Wednesday, 12th
September, 2012
Lackan Bay, Mayo
Yesterday evening brought a
super clean wave in the corner of the bay. As the bay swept around the waves
grew in size with the wind having an effect. On the headland huge waves crashed
against the solid, immovable headland. It bode well for the morning but we were
greeted by north westerlies which as I look out of the van are having a
detrimental effect on the surface of the ocean. Whilst the swell has calmed
down chop is forming across the small waves. Maybe later?
Since finishing at university
I have adopted a system of rational thought when it comes to picture making.
This I feel maybe counter intuitive because rather than producing images that
are felt they are more thought. I think this is often the case with art rather
than producing feeling the work in front of you tends towards thought. Thought
tends to be rational. We take a step back and objectify. Whilst we may initially
adopt a Kantian perspective of first exercising judgements of beauty based on
taste we then begin to make judgements based on categorization, classification,
conceptualizing or intellectualizing. The latter set of criteria appears to me
to be related to modern science.
The camera is able to make, as William James
highlights, the ordinary become extraordinary but as Sontag sets out this
approach is part of photography’s historical perspective. Ultimately, for
Sontag the photograph, unlike painting can never truly transcend its subject or
the visual itself. Whilst the photograph discloses, the painter constructs. For
photography the “identification of the subject…always dominates our perception
of it” whereas this is not necessarily the case for painting, what is of
primary importance for photography is what the photograph is of and until the
viewer knows this Sontag believes that they are unable to react. (Sontag 2002 H Edgerton “Milkdrop Coronet” 1957 P92) In highlighting a image by Harold Edgerton (1903-90) Sontag states that what
looks like a bare coronet becomes more interesting when it is perceived as a
splash of milk. However, for me the image then becomes less interesting because
I know it is a splash of milk.
This notion brings to mind
the work of the Belgian surrealist artist Magritte (1898-1967) who questioned
the relationship between the image and the written word
Is changing the ordinary into
the extraordinary enough? What more can a photograph achieve? Maybe I need to
follow the manifesto Provoke by
Japanese photographers Takuma Nakahira (b. 1938), Daido Moriyama (b. 1938),
Yutaka Takanashi (b. 1935) and the writer Koji Taki (1928-2011) and implement
the transformation, “First, throw out
verisimilitude”.
On Objects
I have collected objects from
each site. These objects marked my taking a souvenir from each site of
pilgrimage.
If we look at Magritte and
his influence during the mid 1920s from the work of Giorgio de Chirico
(1888-1978) we see that he found the idea of “creating an image abstracted or
separated from a real object abhorrent”. (Grunenberg and Pih. 2011. P6) Whilst
Magritte’s ideas related to abstract, non-figurative or formless art, for me,
they can also relate to the photographic image hence the representation of the
found object with the photographic image.
In reference to Provoke does the work of Moriyama,
Nakahira, Takanashi, and Taki not reinforce Sontag’s view that “photographic
seeing has to be constantly renewed with new shocks, whether of subject matter
or technique, so as to produce the impression of violating ordinary vision”?
(Sontag. 2002. P99) As the work of the then Japanese avant-garde, Paul Strand
(1890-1976) and Edward Weston (1886-1958) become more assimilated their ways of
seeing simply become, as Sontag posits, a cliché.
What were Provoke attempting to battle? Was it the
photographic tendency towards beauty and order?
What Provoke seem to fit into is the then contemporary taste of the late
1970), as does the work of American photographer and filmmaker William Klein
(b. 1928) and as Sontag highlights the work of French photographer Atget
(1857-1927). This style of not being technically perfect goes against the
modernist view of Weston whom devoted himself to the perfect print.
Imperfect technique, as
Sontag sets out broke what she deemed the “sedate equation of Nature and
beauty”. (Sontag. 2002. P102) Rather than Nature fitting into what I would call
a Wordsworthian object of contemplation it has, for Sontag become more a
subject for indignation and a sentimental yearning for the past, a notion that
seems to point towards my project, “Left
Right Here”.
Whether it be the work of the
Bauhaus, Weston, Klein or Moriyama photography, to Sontag still beautifies and
even when the camera is cruel a different kind of beauty manifests itself. It
is to my mind the canon of beauty by which everyday people judge both
photographs and art.
From a socially conscious
point of view “Left Right Here” aims
to do what moralists demand from a photograph, that it speak. However, I do
feel that the written word should reinforce rather than take over, as the
example of Edgerton’s coronet shows. The two should compliment each other for
when the text explains, it can, I feel then diminish the power of the picture.
The text also limits, as Sontag states because it is only one interpretation.
Ultimately to photograph is
to produce what Sontag calls an “item for aesthetic appreciation”. (Sontag.
2002. P. 110)
Bibliography
Cotton C, 2007 The Photograph As Contemporary Art Thames
& Hudson: London
De Botton A, 2003 The Art of Travel Penguin: London
Grunenberg C and Pih D, 2011 Magritte A to Z Tate/London
Newby E, 1995 A Book of Travellers’ Tales Pan Books
Ltd: London
Perlmutter D and Koppman D,
1999 Reclaiming the Spiritual in Art:
Contemporary Cross-cultural Perspectives State University
of New York Press: New York
Smyth D Editor, 2012 British Journal of Photography Oct Issue
7805
Sontag S, 2002 On Photography Penguin Group: London
Tolstoy L, 1969 What Is
Art? And Essays on Art London: University Press Oxford
Turner V, 1967 The Forest of Symbols Ithaca, NY: Cornell
University Press
Turner V, 1969 The Ritual Process Penguin 1969
Various, 1987 The Age of God-Kings 3000-1500 BC Time
Life Books: USA
Vernon M, 2012 God The
Big Questions Quercus: London
Copyright Mark King 2012
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