in prcvio1,1 ~ chapters, wd ' 5cinc111a ," whi ch of COUJ'SC' applies directly to Wall ;rnd Sugimow, not to mencion She1'man.

jea 11-lta n<;ots ct1av 1,u r bn 11,e " lab l!mu ro,m",

{llt)rrl as 11 .111. <11 1(lreas /;l i1sky, luc de l.'.lhay0

141:i

Finall )', th c French word tall/call ha s 110 ex act equivalen t in English. " Pictu re ce rnes close st bU I it lacks th e connorarions o f co nsrrucred ness, of being th e product of 3 11inrellccuml act, thar th e Fren ch wor d C:lrr ies.' To cite Chevrier one more time; "T he photogra phers o f toda y wh o consider the mselves an d m:lni fCSt themselves as nnis rs raking imo cons ide ration rhc public spaces in wh ich th ey exhibi t ca n no longer merely 'rake' pict ures; rhey m ust ca use the m to ex ist, co ncre tely, give th em th e weight and gravity, withi n an actu alized perceptu al sp ace, o f an 'object of rhough r' [a phrase o f Hannah A rendt'.sl ~ ( 1 20) . T his 100 is apt an d co uld serve as a ;ustificlIlion for retaining the French word - in connect ion w ith Che vrier, w ithout ita lics - in wh at follows . l~ot: roi ncidefll:rllr , Besramant e c,111OOhis ea rlr pbor ograph s o f 1'(O \ 'C'I1CC' an d north ern Spain c

-c

Tab/rall.Y.!

ln 198 I Thomas Ru(f, then still a stu de m of Bern d Becher at the Kunsrakademle in Dusseldorf. began m klng po rtrait phot ograp hs of friends and acq uain ta nces from the aClldc lllY as well as other pe rso ns with whom he came int o contac t. According to the introd ucto ry not e onthe early por tra its in his acc j curnlogue raiso nne, Ru ff useda "iew camera w ith a stu dio fb sh, All th e portr a its follo w :1 single set of protocols. Ruff "decided o n a bust po rtmir alld n mo de of re prese ntation rhnr woul d be as neutra l as pnssihlc in o rde r to foreground th e stncr's face while at th e sa me time avoiding allY psychological int erp retation ; ' th e note read s. " Every siuc r wou ld be phot ograph ed like :I plaster bust , based on Thomn s Ru ff's ass um ption tha t ph ut ogruph y shows only the surface of th ings anyway. By 19111 he had alread y defined the specifications for his plcture s: th e sitters, w enring thei r o rdina ry clothes and seated on :l 5100 1, would be photogra ph ed with a serio us, calm expression on thei r faces. There was to be no show o f feeling, like smi ling. grinning. or 'flir ting' with th e 0 I111e r;a.~1 "The people have to know wha t my port raits a re like in ord er to behave in such a wa y that the result is 0lIl' o f my portraits, ~ Ru(f has said .' No effort was made to mask or min im ize facial blemishes o f a ny SOrt . To av oid mon oto ny Ruff nltowed the sitters to choose from among different colo red backgrou nds. The initia l crop of pholOgra phs measured rwenry-four by eighteen centime ters; in t 986 he decided 10 en large so me of the portrait s " bur soon realized t har the color became tOOdominan t in la rge fOfmat , ~' Thi s led to a new series o f port ra its wi th wh ire o r off-w hite ba ckgrounds , ta ken with a view came ra thai produced a la rger nega tive th an befor e and primed on th e la rgest phOlogr;ap hic paper availa ble - .:.1 0 b)' 16 S ce ntim eters , or just und er seven (tt l high by almost five-and-a-half (eel wide (Figs. 8; an d 8..). With a handf ul of except ions early on , allthe new po rtraits were rigo rou sly fro ntal hust shore, an d the lighting was arr ang ed so as to elimina te all shado ws. w hether on faces or clothing, The effect o f un iform ity was therefore greater th an in the earlie r por traits . The se ries carne to an end in ISl9 1 when the paper was discon t inued , M o re th an his ot her relativel y ea rly serie s - the inrcriors ned the houses - the large port rait s establishe d Ru ff's reput ation 3S one of th e leading phot ogr aphe rs of his gen-

'"

w lW photography (n " lle rs lIS lUI liS never be lore

Ruff Portrait /A. Kacho/dj 196 1 , hrnmo geni ' prnc ~ss prim. 2 3.5 X r 7.8 cm trnd laser

B3 T homas 2. I OX

84

horna· Ruff, Port.rit [R. Hu/nm/; 1988. hmm ~

geni.c process print. z.4 x 18 c.: m ancl later 110 x 16

' 111

165cm

'ra tion; ven today in fact the1·eis . 111ething paradigm,u ic.about them, a sense in which_, imply pu[, t·I 'Y St:·111 to r pr · nt ru1;ilmost ne essary ph ase il'.lrbe emergence of the new l'tr ph ography.1" Ruff him elf has b n 11 orhi11 g if n.rr ·pli ·it ab m his inrenrion . Here i a cy1,l al xd1a11gefr ma 1995 int .rviewwith Stephan Dill c1m1t.h: TR: T don't give viewers :.1 chance a.nymo1e to draw ~on fo ions about the lives of the peopl e ] porti'l!Y, sn: And th at nn noys vjewe rs? Tlt: 1 don't know wliat hey want to find out ,1bout the sitter whose face they see

in front of h ·111.Do th y wanr r know d1 pe.l' n 1s Jljimeor add.res. or what tl1cy do for a living, m- d th y wanr co k11 ow ·om't hit1-' about their inner lives? What good would thar Jo? sn: uriosity gossip, admirarion -id emili.carion. Tll: Some imcs I think ir's outr geou the way p · ple treat my pori:raiI. Th y rhink you ca n just sta nd in front of tJ1cm and ma ke up a t heory. 11

I·

11

ranco,s cil!:lvrltu on Iha "tab leau Jorm";

hom1:1sru rt, nndrnas g ursk y, luc de lah ye

147

'rhc prnblcrn, RuH says in thi: ~arnc inicrvicw:

i~ thi: subjt:crive impression rhnt I have when 1 face someo11 c else. Tlinr's the trouble wich()Orrrair ~. You're living your life and rhen you gt•t to know ~wople, you likesonw more chan otht'rs, and these c111otlo11s ~ur face when you look ,lt plcrnrcs rba, depict a pecson. lo other word,, these \ensncions rhar you hnw rcg,1nli11gother~are the S.'lme when you're faced with 11 ~c.lc.1Jn picture...I don't know if-you'd coll thar n 111ix-u_p or correct behavior. You prohahl~ projecr your own life ~pcricm:c into rhe picture.,, IWhere-.1.~) !Jff yllu think in terms of projected ,;urf.u:c.~.rhcn rhl.'objL..::thas nothing to do with iranrmore. I he'rea..:11011 to the star pictures(,1001hcrscri,:<;of phorographs

Ruff bas rnac.lcJ is ~1mil;1rtn tht:ctlecc chc.> portraiLS hnvc. When p.:tiplelook ar them. they mix chem up wuh rhc rc.,1thing, holidays in M.'ljon;,'l wuh he:1ucifol\tar-~'t:lldded ~kies- or rhe houses, they lonk ar rhccurr:nnsand LI"} ' to ligure tJutwlm son of people 11,e hchrntl thfm . ... [But wh)' can't rhcyl gu up and soy, ah.1, big photogr-aph.big beJJd,rakc the picture :i:, a picture and say, thank you. Mr. Rufr. well done? [106-·J A~ Ruff has also said npropo, the ponrn11s,·•1don't hd ievc in 1hc psychologiziog portrait ,,howgraphy that my colleague.~do, rrying to capture rbc char.1crcr with a lor -0f lighr and sb3de. Thol's t1bsnl11tdysuspect to me. l tan only show rhc surfuce. \'Xlbatever goes hcyond rh:-u1s more e>r less chunct. " 12 No wonder RL1ff'sphmngr :1ph~ 11r<:ofrt:n said to be "cold," us R6gis Dunnd observed ln 1997 in an iMen:sti11 1,tcs~ri)1 : Generally the rc.:r11 arl, c:ooc1; rns rhc /lor trnlts, occ(l~ionnlly the I /m1sas or the S1art, mrcly tbc orher work s. What is mcnnt hy this? No doubt, i11 the c:isc of Pnrll'aits :ihovt nll, that they "cxp re~s" nothing, that rbcy rcvc.:-:t l nothing nbom the ir1ti1m1te pc.:rsonaliry,rhe identity, of tlu.:ir moclc.:ls. That they ceU no sw ric.:s,no anecdotes. And rbcrefore, chat the}' ~ay nothing ,thout rhe phowgrupher, uh111 11his rhougbts ordesirt's in n:lat111nro his subjects. Or mther, that hy saying norhing abuu1 a ll chat, they di!ilrly manife5t Iris indifforcn..:c,hi) bo:t,IJne,;s." 11 i\s Durand also remarks. Ruff's phorographs~are not windows opcnin_gunro chcworld; UlC>du no t st,gc a brief momcnc of Lhcworld's theater. They appear JS highly polished -urfuc1--s,through whkh u r\1piJly appc.'lrs quire-vain ro reach for '.111orherrl'.llicy•.'They art> prrfe.:t.ly a.ml mi~ ,·cl> ·rl'aliscic' and precisely bc:L11u,cQt rh1 l"C':'llism mey underLUl any attempt ro look for dut'> thnt would allow one ro go hcyond rhem" (r6- :17J,1~ For Peter Galassi, "Ruff'~ porer.msprove ma fare-thc.:-c-wcll thnt phorogrophyis equally ca1,ahlc of rCC'ordingcverythinj.;.md rcvt-almg nmhin~~ ( 1 ~,. (He ,1J~ordcr.. 10 the large pnrrraics as ~monumcmal icon~ of blankness" [2.71,)Jc i\ rdcvant t hat Ruff's portrait phut0gn1ph,; dcp1cr ,1 largely honmgl'n1:11u~ popularion 0£ fricnc.l~;1110 ,1cq1L1inranccs; at nny r:m·. norhing could he 11111n· ~lien to his purpost:' than ~truth'~ chokl.' of culruroll)' diverse ns well os malti ,µen~r:.rnon:i)r:imili('S ns tht subjects nf his fomily porrrairs (to bt discussed la Chilpter S!.'vcn).1' t\.~ RuH also says, hi$ ponrnil'!, n111 ounr rn enlarged p:issporr phowgrnp hs - in fact· much of rbei.r persistent shm:k-t,dfocr nrlscs from theg ross cu111rn~r in si1.e betwt'e11 his ltH'J,;(' colun;d portra its ctnd the riny generic nnrn,. 16

148

wttv 11h olog1s ph y m,;t1or., .1•1orl n•, 1,ev,n l1,,to 1t!

All lhis is welltinclcr~wod - indeed Ruff's stra ightforwardnes s in interv iews leaves nu room for doubt as ro his intcllt·iOns. \'i/hot is perhap.~ lcs~ unJersrood - whnt in any case has not heen tvuchcd on by either Ruff or his many commenta tor~ - is thi: siJZnifi cance of 1hi.-porrrorc as a b11~i~ for Ruff's dtdslve incerv1:nti1111. The fir~t poim to he made is so ohvinus as scarce ly ro require emph.1s1~:almosr ;111 Ruff·~ portrait pht,rogrnrhs, espec1Jlly from 1986 on, arc ngorou!>lyfromal, which i~ why rh1:passporc analogy ~,1it:Sth1:m. Now. faces se~·n from the from fare the viewer; indeed Ir is hard w thin!- of another 111mirthar L~cap:ible of rhemari1;ing focingncss with co1111 ,nra ble force and exp licitness. IJur this is nor ro ~.iy rhot mosr frontn l porrrairs, wlwrher painccntr·ived 11bsunccuf ~ocial and psychologic::a l cues throws the weight· of the picrurl! prcdscly there, This i,1 rurn gives ri~c tc• 11singularly ~rrung effect of l'onfrontarion and clisruncing ot wich ch_ecablc:111form. rbe ~orr Chevrier in hi~ e~I)' a~-soci:1H·~ Differently put, the nhs1rncring .iml h~posmrizing ol facmgncss in Ruff's porrraini plou: 1hosc works linnly 1111hc orbir of painnng. For it is a crucial a\pcc1 of =I pau11ing (tht• .lominam form iit painring in 1he Wesrsramng Jroand L6oo tf not earlier) rhat itS producrs hang on a wnll and face rhc1r ht:h()ldc~, who typically ~r:rnd facing rhem in o relationship of something like mutual refl~-non; the front.ii portr:u r a~ a suhgcm e mnkes rhitt relation~hip mil)• more perspicuous than it ocherwise WOLtld he. Yer che connrctio n hclweeu faces and pait1ting~is even closer rhn11this suggi:~rs:rakc•ntogether they are wirho ut qucstirnl t.111: two mosr conccntrr.1te dly expn·ssive "sarfa ce~•· hum:111beings (al lt·ns1 in Wesrem cull·ure~) encounre1· in rhe cours,· nf their Lives, rhc tW (> "s urfoco.~• · whose claim on tl1e virwc1•is most inrcn~ivc and undeniahlt: and dw presence "within " or "upmt'' which of alnw st invisibly mmutc differences Is registered by him or her with the grcnrc.\l .1cutc1WS\.1• Wirh rC<;f1C1.'t to faces rh is is whr we effortlessly recognric different 111dividualsand rl..,pond insn nrnvdy t0 the mol>cfleeting cxpn·ss1on of keliag in n frimil,ar countenance, while with rcspecr to painrin[t ,his is wb) ,r i.'>possible for cx-p1:r1cnccd muscmn~ocrs - persons wh,1 arc not connnis:.curs - to rcCo!(ilitean alm~t nnlimiicd amounr of persona l and orhcr stylisti.: m;irkc.:rsin boch rr prcwma 1ional :ind non-rcpcescnturional works. Ami it ii. wh.,r enables Gertrude 5tci11,in her under app rccir1tcd ess.1y" Picnircs," to link th1:two, choL1ghthe further inreresr of her rcmRrks

,,wf'l•lron<;QI~ chov, ur 1111lh'3 ·1,11,101111 torm

: thorna,

rul1, nndreas

gur~I

v

tu~ llel11haya

i~ th:1.rthey cvi11 cc a cnmpar:ible mov<·n1cni: tow;1r
in Ruff'i;porrr.lit photographs: ng~ k:ticl p:1iatingsl wn~like Gr;id11nllygctring more and morc familiar wirh oil p.11111i g,min~ gradun lly moce nnd lllorc fomilinr wich foct'Sai. )'C'IU look very hMd :n w me of them nod you l,>ok very harJ :11 ,\II uf them and }OU do .111of tbi~ very often. Faces gradually cdl you wmerbrng, tht•ri, is no doubt :thour 1ha1 .l.\ yott grow more and morc familiar with any nnd :ill fuc1..-s und so it 15 with oil pain cin~. The re ult \v:b 1h,H in a way I ~lowly knew wh:u Jn 011 paincing i-. nm.Igrndu:illy I rcali1-eJa<;I h:id already found ouc very often du, rhere is a relatio n hcrwccn anything that 1s painted nnd th e paiming of it. And gr:idnally I rc.,li:,,eda:. I had found very often that rhc rcl:irion W:t!> so 111 !>pt:ak nobody's husincss. The rclarion bcrwect1the oil p:11111ini; nnd the thing pL1lnr1:clwns really nobody 's hu~ines~. It could be the oil painting's hllsinc~sbm was poi111 1.'CI 1r was acruallr for the purpos e u( rhc oil p:iinting niter tlw oil 1l11i111ing 1 css. ~ no t th~·oil pninting's business and so it wa~ nobody's husi11

