We’re traveling this week and may even get some down time, so the next new post will be on March 24. See you then.
Photograph by Daniel Karmann/AFP-Getty Images.
What Happens When Photography Imitates Art?
You can see why I asked the question. Like the caption itself (“Still Life”), every detail of the composition connects directly to the art of painting, and to its history and within that to a specific genre, and within that to a particular style. And “composition” refers to both the technical values of the image and the careful arrangement of the objects that were photographed. There is nothing accidental here, and so the intention seems clear: to create an image, and response, that would as closely as possible approximate the experience of viewing a work of fine art.
Which would be enough to make some critics go ballistic. From Baudelaire to Sontag and beyond, the censors’ reactions have been clear. It is only an approximation, and a cheap one at that, they say. The skill that is supposedly on display–and that was reason for the existence and value of the genre in the first place–is in fact being supplied by the camera. Oh, sure, some technical craft is involved, just as is the case with arranging the table, or for that matter a department store window, but it can be learned in hours, not the years that would be required to paint such an image. Worse, that de-skilling is matched by a loss of value in the work and in the audience. Finely wrought images become cheap things to be admired and as quickly forgotten. Because of the easy reproduction of the image, the artwork loses the aura that comes from being experienced within a tradition, and with that loss we become less capable of being open to or improved by the art itself. Instead, modern society becomes susceptible to kitsch and related habits of excessive consumption. A still life on your desk top, or those cheap reproductions of Modern Art in every hotel room, or it doesn’t matter: whatever they are, they are not really art.
I’ve argued against this attitude, and usually I take the angle of saying that photography is not a fine art and all the more important for that; instead it is a public art, among other things, all of which have considerable value for modern society and politics. (By the way, you don’t win an argument with an attitude in a day.) Today, however, I want to take a different tack.
My argument can be stated very simply: It’s beautiful. You can tell me that it’s derivative or that it’s not authentic or that it’s more contrived that photography should be, but you can’t tell me it’s not beautiful. (And I’m speaking for me, by the way, not you. If I’m a sucker for elegance or any other social value evident in the image, that’s my problem, though certainly not one foreign to painting.) My idle scanning through a slide show stopped the moment I say it, and my day is richer for having seen it. Nor is it idiosyncratically or oddly beautiful; instead, its beauty comes in part from how well it has reproduced the conventions of the painterly genre. Trust me, I’ve seen a lot of still lifes, and I’ve walked by a good number that did not catch me as this one did. (Yes, this had the advantage of not being in a museum context, but frankly I think photography always is orienting us, to greater or lesser degree, to see as if we were in a large, open air museum. Furthermore, it stood out at National Geographic, which is saying something as far as photography goes.) Long story short, although I never would have set out today to look at still life paintings, this photograph provided one nonetheless, and it’s beautiful, and I’m grateful for that.
There also is a more complicated argument to be developed along the same path, but I’m running out of time. One thing to consider is how the photographer has labored to put photography back into the tradition of painting, and how something like an aura may be one result. At the same time, there is little likelihood that anyone would mistake this image at a photography website for a painting, so perhaps the art of approximation also is being featured, and with that the conventions and history of the artistic genre. This image may be an imitation of a painting, but also an imitation of a photograph; and it may be about photography more than painting, which would move it closer to the work of art in any medium. (Admittedly, this still life doesn’t stun me, enthrall me, and challenge me as the best art does, but in my experience that’s a problem of the genre.) And if it is about photography, then it is about modernity. If tired of defending the arts, you might to think about that.
It might also be a statement that simple elegance is more available than we might think–much like a photograph is less expensive and more accessible than a painting. It could be a demonstration of how beauty can be shared easily via photography, indeed, how photography is pitched toward sharing while painting continues to be defined largely by hoarding in mansions and corporate hallways. When a photograph imitates an older art form, such questions are brought to mind. Surely that can’t be all bad.
Photograph: “Still Life” by Rucsandra Calin, Craiova, Dolj, Romania, from National Geographic’s Daily Dozen, March 11, 2014.
Random Acts of Public Art
Winter still hangs on in the Northern Hemisphere, with the occasional thaw only enough to bring up the accumulated dirt and trash. In the Crimea, another democratic spring has been flipped within days into another authoritarian consolidation of power; the pattern is now all too clear, while the rapidity of the military response is becoming truly impressive. In Malaysia, a 777 has disappeared into thin air; at least the UFO hunters will be thrilled, but everyone else who flies now lives in a slightly more uncomfortable world. And if that weren’t enough disquiet, for some us the calendar has moved into Lent, a time for reflection on our many personal failings. So perhaps you can appreciate why I am grateful for this photograph.
