One reason I enjoy art galleries is that they enhance the way I see the people around me. I begin to look at strangers with the same intensity given to the art on the walls. This gaze involves more than an eye for detail: people become at once universal and more perfectly unique. They become types yet acquire a distinctive aura. I see each one alone in existential space and yet rich with meaning and mystery. Above all, they become idealized. The beautiful people become more beautiful; those who look interesting become even more so; even those seemingly trapped, whether in low end jobs or their own stories, appear to be treasures of human experience and possibility.

That is not the only way to see, however, and two photographs in the same week seem to challenge exactly this attitude to idealize when seeing life as art. The first photo shows gallery visitors together with a sculpture by Juan Munoz.

The visitors are the ones in color. I can imagine a space alien having to ask and perhaps being disappointed on hearing the answer. Perhaps the grayscale figures suggest a statement about uniformity or collective happiness, but they do look better off than those around them. And not by accident. Munoz is quoted as saying that “The spectator becomes very much like the object to be looked at, and perhaps the viewer has become the one who is on view.” But not prepared to be on view. The spectators here each look as if unaware of being seen and the worse for that. The two women are pensive at best and perhaps depressed. The two guys appear to be studies in corporate indifference (on the left) and self-interested calculation (on the right). And whereas the statues are dressed in clothing that looks both comfortable and styled for being in public, the male spectators look dressed to code while the women look somehow uneasily thrown together.

This contrast between life and art is inflected further by this photograph:

The photo was taken at an exhibition in Athens, Greece of contemporary Chinese artists. The work on the right is no smiley face, but neither is the one on the left. The one on the right at least has the excuse of being a commentary on itself, not least on the effect of being pulled in opposing directions. Having no aura and holding herself protectively, the one on the left is several times diminished by contrast with the larger, stylized fashionista. If at this point someone were to retort, “yes, but she’s a real person,” well, then the game really is lost.

These photographs achieve exactly the effect that Munoz hoped to create with his art work: “the spectator becomes very much like the object to be looked at.” It’s a small step from there to imagining ourselves on display in a museum gallery. What would other viewers say? “They were a sorry species, weren’t they?” “Do you think their artists were as depressed as the rest of them?” “Maybe they were different in private, but you think it would show. . . .”

It would show, wouldn’t it? Or is it just that museums are depressing? Or are the photographs unfair? It is easy to answer no, no, and yes. These are real people with rich inner lives and many moods including the inward reflection rightly activated in a gallery and easily misread. But art is there to help us take a careful look at ourselves. If we really looked at one another, what would we see? What would the spectator’s gaze reveal if taken out of the gallery? What is there to be seen in public? Depression, fatigue, loneliness, exhaustion, failure? All of the above.

Photographs by Vincent West/Reuters and Louisa Goullamak/AFP-Getty Images. The work “Many Times” (1999) is comprised of 100 figures in a single room. A Tate retrospective on the artist earlier this year generated a number of reviews that are available online. The painting in the second photograph was not identified in the caption accompanying the image in a Manchester Guardian slide show.

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I’m not sure why, but the photos from China that have been devastating. Disaster coverage is familiar to everyone–whether it’s twisted wreckage or a bloated corpse, long lines of refugees or supplies stacked on the tarmac, we’ve seen it before. And we’ve seen people crying over lost homes, villages, loved ones. But somehow not like this:

Can a photograph be more tender, or more heartbreaking? The contrasts only make everything worse by underscoring deeper similarities. He looks as if he still could be alive, but he is as dead as the hardening body shrouded next to him. His covering is colorful, alive with color, but that only marks the vitality that has been lost. She holds him so lovingly, as if they had fallen asleep in each others’ arms, but she will never hold him again.

Nor is she alone in her loss. There are many images of parents, sisters, friends, stricken in their grief. Like this:

This woman has just identified a loved one. The shock is palpable–a heavy body blow driving her into herself. (The English word “grief” derives from the Latin gravis, heavy.) Her hands claw at her face, as if to scratch out her eyes. Other friends or family are with her, holding her, yet she is inconsolable.

This photograph is less elemental than the first. Instead, it is cluttered with signs of the public character of the disaster. A uniformed emergency worker fusses with tarps and other material while overseeing the body bags. The background suggests some public venue (a stadium?) and a stranger walks by on his own business. The informal masks, which are an indication of mass death, also signify the anonymity that divides private lives and public interaction. And that’s where we come in: anonymous spectators far away from those whose lives are being ripped apart in full view of the world press. Some writers on photography are appalled by the visual mediation of suffering, and they could describe these images as a voyeuristic indulgence in false sentiments that deaden genuinely ethical relationships.

And they would be wrong.