The mov ement is from d,c ,in:ilngy hcrwcen faces and oil pnimings (b~tw1;:e 11finding one's wny nrti und both), co rhc rccogniriou that oil pninrfngs - rcprescnmrio11 nl onesnitiou that thar rela· bear so111 c sor r of rclarion ro what rhcy depicr. ro th<:further r11cog tio11i~ irrdl•vn nt ro an cni;agcmrm with the oil 1miming ns an oil painring. which is whar ~rein nicam, by saying that the rd.,tion was nuhod(s husiness, nor even rhnr uf the finished oil p,,intiug . ( l am not endorsing this-view, only ,harncrerr~ ng it.) For Rufi, the N.'<-'l,gn 11io11 ,; seem TOh.Jvc-occurred m reverse order htll 1h.: cud rcsuJt i~ mui:h rhc same. ~J u~cd to ":TYrhar rhc 11kture has an auronomo\15 c,i~ tt.>nceap:m from what 11 reprc,c ntS, or thar ic :icqu,rc,; ;i lift' of itS own," he rcm:irk~ in the conversation with Stephan Oillt'muth cared c:irl1cr. ~ M.l ) lw when 1 said 1h;n, I mc:mr thmki11gabout how you make pu:turcs, but the rcnlity ts srill rberc anywa)' because there re.illy was ~omeunc sining in frm11of th e camcrn when rhc picrurc was 1:ikc11, So now, do we have nuton· tht' Name bccii11sL' o( Ruff's omy?" ( 1o~- i,)1" This is acurc, but rhc end result is 11111r.:h deterniim1dn11in nil his early scdcs - '' Portraits," '' Houses,'' 11Srnrs" - m work ngnlnst the ~r.iin o f his i.11hjccc 111atr er: m dcpsychologizc faces, to t'1·car rhc house~ as men>shells, to prcst:nr minute S(·cti011s of Lhc Southern sky in tlw mosr dernched :1-t1dobjective manne r po:..~iolc. A fun her dimension of dw topic i\ his10ri1.-al.As I show in M,met's ,\foden11s111. the ponrni r as 11 ~cnrc, aod morl' hmndly rhe mode of :1ddrcs.sro the vicwer th.11I have been calling fo<.ingnes:s,playt•d a cnu:ral role not onl) in M:111c1 · epc,clw p:iinrmg\ of the I l<6oi, h111 m tbe work of tho..c of his conr-t'mporarics I tl1ink o( :is ,onsLi1111111g with him rhe Gcncr.111onof 1863 - marnly Henri fJn tin-1.. ..irour, Jomes ~kNc1 1l Whistler, a nd Alphon-.e Legro..,. Th e picrori,11manjfcsro of that gmer.11i1111 is Fanrin's ll w1111g<' ta DclarroLY( 11164), a rromal grou p portrnir depicnng, :,moni:.urhers, aU four painrc~ 1usr namt-d, with fl p:iinred and fr-Jmt-dportrait of Delncrni", whn had recently die
1!i0

why µho1001111>hy

1111 ,1tets-as art ,1s •1ov
85

l!du unrd M ance, l'mtrcilt of Victori11t'Meure!ll, 1 Rr,1. O il on ei.111vt1b, ,13 x 43 cm. Museum o/

Fine Arts, Soi.ton

traits in the ordinary, vemacuh1r ~enloeof rhc term, rhnc something like ,1 r:1dic:.1li1nrion of the portrait in the inter~, of focingness mkes place. with deci:sivc import for subsequent pninring. What set the stage for that dcvclopmenr was rhe ultimate fo,lurc of rhe Dider otian project of dcnring or neutmlizing the prescrll!cof the beholder,whether through 1hc clnssic srrareg)' of absorbing the depicted pc:rsonages within the pnindng so a~ to achieve the mecaph)•Sic:,11 illusion of their complete unawarenCSl>of heing beheld, or 1hro ugh lhc very differenr 11,e.1J1s by which Courbet, Mnnet's immediate predecessor, sought hyperbolically m pni111hi111 sclf into his canvases, llll effort which, if it could have succeeded (needless to s<,y it could noc), would hnvc removed him as first beholder or paintcr-hcholdcr from before the pninting. ln ocher worcl~, by 1860 the sl1preme fiction, ndvocoted hy D•idcror, tlrnr pninrings are not mado.:to be beheld cou ld no longer be susrnini.;d.Whac took ics pince i11Mnncr's art was a new acknowledgment rhar paintings were inckcd made to be beheld, an acknowlcdgmcnr thar l describe {i11Mmret's Modenrism ) in cem1S,of an attempt to rnnkc not iusr roch paincing a~ a whulc bur every bfr of its surface - cv,i:rybrushsrroke, so to speak- face the hcholder as nc, er before. This is what it means to speak of ;1 rndicnli1.·uion of rhc (froncally facing) pomair, and as 111the c.':\Seof Ruff what was required was a shift of emphasi~ from considerations of p,ych olog)' or social idenricy, wl1it:h wouJd have worked ngains1 that mdicali1.arion, w somerbi ng more c11com1,a~s111g, surfacc-oricnced, in d1at scn~c absrrncr. (Maner's hrilli.1111 and scrik-ing Portr,,it of Victorine Me11ren/f 1862.; Fig. 8 s1is the "pare" porrrair by him thar mosr exemplifies rhis. l should ::idd that striking11 css ns well as facingncss be.came a major dcs1dcrnrum for M.anc11111dhis generarion.) Ruff's phrnse for thar so111 erhi11 g is "die pictur e a~ o picture,"

111a11 f1<111r;o,s chevnor on l hti "tflhl8dU 101111", thomos ruff .inclroas 911rsiy, lu<. cfolahdye

161

IUi

Thomas RH f House N,: J J,

1988.

,hromog ·ni proccs. prim.

1S

x

2.3 9

cm

and of our. e · km t be ·rune renown ·cl a~·the painl' r wh m re rlrnn tin} ' od1 ~ pioneered a rcvolutionar on e n with "rh pair ting a, a p:iiinting" whi h ililtim rune to be glossed 111t ·rm · hmh of th mat ·riolicy of pi m'm and the flan, ·ss o{ the supp ort . The latt r is the "form Ii ·t" or Grce11brgian inrcrpretari .on, which in Manet's M dcmhn I • rgu • i an ilhholl'ic:.11pr j lion ba k onto Manet art from 1he persp ' ·ri · of (rnpr •ssioni.m ,Ind ·u c. or 1110v ·ml!nrs.J al •o st1ggcsrrhar Nfancr 111the 18 o · was in (Hll"1dt of th('!tabl cm, 11nclcr sto d as th• :n 1tithesis t the Rea Ii. r j urb r-Jike mor C(W or fr.agm nt ¥ ithout knowing i11 achra11 ·' act l)r wlrnt that· , ould in olv . Althou h this is not qumt wl m Chevrii.!r m. , n. h c, bl au, ic pr id . a "rt!ri'r reason F.orrct:ii11ingtha t t rm i11subsequ nt di,·cussions of r ">rt ·rap I tion from h vrier's Cll, :l,

f do 1tot wi h to drm t lo · an an.-ilog}' b •rwccn Maner and Ruff or between their re 'P" ·tiv.: histori al ·ir ·umstnnc s. ·1fowcv r, it is sugg ·sci · c to ay th lt..:at rhar aerrw J ci ive juncm r . in the hi l'Ory o.f modern pictorial art - th,c rise f mod,rnisr painting (m; i1 :1111 to h • k.now11 in d1c 1M60 and the ·m·1 ·~ence f larg·-s ',le ,1r plioc graphy iri the late T97os .mnd'80 - th e portrai t or porm1i -tablew (n t ·rm I u e

in Mau ,,, Mod 'rnism) became a vehi ·le of 1tu1jor an-1bition, one mor over that requir ·d a certain blocking r evn atio.nof fo11Hhlrkio
'162

t

i a ~,ll 1· rsuasive, wbm nl ut ch id • ri rhat the ''Hou · ·s," 111p~uti ·ul.ar

wl1y pil o logra 1 hv 11~i11 rs n!l ar as

I

v r before

87 Thomas Ruff, 18h 12. 111/- 2.0 , l')!):t, Chromogcnic

pmcc~, prim.

l (iO X 181! Clll

those phowgraph s in rhe series rha1 dcpic1 fa~ndes pa,·allt.•I to rhc picr1Jrcplnne (Fig. 86), mi~hr bc una logiicd - perver~cly, so ro speak- wi1h ccn:iin works hy C6mnnc? (What is pcrver,e :ihour the relation i~ summed up in Ruff's remark ro Thomas Wulffen thar in rhe .rn:hirccrurnl photogr:iph~ "rhe picrurc q:im ;u the heitinning w1chche Ontground. 1hen it has lO go srraighr inro tf1c vcrtic:tl. and then there's a backgrow1d. The re musm'r be anr1hing d1~turbing in the middle" (961- pred<,cl> · the :ireoa of Ch,nnc\ mcm determined painterly acn\'ity.) Also, that tlu· "Stnrs" (Fig. 87), large pho1ogr:iphs made from ncgm1v<,~of 1he Southern sk)' purchased from an obsen•arory, might he unJcrsroodagain, perverselr - in relation to lmpressiomsm? (N iglu morifs instead of darlig ht ones, and clc,pite a certai n all-overnc» a comp lete:absi:nce of surfaces.) And that the ~ Altered l'orcr.1ics, tt in whic h rwo fronrnl photographs of cliffcrcmpersons nrc superimposed upon nm: .ino d, cr, h:ive a v;:igucly Annly[ic Cubisr nir?zo And tht1t the "N udes·· (J-'ig.88) adnprcd from images on pornographic internet sires - hnve something F::rnvc or pcrhnps

,a 1n llaricois chev11e1,111llrn •1abloau lorm

1ho11rns,u11 ilndreas gu,~I v luc i.Jelahave

153

88 Thom.,~ Ruff, 1111des tl/)14, 2001.

Chro111oi:cnic process prinr with diascc.

11\.1. x I

r 2 cm

German cxp rcssionisr about them, :u least as concerns their often garish co lor? Also, thar rhc .. Machines" recall Leger?Also, thar Ruff's reccni enlarged pixel photos (Fig. 89}, based on blocks of eigh t-b)·-eighr pixels chat arc unreadable rcpresenc.11ionnll)'at dose range but begin m make scn~c at a di~tnncc, recall the poinrillist strncnm: of ncoimpressionism? 11 And so on. I do not ~uggcst chat Ruff himself thinks about chose wries in such tcmu. or rhnr the associations I have just named arc m be taken ns scriousl>·~ that betwct'n the ..Porrmjts" and Manet's paintings of 1hr 186os. Yer, consider these proposals ns loosely as one wishe
why pho1our11phymatters as art as oev.,, bofore

89 ThomAsRuff, jpcg 11to2,2 0 06

.

Chromng enic proces s prinr w ith dia sec. 242.6 x 1 84.8 cm

dipped by Ruff from newspapers and reproduced twice tbeir origin.al size, wirh no caption or accompanying news sto ry ro specify their meaning, can be related to one of the cenrral problems of hisrory painting in the second half of the eighteenth cc11t11ry: the a l canvases by providing the need co secure rhe instantaneous intelligibility of i11divid11 beholder with advance knowledge of their subject matter (ideally, ;:itany ratc).22 In contrast, the absence of ;:iny rcxnrnl frame in the " Newspaper Phocogi:aphs" is meant to .crc roo I 1tm not sugdisclose the residual LntclUgibiliry of the images in themselves. F-T gesting that Ruff was awnrc of the hisrnrical resonances of his project. Yet the reso· nances are there, which is part ly why the projcc.:tdocs not see111 merely quixot ic.

Jean-frani;o,s chevne r on the "tobleau form"; thomas ruti . andreas gu rsky, luc de lahaye

155

unday 1rnUers, iiss fd rf oll ·crior, o per om, < f dif-

orU1c ·rmn , 11h

o doub1 l'his h. d

njun ·tum with th

90

156

nJrca,. Gu

und,1) '

Ir ii/er ,

v pl oto r ,p

D,,C'llur(Arr/Wrl, 1~

n tters a

• "hromo •c111 p,roce.s.! print.

6 X 6 1 cm

·ming

91

i\ndrt':ls Gursky, Kl,111sc11pass . 19ll.;. Chromogcnicprocess print. 92 x RI mi

conccnrrarion of the most coru.picuous among rhem on 1he rurplanc ju!.1hfnng off m chc right of che middle of the picrure (1he "focher~ seared on his bicycle m rhe righr of the two young boys i~ pcrh::ip~g,ui ng through a pair of binoculars) - coO\'cys the mong impression char tht.!o nluokers are unaw::ircof rhe phorogrnphcr's prcscncl!(and by implicarion rhc viewer's). Thi~ is of course a rn1clirionnl nntirhc:itric:al motif, ns in Chorclin's Yu1111,11, S1ttde11t Dr111oi11g, gla nced ar in connection wirh Wall's Adrian Wl(f/kl!r, or Gericatilr's R(f(/ of tlie M1!d11 s11:rnd "Adelphi Wharf." Need less ro say, if S,wd ay SlrCJ llers, Diissdd"rf Airport were unique in Cursky's oeuvre in these respects, ir would scarcely be worrh 1he :men rion givt:n it- bur dw opposite: is tr ue. Another work of rbc s.imc y<--ar,K/t11IS{mpass ( 1984: Fig. 91) is of1e11l."itcd ::iscrucial in hi~ development. According co Gursk), he rook 1hc photogra ph ar 1hc n..-ques[of ::i companion while ,·acatiomng in w111erlnnd.··Six momhs l:ucr, when he enlarged the nt:g,1ti\e,~ Peter G::il.:is_,i writes, he ~wa, cxcired ro find ~Llttcred acroSl>the land.scape chc tiny figures of hikers whose prc.>senc1• rhc phorogr::ipher,unlike his camcr::i,hnd failed to rcgistcr at rhc 1irnc. I le rhus recliscovcrcclone of rhc oldest, simplest, ::imlmost reward11res o f photography- rhc pnricnr ddecrnti on of clctnils roo small, too im:idcning pl1:11s

1ean-lran<;o1schev11e1on 1he "lllbleau

tom,·.