The caption at The Big Picture said: “Reflected in a puddle of melted snow, people and dogs walk past umbrellas suspended from trees at Spanish Banks Beach in Vancouver, British Columbia, on Feb. 25. The art installation, called the ‘Rainblossom Project’, was put up by an anonymous group to be a celebration of the rain the city receives.”
My favorite part of that caption is the word “anonymous.” Whatever else happened on February 25th, there was someone in Vancouver who wasn’t working on branding, who wasn’t worried about others free-riding, who was willing to spend time and money and effort to improve the commons, and do it without any reward, much less making a profit. Maybe it was a hedge fund manager on his day off, but I doubt it. This was done by someone who cares about art and the general welfare in equal measure, and who is able to express those commitments generously. We can call it a random act of public art.
The same can be said of the photograph. “Random” may seem incorrect, for surely the photographer was acting on an intention, but the same is true of the red umbrella hangers and the other strangers signified by the allusion to “random acts of kindness.” The act is, by definition, intentional, but “random” because not directed by the usual logics of economic exchange, competitive marketing, political persuasion, or even direct social reciprocity. Yes, the photographer will have been paid for the image, but there was no guarantee of that happening, not least because there was little chance of finding hard news, or even soft news, on a beach in Vancouver in February. This image barely qualifies as news at all, although it does inform us about the public artwork on the beach. It’s something else: another work of public art, and one just about as incidental, unexpected, ephemeral, and generous as the other.
And what a fine work it is. The photo is true to the work it depicts, while enhancing and extending it as well. The red umbrellas hang improbably in the sky, and the trees, mountain, clouds, sky, and lake seem equally improbable and beautiful as well. That lake, itself perhaps newly freed from the ice, reflects the figures above it, just as the photograph reflects the entire tableau. Likewise, the deep blues balance the blossoms of bright red, as if they were low and high notes harmonizing. These symmetrical optics evoke a sense of serenity, but not by pretending that the scene is any more solid than it is. The reflection on the water can be broken by a single ripple, just as the scene can disappear the moment you turn away.
And we all will turn away. Even those in the scene, who rightly seem to be enjoying it immensely, will walk on. The clouds will thicken, and the rain will come–remember, the umbrellas are an offering of gratitude for the rain–and the umbrellas will deteriorate or be taken down. Like the rain, this scene is not something that you can hold on to. Only the photograph will remain, albeit probably forgotten. But that’s OK, if we understand what it is teaching us today.
The world is more abundant that we know. Not always, but too often the suffering that occurs is due to artificial scarcities: due to greed, hoarding, and the withholding of kindness. Any decent society ultimately depends on more than natural abundance: on commitments to the common good, the general welfare, and sharing in both hard times and good times. So it is that we ought to feel thankful for those artists and arts that are themselves acts of generosity for a public world.
Photograph by Darryl Dyck/The Canadian Press via Associated Press
Seeing Through the Colors of Carnaval
Lent is upon us, and that means the Carnaval season, with its abundance of hyperbolic, bodily exaggerations and all around revelry that mark a world turned upside down. And, of course, there is a profusion of lavish colors; a coordination of fluorescent reds and yellows and blues and greens, all of which underscore the festive nature of the event, but more importantly accent the relief from the regular conventions and constraints of everyday life. Indeed, the combination of bodily excesses and explosions of color has made Carnaval a prime destination for photographers and every year the slide shows at all of the major news outlets comply by featuring a profusion of such images of the event in Brazil and around the world (see, e.g., here, here, and here). If one didn’t know better the regularity and regular similarities of such slide shows might appear to be motivated by a commercial interest in advertising La Paz or Rio de Janeiro and other similar locations as sites for tourists in search of an exotic holiday. What is missing, of course, is any sense for the history of the celebration or its close connection to nationalist sensibilities as it appears both naturalized and commodified.
But, of course, Carnaval is more than just a commercialized, global event designed to attract tourists with its outrageous revelry. And so we have this image from the celebration in a rural community in Trinidad.