Second photograph by Mark Ralston/AFP-Getty Images; I misplaced the credit for the first photo but hope it will turn up.  (If anyone can let me know, it would be much appreciated.)

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Public space is designed for seeing and being seen, as the performance group Medaman-Medaman demonstrated in Tokyo recently.

Here you have Benjamin’s flaneur but without invisibility or empathy–as if the transitory spectator of public life had evolved into a hypertrophied version of itself: the enormous eye, engorged with the urban spectacle, no longer needs the other senses (note that the hands are gloved) or any mental acuity other than raw encompassing vision. Nor does it worry about being seen–this is a creature of optical interaction.

The girl is fascinated, but she’s young. The adults, more accustomed to the spectacle of urban life, go about their business. Why shouldn’t they? Look at all the windows looking down on the open vista of the street–this is a place where everyone is constantly transecting lines of sight, so much so that to be seen becomes little different than not being seen.

There are other reasons to take the walking eyes in stride. The idea that a mediated world is a world of extended vision has been second nature for decades, and I’m not talking about 1984 but rather things like this Old Media logo:

Things have changed, however, The CBS eye was abstract, centralized, and otherwise godlike enough to be at once omnipresent and no part of everyday experience on the street. The eye walkers, by contrast, are directly accessible and obviously individualized. If standing here, they can’t be somewhere else; if looking one direction, even they don’t have eyes in the back of their heads. In other words, they are much closer to the new media that are widely distributed because woven into the fabric of everyday life. As this photograph suggests:

The big eye is aligned along the same line as the camera, two organs of viewing especially active in public spaces. As the eye walker mimics a typical visual practice we are invited to reflect directly on the ubiquitous yet still personal nature of the visual public sphere. And amusingly so: instead of the imposing figures of the first photograph, this one gives us an entertainer playing his part in the everyday carnival of the urban center. The attitude is comic, as everyone is secure in a world of shared vision and civil interaction.

And when weirdness becomes familiar, it’s time for another jolt. Lest we think the eye walkers are all we need to see ourselves, take a look at this:

 

 

Another photo of an eye, and yet this is everything the first is not: nature, not culture; enclosed, not in public space; marked by the flesh of mortality, not masked for whimsical performance; evoking the empathy of a fellow creature, not mirroring the hard surfaces of the city. The eye walkers awaken one kind of self-awareness, but not the only kind. Living in highly mediated environments, we need to be attentive to seeing. Living in highly mediated environments, we also need to be attentive to what else we share with others beyond intersecting lines of sight.

I’m anthropomorphizing, of course, but that single eye and wrinkled brow look so mournful. It is not hard to imagine that he somehow knows that he should not be on that truck. Pigs and humans have many physiological similarities, so it can’t hurt to reflect on how we also are often not free, fated for suffering, sure to die, and before then seen only in part. That, too, is part of city life, even if it can’t be seen so easily.

Photographs by Yoshikazu Tsuno for AFP/Getty Images and Casey Bhristie for The Bakersfield Californian/Associated Press.

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If you type “democracy” into Google Images you will see one of the more motley and uninspiring slide shows possible. Bad editorial cartoons, messy posters, conventional book covers, not so snappy bumper stickers, a video game, an Internet TV platform, a monument in Bangkok, and my personal favorite: the king of Nepal wearing a floral garland. Most of these are not images from photojournalism. The two iconic images from Tiananmen Square each put in an appearance, along with a few snaps of protesters holding signs, but, again, the record is not distinguished.

This poor showing may be an oddity of the search engine but should not be surprising. Democracy is a set of beliefs, practices, and institutions each of which includes assumptions about the world that are partially metaphysical. I can show you a traffic light, but not “rule of law.” People voting, but not “the will of the people.” A flag, but not “liberty and justice for all.” So it is that we are drawn to documenting political and ethical failures, and to relying on iconic images and other symbols. One can document crime, privilege, and injustice, and a monument or photograph can evoke reaffirmation of our democratic ideals.

These thoughts were brought to mind by an image accompanying a Sunday New York Times story on the erosion of democracy in Russia during the Putin regime. Interestingly, the story was published in Russian on the previous Friday at a Times Russian website, and some of the 3000 comments were translated for a story in the US on Monday. The comments suggest that democratic debate is alive and well in the Russian blogosphere, with the added value of having devotees of authoritarian rule being able to voice their sentiments directly rather than code them as family values. But I digress.

The question I want to raise was provoked by the first photograph in the 13-photo slide show accompanying the article:

This stunning image is captioned as “Nizhny Novgorod, an industrial center with 1.3 millian residents, was known as Gorky during the Communist era, when it was closed to foreigners and was home to the dissident physicist Andrei D. Sakharov, who was sent into internal exile here. After the Soviet Union’s collapse, it became a hotbed of liberalism. Today, authority flows from the Kremlin to a regional governor appointed by President Vladimir Putin.”