1ho111nnru1t arid1eas gursl·y, luc delahavo

157

rnl, or ton overwhelming in their inexhaustible specificity t(>have been noticed, ler al1iJ1~ pondcrc•d, at rhe moment of c~posurc" (:?.2. - 3), G;'dassigol's un tu r:cm,uk: "The effoi:t is ,ill rhe more seductive when, as in Gursky's Kla11se11J111ss, rhe phowgraphcr wasnlr1mdy remote froin d1e seen<.,wli~,seantlike ,,ctt)r~ crn1set1ue11rlyse,:111 :ill rhe more pttr):lQ$eful be.:ause bli$sfu1Jyun,,ware of the eye drnt t'egards L.licm"(2';1), All rhis is fine as fhr ~s ir goc~ hut I nt ro go farther - by 11nw the reader will have :inridpated me- :tlld suggesr th:11the tiny tigurt:S'"111 , nwMenc.ss<Jfthe eye thar regards them,. aligns:M,/,r11si•1 /Jass with nn antitheHtricul csthetic. What in Kla11scnpass gucs beyond St111daySttollers · 1s rh,1t.our convicric,.n~s w the riny figures' (Jhlivinusncss tc>bcinJ.(beheld is bas(ll 1w1 on any int11irivnQll our• part of their .sccmlng engrossment· 11 1 wlrnt 1'11cy are dning (.tlwy 11rctoo mimrte for rhatl, or even 011their uricmation rclatil'I' 10 the camera (it 1)1inlly rnartcrs \\1bethti.r rht:y are rurned nway from us or not), hue. siinply- more fui)datnen , r;illy - of how disranr from the camera they appe11r to be. Tlrn1·is, rhe tt:c:h11ology of the rclephoro lens, !'01?,erher wid, rhc ability of th<'color film co record c:· hinl$C'lfas a double ctt1phosison rhc rnicrosco1,icand r.nacrc)scopic 11spccrsof rhc picn1re; as Gursky wrircs in a com:sp(ltldenc1:of r 998,

w,~

IMJy pictures really an·

becoming incre.isingly formal ,111d~bsrract. A visual strltC,ttrne app(•:.irsI'<>Jom in:.ircthe real cvcnis sllbwn 111my pictures. I suhj 11g,llerhe real situ11~ rion co Ill) ' artistic concepr of rhc picture . ... You never 111>ti-:e arbicr:Jryderails ju my work. On a formal le. el, c.:ou1H lcss i11terrehrrcJ micro and 11111cr(1Stt'Llcni res al'C/wovtm mgerhcr, dctcrmi11ed by :rn ov1:1·, tll ot'ganls:ul,,nal ,,,·i11 ciple. A 0lo~cd microcosm which, thank s to my ,Hsn111cednrcitudc rnw111·d my subjccr, :illows rhc viewer to re.COB · nise dw hin1:1<: $ 1ltat hol
1!l8

why phn1<> q1,1iihy mr.nn, ~

1s Jrt , ,~

111,11111 li11roro

91. Andreas Gur$kr. ri5111.'rml!11, Miilbom, il.d. R1J,r, r9!19.Chromogrnicproces~prim. r-5 x :.12.

cm

These remarks rd er most fully to his pictures of the 1990s (and ::ifrcr), in which "abst ract" co11 s iclcrntions come increasingly ro the fon.:, hut their relevance to works such ns 1hosc I have been i.:011 $idcring is also clcnr. Anol'lwr fcllture of the la1:rer is thnt in a ll of theq11hc phocogrnph has been tnkcn from :1 point of view loc::m:da r some considerable height nhove the scc.:n csY A four1h picture i11gPnol, Rali11ge11 ( 1987; Pig. 93), oae of Gurl.k)", de.fining from 1hc 1980s, Swi111111 works of that decade, exemplifies 1.bcapproac h. Trshows a communit) swimming pool, shot from above ac an oblique angle ro the horizon. The pool itself, which c·,,:tends beyond the l.-dgcof the picture tu the right. is irregularly ,hapcd, adding co rhe rnrerest of the 11101.if (to me. the shape rccnlb those of Fr-Jnk tella's eccenrric polygon pai111ings of 1966). The water appear; light turquoise, and 111rhe foreground rhe pool is bordered by a ,,atio of differenr-si1cd n·crnngular ciles. A few dozen swimmers, ,;ccmrngly nll youn11,disport chemselves in rhc water; orhcrs lounge on benches or ledges or simply srand :iround; while on 11 large grassy expanse beyond the pool mtmerous sunbath ers lie on towels or blankets , scand miking, or ot herwise relax . Beyond rhc gr.is:. ;m : trees, and nhnvc the t rees one glimpses a nanow strip of sky. 0 11c ,nigbr Lmag ine, fo-:cclwit h

Jean han<;o1schttv11 t>1011Iha 1/"lbleautorm", thomas ru lt, a11d•E'a« gurs l y, luc d1lahave 0

159

93

Andreas Gursky, Swi111111i11g Poul, Rati11 gc11,L9 87, Cbrornogcnic process print, ro7.5 x 13 1 c,n

such a photogra ph in isolarion from any other of his works, that Gursky's inrercst was soc.:iologic.: al: rhis is how you11 g Gcrma11 men ;;ind women at a certain place and time rela te ro one anot her a nd to their surroundings with respec.: t to the institution of rhc pub lic swimming poo l. The macroscopic aspecr would rhen refer ro the institution as such (and beyond rhar ro the culrnre of which it is a pa rt), the mic.: roscopic to the minute parti culars of rhc behavior of several dozen individuals. The focr char the latter appear obliviou s ro th e photo gr.iph er's pres ence would thu s functio n as o Further gu:1ranccc or the reliability of the picture as a socio logical document. (On ce notic ed, th e coup le who sit absorbcd in conversation on the second bench from the ldt at the bocrom brings tbe theme of unawar eness ro a particu lar focus,) There may be more than a grain of truth i11such a reading, especially as regards various pictures of the 1980s. Howevet', far more imporrnnt than considera tions of this sort is the viewer's feeling of rc11 rni11in g wholly

160

why pl1otogrophy rno1tors as an as novor botoro

'J•I

1\nc.lrl'.ISGur,ky, 'fokyP Stock Exc/11111,11,•, , 990. Chromugcnic proces~ print.

1 88

x 230 cm

ouu.h.lc rhc pro.ceedrngsthe picture dcp1crs- chc feeling, 111 pur ir srrongly, clut he or ~he i, M~·vcrcd- (from here on, no quoca11on marks) nor 1u~tfrom che doing, uf the swimmer~ .1nJ ,unbarhers hut abo from the image itself, whid1 in rhar sense is formall) and onrologic.111) • com1m:hen:.ivc and complete, however radically open to 1•inv it m:iy also he (more on this openness ro view shortly). Or c.:t,nsider :1110 1hcr, lirn.:r picnirc by Gurbky, Tokyu Stoel~ £xd1,111Re ( 1 yyo; Fig. 94), seen by Cnlnssi as 111nrkin g :1 new ph:isc in his arc. Fm 011<.: rhi11g,rhc subjc<.: [ signa led a bur!(coning imcrcsr in contemporary themes; for annrh cr, rhe picrurc itsclf introduced a new "image model," to use Galnssi's phmse, according ro which "t he aloof vanrngt' point 11mlsmall figurci. pcn.istccl, but chc crowd now filled the frame in a dl'nM: mass from 1..'Cl&e to t'dgc- (2.ll). (Formally. it was a mo,·e tow:ird all-ovcrnC\\.) In addition. chou~h C,.11:u,si docl>not mcmion it, rhe rrnders' absorption in their rransacr,ons, which lwrc :md there 1i. fer,cnt bur on the wholt!'tends roward uniformil) J.'>doc., their dress; more on this 100 inn momenc), quietly underscores rhc l'icwcr'$ conviction rh:u they arc unnwarc of bemg photo~raphcJ. (So for rhar matter dol '\ 1he blurrin~ of v.1ri<,usfigures rownrd the bonom of rhc picrurt.'.) Of 1his and stmilnr works - moH· hrnndly, of die " level of nbsrracrion i·ow:m l which nll of Gu,·sky's m:Jrurr picrnrcs iilt'ivc" - Galassi

uan fr.,n, o,

hl!!vllt!• on the

tat loau lorm·

thom11, ru1·, and<e,1s 11urS~'f uc delahave

101

writt:s, '·Th e a in.1is Ni ohlit·crah: the co11~i11 gc11c:ic s of perspecrive, so thar the suliject appears ro present itself wirhour rhe agency or inrerfenmec o( :in observt:r; and to selci:it ao(l shape the view so that it is not ,1pan or :in as_pcctbm a perfectly sclf•conraincd who le, co rresponding ro a mental pict ure or concept" (30). (l 'his (clares to ~h«r998 remarks by Gur~ky a ltcady cited.) Gursky bin'lseHhas s:iiJ , " l sta nd at a dista11ce,lil~e a person who comes from another wodd," 18and indeed several of bjs cort1mtntato.u ~ have rukcn up the figun: of ''.mother wor ld'' as a means rJf character izing die rypic11J i111p r<%sto11nrnde by his art .i• (Compi1re Schw,tn,for on W~U's Adria11Walker.) Yh 1\0 one has been quire as emphatic as Galnssi in rhe pe11nlc imare paragrnp h of his catalogue cs~iiy,whcrc he writes:

The diverse currenrn that Aow into Gursky's wor k cm..rgc a~ tbc co hcrt n~ p icture of a world. 'r'here is no place for us in that wo rld. Banished from its com1J1and iag, sym • metFies, we iuc consig ned to contempl ate its wholeness from witho ut. We ni >W .sru(ly its derails :ir our leisure. We may be begL1ilec l or repelled by the goxge.ous spectacle. Wt rmw ,marvel at its scn.)1 1c imliffcl'cncc. We m,iy cvcn. eli:ct <)urselvcs to slt in judgJnent upon it 1 but we will never become pai:ticipanrs. l,p ,111'

011ct'agai11 I w,,m io dr.1wan obvious implicacio n from Gafassi's remarks, t1ne he seeOJ'. not r'\) rc:cognir.,: is there-- but of C()11r~c Gursky ru<>may not· recog1)i7,Cthat· rhis is the o nwlogical implication of his procedures- namely rhar the metaphor of a1wuhcr, St!pa· r;1tc world, a wor ld· rhnt' has norhing to do with the l'icwcr, from which he or .sheis, effec;tively banis hed, is ;:ir1 annth eatd c.1] mwiphor pcrEe~ ,ly con$istcrit with [)1clC[(lt's writings l)n thea Ler and pn_inting and, more IOl)sd y, with 111yc1·irique of minirnalisn,/ [i,r. esalism in ''Art ~UldOb]ecrhoocl'i (nor t6 menti on WlttgenstcU1'sextr(ld of 1930). Tris aL50,l have sugge~ted, wbar is mode visible in different terms in the strnngest of Stturh1s 111u ~eum photographs, which otherwise have almost n0thi11gi11con1111 cm wirh Gur$ky'swork . Put more stl'()nglt - these are my views now, noc Galassi's - I see Glll'sky's bi~hly inventive and original OC'11v re, likr,:those of Wa ll <1ndSrrnrh, as 111>1rkin g a rcsumpli(ln not so much :ifter as across a minimalist and pOHminlm,1listinterregnum, of rne andthe· Mdca l impccus, first, of the Didc1·otii111 tradition chat Aourished berween about 17ss irnd the advent of Man et jnst over n centur y l;1tcl', and second, of the pa rricuhir version of that tt11tlitio11- the r0it1tctpretntio11 of it - that issued in the high rnodetJlist painfing and s.,;uJphU'cof the 1950s and ' 6os ch.amp:ioned in '' Arr and Objcctbood" and relattd essays. J sholl have more to sny a hour the histo rical developlilenr such a reading implies Jarer {lll in this book. However, t am 11ot )'Ct clone .ca11va.ssing the fei1tures of Cvrsky's art that tend wward ch.is end. So fa r l h,wc mnched on rhc unawareness of G11r.sky's l111rn~n suhject.,<:tohcing beheld; 0 11 hL ~ pent hrinr for viewing them frClm behind (Gursky ro Gomer in 19Q8: ''I believe rhat thcrc'$ a lsfJ a Ct:rrnin fpnn of i1bstn1c1 ·io11in mr e11rly hmdscapes: for CKn mplt::, l often show hurnan ngur es from bd1ind and thus th e lambcape as ohsc:rved 't-hl'o~1gh a second lens" I1xl); on his ob~ession with disrnnce (ft0111the same cor:responde11c e: "Th e camera's enormo us distance from these ti~ures 111 ea11s that they become dc; and t,n his preference for views frnm above. ln this last con11eciJ1dividualised" ID:JJ t·iqn, G,1lassi's ncutc tlbservntion q11ott:d c11rlicr th:H Gnr.sky ch11ractcrisricnlly seeks "ti)

16,2

oblii:erate the ·c nring ·n ·i ·s of perspective, so time the subject appear tt> pr •s ·nt its ·If without the flg n y r int rference of an obs rver" should h· stressed; os Rupert Pfab pllt s it, "be cau w n ·vcr g ·t to . c · wh ere the phorographer is lo atecl, the act of sc ·ing is. expressly emphasized. ".1 1 T he crucial point, with which l ag.ree, is that for all their unu ualness with respect to what is nnrmaHy thou he of ;l po'nt of view, ti l'. :"l{_t ual cff ct of many of Gursky's pic:tmes is somd1ow to divest the laue1· con ept f implying an ucttrnl l catio - a parti ulaf pol rllLll:was o upi ·d physi ·ally by H1· pholograp her and char we as view r · ar - I ·d to q · ·upy imaginativ ly in wm. A sp ·ta ular cas' 111 p<Ji11ti, Sai,imo (1990; Fig. 9 ), 1 e f -·ur l y's fin st works a p::lnurn mic-. c m ing view fr m a on ·i
._5

An Ir •a

,ursl .y Sa!u11 , r990 . Chrorno genic 1n-octss print . r 88 x

21. 6

cm

Je,n fr nr,oi · clie vrier u11Lhe " L1c1 IJlea11form". 1hornas n1H, .inclreas gu rsky, luc delahaye

163

{,

16'1

mJ l',l"

(

,ur~~ ,

fl l'I

fo r,

I

~

I,

Chrim111~ ·11i •

Nhy ri111109rAphv m

rr "'

I rint.

l ,4

t r• ,1. 111as 1cvor h lore

i..2.(, , il'1

9~

Aodrc:1~<..ursky, Atl1111ta,nN6, Chromogenic proce;.\ pnnt. 186 >
n:m-J but also "holly unfettered gaze. hoth di)tanced and inr.imau:. With the elision of both photogrophcr and viewer ai. implicit perce1m1al.1nchors, the picture i\ free ro pursue truly "absunct" end~, whe re "abstrac tion'' \tands not simply for 1ht• subordination of subject martcr ro compos itional principles, nor for ,1 r:rnge of formnl nnalogics herwccn indjvidual picnircs :111dwell-known works of a hsr.n1c1 pninring and sculprurc, bur rnthcr for the picrur·c's exclusive prcoccupntion with irs own " inner" purp oses, whatever they mny he.:- nnd they arc most ofwn heterogeneous, 111i x('(I. (All this might be tho ught of as ;i rad icnlizarion of the to•bc-sccnness cliscussccl ln previous drn prcrs.)

At thi~ pninr I wane to com ment briefly on seven aJdinonal featttrcs of Gursk)"s pictures th.ir bear din.'Ctl}'on Ill) ' ba~ic daim that they•. ,long with the work of Woll, Struth.

a!> Sugimmo. ,1nd Bus-urnnnre (I am e>.empting Sherman ap.irr from her carlill~t so:rie!>), well as other phorographcrs scill 10 OCdiscussed. hclung t0 a renewed nnd re\•iscd anr.itJleJtrknl rradirion. 1) Theomost obviouslr relevant of those fcarurcs 1s Gur.k) \ mcrcasmg recourse, starring in the early 1990s, to digitall)' mampubr.ing hi~ images, a process that has rcsulred in a nnmlwr of his most famou~ "orks, i11clucli11gParis. Mo11tpamnsse( 199 3 ), Pradt1I (1996; Fig. 96), Atla11ta( 1996; Fii;. 97), Untitled V ( 1997), Chicago Bot1rd 11(Trade ( r 997), T1111 es Squm·e ( 1997), ond J{hi11eJJ ( 1 y99; Fig. 98). The extent of thl' manipu · lation vnrics from work co work, b111 in all c,1ses rbcn: is n cnnsequenr loosening of the

joan fra11~01scho11rloron tho "tableau wrm"

1horn, 1s ruff. ondreas g,trsky luc dt!l.i~av,•

165

q'

nd

G11 ~L.• R#mre "·

I.,., .

mmog ·m. rr .

rrim. 1.07

36

111

rkl

or · ju m ·ired , r

t

\ h Ji ,m f ~o . u h pl:marion he.re. 'h. t matrl'r!. t m • ar~\1111 ·nt, hor e e i th•.n rh fC/i.l!ltingimagei- or' imrin i all f1 t, ar I . t n t in rhd •ntir •ry rl • r c:or I of il!l thing thn1 • m id have I · •n ·een in the r ·al wor l 11 :1 hum:111 ob:, ,. ,r or ·in fo •d a me ·fl.mi al r · rding i11s1 rumc rH; rhc luos ·ning,of inidc·i a lit i rn ;ur 'ky"a c 1uh•, lcnr f n e er-in f' h any rigin. r)' p •r · ptu el • 11

II I ·ncl

•111.,.

