Joan Fontcuberta: Pandora's Camera
I knew the Spice Girls
In this chapter (1) Joan Fontcuberta faces, in a time span that goes from the birth of the daguerreotype to the birth of the so-called "infographics", the alternation of photography and painting in assuming the role of the next art form to disappear.
"....In cyclical fashion, the art world regularly attends the funeral of painting, but let’s accept that this is a ploy, an excuse to talk about alleged crises and generate debate in the specialised media. After the obligatory crossing of the desert, painting is reborn with renewed vigour. The catastrophists are now announcing the death of photography.....". (1)
As in the writings of Geoffrey Batchen (read my post), Fontcuberta also analyzes the role of these forms of expression and comes to directly link painting with infographics, which can be considered, according to Fontcuberta, the new form of painting. considering photography as an intruder of another nature between these two forms of expression.
".....It can therefore be argued that, in essence, a pictorial image and a digital image are identical. There are differences in the technical modus operandi, the tools and the apparatus, but – let me say it again – their structural nature is the same...." (1)
Fontcuberta considers photography as an intruder of another nature between these two forms of expression.
".....Considered in this light, photography would seem to be an accident of history, an anomaly, a parenthesis in what could have been expected in a foreseeable genealogy of the image. In the natural transition from painting to infographics (which can actually be thought of as computer painting)....". (1)
I totally agree, insofar as, as Fontcuberta affirms, the creative process of those who paint with the computer is practically identical to that of those who paint on canvas or engrave on a wooden board by a chisel.
If we exclude any automatic image creation process, we can say that the electronic brush is also a brush.
If, on the other hand, we compare these means with reality and its representation, then we find a definite role for the "camera" medium, but not for the creative use that can be made of it.
From this point of view, even if the process and the method to realize the creation (the analogical or digital image) are completely different from the pictorial one, it is not for this reason that photography loses its artistic potential.
It all depends on the interpretation of who has the camera in his hands and what he wants to achieve.
If the purpose is to document reality, then it is objectivity and intellectual honesty that occupy the scene.
"....However, what we commonly think of as photography only crystallised in the early nineteenth century, because it was precisely at that point in time that the technico-scientific culture of positivism required a process that could certify the empirical observation of nature. The advent of the camera is thus linked to notions of objectivity, truth, identity, memory, document, archive and so on.....". (1)
But if the intention is to represent one's own idea, then the creative process takes over, no matter if it is made explicit by what means.
"....The representing reality gives way to the construction of meaning....". (1)
In this regard, Jeff Wall's works are emblematic and it could be said that his art lies in creating the scene to be photographed, and what he wants to represent. The technical mastery of the artist, while very important, quite essential, as in painting and in any form of expression, takes a back seat to poetics.
Archive Noises
In this chapter Fontcuberta explores the various meanings that the dichotomy between memory and forgetting has assumed in human history, and the relationship of these two states of mind with photography.
"......What role do the archive and memory exercise among us today when the weak thinking all around us advocates amnesia?...." (1)
This conscious operation of removal, in order to erase traumatic and uncomfortable memories from the book of history, is an act that we find in the life cycle of many nations.
It does not concern only the photographic archive, but all the material, tangible and intangible, which bears witness to something that is expressly wanted to be forgotten, as if oblivion corresponded to non-reality. As if nothing ever happened.
This memory removal process also reminds me of "Fahrenheit 451", a 1953 novel by American writer Ray Bradbury, and "The Killing Fields", a 1984 film directed by Roland Joffé. In this last work, we see, in all its madness, the attempt of a regime to kill all Cambodians who can maintain or propagate the memory of their people. A massive operation of theorized removal, designed and implemented by a dictator who had formed his social and political convictions during his studies at the Sorbonne.
"...Institutionalised history is a corset that shapes memory, but at the cost of constricting the experience of the present and future...." (1)
There is a famous phrase, the author of which I do not know, which has been quoted countless times in its various versions "History is written by the victors" or even "History is written by the victors with the blood of the vanquished".
It is inevitable that this destiny is fulfilled every time two peoples, or rather, two cultures, collide.
It doesn't matter what the broader and deeper culture is: whoever wins writes history and then shapes the memory to his liking and to pursue his interests.
It is not in the interest of a nation or a people to remember the reality of the facts.