Here too we have the appeal to bodily excess and exaggeration, and with it a marking (and mocking) of the conventions of everyday life, though the appeal is to a more localized history of colonial control. I am especially drawn to the tension between the exaggerated, historical costumes and the somewhat dainty parasols on the one hand, and the contemporary footwear on the other. I don’t know if those are Nikes or Adidas or some other internationally marketed running shoe, but they are as uniform as the rest of the costumes being paraded about, and both no doubt speak to the colonial influences that have been imposed upon Trinidad from abroad, both then and now. Few are likely to flock to rural Trinidad for an exotic vacation, but that doesn’t mean that the celebration of Carnaval that takes places there is any the less interesting or worthy of consideration.
But there is another point to be made, and it concerns the contrast between color and black and white photography. There was a time not so very long ago that one would rarely if ever see a color photograph in a newspaper or in most magazines (National Geographic would have been the most notable exception). That changed within the past twenty years or so, and now color photography has become something of the photojournalistic norm with black and white photographs relegated largely to the world of art photography. When black and white photographs were the norm, color photography underscored the ways in which the grey tones of black and white images were an artistic representation that was and was not the reality being displayed. And now that color photography has become more-or-less the norm, black and white photography operates in something of the same register, albeit in reverse, reminding us that the tonality of an image—and no less the tonality of the society that we are seeing—implicates and is implicated by the manner in which it is constructed and represented.
Photo Credits: Juan Karita/AP; Pablo Delano/Trinity College
Sight Gag: Back to the Future IV
Credit: Fitzsimmons/Arizona Daily Star
Sight Gag is our weekly nod to the ironic, satiric, parodic, and carnivalesque performances that are an important part of a vibrant democratic public culture. These “gags” may not always be funny or represent a familiar point of view, but they attempt to cut through the lies, hypocrisy, shamelessness, stupidity, complacency, and other vices of democratic life. Of course, we invite you to comment … and to send us images that you think might deserve a laugh or at least a wry and rueful look by those who are thinking about the character of public life today.
Kickstarters and Other Great Projects
Of the many worthy projects that are using online media for support or other forms of development, here are a few that have come to my attention recently:
Dhaka Photo Stories: This Spring teaching artists will partner with Carlotta Center in Dhaka, Bangladesh to conduct a workshop that empowers students to develop their own voice through basic photography and storytelling. The Carlotta Center provides education and resources for children living in slums. The Kickstarter campaign to help these students is here.
Looking at Appalachia: This crowdsourced image archive looks at Appalachia 50 years after the War on Poverty. The Facebook page is here.
Mossless Issue Three: The Kickstarter drive for this volume, which will feature over 100 photographers, met its goal as I was preparing this post, but you can see what it’s about (and still contribute!) here.
Alexia Foundation: This foundation provides grants and scholarships to photojournalists, enabling them to create work that gives voice to those who go unheard, fosters cultural understanding and exposes social injustice. You can donate through the website, and other forms of participation are available at the Facebook page.
Thanks to Jan Berkson and Pete Brook for the suggestions.
How Can an Army Be Anonymous?
Of all the photographs to come out of the crisis in the Ukraine, this one may be the most troubling.
It’s not dramatic; indeed, nothing is moving. It’s not chaotic; instead, we see an orderly deployment of disciplined troops. It’s threatening, but in a somewhat abstract, obviously calculated way; the guards are attentive, but the guns are pointed down. You are witnessing an invasion, but it looks more like a training exercise or a bluff that is part of a larger diplomatic maneuver. The troop carriers are chess pieces in another Great Game, perhaps, but not likely to unleash destruction on the city where they are parked so neatly. That’s one of the purposes to which modern armies are put; because all sides can count on the professionalism and discipline of a modern army, while remaining well aware of its incredible lethality, the soldiers can be moved up to one line or the next without having to worry about things getting out of control–on the ground, anyway.
So what’s the problem? The problem is that the soldiers are Russian troops. This is not a post about the legitimacy of the invasion, so I’m not slamming them for being Russian. The problem is that they are Russian, that is, very, very, very likely to be Russian military forces who nonetheless are wearing uniforms having no insignia.