t11r ·; in

99 Andre,,~ Gur~ky. llappy \ i.11/1')' I, 1995. Chromogcmc process pnnt .

2:!.6

x 186

cm

Scl,iµol (d:1tcd r99 4 but phorogrnphcd c;irlier), art empt y runwa y is seen throug h a floor-to-ceiling gin.~ wall, presunrnhly in a waiting area (the slightly blurred toil of an nirliner can just be glilllpscd exiting cbe picmrc at rhe extreme right. and 1herc ace also faint rcflccnons of the waiting are:i itself m rhe gianr glass panes); and in Happy V1dl1')'I (1995; Fig. 99), a view of Hong Kong, :rn urban land~cape is seen from an elevated vantage poim through a currainlike metallic scri1:n,which significnmly is in shaq,er foc11~than nny orhcr item in the picture. Thc11there is che spccrocula r Aut obnh'II,

rean 1ranc;o15chev11or on the •1all,f'.l11uform•. thomas roll, arid,eas gursky, luc delanJve

167

i8

~

--~~

1

. --··

-

oo AnclrcnsGursky, A11tobnlm, Mc//111,11111, 19y3 . Chrnmogenic process prinr. 186 x i.:i.6cm

Fig. 1 oo), a Strongly downw ard view onto a field dott ed wirh blackand-whire cows; the horizontal bands ,,r e stripes " painted on the glass siding [of the autobahn overpass! to mark its presence and w discourage drivers froni being overly distrncrcd by rhe landscape'' (Galassi, 37) - hence the b:rnds' subtle narrowing and dark:1ge. The severing effect of the hands, and more genening tow:1rclthe bottom of the i111 erally of the viewer's uncertaimy as to how 1·0 understand his or her implied siruation (loo king downward through the ).llasssiding), could scarcely be more emphatic. 1r, There are also two impressive picmn.:s of buildings: Hon g l( ong 1111d SINmghai Bank, Hong L
w hy photograptl y maHers as an as nove, before

1o I

Andreas Gursky, Stnle11ill e, llli11 ois,

:z.002. ,

Chro111c Jgc11i c process prini. 2.08 x 307 cm

(nnd fur ther ems us loos e from rhe sce ne as such). Perh aps Gurs ky's mo sr ex trem e state · men t in this vein is the more rcccnr State-ville, Illinois (2.0 02. ; r ig. r o r ), a picture of the panopricon -like interior of a prison, in whi ch th e se verin g of the viewer from th e pr isoners, some of whom can be seen in their cells, is all bur Litera lly spelled out, (There is not a hint of voyeurism in tbe::se:: las t images; th e picwrc's point of view, if itc, in he called diat, is in no w ay privileged: what is seen ofthe o ffice worke rs is perfectly ordinary, rhe actions of che members o f the Bundestag an: pretty rnm:h incompn::hensiblc, aud chc viewer is given no more rhan pa rtia l glimpses of th e priso ners. T hat so me of che prison ers seem poss ihl.)' awar e of rhc phnt og r;.iph cr, c,r at :my rat e of the presen ce of som eon e in di e imp lied ce ntrn l space, is not felt to estab lish a con nection betw ee n the view er a nd th e scene as a w ho le.) 3) Gur sky 's use of what Ga lassi ca lls th e diptych form is also to th e point . Class ie example s includ e Cairo Diptych (1992.), Schiesser (1991), and Hong Kong Stock Exchange, Diptych (1994; Fig. 102) . Galassi also im:lu
1e,rn-lra119ois chevrier on 1110"tab leall lon n' ': thom as ruff, andreas gur sky, luG dolahaye

169

d,,

1

-Ii· hrum

cni ~ p oc ,; pmn.

m ro

((11 ;,,~ /I IJ,:• liutt m )

·m. i,roc

rrmt. :r.o

). Hon

_\ p.oin, rhL i n m,u c :iml h ·11ful hm ir stop · h rt f pcd ying tit • 11lri111a t · si rnHiof Gursky's inv ndm,: Lh w, y i1, whi ·h rhc li.nal Jipt ·h ,ib. olu I • •,rcr chc

70

w

v p'1010g

p

w m, n rs

n.. ,ll I

I'

n

vor t !0 1e

lli

:rn

TO-!

I

11Jr 'J ,

I i.:n

4) Iii many of Gursky's pil:tures pe<>ple are shnwn nb~<.)rb cd in whM they ;ire doing (Ind h;;:1ic ,:e as 11uawa rc of rlw presc11 ce of die photograp lwr (and by implicarion the viewer). I norcd versions of this ln cad)' works s uch as Sm1dcl)' Str()flers, Diiss<'ldl.?r( Airport, J1is lrcrm,m, Miilheim 11;.d, Ruhr, a.nEI Sw immin g Poo l, J{atingen (see Figs, 90, 92 , 93 ), bnt b eca use the figures in the 6rst a i:e depit:tcd from behind a nd those in the sc<.:t>i1d nnd third Fro111a .considerable di stal 1ce (also from above), the theme of absot p• tion bai:ely comes .1cross as s uch. lt is mlu 'C palrahl ,y present in W<1tks suoh as 1bllyo Stoel~Ji,xdwn,11. e (J.990), Siemens, Kai·lsruhe (J99 i; Fig. 105 ),. ri w 1J1mi ssio11cdirnag\: in s, working m::1t eriwl1icb one s1.:cst1urneruus workers scMcd at tables nmid t1'<1lleys, rec:1 11ls, .ind supply cribles spiraling frorn tl1e c:eiHng, and Nha 7iw ,g, Vietnam (2004; Fig. 106 ), :1 verri.:al c~m1posirio11 , slwr typically from 11hovc, of a large, o pen focmry inte• rior in which a few hun~lred Vietnamese wom co in orange company shi.r ls sil o r squat on the grom,d weaving ch~1irs 1u1d ha~kets out of smiw. Ln rhe J·asr 0£ these, only one .f:igtLrels $h0\VIJ apparently look iJJg up row:.ird rhc c:rnwr:i (she is by 11< ) mea1\s easy tO fiml); r·he <~rhers are all benr upon their tasks, an ostensllily antitheatrical structl 1re of an almost dasska l sort. (Wi,:sense, Joukirt.g nr the Nh ,1 Trnng picture, rhat it bas been digita lly nhmipufoted, though we do nor koow how - a fomilhlr t'xperiencl< before Gursky's irnagco.) What I w;rnt ro srress,, however, i.~ 1ha1absoi·prion in Gursky is co11 s.i'sreL1 t.ly " IIJc"' or 111 ech,1t1ical; nowlwrc is it pcrwi vt:d m imply rhc least. inw::irdness or psyc.hi, d~prh ou dw p:1r1of his human subjeccs.37 'J'his is particularly evi dem m Siemens, Rarlii·i'ihe:fnwiilch- thc workers, alr.hough by no means 1,iddcn from sight, 11re easy ro -miss- Oilce seen, mor eover, .they are hard ro keep in view as active fo<.:torsin the c;ompC)sirion. fostead. rb:ey blend i1Jtuthe mnchinery, ..1.s if part (>f it.1~ In Nh t, Trang, Vietnam the visual cmp ha$iS, i11.die a bsence of mad1inery, foils on cl1e women, but their s he er m 1111ber , the repctitl.ous ness of their uniform shii·ts and black pooytai ls, as well as t•be view from above, have a s imi lady lhtteniJ1g: effet: r, as du es the division o f the co,opn· sition luru J1orizoural r.um1s by ii sll(;Cc~siou of wi1·es c~rrying flmwescenr lighting. lr mighr therefore see111 rempcing.to thl 11k of Gursky "~ seeking to u11derscorc rhc dchurn,111i z.ing ,1spcc1:sof certain forms of work/' but J rhink this would be <•ff-key. Instead I take his flnttenin~ 0f ,1bso1'ptiun to he ll noth cr ~i.gn of the consi~tcnc}' with which his ~-rt ni~ists or indeed. repudiat es all identification by the viewer with dw huma n ~uhictts of his im;:igcs- th(: projcer of si:vering call~ for not hing less. A relared theme is that of the ~eparotc wo rld of animals, as in Chidw1.s , Kr.cfeld (J.98y), ,i srraighrphutugroph .oF chickeris .and roosters in a largl' f..:nc;1,: J yal'J, ar1d Gredey (2.002), an aerial view of a vast grid of open pens cu11tainJng hundr eds of h ead of cattle; sw.:h 1111i111als ill Gursky's art appcc1r imn:11.: rscd in 1'11t:i'r lives even rnure flatly :rnd non-1:01111m1n icatingly than -rhe ~;em~ns workers. 5) For SlHnt: dni, : now co111 111 cntaw rs o n Gursky's ·ar r hnve noted his interest in .subjects - s uc:1 1 as rlw Sienm1s plllnr :xt K~rlsn,hc, t)1c Tokyo, Chic:xgo, ,;n1dHon g KoHg swck c.,x c hanges, che Hon gko ng and Shanghai B,mk building in Hon g Kong, and the coo lly lit mod ernist shelves lined with PrndHshot:s or Nike .rneake rs - rhat he.long to the social and econo mic phenomenon known as .glob<1ti zation. As in tlw .:,1~(·of his 1.1 Sc of Jii,itiiMi~l.n, I ha\
'173

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, or, J\ndr~~~ Gursky, Nim Trf/11)1,\licl11n111 , 2004.

Chron,oj:\cllic prncess prim ,

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(above arid {acing page) 18 x 2.59 cm

10 7

Andreas Gur ky, Stockholder Meetiu , Diptych

2.001 .

Chromogenic proce s prim . Eacb pll.11el

Diptych (2.oor Fig. ro7) a monumenta l double image in whi h group of co rporate leader from ome of G rmany ' large t corporations it at long table · or dai e th at are pre ented a if uspended in front of or partly upporced b an immeose mass of granite o ered with snow, At the bot:tom of the two images an odd ly spectra l audience unfornmately turned away from the viewer, look up roward the heights. T he logo of the corporations (Luft hansa, Daimler Chry ler Bayer, Volk wagen iemens, and so on) Aoar aga inst the ky while the nam of all tbe ex cutive appear before the lat ter on plagues. Not urpi:i ingly perhaps Stockholder Meeting, Diptych wa one f the few utrighr failures fn Gur ky' retro pe ti e exhibition f 100 • 6) Or consid r a ingle enigmati work, U11titled Xll (r) ( 1.999; Fig. I08), a doe-up photograph of a page of printed German prose. The page is "from' a famous book 1 Robert Musi l's unfinished masterpiece Der Mann ohne Eigenschaft.en (Th e Man without Qualities· r92.3-42), a book already mention ed in connection wich Bu tamance Tableaux in Chapter One and v hicb, in more than one re pect mak e intriguing reading in relation to recent photography; fore ample ici easy m imagine rhe appeal to Gursky ine) of the title of (or to Thoma Demand, whose work will be di en sed in Chapter

176

why pholo~ranhy mat ers as art as never be ore

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steps that he d id. Thus r.hc Germa n (or German-reading) viewer - the work's implicil' audience - who start s o ut reading che page will find himself or herself subtly bur repeatedly alienated from it: .is if t he force field of reading was not co be undone bu1· o nly subver ted, or as i.fGucsky's aim i1J rhjs instance was a kind of severed reading rhar continuously compelled the viewer to rent:gotiat e his or her relation to the page, and thereby 4 tO rhc picture. ) The absence of all proper names from Gursky's fabrjcared page is a further gesrure in this direction, as if mrn,es as sucb threatened to pr ovide occasions, however rninimfll, for rcadcrly idencification. More bwa d ly, che ta d ically iron ic, hcm:c a ffectively clistanciJ1g, to ne of M usil's novel - o r at any rate of its first cwo sections (more tban seven hund red piigcs in the English tra nslation), before the introductio n of the prot agonisr Ulrich's ro9 Barnett Newmun, O n e11ie111 1 , 1948. Oil on sister Agath e, with whom he engages in an extraor • canvas ,rnd oil on masking tape on canvas. 69.2. x 4 1.2 dina ry (a nd for the mosr part non-physical) love c111.The Museum of Modern Arc, New York. Gift of affair - made T/Je Man wilh Oul Q uali ties the perfect Ann alee Nc w rn:ll1, 199 1 object of such an cx-periment. 44 7) One more topic remains 1:0 be touched on, the 1·elation ol: Gursky's pictures ro abstract pa incing and sc11l pt11re. This too has been exhaustively discussed by his comrncnrntors, who have repeacedly called a ttention to certain obvious associntions: for examp le berween Gursky's penchant for a ll-overness in works such as Toky o Sto ck Ex change, Klitschko , and Chicago Hoard of Trade (among other images) a nd Jackson Po llock's all-over drip pa intings of 1·94 7- 50 ; between Uulitled 1 ( t 993 ), a picw~e of the gray carpc1 on rhc gro und floor of the DLisseldo rf Kunstha lle taken from a heighL of :ibou1 two and a half feet nncl Gerha rd Richter's gray monochro me paintings of r 96 8 and afrer; between l'rada I and even more Prada 11 ( i:997), a la rgely digital!)' pro duced image of three empt )', white, coldly illLU n inated display spaces "s tacked " one a bove the other, and va rious minimal sculptur es (more accurately, "s pecific objects") by Donald Judd ; and between J{hi11e fl (see Fig. 98) , in which a computer was used to remove unwa nted structur es on rhc for side of the river and so yield the relatively a bsrracc image we sec, :ind Barnett Newman's O nem enl I ( 1 948; Fig. 109 ). Other works by Gursky, such as Times Sq11are and /-/011g Kong Stock Excha nge, Dipt ych (see Pig. ro:i.), are inconceiva ble without the precedent of amb itious (a nd I wou ld say American) a bstract painting of the lace r9 4os and after. 111;idclition

1nan•fr11nG0 1s cllevrier011the ''ta bleau fo 1m 1' , I homos 111ft, Rndrnas g11rs~v.luc de lalrnye

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111

Andre:~s (;ursky,

l{ i:s1111 1r<mt.. St 1\llori tz, 199 r. Chr omogcnic pmccss p1:in t. 175 ,5 x

20 5.5 cm

cured, almost poincillisr-seeming surfaces c.:ompan:ck>scly wiLhthe bncto11Ho-cop,lighrco-dar k perspective recession - 11lso the rexwr ed charncter - of the ciirpeted Aoor in U111 :i1/ed I. (Con1p,1risons with Olil's ki arc also gcr111 ,1nc for Untitled II LT993J ;,ind Untitled I I l I r996j.) Mor e broadly, the uncompromising fronraliry of many of Gursky's pictmcs, including chose, like rhe Prada images, char are rourinely linked wirh minimalism, recalls norhing so much as the sheer abstrnct facingness of Louis's ''Unfurlcd s," ii quality intimately linked co wh,H in '' Art :ind Objccthnod " I call their presentness (as oppo sed to the theatrical presence of the minimalist/literalist object). I leave it to the reader to decide whether between Louis's " Unfurleds" - for examp le, Alpha-Pi (196 0; see Fig. 41) - and Gursky's Atlanta and Times Square there exists ,1 further affinity of co111 positio11. 8) Finall)', a few senLences abo ur a pborogra ph unlike any other in Gursky's oeuvre, Restaurt.1 111 , St Moritz ( 199 1; rig. 111), ,l strnighrforward, Fairly close-range depicrion of families and young people se.ued ar wooden rabies in a dining hall at the famous ski resort. Hcyond the diners, many nf whom have only a glass of beer o.r n borrle of soda in front of them, arc what one takes to be soaring windows - in c.:ffccta glass wall inter-

1e11nfranco,s chevr ler on tho "tab leau lorm"; ·1homas ruff , andreas gursky, luc de lahaye