If you read all of that without having your eyes glaze over, you’re ahead of me. I can’t help but note that the 66 words fail to identify the specific place being photographed or the subject of the the large statue in the center of the frame. Likewise, there is no evident reason to believe that what is being shown has anything specific to do with industrialization, Gorky, Communism, or Sakharov. I believe that we are looking at the statue memorializing Valery Chkalov, a Soviet test pilot killed in 1938, but you wouldn’t know it from the Times. In any case, that allusion to Soviet engineering is topped visually on either side by the Orthodox crosses and deer immortalized in ice.

So, what are we being shown with this photograph? One answer is merely aesthetic: it’s a visually striking image, what more do you need to know? I don’t doubt that had something to do with its being selected for the slide show, but it will not account for the full range of effects. We think with images, and this image will make it easier to imagine one Russia rather than another. Apparently, the news is not good. Although technically a color photograph, the scene seems a natural grayscale. The cold, hard, metallic monument sets the tone; its black sheen is the most vital thing in the picture, as if it were a monument to Darth Vadar on the Ice Planet. Inanimate objects surrounded by a vast, empty, public space and a featureless winter sky: Welcome to Nizhny Novgorod.

The “new city” was founded in 1221, and the photograph’s symbolism all but keeps us there. Nature and the church–a bastion of traditional pieties–surround a lifeless monument; Mother Russia envelops a hard core of authoritarian metal. The people are represented by a lone worker and his tools, which appear antiquated. So much for the people’s republic, vanguard of progress, and one has to wonder if a democratic people could fare any better in such a frozen place.

Unlike his counterpart in the US, I haven’t looked into Putin’s soul, but I wouldn’t trust him with the garbage. Even so, those committed to democracy should do more than point to its threats. If democracy is to succeed in Russia, it may need help from citizens elsewhere. (The US did.) We may not be able to see democracy, but it does require imagination. If we have already concluded that Russia is fundamentally cold, harsh, and naturally authoritarian, we do them no favor. Images such as the one above are visually distinctive, but they may be a political mistake.

Photograph by James Hill/New York Times.

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According to the Chicago Tribune, the Dutch Cabinet has asked parliament to ban burqas from all schools. “‘I value being able to look somebody in the eye,'” Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende said, referring to the fact that the robes cover a woman’s face. “‘I find it unpleasant.'” The PM may be referring to the Afghan chadiri, which, unlike many burqas, covers the eyes:

I have to admit this habit spooks me too. It even was too much for libertarians, who banned one of their own from the US national convention. (She’s the one behind the veil in this photo.) At least the PM was honest enough to say that it bothered him, rather than pretend that he cared about lending support to a cultural practice that restricts women. After all, what’s more important?

I post on burqas from time to time because of how they raise important questions about the relationship between liberalism and norms of transparency. The PM’s comment may seem idiosyncratic but carries a set of common assumptions about how civil interaction presumes some openness to others’ scrutiny, how social trust depends on being able to assess character, how the eyes are sources of information about a person, and how good judgment includes aesthetic reactions. These notions can each be debated at length, but that is not where I’m going today. Instead, let me suggest an alternative headline for this post:

Dutch Cabinet Bans Sunglasses

The problem is that the reason given by the PM for banning burqas applies equally well to a widely accepted practice of veiling in the West. I am referring to wearing sunglasses when in public, like this:

The caption read, “New York Giants wide receiver Plaxico Burress listens to a question during media day for Super Bowl XLII.” Wide receivers probably don’t have eye problems, so I’ll bet this was a matter of choice, just as it was for Antonio Pierce:

So it’s not a black or white thing, either. It can get bright outside in Phoenix, but the first photo has clouds in the background and the same slide show had photos of other players not wearing shades. No, these dudes chose to cover their eyes and the reason probably had a lot more to do with “media day” than the weather. They are withholding visual access to their eyes, an act of resistance within a liberal social order. And it would not be news that wearing sunglasses makes people uncomfortable; indeed, that is one reason to do it.

Now this may not mean much to the Dutch cabinet. Some might say that the comparison doesn’t hold since the players haven’t really attended school, but that’s beside the point. The question is, why can pro athletes, rock stars, movie people, and anyone who wants to imitate them cover their eyes in public, while women who have little choice to do otherwise are punished for it?

Photographs: unknown; Julie Jacobson/Associated Press; Harry How/Getty Images.