You can be excused for not thinking that is much of a problem, because–and this is equally astonishing to me–everyone has been talking about them as if their anonymity were the most normal thing in the world, or just a small wrinkle in what is otherwise a completely legible situation. Or, if the situation is not legible, it’s because of the bigger problems of deciphering the work of a madman (Putin, as labeled by The New Republic and the Huffington Post: “Vlad Goes Mad”), or the Russian susceptibility to “mysticism” and “messianic ideology” (David Brooks in the New York Times). (Politics should be so simple.) But as for the troops themselves, we all know they are Russian, so what’s the big deal about not wearing insignia? Isn’t the military preoccupation with badges a bit silly anyway? Or couldn’t it be a rather clever tactic, diplomatically speaking?
Call me old school, but I think it’s important for the professional military of a modern state to be identifiable as such. This isn’t a question of merely literal recognition–was that the 184th or the 185th brigade?–but of the legitimacy of the state’s monopoly on force. If soldiers are not wearing insignia, they are partially out of uniform; if they are partially out of uniform, they are that much closer to being private militias, gangs, or thugs. The informality can be justified if they are noble partisans battling against conquest or tyranny, because resources are limited, invisibility is necessary, and they disband after victory. But it is definitely an odd thing when the unmarked troops are state troops and the occupying army. Something important has shifted: you still have all the lethality of state power, but the social contract that went along with that concentration of force has been weakened. The army is still there, but less accountable. Still under professional command, but not under legal authority.
So take another look. Consider how the face cowling might be about more than keeping out the cold. Notice, as you look across similar pictures, how systematic the erasure has been; again, you see all the marks of military organization, except one. Imagine what it’s like when such dark forces roll into town; not knowing if they are terrorists, bandits, renegades, militias, gangs, vigilantes, or some other example of what happens when war unleashes lawless predation. Consider, most of all, how the appearance of the anonymous troops in the Crimea suggests how the distinction between those groups and the Russian military is becoming tenuous. Not in organization or discipline, but in something equally important: in the relationship between the army and society.
Nor is this just about the Russians, because the lack of reaction in “the West” suggests that the shift may be occurring much more widely. Think of all those out of uniform “contractors”–i.e., mercenaries–hired by the US government for work in Iraq, including guard detail for State Department officials. If the state’s monopoly on violence begins to adopt the appearance and techniques of stateless violence, then the state is eroding as a political form. Of course, state sanctioned violence has been anything but a lesson in restraint, but it has been relatively beneficial in comparison with many of the warlord eras in history or any of the natural experiments in anarchy now underway in Africa and the Middle East. The choice, however, apparently is no longer between modern and premodern violence. It looks to me like a third kind of force may be emerging, something for which we don’t yet have a vocabulary.
Fortunately, we do have a photograph. It’s not everything, but it’s start.
Photograph by Baz Ratner/Reuters.
Cross-posted at BagNewsNotes.
A Return to Normalcy (?)
A sailor kissing a woman in public is not exactly news. But this photograph of a Russian sailor kissing a woman in St. Petersburg bears enough similarity to what is perhaps one of the most famous pictures in the American family photo album that it warrants just a little bit of consideration on our part.
Alfred Eisenstadt’s “Times Square Kiss”— often dubbed “Return to Normalcy”—marked VJ Day and the effective end of World War II. Every ending is a beginning, of course, and so one might also imagine it as the beginning of the post war era which soon became known as the “Cold War” and extended until the fall of the Berlin Wall and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. The “War on Terror” has redefined our understanding of the East-West split in the intervening years and the Russian threat to the West has generally been muted by its relatively weak economic condition and its willingness to cooperate on a number of small scale international initiatives. Muted, that is, until the Putin administration, which has demonstrated its willingness to resist entreaties from the G8, NATO, and the United States on a range of issues beginning, not least, with the civil war in Syria. And now with the Russian “occupation” of the Crimean peninsula and President Obama’s warning that this this will be seen as a serious threat to the US and the West, it is fair to say that we may be moving in a new and different direction in our mutual co-exsitence—and it is not entirely clear that we have an effective or useful vocabulary to describe the mentality that will govern this new relationship. But back to the picture of the sailor and the woman kissing.