181

spersed with metallic supporcs- floodcJ witb feuturclcs~ white lil,1111 , a ra
... . l uc Oelahayc, born in 1962, is a Fre11d1photographer who began his career as a photojournalist. in p.irricular a war pborog.rapher for Ncwsu•eck :ind s'lmilar poblicarions, and wem on co cnJO)' grear su..:cessin char field, wiomng the Robert C.1pagold medal rw1ce (in 1993 and 100:1.) and che l'rix Nierct- (in 2.002.). At some po int in the eady 1990s, however, he hcgon co cbofc nr the cons1r11intsof pborojoumalism and to explore various arti~tic possibilities for which there were no precedents in w.hat he hnd hitherco done. SP for example he made (0 1· had made) a series l)f piccutes 1)f homeless Parisi:111S by :isking c,tch tti have his vr en· her photc1b'TRph rake1t :tlnnc in a photo bom:h while Delahnye deliber:udy looked .swny.This led to a further proiecc, a seri!.'l> of hlack-aml-whue_ port.rairs mollt.!un the M1:1rowirh a hidden camera. A ~dt.'Ctiooof chcsc, ninery in an, were published ;15 a book with the utle L'Autre in 19~9. Stlll :1nmhcr project in,olvecf tr.iveling for four mo111h~during the winter of t996 from Moscow to Vladivostok, and phorographinl! in garish color people living ruosdy ~llfr)' lfves in squalid conditions; a hook ga1.heri11gn selection nf chose phot M, Wi11te1·1 ·cisL',came out in 2000. I ~hall bi:it!llyconsider ~he Me.ere,pnrrrnit s in L'A11tr1 1 i11com1ecl'io11with rht' problc.m.1 tif ..:bnteJUporar y porrra il photography In Chapter Seven, hue I wanr here Lo say somerhi11gabout Odahaye's l(ltust venture, a :.cries of mostly vanoromic, l.tc~c-scaJe (roughly eighr by four foet) color phmog(;lphs of subjects mken from the im:ige repertoire of photojournalism buc rrc-.1tedin a manner that could nnt diverge further from photojourna li\11cnonn:,. The earlu:st work:, of this fY!k J.nc from 1.001; ~incc then he has made onl) ' a limired numhcr of photogr:iphs that meet rhe ~-tan dards he has ser for him~clf (an exhihition ar La Maison Rouge in Pari~ in late 1.ooscomprise d only ,cvenrccn works). ~H As this dcscrlprio,, S1)ggcsrs, whoc_Dd 11haye bas do1H·i11bis 1Jew pmje-:r is play subject marter ag;1ins1format ,rnd nll thar goes wi1h it. Thus he seeks ~ubjecrs of il sort rhttt would ordinnrily belong ro nis e::1.rlicrprncricc as a phoro/ournalisr- a dead T.ilil>an fi~hrer lying in a Jirch O,:ig. 1 t?.), the bombing ofTnlihan positmns m Afghani,mn br nn American 1\ -sl. (fig. 1 13 ). a squad of Northern Alliance Fighrer$ :idvane1ng m J mountainous l:ind~cape, the Jcnin Refugee Camp on the \Xlcsr l\nnk after ..:omh::it bccween rhc Jla lcsrinian&and the Israelis (Fig. r 14). Slobodun Nrtlusevicabout ro he ll'ie.d in The Hague, :i unit of American M ;irines warily standing guard in front of a p;irtly destroyed building in a suburb of Baghdad follr day~ heforc rhe city was taken (Fig.

why pho109r11phym:mer• as art a& never belore

1 12

I ,ll C Delahaye, 1"a/iba11, 2001.

Digita l chro mogcnil: pro cess prin t.

11 1

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the Sccurit)' Council at rhe U N 011 the occasion of Colin Powell's speech claiming thar Traq possessed weapons of m;iss destruction, and a "power" lunch hosted by Pervez Musharrnf, President of Pakistan, with the American finnncier-philanthropist George Soros among his guests, at the Wor ld Economic Forum in D::ivos, Switzerland in 2004 (Fig . .n6), co name eight. But instead of shooting eacb at dose range with a lightweight hnnd-bekl camera in pursuit of highly dr,1matic, compositionally arresting, a_ndinstantly lcfl,ible frngmems of la.rger situat ions - the phot ojournaliscic norm - he emplo)'s pcrso11alized, large-format, frequently panonimic camerns in order co include vast!)' more of che scene before him in terms both of lateral extension and of sheer quantity of visual information. Also, by print ing his photographs at large scale, he ensures that, at normal viewing dist,ince, that infonmition comes close to enveloping rhe viewer. For rhe mosr part he works with individual phorographs, tho ugh in two instances - the MusharrafSoros lunch and a much less orderly scene of a press conference at a meeting of the OPEC oil ministers in Vienna - he digitally combined different aspects of multipk shots taken from a single vantage point, shifting figures from one part of the composition to anothe1·,substitutin g gestures, eliminating unwant ed persons and objects, a11dso on, co arrive at the final images, which looked at closely give no indication of having been manipulated. T he pho cographs that resulr, as Quencin Bajac has renwrked, invcJlvc fl balance of opposing forces.49So for example there is in all of rhem a strong sense of distance, even wirhdrawal , on the part of the photograp her; in more tha n half, the dista nce is literal (it is striking, for instance, how often one's gaze extends to the far horizon); in oth er 1 1 5),

Jea n- I ranc;ols chevrie r on the " tab leau ror111":Lhomas I u II, andra as gursky, luc clolRhaye

183

1 13

Luc Delaha ye, U.S.80111/Jiu g 1111Tolib1111 (' osi ti <J11$,

200

1.

Chromogcnic process prim. , 1 z x 2.38cm

works in which rhe primal'y sul>jccr is 1t1oreproximate what comes aCl'()SSis a srrong impression of deliberate 11on-eng:1gcmenr, not, one feds, in the inreresrs of rcperrorial "o bjcctiviry" so much as in pursuit o f an artisric - ultimately an onto logicnl - ideal or allowing the picrurc in all irs densiry both or reference and of color ro come into being as if of its own accord. "T here is :i real ambiguity," Delalrnyc has said, "I am cold and clt;rached, su fficicmly invisible because sufficiently insigniRcanr, and rbat is how I arrive nr a full presence to rhings, and a simple nml direcL relation to the real. That idea, in my work, is central. ,,~o This me.ins thaL the viewer quickly becomes aware that a basic proroco l nf rhesc images rules our pn.:dsely rhe sorr of fears of close-up capture - of fosr· s, vivid momcnrnry juxrnpositions of moving events, exrremc gesturt:s a nd 1:111otion persons and things - rhnr Ont.!associates wirh photojournali sm :it its bravura best. RaLhc:r , the phot ographs in their sheer breadth aml det:iil extend :in invit:uio11ro rhe viewer to approac h closely, to peer intently ac one o.r another portion of rhe picrorial field, in short w become engrossed or indeed immersed in prolonged nncl inrimntc conrc111pl.uionof all Lhnrthe image offers 1·0 be seen. At che same rime, the viewer is given
why phOIO!J1aplly 111t1 lte 1s ;is art as 11ever before

cr4 Luc Dda huyc, Ja11i11 Rc/11 ,:ec Camp,

115

2001 ,

Chromoi.cnic pro cess print r t r

Lui: Dclnhnyc, llll .~l1darl II, 2.003. Chro111ogc 11ic colCJ r prinr.

11

·1 x 240 cm

X 2J9

cm

, 1t,

Luc Dclnhnyc, A Lun cb

a1

th e Belvarferc, :r.004.

Digital cl1ro11 1ogcnic process print.

1J 5

x

2 9 0 c 111

distant explosions off to the right); in Jenin Refugee Cam/) to try to grasp the relation of the hnlf-demolishcd camp to the peaceful-seeming distant landscape in which it rests; in Baghdad LI to perceive the Marines' anxiety and to wonder as they do (but nor exactly "with '' rhem) from which direction danger is likely to come; and iu A Lun ch at. the Belvedere w recognize Mush:1rr:1fand Soros and then by empathic looking ro "activate" the discreet but palpable dramn mking place berwc<:n chem (Musharraf speaking, his left hand conveying a ccrrnin tension, Soros looking down with an almost wirhdrnwn expression l'IS he fingers something on the rnblccloth, the fact that Soros of all those at the rnble docs not wear a tic, the complementary impression of contai11ed energy in Musharraf, and so on). This in turn is why the viewer tends ro feel, at least mornenrnrily, that d1c dernils he or she comes to invest with significance arc discovered by him or her rarher drnn delivered personally by the photographer. Yer because rhe viewer also knows that this is nor the case, the cumulative effecr of those derails is ro underscore the aura of arr. (Art of a different sort came additionally into play in the 111:ik ing of the Davos fum:h and 0 1•1,c meeting plwtographs, l'IS already mentioned.) An obvious rerm of comparison is with rhc rcconstrucrive "n ear documentary" csthctic of Jeff Wall. Even more telling, perhaps, is the conrrnst between Dclaliaye's panornmic pictures and the work of Gursky, whose large-scale and often fonrasticall)' derailed images put a similar premium on sheer visibility bur which, I have rricd ro show, are deliberately and ingeniously severed from any corporeally iouiginablc relation ro photographer or viewer -so mething that, in my experience, is not at all true of Dclahayc's images. More precisely, distance in Gursky tends ro be ~bsolute, nor, as in Deln-

186

why pl1otog1aphy niatte 1s as art as never befo10

hnye, the dialectical other to prox·imity and immersion, a proximity and immersio11th:;it in the tirst il.1stanceis thaL of the phorographc;t hfo,sc:lf. 1.n Ddah.aye's words:

I wam to show the evenr at the very morncnr it hikes plai;:e.... My. body musr be 1111chc )rcd to the ground and to seek rhe best point of view, without a ny.visual taboos . Bur then, at the beart of rhc evenr, my efforr is 1·0 tlisappcar, r introduce ,1 tlisrnnce char border s on indifference, The v.ism-11 rcsuJt ttan slares a more essential presence m things }~nd to tbe world. IDbeing transpare nt, I redu ce the distance between th1:-evenr .tlnd the spectat c'lr. I've idwoys wnrkt:tl that way, but in an intuitive way. With History 1Delahaye's n~me for his project in 2 003] 1 formalize rbat prncess.5' 1t is as though Delalrnye's panorami c pictu.res, antith!.'tically-to Gursky's work, aspire in rhe e11dto yield an imaginative expe.cience near ly like merger with the world ·- au ttspirar.ion that may well strike a wholly original note in contemporary photography .

.A few addition .ii thoughts. IJ1,t946 Clement Greenberg reviewed an exhib ition of photo· graphs by Edward Weston. The review begins: "PhotQgraphy is t he mo st transparent of overed by man. It is probably for that reason thM it the an 1nedi1.1msdt:viscd or diJ1c

proves so difficult to make the photo graph trnnscend its a lmost inevitable function as documenr .and act as W<>1 'k o.f art as well.».12 B)' "tra nsparent' ' Green berg me.int both thM plwrograp hy is capable of e.xtrl':me feats of depictive realism nod that althon~h rhe phmog raphic a1tifact bas a surfocci (ir is, in a sense, all sw·face), the viewer tends incvitnbly to louk " through" or, more accurnrcly, "past'' th,,r surface to the dcp[ctio11 ;,is such. This second point is in sharp contra st wjrh paintlDg, whose materia l surface is n:Otjust @cutely pr esent to the viewer's awa rc 1iess (it is "npaqu e" rather than tr::inspar· l:lllt) but is also avallab le to the painte r to be ernphasized, artic ulim!tl, and the1:natized in an infinite number of w:1.ys; the invention of collai;e aroulld ·L9n only L'attfied .a te11 dency that had been at work for cent uri es. Tbu s it rnighL be said th;it one important funcrion of the rableau form has bcet1to counterncr or coL1J peusate for the rranspa.reuce of 1\1c. photographi c su.rfaG: e by keeping the viewer at a disr:ince from the latter no~ i11s1 · physically (and of cou rse; the v.iewer is alsJ 978 and an interview w irh Greenberg by-James F~urc Walker, At one point Greenberg notes how when Pict Mondr ian "opened up" the middle of his pictures

Jea11 - fr1111qolschevr lar

0 11

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18)

~

th H i ·, w!1 ·n he ·ired hi. ·olorcd r wng l .s co nrd the dgcs of rhc ·:m n , I · viu. the middle o the pi tur, up •11- the pi~tur inv. ri. bl • ·u cecd ·cl• "1rt. •• h. r \ s hi r 1:1 • c;1li m~ \ chat
h. Jr l1.

rhc

88

trnnsparence means also rhat rhe material surface is put out of play as a bearer of pictorial mca11i 11i:;,a sig11ific:1111: loss and one whose ultimate implications rclllain ro be assessed. " !Touch I is rhe eros specific to painting," I hnvc alre:idy quored Wall as remarking." Or :is Thomas Demand observed as he and I srood rnpr in admirncion of the pa int handling in Courbet's sublilllc pict11rc of a breaking wave in the Alce N:.itionalgalcrie in Berlin (Fig. :rr7), "T har is whar we c:.innot do."

rr8

Thoma~ Srruth. The Hirose Family, Hirnshimt1, 1987. Gelatin silver print. 39 x 54 cm; 68 x 84 cm framed

portraits by thomas struth, rineke dijkstra, patrick faigenbaum, luc delahay~, and roland fischer; douglas gordon and philippe parreno's film zidane

7

Starring in the !are 1980s Thomas Struth, whose museum pictures were discussed in Chapter Five, has made rhirry-two portraits of familif'S, the mo~t recent in :2.005. 1 [ shall begin hy considering rbree of the earliest {and srill the best known): The Hirose Family, tiiroshima (T987; Fig. r c8); The Smit/; Family, Fife (1989; Fig. r 19); and The Bemstein Family. Miindersbach (r990; Fig. c20). The tir<;t i<;in black-and-white while the other rwo are in color but structurally all three are similar: between eight and ten member~ of a i;inglc famjJy, ranging in age from young children ro older adults (there are no you11g children in The Smith Famil')', however), sit or stand facing the camera (and the photo~rapher? - the answer to rhar question will turn our tn mam:r). The setrings are domesric. The Hirose family ,irs Jammed together on a sofo; a tabletop piled with hooks and pieces of paper fills rhe right foreground of the image (slightly out of focus bec:wse near the picture plane); co the left one sees part of a desk, also piled with books and papers, and some gh.tss-fronted bookcases; to the rear a lamp and telephone resr on a cable but attcnrion is caprured by several African sculptures, one a mask hanging on rhe wall, and to the left of the mask ,1 framed painting of a masklike head in a :.urnewhat cu hist style. To the right rear one looks past an open Joor inm another room. The Smirb family too appears at home; father, mother, and one son (I assume) sit in :irmch:iirs while five others {two men, rhree women -sons and
po11ra1ts !>}' stnith,

tJ11~. stra, laigenbaum,

de/ahaye, and fischer; gordon and p,irr0no's

.:1dant::

191

1 19 fhnma~ Struch, The Smith FL1mi/y,Fife, 1 y89. C:hnimC>genicprocess prim. 100.8 x 126. 3 cm; 104.8 x 1 29.7 cm framed

point of entry is Strurh's remark, quoted in Ann Goldstei11's essay, "Portraits of SelfReflection," in rhe catalogue of Struth 's 2002. retrospective exhibition: "'The portrair is rhe subject matrer in photography where the prob lems of the media !why rhe plural?! are the most visible.' '' 1 Go ldstein continues (basing her remarks on a convru~ation with rhe art ist): ''For him, those problems begin with the realiry of purring a person in franc of a camera, and the complex dynamics rhat rake place between the sitter, the photo grapher, and the spectator" (168) . Struth and Goldstein between rhem make it sound as if rhe portrait presents unique difhculc1es for the photographer, which may well be true, but something of rhe sort has been felt to hold for painting as well. In mid-eighteenth-century France, for example, the portrait was a questionable genre in the eyes of many an cncics. As I remark in Absorption and T/Jeatricality,a frequent objection was rhat portrairure required the exercise merely of mechanical skills rather than of the pictoria l imagination. "But there was," I su~ge,;t, srill another source of critical misgiving- the inherent rheatricaliry of the genre. More nakedly ,rnd as it were cate~orically than rhe convent ions of any other genre, those of the porn-air call for exhibiting a subject, the sitter, m the public gaze; put another way, the basic action depicted in a portrait i::.the sitter 's presentation of himself or

192

whv

JJho10grar)l1y

111a11ers ;is ~rt

as never l)efo 1

12 0

Thornns Stru1h, Tin Bemstein Family. Miindersl,ach, c:111; , 08 x 1 _ H cm framed

1990.