Culture does not suffer the same fate as memory. The deepest culture imposes itself despite victory or defeat, and this is historically demonstrated by the outcome of the ancient clash between the Roman Empire and Greece: in spite of the military success of the Roman Empire, the one that prevailed was the Greek culture, and also today, in the culture of the Latin European countries, there are vast traces and influences of Greek culture. Just think of medical terminology, where roots and terms of the Greek language have a prominent place in the vocabulary of any pathology (the very word "pathology" derives from the union of the two Greek words "pathos", "logos" and suffix " iko "that means" which has to do with ").
Returning to the relationship between history, memory and photography, when photography supports memory, it cannot manipulate history.
Edgar Reitz, German film-maker, in his film "Heimat, a chronicle of Germany", tells the story of a German family from 1840 to the 2000s. Between episodes, Reitz uses photographic images to summarize the previous episode and start the next one. It is as if the photographs were a bridge between the past of the previous episode and the present of the following episode. Facts that happened, naming the people depicted in yellowed snapshots typical of old photo albums from the turn of the century.
As Fontcuberta affirms, the best act in the service of history is not to produce photographs, but, as Joachim Schmid does, to select them, also because, says Schmid ".... everything in the world has now been photographed in every possible way .. ..". (1)
However, if photography, compared to time, must faithfully represent the "here and now" and equally faithfully serve a true memory, then "... It's not so much the production of photographs which needs to concern us, but the use of them ... ". (1)
In the film "Smoke" by Chinese-American director Wayne Wang, the protagonist Auggie photographs the corner of Third and Seventh Avenue every morning at eight.
It has already reached four thousand photographs of the same place, when, leafing through the album, a customer speaks out against the apparent invariability of the images.
Auggie answers: "They are all the same, but each is different from the other. There are sunny mornings, dark mornings; there are summer lights and autumn lights; weekdays and weekends; there are people in raincoats and goloshes and people in t-shirts and shorts; sometimes the same people, and sometimes different; sometimes the different ones become the same, and the same people disappear. The Earth revolves around the Sun, and every day the sunlight hits the Earth from a different angle ".
This use of photography as a "recorder" of memory was revolutionized, as Fontcuberta affirms, towards the end of the twentieth century and up to the height of 1989, 150 years after the birth of photography.
Photography enters the world, and the market, of works of art, and its DNA is reshaped as per pictorial tradition.
The value of a photograph no longer lies in the documentary function and in the preservation of memory, but in the artistic value of the content.
In my opinion, this is where photography divides into two mainstreams, one with an artistic end (not always from birth), and one with a documentary end.
If the documentary stream is identified with telling the story, often the artistic stream mixes with the documentary one in order to tell (or denounce) a story (the one desired by the author) or more stories (those imagined by the viewer).
This reminds me of a Jeff Wall opera, "Dead Troops Talk". In reality, this work is a staging of the vision after an ambush on a Red Army patrol near Moqor, Afghanistan, in the winter of 1986.
I honestly don't understand why anyone should advocate for themselves the right to select which image is worth keeping or which is not. It seems to be a purely ideological position which, starting from the spontaneous and rigorous renunciation of producing images personally, requires others to do the same thing.
I am for Auggie's position, when he affirms diversity in the same passage of time, just as a tree never has the same leaves and a river never has the same water, in the statement of "Panta rei" (everything flows).
".....The photograph, then, shuffles three cards: reality, the image of reality, and the reality of the image.....". (1)
Fugitive Identities
This chapter is a fascinating excursus of Fontcuberta in the various ways of expressing and representing one's identity, beyond the stereotyped and conventional forms of communication.
It is the world of affirmation to every one of their belonging through graffiti (it reminds me of the 1979 film "The Warriors"), of the attitudes represented in order to determine multiple personalities and identities, of shooting and post-editing techniques in order to make the subject is evanescent in its image, therefore also in its identity.
Stimulating is the reference to the story of the photographer Isabelle Eshraghi, who describes her "tactical" transformation from a typical representative of the Western female figure (even if divided between two divergent models of family education) to a perfect interpreter of the female figure in the Iranian world, post Islamic revolution. All this, in order to complete a photographic work on the condition of women in the Islamic world.
This is a typical case of an identity being consciously manipulated in order to achieve a goal.
Can this behaviour be assimilated to what, not in the Islamic world but in the western one, often makes us express attitudes and personalities constructed in order to show an image of us that does not faithfully reflect our identity?
Is this how we can assume multiple identities?
Fontcuberta cites as an example the works of female artists, who have often dealt with the issue of identity between public and private. The author associates what appears to be a particular predisposition of female artists to an as yet unresolved problem of affirmation of their own gender.