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The papers of late have been full of pictures of the front runners in the presidential nominating races surrounded by throngs of near delirious supporters eager to touch the hem of the political celebrity who has come to their otherwise inconsequential state. (OK, I’ll retract that last remark in respect to South Carolina, which has started a war.) These photos are full of the energy of massed bodies, close encounters, and the charismatic touch. They are representative of important features of our political process, for better or worse, but they don’t tell the whole story. To get closer to that, we have to look elsewhere, like here:

You are looking at a photo from last week of Fred Thompson stepping onto a stage in Prosperity, South Carolina. The long view allows us to see the candidate as part of a scene, rather someone around whom everything else is compressed. The view also isolates each part of the scene: candidate, bunting, handler, local supporter, and wife-and-kid are each identifiable as if pieces of a grade school diorama. What is most revealing, however, is that we see both stage and backstage in a single view. What would have been The Candidate framed by the Red White and Blue becomes instead a tacky stage set–hey, don’t trip on that cord! And instead of those gathered in his name, we see instead wife-and-kid waiting in the wings, or waiting to make their entrance, but either way now bit players that make Thompson no more than the lead in the school play.

I suspect that this image is presented to remind us that Thompson’s campaign remains a non-starter. One reason I think so is because the shot above called to mind another taken last year:

Now we’re in Anderson, South Carolina. Not much has changed. Again, the key element of composition is that we are shown both stage and backstage. And as before, the difference between front and back is only a flimsy curtain and our customary inattention to political stagecraft. This photo may be a bit more grim in that we see Thompson just before he puts on his theatrical mask. And we see a bit more of the area behind the curtain–enough to really know that backstage is a cold, harsh, functional place of calculation and paying the bill.

Again, the message is that this guy is not going to win. He’s playing on far too small a stage in too small a place to what barely counts as an audience. (Pop Quiz: how old will Thompson by the time that kid on the left votes?) That’s not exactly news, however. I think the real value of these images is that they show us what every candidate experiences and endures. The big winners only get there by playing before small houses like these in the community theater of American politics. And when some of them make it, the stage gets larger, but there is always a stage.

Photographs by Jim Wilson/New York Times and Mary Ann Chastain/Associated Press.

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There will be a lot of photos in the papers today following the New Hampshire Primary. These will include professional photojournalism as well as the Polling Place Photo Project and other examples of vernacular photography. I’m going to add one from the recent past:

This is from the 2004 New Hampshire primary. I haven’t seen it reproduced anywhere.

I love this photograph, which could be labeled Poll Dancers. There is a lot going on, including the expressions of the poll workers, the color and texture of the setting–look at that beautiful table–and the formal relationships in the visual composition of the scene. The basic design is what was called a chiasmus in classical rhetoric. The formal pattern for chiasmus in a verbal text is ABBA: “Let us never negotiate out of fear, but let us never fear to negotiate.” In a visual image, the equivalent figure would be a crossing pattern that carries a change in meaning or joins opposing concepts. In this photograph, this pattern is cued by the legs of the two poll workers: each are crossed, front foot toward the other. This unconsciousness entrainment is mimed by their arms and turned heads, and by the spontaneous entrainment of the two voters stepping out of the booths. The symmetrical alternation by gender links the two pairings, who together form a large X if you draw lines from head to toe, male to male and female to female. Each of the two couples has nearly identical expressions on their faces, and the seriousness of the citizens who are voters is complemented by the good vibe of the citizens who are tending the polling place.

The smiles cue emotional response to the rest of the scene, even though it is obvious that those smiling could not be reacting to those behind them. Likewise, it doesn’t matter that the viewer will never know the joke being shared by the two volunteers. Their smiles, along with the informal clothing of all four figures and the fact that all are acting as if no one is watching, make the scene a celebration of the beautiful egalitarianism of democratic elections. This more complex sentiment is shaped by the red, white, and blue cloth draping the voting booths. Wrapped in the national colors, the voters’ accidental choreography symbolizes that elections can aggregate private decisions by strangers to produce social harmony. The woman on the left and the man on the right are different individuals, but they unconsciously move in unison on election day.

Note also that the photograph has no news value. We know that thousands voted, that many voting stations and voters look very much like these, and so forth. Instead, the photograph crafts an emotionally rich performance of democratic life. The vernacular life of small town democracy temporarily is given national significance and emotional resonance; likewise, the social form of citizenship, which often is disembodied, standardized, and abstract, becomes more embodied, familiar, and particular. Aesthetic judgments have to be specific, particular judgments, just like voting, and so there is yet another continuity offered: the act of voting, which only a few were able to do yesterday, is extended to all who are able to view the photograph. One act of citizenship becomes multiplied many times by public spectatorship.

The cynic could point out the virtual citizenship is a long way from political power, and for that voting and viewing often are about equally useless. My attachment to the photograph is not nostalgic, as I see it as a still present reality, but it certainly is sentimental and idealistic. Just like voting.

Photograph from the New York Times.

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