Chrorno~enic rrncess rrinr.

76. 5 x L04

herself to be beheld. It follows chat the portrait as a genre was singularly ill equipped

ro comrly with rhc dcntanJ that a painting negate or neutralize the presence of the beholc.ler, a demand tbat ... became a matter of urgent, if for the most part less than fully conscious, concern for Frern.:hart critics during these years. 1 go on ro show how 111 certain tases painters soughr ro overcome this limitation by depicting persons in a portrait as absorbed in thought or action; by rhe same token, Didcror in 1 767 c;harply criticized Louis-Michel Van Loo's portrait of him for irs air of coquetry, which he explained jo terms of rhe presence in the room o.t the engaging Mme Van Loo while he was being painted. What would have been best, Diderot wrote, would have been to leave him alone "'anc.l aban
portrait"

by struth

d·1~stra ia1genbn1.,rn de lahayP., and t1scher

r10rdo11;ind parreno'c, z,cJant'!

193

u I Walker Evans, Alabama Te11a111 Parmer Wl1fe{i\llia Mi.1e Burroughs/, r9 ;6. Gc l:mn silver print . .?.0.9 x q.4 cm. The i\tletropo liran Museum of Art, New York, Purchase, 1.001 Benefir Fund, 1.001 (1.001 .41 5)

of being beheld, which is what Diderot meant when be insisted in the Entret,ens sur le Fils ,wturel ( 1757} and Discours de la poesie dramatique (1758), his revolutionary early cexts on the theater, on che need to treat cbe beholder as if he did not exist. 4 As has been mentioned more than once, naturalness so understood has also been a photograph.ic ideal, based on the belief thar a person who is caprured unawares - who does not know he or she is being photographed -will reveal the "truth'' about himself or herself whereas a sitter who is conscious of the camera will at once alter and thus falsify bis or her mode of self-presentation, as Barthes in Camera Lttcida
194

why f)horograp l1y 11rntters as art as never before

1 22

Augusr SanJer. Pastry Cook ,

1928. Gebtin ~ilver print. From

Penple of the Twentieth Century

fic:ulties and embarrassments that that has been undersrood to involve. So for example Walker Evans, in his portraits of tenant farmers ao
portraits

lly s11utti, cJqf ,Ira, fa1genbaum, de lahaye, and t.sche r, ~101..ion,nrl rarreno's

zidane

nutted ro a rigorou~Jy fronr,il and centered - in thar sense portrait-like - approach to rhcir subject matter, not persons bur rather industrial strucrures of various kinds. Like Snnclt:r'ssystematic portrayals of members of different professions, the Bechi:rs· pictures a.re rypological in intent, though in Chapter Ten I sha ll rry co show that ,;uch a formulation barely scratches che ,;urface of the .Bechers' achievement . Struth 's portraits of families arc someth ing else again but- as ha:. always been recognized - the importance ro hi-; art of rhe B1ccher'-'reaching :;inclexampk• can .<:carcelyhe overestimated. "The profession depends so much upon the relations rhe photographer establishes wirh tht.' people he's photographing, rhar a false relationship, a wrong word or amtt1Je, can ruin everything," Henri Cartier-Bresson ha-. ..aid. ·'When the subject is in any way uneasy, che personaliry goes away where rhe camera can'r reach ir. There are no systems, for each ca:-e is individual and demands char we be unobrrusive, though we musr be ilt close range.''- Cartier-13resson was not referring specifically to ponrairs but his remarks apply to rhem wirh a vengeance; if che phorographer's aim is unobtrusiveness, how is that to be acbieved with.in a situation that explicitly faces off photographer and sirrer? 1lere are the seeps Srruth rakes in order co malke his family portraits: 1) As he explains in a -1990 discussion with Benjamin Buchloh, he photographs only families or persons he knows and likes.11 Arbu, roo famously "befriended" persons whom she met and wanted ro photograph, bu1t thar seems to have meant merely rhar she somehow won their trusc and thus was allowed to photograph them, l)ften in their homes (none of the sitters in her best-known image~ is 1.:.aughtunaware~}.~ Her inrent1011swere photographic from the outset, and chere ts no suggestion eirher in rhe secondary literature or in her own statements that her connections with most of her subjects outlasred the making of the image. In Sr-ruth'scase, in contrast, the friendships or aqunintance-.hips come first and the photographs follow ),1rer- indeed Struch tells Buehloh thar "]mlany of rhe photographs were discussed as l ong as two ye;1rsbeforehand'' (29). Thefirst rwo photographs cited earlier seem to have been maJe more or less a~ mementoes after Srruth srayed with the fa111ilie,in Hiroshim ,1 and fife. HI 2) The actual triggering of rhe shutter i:- thus only a final stage of a much longer process. In many cases, perhaps even all, rhe process involves extensive discussions with rhe sitters, presumably dealing with rhe question of exactly how they wish to be portrayed. The idea seems ro be not just to put the sitters at their c<1sebur as much as possible n> engage them as collabor,Hors in the making of the porrrait (Buchloh interview, 29).

3) When rhe time come~ for the actual sboO!'ing, a room or pJace is chosen, presumahl >1by rhc family jointly wirh ~u·urh, who then asks them to dispose themse lves as rhey like before rhe lens of his camera. More precisely, he shows rhem rhe limits of the picmre field and invire1:ithen, ro arrange rhemselves within rbose limits (Buchloh interview, 19). In an interview of 1 994, discussrng rhe family portraits, Mark Gisbomne asks ~truth, ·' Are these h);ure-; ever posed?" To which Struth answers, "No. I decide upon the Iimirations of the frame, them I tell [hem to pose wh1:rever thev like wirhin rhe frame'' (8). Tnnrher words, the circumstances are such char a certain element of posing is inevitable (Barthes in Camem L11cidaholds this to be true of photography generally), bm as a po1nr of prim:iple the sitters are not posed h>1S,rruth.

v,,1,y p l1
neve, hetNe

-1) Equallv important,

it seem~, Strntb does not stand behind rbe camera bur ro one

side. J le asks his sirrerc; to look nr the camera, not

::it

him. Ac; he l'xpbins

ro Buchloh:

There is ... a difference in mak111gJ rortrair wirh a large negative-format, with a focu'ling-screcn, where the photographer stands next to ~111J not behind the camera. The portrayed don 'r foll into illusion that the~· are looking ar the phorographcr. The individuals heing photographeJ look inro rhe lens and know exactly whar it means to be phorographed: that in rhis puracul.::ir momenr they proiecr a mirror-image, without acrua lly st'eing themselves. j3ol (for Buchloh, a rigidly Adorno-ec;que critic, "the rradirion of the reprcsenrarion lin paimingl of the individual subject is obsolete,'' though he grams , seemingly with regret, thJt ''somehow 1r LS •mil possible to produce portraits with rhotography" l3 r J.L' The question i., how.) Th e idea ~t'em1, to be rhar by <:repping to one <;jde in rhis way Strurh effectively removes himself from the process - after all, projecting a mirror image i1, something ooe does by oneself, typica!Jy in condirions of pnvacy. Narnrnlly this cannor be taken literally; there is nn way for Struth to absent himself from the enrire scene . Yet ir t·videnrly matters to Strurb to fed char he personally is not the object of hi!, sitters' fronral gazes. 'i) Struth Jelibcrntely chooses to prolong the expmure rimes of the shots of his families as mm :h as b feasible. This too emerges in the interview wirh BuchJoh. "The exposure i..,very long," Strurh exph1ins, sometimes up to one second- even in a case l.ikc the Japanese fami ly Hirose, where there were 9 people in the sitting. Normall}' you would rhink it's pr~1ctically impossible, that it is at rbe limit of the photographic process. But it works when rhe people perceivl' this process a1, their own. Once Lhey understand that it'!> going ro be rht'ir photograph, rheir own rmage, they manage to sir still one full seconJ. Orhcrwi.,e, they move. It's practicall y a form of con .c:ciousness about the mirror -image, the question ing of rht self, well, who am I? L~ol This recalls Walter Flcnjamin\ famou::. description of early pnrrrnit photographs, in which the slnwnc.s11of the plate necessitated similarly long exposures. "The procedure itself c<1uscd the suhi1.·ct ro focus his life in the moment rarher rhan hurrying on pasr it; during the considerable period of the exposure, the <;ubject (as it were) grew into rhe picture, in the 11harpt:stcontrast with appearances in a snapshot," Benjamin remarks in "Little Hisrory of Photography. " 1~ Closer ro home, there is the example of Sander , whose ponrair work, Struth says to Buchloh, "was only possible through the particular wny he inrcracte
nonr, 11t

1i~· stru1l1

ClqkSlr

lri1tJertl),1ur11 11r.l.-1hr1v"' and 11.,cri,:;r

aoro(,n anrJ nar,,~no's z1na11A

can he read and is visible. 1 know this from experience, as l often presenr the photos ro several people and with certainty nearly everyone agi:ees and says, I find thi!. or that shot the best. When r present chem wirh forty negatives of a ten-person family, they practically always decidt upon the same rwo negatives rhat I would choose'' (31). 13 The result of aU these measures has been felt by commentators co shift the balanc e between the phbrographer and his subjects in a decisive manner. Thus Masanori Ichikawa writes: "The foremost achievement in Strmh 's rortraits should be attribuccd to rhe models." 14 (This is in effect whar Struth said to Buch lob about Sander's portrait photographs.) More broadly, Peter SchjeldahJ observes: "Struth's faimiJy porrrairs vivify an approach char extends ro citic~ and forests. That approach is a revelation of rhe conditions in and on which a given subject exists in the world. Thi! picture belongs to the subjecr. In a way that counts, the suhject authors the picture." 15 Tbis too cannot be taken literally burro the extent that it is imagined robe tru e, the plnoto~rapher cannot be accused of exhibiting his sitters, which is ro say that one major source of rheatricaliz.ation is avoided. But the association between Struth's family photographs and the issue of anrithearricality is far closer then these remarks su~gesr. Here it will be helpful ro consider an extended commenrary oa Srrurb's portraits by Charles Wylie, chid organizer of the :2002 retrospecrivc exhibitio n; I shou ld say at rhc outset that my aim in citing Wylie is to use his commentary to help clarify che issues that concern me. Wylie writes: The idea of families, of how one's place in the world is determined by one's place in the archirecmre of family, prompted Struth's second series [after his early hlack-and whire ciryscapesj. Citing nis own family's photo albums as .;in initial spur, in the mid1 980s Struth pictured groups of family members ananged in domestic settings that brought out t he innate psychological intensity present whenever a family gathers. Srruth ·s families are clearly relate
why photo9r1:1ohv rmitters as art as never before

of all these figures -awareness of tbe arti,;;t raking their portrait, of the fact that rhey arc a SLLbjectto be looked at, and, by extension, of their place in the world once the :-.butter has fallen. Perhaps we as viewers are meant to take this awareness with us after we have finished looking at Struth's intense subjects, aml focus an equally intense 1.:oncentratioo, not merely visual, on those we know and don't know, and on those ' we embrace and rho!.e we avoid. 11 For Wylie, as (he believes} for Strurh, families are inherently psychologically incense emities, and Srrurh 's photographs bring chat out in a singularly focussed way. They do rhis, Wylie suggests, by making available to the viewer a wealth cif relationships, at once

of affinity and difference, thar for one re;1son or another are nowhere near as salient in ordinary life. (This last point may be me rather than Wylie, who concludes by suggesting that we
"Suppose there were a law of acsrherics rhat said rhar faces in a painring have to he ,imilar. Now I point to two people and say to someone 'Use these as models for your picture; they are similar':· ix Wirrgenstein 's gist, 1 take it, is char rhere would be :.omerhin?, ahsurd in this, precisely because a painter is nor lj_mired in what he can paint hy hi:- choice of models. Yet not only would it not be absurd for a photographer to proceed in that way, it is hard to see how else he or she could produce the desired result. This points up an ontological difference between pa.indogs and photographs, as does another ctration, this one from an editorial aside by Melchior Grin1m, an astute critic of paint111g in his own righr, from Diderot's Saln11of r763, where Grimm says of the portraitist Jean -Man.· Nattier (by chen a relic of an earlier pictorial regime), "All his porrrairs 19 resemble one another, one believes one is always seeing the same figure." More broadly, dose resemblance between persons in painted portraits is inbercnrly dubious in that it invariably strikes the viewer as a mannerism of rhe painter, ra 1cher than as a veristic report un che appearance of the persons themselves. (Not that it ii, impossible for a painter ro report a<.:<.:urarelyon family likeness; bur the painting or paintings rhar result will be powerless to pcrc;uade the viewer immediately rhar such likeness is grounded in reality rather than in the painter's habits of seeing and depicting.) The opposite is rrue of re<.emblance in photograpl1s, which in comparison with p:lin1rings '-trike the viewer a, mechanically faithful to rhe reality they ostensibly depict; this has begun to change with the advent of digitization, bur the basic distinction still holds.

r,ort1<11 1s bv s1t1Jll 1, rl1J\.:S11a, fa,yenbaum.

•Jt>lahaye and f1sche1. gordon aml parreno's zidane

1~9

Another remark hr \'<'ittgenstein in the same volume also bears on the topic: "Suppose we were ti) meet people who all had the same facial features: we should not know where we were with them'' (29c). 10 This is nor quire true of our relacion ro Srruth's family pictures, but for me at least there is a momenr of disorientation every time l take in the strength of family resemblance among his subjects within a single photograpb (again, rhe Bernstein one is an extreme case). Almost immediately, however, that sense of di'>orienration is counceracted by a recognition of countless small and large differences of physiognomy, expression, sex, age, dress, and demeanor among tbe various sirten,, ::is well as by an appreciation, which comes about more slow ly hut in the end is deci~ive, of rhe wlle<.:tive~tyle of presentation of the family group as a whole. Further, one's appreciation of char collective style is made much more acute when twn or more nf the family phorographs are presenred in close conjunction to each other on a gallery wall or in a catalogue. So for example Norman Bryson in 1 990 contrasted the Hirose and Smith fomiljes, noting how In the presence of tht' camera, the family in Hiroshima foll!, um, a closely inrerrelared group, with rhe heads of the women and children forming a single, unbroken wave, flanked by the higher-placed males, as though the feeling of the family as a group rhar supports and sustains aU its members existed in no particular conflict with its internal sense of ranking according to gender and senioriry. The family in Fife, by contrast, falls into a relatively scattered and individuated pattern, with no apparent Jramati.zation of age or gender in terms of the figures' placement (central/margina l, standing/seared). Ir i,; as if each sitter were ,;urrounded by an invisible cocoon of personal space, extending quire far from the body, within wl1ich he or she presents a relatively autonomous and free-standing -.ubjecrivity.1 1

Bryson's observations are shrewd, bur they stop well shon of Wylie's claim that each of Struth's family groups "must he read in irs entirety, and each family member placed by position, poi:;mre,gesture, ancl facrnl expression in the complex interweaving of emotion, gesture, and facial expression we all encounrer in relation co our own families." No viewer could successfully do wh;:ir Wylie c.lemanJs; Bryson is surely correct when he insists thac the "quasi-nove listic'' approach raken in his comparison of the Hirose and Smith families quickly reaches its limits (130), For two reasons: the first is informational - there i!>so mu<.:hone does nm know and no phorograph could convey; 12 the second is -:rrucrural, owing co the unresolvable conflict r>erween rhe viewer's empathic engagemenr with individual family members on the one hand and his or her larger response co and inrerprctation of rhe family grour as a who le on the other. The viewer's attention is divided berween the rwo, it shuttles continually from one ro the other ,is ,,.,ell as from one member of rhe family group to another, without the least possibility of completely inregraring the various individuals in their p:micularity into the larger unit. To my mind, the special magnetism of the best farnjly portraits owes mu<.:hco Srrnrh's handling of that confl ict. Whereas in those family portraits where for one reason or another the conllicr is muted-such as The Shimada Family, Yamaguchi (1986), in which only six persons, apparently comprising three genernrions, are perhaps roo artfully distribur-edacross a Japanese garden complete with mossy rucb, flowering bushes, and a water-