However, we also find this theme in male works. I remember, for example, an Italian film ("Pane e cioccolata", by Franco Brusati), where the main character (played by Nino Manfredi), who emigrated to Switzerland, tries, unsuccessfully, to identify himself with the prototype of the respectable Swiss gentleman and transforms his way of acting, talking and dressing. However, he does not realize that, in reality, he has conformed to a stereotype, as it is superficially perceived by a non-Swiss.
In my opinion it is interesting to compare the behavior of this "I wish I was a Swiss gentleman" to that of the subjects hired by the artist Dillenkofer.
Everyone, if left totally free to express their identity according to their desires, has unexpected and repressed manifestations.
However, while the character of the Italian film performs this liberating act by shouting at everyone his true identity as an Italian, in Dillenkofer's work the identities manifested are the most diverse, and in any case, not those of origin (for example those of the private sphere).
The liberating act is common, originated from repression. The manifested identity, on the other hand, is completely different, but it still derives from an uncomfortable situation, caused by what Fontcuberta describes as a reaction to "...protocols of social hierarchy..." and "...dialectic of the mask and the mirror..." (1).
As for the quotation from Annie Sprinkle's work, I see another kind of manifestation of one's identity. All Sprinkle initiatives, not surprisingly defined post-feminist, are aimed at the affirmation of women over men. Identity and its affirmation, therefore, is more a means than an end, while the end is the supremacy of one sex over the other.
During this reading, I asked myself what the role of photography is in the examples and situations so well described by Fontcuberta.
Undoubtedly the central role does not belong to photography but to identity and the various interpretations that are made of it.
Photography is a means of representation and communication, as in the work of the Norwegian artist Vibeke Tandberg, with "Living Together". Furthermore, the possibility of digital post-production allows for further visual developments, such as the duplication of a subject and the possibility, therefore, of working on a narrative referring to the doubling of identity and/or personality.
The advent of the digital age has thus allowed visual artists to post edit photographic images or, even, to create them from scratch (for example vector images) and thus freed both creativity and the possibility of supporting artistic narrative without limits. of representation.
The photographic artist, or rather, the visual artist, as in the case of Paul M. Smith and its war representations, has become a painter who uses bits as a brush.
The manipulation of the image and the subjects in it lead us to think that identity, or the representation of identity, can also be manipulated.
Fontcuberta provocatively calls "stealers of faces" those artists who, in some way, replace or modify the faces of the subjects in their works. Does the face represent identity? Fontcuberta's speculation develops around this question.
The theme of identity and its possible manipulation with technical/scientific tools, and of the relationship with the ethics of existence, have stimulated many artists. They reacted in a provocative, playful, denouncing way, and among these Fontcuberta quotes Dalia Chauveau.
It is interesting to compare Chaveau's work to what she denounces, insofar as we are faced with a paradoxical situation where those who denounce manipulation use digital manipulation.
The term and the concept of identity are closely associated with the term and concept of individuality: it follows that the removal of identity leads to the removal of individuality and vice versa. This is the theme of the work "The Star Diaries", by Stanislaw Lem, quoted by Fontcuberta. It is the story of the planet Panta, as a perfect example of the cancellation of individualities through a process of daily reshuffling of the social roles in which people identify themselves.
Returning to digital photography, Fontcuberta assigns it an active role in interacting with everyone's identity and world's reality:
"Digital photography should be viewed as a realm of the new order brought about by the electronic media whose 'unrealization' effect is not confined to the representation of reality by the image, but touches all the facets of our abstract construction of reality. In so far as it affects the conceptions we form of the world, it also changes our relationship with the world. The dissolution of the reality principle does away with our formulations of space and time, identity and memory. Electronic culture thus forces us to rethink all of the cultural and political architecture of our value system, and induces us to examine its remains and examine ourselves in the context it provides. " (1)
If our relationship with the world changes, do we change too? To the extent that each of us projects ourselves into reality through the computer, Sherry Turkle in Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet, argues so.
Again, in my opinion, the subject "digital photography" is lost in the background of planetary scenarios that derive from the internet, from the world wide web, from the possibility that all of us are given to manifest any identity.
Conclusion
This chapter of Fontcuberta is almost uncomfortable for me, because I feel it tries to lead me to distort the role and meaning of photography as such: I prefer, since we are talking about "fugitive identities", to continue to assign identity to photography artistic representation of an idea using a medium that was first analogue and then became digital due to technological progress.
As long as I, as a photographer, insert what I want into the image according to a narrative and content that I desire, I will continue to affirm my identity as a photographer and as an artist.
(1) (Fontcuberta, Joan. Pandora's Camera: Photogr@phy After Photography.