The photograph appeared in an on-line slide show on the Russian military that was posted two days before the Russian Parliament authorized a military takeover of the Crimea. Most of the photographs in the slide show focus on members of the Russian military in training and, truth-to-tell, in many instances it would be difficult to distinguish what we see from training sequences in almost any modern military organization across the globe, including the US military. But there are also a number of photographs that mark the scene as distinctively Russian, and more, link Russia with the image of its authoritarian, anti-Western, Soviet past, including near iconic images of soldiers and tanks making their way through Moscow’s Red Square in a show of strength. And then, near the middle of the slide show we find the picture of the kiss. And one can only wonder what it is doing in a photo essay otherwise dedicated to posing the question: does the Russian military pose a threat to the West? It could be an ironic gesture that serves to damper what else appears to be the projection of a hostile and belligerent nation state. See, they are just like us, humans caught up in the worldly tensions between Eros and Thanatos, and we need to identify with them as such with all of their foibles intact. Or, it could be a more cynical gesture to a “Return to Normalcy” where the war was “cold” and we could identify who our enemies were–after all, that’s not exactly Times Square in the background and the kissers are not exactly front and center. Comedy or tragedy, its really a matter of what we choose to see.
Secretary of State John Kerry was quoted on the Sunday morning talk shows as indicating that the current situation “is not Rocky IV.” We can only hope so, for it would be all too easy to “cry havoc, and let slip the dogs of war.” We have had too much of that in recent years. And so, to return to where we began, no, a sailor kissing in a woman in public is not exactly news. But then again, perhaps that’s exactly the point.
Photo Credit: Alexander Demianchuk/Reuters.
Cross-posted at BagNewsNotes.
Sight Gag: Keep Your Eye on the Font
Credit: The Letter “E” From Kerozen‘s “Human Type”
Sight Gag is our weekly nod to the ironic, satiric, parodic, and carnivalesque performances that are an important part of a vibrant democratic public culture. These “gags” may not always be funny or represent a familiar point of view, but they attempt to cut through the lies, hypocrisy, shamelessness, stupidity, complacency, and other vices of democratic life. Of course, we invite you to comment … and to send us images that you think might deserve a laugh or at least a wry and rueful look by those who are thinking about the character of public life today.
Paper Call: Debating Visual Knowledge
“Debating Visual Knowledge” Graduate Symposium at the University of Pittsburgh
October 3 – 5, 2014
Call for Participants
Visual knowledge and visual literacy have become pressing concerns across a variety of academic disciplines and areas of creative production. These concerns are shaped by the fluid definitions of “visual knowledge” and the multiple ways in which it manifests. Many forms of visual knowledge have capabilities that are not shared by language. This knowledge is produced, mediated, and distributed by a number of different objects, tools, media, and technologies. This symposium seeks to broaden understandings of intellectual and creative work by interrogating the theorization, production, use, and historicization of visual knowledge. We envision the event as an exploratory lab, comprising scholarly and creative projects that engage with these questions.
Presentations might relate to (but are not limited to) topics such as:
● Digital humanities
● Cognition, intellectual history, interpretation
● Photography, printmaking, engraving
● “The spatial turn,” GIS, maps, mapping
● The body, performance
● Data visualizations, modeling, categories and groups
● Law and policy
● Media theory, historiography, ecology
● Exhibition design, curating
● Network analysis, grids, graphs, timelines
● Interfaces, constructed/built environments, design
● Astronomy, physics, mathematics, botany, medicine
The symposium will include traditional academic papers, posters, and keynote sessions, as well as presentations of creative works, roundtables, praxis sessions, screenings, and performances. Participants may be invited to take part in curated roundtables, seminars or workshops. We also welcome submissions of projects that could be workshopped or collaborated on in the context of the symposium.
Submission Guidelines:
● For a paper, please submit a 300-word abstract for a 20-minute talk, and a CV.
● For a poster, please submit a 300-word abstract and a CV. A sketch of your poster is optional. If selected, posters must be printed and provided by the participants, and can be up to 30” x 40”.
● For a creative work, please submit up to 10 images and/or a 2-minute video or sound clip, a 300-word project description, and a CV.
● For a pre-constituted panel of up to four papers, please submit a 300-word abstract describing the panel topic, and a 150-word abstract and author’s CV for each proposed paper.
● To propose to lead a roundtable, seminar, or praxis session, please submit a 300-word description of the topic and CVs for all proposed participants. You may also propose a topic without having chosen participants.
If you have any questions about possible submissions or formats for submissions, please contact us at debatingvisualknowledge@gmail.com.
Send submissions to debatingvisualknowledge@gmail.com by April 11, 2014. Selected participants will be notified by mid-May.
Photograph from London’s Fashion Week, 2014 by Suzanne Plunkett/Reuters. The photo was not supplied by the conference organizers, but it does give new meaning to both “debating” and “visual knowledge.”