?00

whv rlio10,J1<11>hY malt!'!I"

rl" r1rl ,1s nti.ve, before

Thomas 5truth, The Consolandi Family, M,la11, 1996. Chronriogenic process print. no x L35cm, 148 x 1 7 1 cm framed r2'1

fall, and The Consolandi Family, Milan (r996; Fig. r 1.3), in which an elegant modern apartment competes on equal terms with its well-dressed occupants - the rota! impact, while for from negligihle, falls short of the almost hypnotic force of the three portraits I began this chapter by describing. Another factor is the strength and perspicuousness of color, whicb tends ro u1still its own order of pictorial simultaneity, without relation to the individual, the group, or the conflict between the two: a llthough of my three exemplary photographs only rhe Hirose Farnily is in b lack and white, in none of the three i~ color as salient a~ it is in the Shimada and Consolandi portraits; the nearest they come is the Bernstein phowgraph, but there the main role of color is ro serve the rheme of family resemblance by making visib le the blonde hair of most of tht.: sitters. (Tn a struc turally different ponrait of an older married coup le, the justly admiJ·ed Eleo11orand Giles Robertsull, Edinburgh I t987; Fig. J 24J, the slighrly our-of -focu s warm plum wallpaper in the middle ground is vital to the overa ll effect, provicli11g an affective frame for the physically separated but obviously well-matched pair. ln general, though, l think it is fair to say that the family porrraits as such work best when color is minimized Y )

purtra 1ts by str1Jth, dqf stra, fa1genbauni, delA~1ave, and f1sche r, nordon and parreno's zidane

20 1

124 Thomas Strmb, Eleonor a11dGiles Rnbertso11,Edinburgh, 1987. Chromogenic proces~ print. 41.5 x 59 cm; 68 x 86 cm frame
Farther on Wylie says rhat we ''arc allowed ro ponde r a group of individuals whose relationships are essenrially ung-uardcd, open ro our examination,'' and connects that supposed openness with che fact that "the sub jects are fuJly aware of rhem selves and conscious of how they present themselves to the camera (and for the image) '' though, in a way that is typical of commentaries nn Strurh's work, he does nor explain exactly how the second enables the fuse. Instead he underscores the theme of awareness by dairning chat it and nothing else is ''the hallmark of all these figures- awareness of the artist taking their porrrair, of the fact chat th ey are a subject to be looked ar, and, by exte nsion, of their place in the world once the shutter has fa llen" (r51-2). It is not hard to see why someone caught up in the ostensible logic of fronral address might wish co :;a)' chi:,;- but nor is it hard to sec how and where sw.:h a claim goes astray. (Nor ro mention the additional suggestion that "perhaps we are meant to rake [the sitters'] awareness wirh us" and apply it within om own lives IT52). There is something about photography that encourages this so rt of well-meant moralism. 24 } Let me try to clarify matters by noting the active presence in ~truth's famjly photographs of two complementary axes. Th e first lies wholly within the picture and is essentially lateral; I think of it as the axis of family relarionships, which in the case of Strurh's family portraits includes both che play of physical resemblance and difference Wylie

202

why phorography

matters as art as never berore

poinrs to and the la_rger, at once cultural and personal styles of self-presentation Bryson associares with the Hirose and Smith families respecrively. The second axis is orthogonal to tbe hr1;r anrinction, we now consider the family portraits as a group, we recognize at once that the axis of family relationships ic; marked by unawareness or oubli de soi (or rather by ,;everal kinds of unawareness} while tJ1e axis of address is indeed marked by an awareness of bejng phomgraphed (but thar awareness itself has a more complex structure than is often a!.sumed). Not on ly chat: rhe two contrasting modo Iities - self-awareness and linawareness, to pur them that way round - are functionally relatehip:. is precisely the axis of ab:,orpt1on, while rhe axi:-.of address is themarized br the open tahle drawer and the two cards facing- the beholder, the operative fiction being that the boy, since he is caught up in the firsr, is oblivious to tbe second. 1n the most ('Ompclling of Srruth 's family portrairs equivalent lateral relationships, equally under the sign of unawareness, are elicited not by closing out the hcholder bttt by the subjects i_nthe phorop;raphs directly addressing the camera. The result in each case is thus a rour de force of anrithearricc1l art despite rhc overall frontality of tbc image, which one might have thought would militate strongly :1ga1nst such an outcome. Or r:irher it is Strurh's creative resraging of the frontal dispusitif by means o f the vanous measure~ summJrized earlier rhat nor only divests that disposit,f

203

r 25

Thoma~ Struth, The Richter Ft1111ily. Cologne, 2002.

Chromogenic process print. 97 x '·F·5 cm; r 3 0 x 174. 5 cm framed

of rheacrica l connotations bur actually makes it serve rhe interests of the overcoming of theatricality. Such a conclusion is not fundamentally ar odds with the passages 1 have cited from Wylie, Bryson, Ichikawa, and Schjcldahl. On the contrary, my sense is tbar the family porrraits have been universally admired large ly on the strength of their antirheatri<.:al qualities - indeed that these works, like those of rhe other photographers featured in this book, have been the vehicle of a serious return to antitheatrical values as well as of a resurgence, on the part not just of critics such as those just mentioned bur also of a sizable portion of the artgoing public, of antithearrical sensibility- all this, however, with almost no general awareness drnt anything of the sort has been going

on. 2 Two more family phorographs are word1 glancing at before moving on. In The Richter Family, Diisseldor( (2002; Fig . 1 25), a superb ly intense picrure of the artist Gerhard Richter, bis wife, young son, and daughter, the impression Richter conveys not only of crackling self-awareness bur also of a wariness of delivering himself up to rhc camera

204

wl1y pi,otograpl,y

rr1,:Hlel:; ii~ <'H1as never llefor.,.

r 26 Thomas ~truth, The 110 x 157.2 cm framed

Martill-Mason Family. Diisseldnrf,

1.001. Chromogcnic process print. 97 x 1 25 .2 cm;

could scarcely be more palpable. Yet iris impossible ro imag1ne that all four sirrers could be more vividly "present" to the camera, first individually, rhen in pairs (father/daughrer, morher/son), rhen -spanning the gap in the middle of the composinon - as an almost musical unit (a chord). What gives this picture its special eclar, however, is the courageous stance of the boy, who faces the camera like a small gunfighter, his hands at his sides as if at the ready. The contrast in this regard wich his seated farhcr is touching, as is - in context- rhe physical resemblance between son and mother, whjch becomes more strik ing rhe longer and closer one looks. (The photograph is in color bur irs feeling is of black-an
por11a11s by s111ith. d11kslra, fa1genbaum

cJefal1ay1:;,anrl f1sche1

gordon 'ind parre ,,o·s z1dane

205

sort of emotional access, or sense of overa ll inrelligibiliry., f had come ro associate with his suongest works in rhis genre. 1 said as much to Struth, and, co my surprise, he was delighted: my difficulties, he explained, sremmed from the fact rhe Martin -Mason family i!'.a "mixed" one. Only the you11gesr daughter ar the right is the child of borh parents; the dark-haired daughter at the left is the father's child by a previous marriage, while th~ Jong-haired blonde girl next co her is che mother's child also by a previous marriage. The blonde gir l's gesture of placi.ng her hands on the thighs of her half-sister and her srep-fa th er was thus a moving and probably unconscious action of fami lial integration. Ln other words, the lateral family relationships in th e Marrin-Mason pictun~ are more complex and divided rhan those in the other photographs I have conside red , so much so th.it no uninformed viewer could be expected ro work them out; in particular, it seems to me, the reb rion s of biological resemblance are inscrutable. (In addition the family is nearer the camera than in the other photographs we have looked at, which gives the viewer less psychic ''space" in which to appraise what is going on.) What pleased Struth was that I ha
Rincke Dijkstra, a Dutch photographer, was born in 19 59 and studied phorography in Amsrerdam. 1s H er early career was as a commercial porrrait photographer, bur in 1992 she began ro make a series of large color photographs of pre- or early adolescent bo)'s and girls in swimming suits oo heaches in the United Scares, Belgium, Great Britain, Poland, Ukraine, and Croatia. These quickly attracted attention and remain her bestknown works; they nre tided simply by place names anti rhe dares on which they were taken -for example, Kolnbrzeg, Poland, }11/y 26. r992 (Fig. 127), Odessa. Ukraine, August../-, T')')J (Fig . 12.8), and He/, Poland, August n. I!J98 (Fig. c29), to cite three representative picnires. The basic idea behind a ll of them is simple and bas been c,cplained by Dijkstra in vaxious interviews. She npproached potential sitters and asked for permission to phorograph them; if they agreed she placed her 4 x 5-inch camera on a tripod and arranged atldirional lighting as well; they then adopted a sranding pose, more or less of their own choosing, with the sea - out of focus in the photographs vi-.ihle behind rhem; what mattered was that each sitter concentrated on the actual situation for as long as it took Dijkstra to make the three or four phorograpbs she usually shot (" If they are not 1..'.0ncemrating, l cannot photograph them," she has s:iid). 2" Her

'.W6

why photogr 11,hv 1T1<1rtersbS

"'

t as n,.:iver be for~

:-

Rineke Dijkstra, Kolobrzeg, Pola11d,}11/y .:.6, 1992, ic proces~ print. 1 2. 1 ><Jo I cm

~ ~- Ch mmogen

r .l-8 Rinekc D1ijkstra, Odessa, Ukra/1/e, August ../, 199 3 , 1993. Chromog1:nic prnccs~ print. t50 x 1 2.6 cm

approach differs from Srrurh 's in that her subjects are strangers a nJ she prefers single figures or at most units of two or three per sons ro larger groups. She shares with him ,1 commitment to the frontal pose and to rhe protocol that the subject before the lens should he fully aware of being photographed. And ljke Struth (in my reading of him) , she uses the fronral pose and fact of her subjects' awareness, which in her work amounts often to sclf-consciousnes:., a!> a means of drawing attention to aspects of their behavior thar escape conscious conrrol. Dijkstra's classic statement about her approach occurs in a 2.001 interview with Jessica Morgan. Morgan says: " Tt strikes me that what you are interested in captu ring in your subject~ is nor a neutral lack of interest in the camera but rather the liminal, traosfor mative momenr between self -consciousness and a lack thereof." Dijkstra replies: Lt's like wbar Diane Arbus said, you are looking for the "gap berween intention and effect ." People dunk thnt they present themselves one way, but rhey cannot help but show something else as well. Ir's impossible to hav e ever)'thin g under contro l. But when I try to photograph somebody, especially with the full body, it always make s

portraits

by strulh

r!1Jkstrc. t 11wnt,a111n. il elatwye, and l1sc;l1er gordon a11d narrenr,s

z,dane

207

them wonder "oh, whar am I going to do with 111yhands, etc." And 1 think, retrospectively, l really used rhat more or less in the beach photos. 10 Arbus's famous remarks read in their entirety: Fverybody has that thing where they need ro look one way bur they come out looking ~rnother way and thar's what peop le observe. You see someone on the street and essenrially what you notice ahout them is the flaw. It's just extraordinary that we should have been given these pecL1l iarities. And, nm coorenr with what we were given, we create a whole other set. Our whole guise is like giving a sign to rhe world to think of us in a certain way but rhcrc's a poinr between what you want people to know about you and what you can't help people knowing about you. And that has ro do with what I've alway,; called the gap between intention and effect. I mean if you ,cru tinize reality c.:losclyenot1gh, if in !)Orneway you really, really get to it, it becomes fan tastic . You know it reaUy is totally fantastic rbat we look like this and you sometimes see that very clearly in a photograph. Something is irnnic in the world and it bas to do with the fact that what you intend never comes our like you intend it. 11

In Arbus's practice this led to a kind of photography, large ly based on the frontal pose , that commentators have often found troubling precisely because of her consuming inreresr in her subject::..· "flaw:/' and more broadly her fascination with sitters ~he herself called "freaks'' -dwarfs, mrnsvesrires clothed and naked, a female stripper with naked breasts in her dressing room, a human pincushion, a Jewish giant at home wirh his parents in the Bronx, rern.rded people di!)porring themselves in a field. 12 The charge, briefly put, has been that Arbus typically exploired her sitters by using photography to reveal aspecrs of the latter's appearance rhat they could not have imagined wou ld make the 1mprcs!)ion on others that those aspects inevitably do. "A large part of the mystery of Arhus's photographs lies in what they suggest ahout how her subjects felt nfrer con senting to be photographed," Sontag wrires in On Photography. '·Do rhey see rhemc;elves, the viewer wonders, like that? Do they kncnv how grorc.<,qt1ethey are? It seems as iJ tbey don't" (35-6). Sontag strongly disapproves of such an approach, in the first place because it "makels] .1 compassionate response feel irrelevant" (.p) - cbe viewer is being invited nor to empathize or commiserate bur merely to look with equanimity (wirhout blinking, Sontag also says} - anto understand that it is intrinsic to her approach that <;uchquestions t1rose in the first place and have persisted to this day. That is, her pre-

208

w 1,v Pllotoqrapry

matte•s as art as never be-tore

11.9 llinekc Dijk!.rra, lief, Pnlt111tl, A1tJ!,11st

12.

199g, 1998. Chromogenic proce\~ print. 145 x 117cm

occupation witb ·•flaws'' and ''freaks," and wirh "the gap between intention and effect" with respect to her choice of sitters, has meant thar viewers of her work are in effect invited, one might say solicited, by the photographs to cake a stand with respect to the ethics of portraying her sirrers as she did. Adam Phillips puts rhis <;lightly differently. "What is tru ly odd about Arbus's work is not her subject-matter," he writes, "but how difficult it is to conceive of not talking about it in p~ychological terms. And l don't mean, as an ;~ltcmative to this, talking technically. The difficulry is ro look at Arbus's photographs without trying ro imagine what might be going on inside her subjects ... " 11 Imagining what might be going on inside her subjects at the moment of being phorographed necessarily implies imagining how each one understood his or her role in rhar situation. And that in turn inevitably implies trying ro imagine - and ultimately judging- what was going on in Arbus at that momem as well. ~~ My thought is that one can acknowlcdgC' this chain of implication vvhile neverthdess resisting the call for judgment, which threaten!-. to reduce her work roan ethical conundrum. Dijkstra ha s made it dear that Arbus was the most decisive influence on ber work. Wha r l wanr to emphasize - my reason for dwelling on Arb us - is not so much rbat there cxisrc; an a ffioity between their respective approaches but r.uher that alcbough Dijkstra too is fascinated by the impossibility of her subjects' "hav [ing] euerything under control," her choice of sitters - not bizarre characters or c;trange-looking children or ''freaks" of any stamp bur, in the series mentioned, young and appealing beachgoers in different parts of the world - has meant that the overall impression produced hy her work has nothing of the ethical difficulties raised by Arbus's. So for example the slender, almost breasrless girl in a striped bikini in He/, Poland looks straight ahead a::.a breeze lifts srrands of her lighr brown hair~ her hands hang awkwardly ar her sides (just as Dijksrra snys), nnd one notices the tension of her pose as she stands with her shoulders squared and her right hip higher than her lefr; furthermore, as one scrntinizes her body one observes the small mole just above her bikini as well as rhe flesh-colored band-aid panly covering her navel, among other details. In Kolohrzcg, Pola11dthe girl in a light green one-piece swimming suit strikes a different pose, tilts her head ro rhe left, and resrs one hand awkwardly on her thigh; this time one notes the ,;[ighr knocking of her knees, a few blemishes on a shin, the sand that parrl y coats her roes and feet, the partial lining or "unJergarmenr" beneath the lower portion of her suit. As for the ta 11,skinny, somewhat rigid boy in a red suit in Odessa, Ukrnine - but rhere is no need to multiply descriptions. What matters is that all the features a11d derails one observes - all the awkwardnesse~, vulnerabilities, blemishes, physi1.:al idiosyncrasies, odcLitiesof costume, and

so on - belong co a realm of outward

appearance and inadvertent expressiveness of which the young beachgoers themselves a re necessarily unaware, concentrating as they are on the l.'amera, or perhaps on Dijkstra as she stands behind or perhaps a longside it waiting for the precise instanr to release rbe shutter. Yet there is nor the slightest queshaving taken advanrage of her subjects; on the contrary, tion as ro the photographer one sense_,;Dijkstrn's affection for them, a certain tenderness precisely as regnr
210

w ily ph•.nogra(lt

v n1aner s e1sar l ;i5 never before

inrrusion. The flat, fronta I style she has adopred from ber German conremporaries is respectful of the strangers she encounrers and asks ro pose; ir allows rbem to gather themselves to the task of projecti11g their half -formed selves against the nJes of time and culrure.'' 1" Grund berg's remarks poinr to certain crucia l stylistic and technical differences between the two bodies of work, above all that Dijkstra in rhis series depicts her subjL'<:tsat full lengrh and at a common distance from rhe camern; that she works in color -a~opposed ro Arbus's dramatic bl::ick-and-w hite (try to imagine the boy in the Odessa photograph with his pale reddish skin in black -and-white - rhe photograph wt1uld be meaningless); and perhaps most important, that her phorograrhs are both large - the figures seem life-si'l.e - and visualized from the outset with their desrinarion on the wall in mind (in the sense discussed in Chapter Six), a mode of presentation that imposes a certain <listam:e from the pictw-e on rhe viewer, which is not to say that the latter is not also invited to approach closely in order ro notice details rhar would he much less salient, if in fact they were visible, in a sma ller print. The results may be described as a de-psycholngizing (also "de·erhicalizing") of Arbus's "gap'' even as che young heachgoers' bodies are revealed as minutely and comprehensively expressive mfinirely more so , one realizes on reHel.:tion, than if one were standing in front of the sitters themselves. Put ~lighrly differently, the ''gap" emerges in Dijkstra\ work as a basic structure of photographic address rnther than the tragic (or tragicomic) fact about human existence in society that ir is for Arhus. Two exchanges from intervLews with Dijkstra are pertinent here. fi_rsr, Jan Estep in 2.001 asks Dijkstra what it was about rhe girl in rhe green barhing suit th:ir made that photograph special tn her. Dijkstra replies: "She is so shy, and at the same rime she's unconsciously assuming the stance from Botticelli's Birth of Vc1111s.It was a lso uncon scious for me, because l dido 'r recognize it at the time f was making rhc photo. When I came home I thought char it reminded me of something. J looked in my history books and wow, it's exactly the same pose. That's what makes it very special. " ' 7 In ocher worcls, the realm of r.hc unconscious here im:ludes rhe girl assuming the stance of a figure from a famous work of art (one that rhe girl herself probably did nor know, so what exactly Joes "uncomciously taking the pose'' mean in chis connection?) as well as the photog-rapber's being unaware of that fact ar the moment of making the photograph: this is ohviously quirt far from the incense dynamic of authorial inrrusiveness and potentially devastating self-revelation that 11as led viewers to find Arbus's work ;;n once gripping and problematic. Second, Estep asks Dijkstra, "What is it about children or adolescents rhar you like ro photograph? Are they less self-conscinus than adults?" Dijkstra: "Yes. Their appearance is more abstract ro me." Estep: "Absu·act?" Dijkstra: "When somebody becomes older they have a personality that distinguisl1es them from others, but with reenagers it '5 much more ... " Estep: "They're not sure yet who they 're goin~ to become?" Dijksrra: ''Jr's like an open book or something. Their lives can go in all directions: they are not complete ly filled in yet" (55-9). (In the same interview she explains chat she did not like doing her earlier portrait work for magazines and newspapers because her suhjecrs ''knew exactly how they wanted to he seen, with a specific stance, a certain look" f54l-and no doubt because they knew how ro gcr what they wanted.) The term "abstract'' seems exactly right. What interests Dijkstra is nor whar is revealed

portr;itrs

t,y strulh

d11kstra, /aigen!Jaum, t /~lahaye , and flscher,

go1cic>r1and PiHrenc,·s ,."11ir1ne

211

r 30 Rincke Dijkstra, Ted,,, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. May

1 6, L 99-t, 1 99+

Chrumogenic proce~s print. 153 x 12yc111

psychologically about ber subjects but rather the gap itself, rhe way in which her subjects' awareness of being photographed nor only coexists with but positively foregrounds, makes visible to the camera, hence co the viewer, a range of feat1Jre~ that are not "under control." Put slightly differently, her reason for preferring children and adolescenrs - after the beach series she wenr om ro photograph young adults as wt::11(see below) - is chat rheir psyches, or rather the interface between their psyches and rhcir bodies, is still fundamentally "open,'' not yet marked hy the de.finiteness of adulthood. M y further suggestion of course is that that interest, indeed Dijkstra's entire way of pro ceeding, is on the side of antitheatricality, unct:ir't~ciousncss of the sort l have been discussing lining up with the value of absorbe,real or apparent forgetting of one's audience, in Diderot 's esthetics. "0 combien l'homme qui pense le plus est

212

wl1y photography

matters as art as never belore

,

131 Riockc Dijkstra, Amit. Gola11i Brigade. Elyaqim, fsrael. May 26, 1999, 1999. Chromogeuic color print.

181

x 153 cm

encore automate" - 0 how much the man who chinks the most is nevertheless an automaton - Diderot wrote in 17 5 8, 18 and al rho ugh the anritherical but complernenrary structure of awareness and unconsciousness that l have claimed ro find in Struth's fami ly photographs and Dijkstra's beach series wa~ nor one that painting in his time was capable of devising, rhe core idea behind rhar structure, which is to say the values it serves, could nor be more Diderorian in spirit. 19 Subsequent series of photographs by Dijkstra include three naked or a ll but naked women holding babies taken shortly after giving birth (Fig. 1 :,o); roreros phorographed at close range immediarely following bullfights (therefore disshcvelcd and spatte red wirh blood); young Israeli men holding the powerful weapons they have just fired for rhe first time (Fig. 1 3 r); a young en listee, Olivier, at various stages in his first years in the French

1nrtra1ts by strutl1. d1Jkstra fa1gen1Jaurn 11elahaye, and f1scl1er, go rrlon an(1 parreno's

z1rlane

213

11ureign Legion; and a child asylum seeker, Almerisa, at irregular interval:, as she g.rows into young woman11ood. (The list is not exhaustive.) ln ,ti! these series Dijkstra's concern has been subdy different from the one in play in the beach series. '' I look for specific sitter.:;apart- little details, like a certain gesture or gaze," she remarks things that ser

mr

ro Sarn.h Douglas.

I often find these in um:onscious moments, when rhey are not thinking about their pose. I photographed bullfighters after the fight, mothers jusr after giving birth, and male Israeli ~oldiers after a shooting exercise. When I was doing commis~ioned portraits, 1 found it very difficult to relate to my sitters' self images; 1 feel it is more inreresri.ng when peopl<:>show things that are beyond their controL I look for something authentic, something spe..:ial. I try to strike a balance between what people wane to -;how, anJ what they show in spire of themselves, what Diane Arbus called "the gap between intention and effect,'' the tension hetween reserve and openness, between hiding and revealing. Bur never divulging their secrets. 178-9 I fhe interest in self-revelation is consranr, as is the refusal to embarrass her sitters, but in all these serie~ the ide::i is that Dijkstra's subjects - unlike her bds on beaches- have been at lea~r temporarily marked by the experiences they have undergone (in the rhoco graphs of Alrnerisa by rhe move to the Netherlands as weU as by her maturing as a yo ung woman). Tvvo further poincs. Fi.rst, we have seen rhat Barthes in Camera Lucida holds that "what fountls the nature of Photography is the Pose," 4 ri and goes on to express a sweeping predilection for photographs of person s who look direcrly into the camera- as Barrhes puts it, "fwbo look] me straight 111 the eye" (11 I). J have argued thar this is cons1stenr with Barthes's antirhearricalism in that only if photography is understood to be fundamentally theatrical, which is what it means to claim that it is founded in and hr the Pose, does it offer the possibility, at least on the plane of theory, of being rendered antithearrical, as opposed ro its being merely non- or untheatrical. Herc is Barthes's theoretical "solution" to rhe problem: "One might say rhat the Photograph 5eparates attention from perception, and yield~ up nnJy the former, even if it is impos s ible without the latter ... " ( 111) - which is to say that his "solution'' is nothing of the kind. Whereas the '>tructures of awarcnes::. and unconsciousness l have ascribed to ';truth's and Dijkstra's photographic portraits represent a genuine ''solution" -or at leasr two serious responses - to the problem of por.ing. One would like to know what Barthcs woul
214

wny 1,IHJ1ograph~ matiers as art as never berrnic

My aim so far in this chapter has been ro show how two imp0rtant

recent bodies of portrait work, Strutb's family photographs and Dijkstra's beach series, belong ro the larger photographic regime that it is the overall aim of chis book to elucidate. Jn the pages that remain f shall briefly consider in rhat light three other groups of photographic portraits (in a somewhat broad sense of the term) and a recent film: Patrick Faigenb:wm's black -and-white picture5 of husrs of Roman empero rs (with a sideglance at Hi.rosru Sug1moro·s phorographs of waxwork historical figures); Luc Delahaye's l.J\utre, a phorobook of black-and-white candid shots of passengers on the Paris Merro; Roland Fischer's close-up color portraits of mun ks and nuns; and Douglas Gordon an J Philippe 1 Portrait. Jlarreno's full-lengrh film, Zidnne: A Trve11tieth-Ce11t11r) Faigenbaum, a French photographer born in 1954, Jives and works in Paris. He is essentially a portraitist, aoJ is roday probably best known for two superb early series of black-and-white photographs of aristocratic Italian families in rheir palazzi, the first taken in Venice, Florence, and Rome in 1983-7 and the second in Naples between r989 an
portra its by struth, dq~stra , fa,genbaum

de lahaye, and f1sche r. gordon and pa,reno·s 211-Jane

215

Villa Medici in 1987. What makes the photographs ,uresting in the present context is that Faigenbaum chose to photograph the busts ar extremely dose range, thereby not only eliminating all evic.lcnce of their c,etting but also concentrating exclusively on the heads and faces, with here and there a neck. (Tf one did not know that these were busts - sculptural portraits cut off below the shoulders - one coulc.l not cell it from the photographs.} The result-considerations of lighring, film speed, and exposure time, as well as rhe actual printing of che photographs, played viral roles in rh.is as well - is something new in my experience. Jn the first place, rhe photographs faithfully record the present condition of the busts as nearly two thousand-year-old material artifacts; at che c,amc rime, the cumulative effect of the closeness, cropping, lighting, printing, and so on

216

why pl otograplly

matters as art as nAver before

r32. (facing page) Patrick Faigenbaum, Del Drago Family, t987. Gelatin silver prinr. 50 x 48.5 cm

13 3 (left) Patrick Faigenbaum, Augustus, 1986. Gelatin silver print. 57.5 x 44 cm

has heen to infuse the images themselves with a note of human interiority - what l earlier ca lled mindedness - alto gether foreign to the imperial bust as an artistic genre, were one viewing these in their room at the Capitoline rather than through the mediwn of Faigenbaum 's photographs. Take, for example, Augustus (Fig. c3 3 ), with its missing nose, battered chin and lower lip, blemished surface, blank open eyes (no irises or pupils, though in other pictured busts there are such), and forehead almost wholly cropped by the photographer: how many photographs of actual persons can one bring to mind that offer so intimate, intense, and unguarded an expressive communication to rbe viewer, a communica rion all the more poignant for its seeming restraint and also because one simu ltaneous ly registers the fact that the foce belongs nor to an actua l person bur to a

portraits

by suuth, d11kstrc:1fa,genbaum,

delahaye

anr:I f,scher,

gordon and parre no's z1dane

217

marble image and rhat one is therefore authorized, indeed actively encouraged , co gaze one's fill - co give oneself to the imaginary connection without the smallest risk of imperrinence or intrusiveness on the one side or defensiveness or embarrassment on the other. (lt is hard to believe, in the grip of the photograph, that this is the great Augustus, victor of Actium, supreme polfrician of his age, officially a god.) Orher photographs- Julius Caesar (Fig. 134), the thoughtful face with its repaired nose and forehead shrouded in darkness; Salcmine (fig. 135), widespread diverging eyes full of indefinable feeling; Caracalla (Fig. r 36), as if lost in violent thought; Gordien JIJ (Fig. , 3 7); and Titus (Fig. 138)- have different expressive valences but are equally instances of the same artistic tour
218

why photography mat1ers as art as never before

(facinl!, p,1ge left) P:mick f-a1genbaum, ]ulms Caesar, 1986. Gelatin silver print. 57.5 x 48 cm 1H

5 (/tzw1K page rig/Jt) Patrick raigcnbaum, 1986. Gel.Hin silver pnnr. 57.5 x 48 cm 1J

136 (left) P,Hrick ra igcnba um, Caracalla, silver print. 50., x 4 1 cm

1

Salomne,

~8<-\.Gelatin

1 n (beluit• left) Parnck Faigenhaum, Gordien Ill, r98c;. Gelatin silwr print. 49 x 40 cm

t 38 (below right) Pamck Fa,gcnbaum, Gelatin silver print. 48 x 19 cm

Titus,

r986.

139 Hiroshi Sugimoto, Jmie Seymour, 1999.

Gelatin silver pcinr. 14'} X I r9.4 C\11, Negative R,~

Henry vm and his wives in Madame Tussaud's waxwork museum in London ( 1999: Fig. 139) , a set of images that I see as ingeniously themarizing the effigies' absellce of subjectivity,
scene: All che subjects are either three-quarter view or in protile. Very few of the figures are looking :1ryou directly. One wonders why rhey appear co be avoiding eye contact with the viewer? Frum the three-quarter view, cbe viewer feels as if he or she is invisible and able to investigate this powerful person wicbout confrontation. Nor looking into rhe eyes of someone in a different class or static)n. That's probahly the police thing to

clo.,j,j

220

wl\y photog,aphy

111atlers as art as never beforn

Obviously I chink class difference aod politeness are not the issue here - hut I also do nnc want ro makl· too much in this connecrion of Sugimoro's waxwork images, which for all their charactenst1c perfection hick the unexpectedness of Faigenhaum's photographs.

The second body of portrait work l want to glance ar here is Luc Ddahaye'.s L4utre, a hook of ninety candid shms of fellow passengers taken with a bidden camera on the Pa ris Merro between t995 and r997 (che book appeared in r~99; Figs. 140 and 141). 4 ' "Controlling the shmrer from his pock er," one commentator ha:. written, ''he quietly rook each photograph precisely the same way of whoevt:r entered his frame as the doors of the subway came ro a dose .... He said aboll[ his prorocol that 'ir was a type of nihilism, a zero poinr chat I couldn't do any le...,sthan.' " 4~ The ohvinus precedent, as Delahaye SLLrelyknew, was Walker Evans'c: famous '·Suhway Portraits" of r938-41, tinally cnllected in the volume Ma11y Are Cnl/ed4 - (see Figs. 55 and 58): starting in the winter of 1938, Evans, often au :nmpanicd by his friend Helen Levitt, a first-rare photo grapher in her own right, ro