My memory of early art world comment on Goldin’s work, both other people’s and her own (perhaps following her own), was a mixture of the biographical e.g .the impact on her of the suicide of her sister, and her immersion in the world she was photographing, as a means of substantiating her and the works’ authenticity. She was a participant in the world she ‘documented’, and that acceptance of her in that world brought an access to a level of candour and honesty in the images that she presented of that world that had not been shown before.
For all the hard-working and persuasive rhetoric, there still lurked beneath for some of us a perennial disquiet about documentary photography, namely the degree to which the awareness of the documentation has affects on what is ‘documented’. Or to put it more sharply, especially in Goldin’s case given the proximity of her to the subjects in the images, (not just in the case of the earlier ones but also e.g. later Parisian ones too), there is a level of deceit, the subjects act as if they are unaware of the presence of the photographer or the camera, which is on reflection, is beyond credibility. *
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(L to R) Nan Goldin, Joanna and Aurele making out in my apartment, NYC , 1999 & Capturing Real life, Loenke Mag, June 18th, 2017 |
In the latter work to an extent this is more acknowledged, i.e. and is perhaps more evidently beholden to Warhol’s influence as Goldin has claimed of her work: what we are offered in the works is a record of a given individual’s act/performance for the camera (as in the case of Instagram), not as the rhetoric claims, a record of the act per se, which was perhaps a mythic capacity attributed to photography other than where the subject was oblivious of the camera’s presence.
Though the political import of the latter- the rights of the subject - seems irrefutable what has been lost to our knowledge of the world and how what has been lost might be redeemable, re-thought rather than simply banished from photographic practice, is something that needs to be urgently addressed.( A productive starting point might be to interrogate what we think we understand by ‘the look’ as a category as opposed to looking under particular and in relation to specific circumstance).
*Ben Burbridge: Paradise Lost: Exhibitionism in the works of Nan Goldin. Photography Reframed Routledge 2018.
The largest claims about photography and its relation the real (though far themselves from unproblematic) that most recently come to mind in relation to photographic culture are those made in relation to the work of Gary Winogrand, with the weighty consecration of John Szarkowski.. But In separation from John Szarkowski’s status and institutionally designated authority in his writing little is offered by way of explanation for his judgement “No other work of the period has insisted so clearly and uncompromisingly on exploring the uniquely prejudicial (intrinsic) qualities of photographic description…The self-imposed limitations of Winograd’s art Is symmetrical with its greatest strength: absolute fidelity to a photographic concept that is powerful, subtle, profound and narrow, and dedicated solely to the exploration of stripped, essential camera vision”. (Mirrors and Windows 1978, pp23/4) “And his work has demonstrated that photography can give visible and permanent shape to experience so complex, unpredictable, subtle and evanescent that one would have thought it uncommunicable”. (Winogrand, Figments from the Real World, 1988. P 40).
What receives scant consideration in these accounts is that Winogrand (excepting in Szarkowski’s nodding reference to “Women are Beautiful”) is engaged in a kind of photo practice aspects of which had already become seen as highly problematic in many photographic, photo educational and critical circles. Whether we are prepared to designate the photographs as documentary or not, they are achieved by the same means as a certain form of documentary photography, i.e. without the prior acknowledgement or consent of their subjects – the extreme paradigm of which is perhaps Weegee’s infra-red photographs of cinema audiences – and raise issues about intrusion, privacy, the legitimate use of processes, and power and gender and the rights and responsibilities of those who use them.
All of us have perhaps had the experience at least sometimes of being alone in a (busy) public space, for example of sitting on one’s own in a café surrounded by tables occupied by animated groups and intense couples; of crossing a Station Hall, or walking a street where others’ social interactions fall within one’s field of vision. At some time we all overhear snatches of others’ conversations, catch the interchange of glance and gesture, glimpse fragments of other people’s lives. Public spaces are not just the arena in which public/impersonal events are transacted, (travelling, eating etc) but that of intimate private ones too. Therein lies their fascination and their discomfort. Other people’s lives are potentially on view, but one does not know where to direct one’s eyes, for fear one will be caught looking, (e.g.by a Travis Bickle). For Winogrand at least qua photographer one can’t help but wonder if this was not his basic relation to the world. His most interesting photographs are those that enable us to stare/gaze at moments we ordinarily only glance at, - people in private in public – they give us access to a domain of fascination without fear of reprisal. In that respect we might say that they show us what the world looks like photographed, not in the way that microscopic or flash photography can give access that are unavailable because of the physiological limitations of the naked eye, but because they allow us access to a domain that social convention prohibits.
In that both their pleasure and discomfort lie. Whatever photo-theorist have told us, we all get pleasure from looking, and all photography, even when the subject acknowledges the camera’s presence turn the subject in to an object for viewing. All photography is in that sense voyeuristic, coming clean about it, openly voyeuristic photography is perhaps preferable to that that disclaims it, for in the former case we are at least forced to confront the site of out pleasure rather than bury or disavow it. Again despite what has been argued not all our looking is problematic: there are many social situations where not only is it OK but actually considered good, the look of love, at sports events, theatres, movies. The problem is not the looking but the relations within which it takes place; or better since looking is always inscribed in relations, there is no looking in itself, but like photography only kinds of looking which cannot be identified in separation from the relations within which it which it is constituted. Looking can be mutual, reciprocal one way and agreed, or not agreed, but even in the latter case it does not necessarily entail a desire for ‘mastery’ of the subject, or vicariousness, or prurience, we do/can look at others to learn, to enlarge out understanding (including our understanding of the values socially condoned and proscribed in certain kinds of looking ie. their ideology).
The largest claims about photography and its relation the real (though far themselves from unproblematic) that most recently come to mind in relation to photographic culture are those made in relation to the work of Gary Winogrand, with the weighty consecration of John Szarkowski.. But In separation from John Szarkowski’s status and institutionally designated authority in his writing little is offered by way of explanation for his judgement “No other work of the period has insisted so clearly and uncompromisingly on exploring the uniquely prejudicial (intrinsic) qualities of photographic description…The self-imposed limitations of Winograd’s art Is symmetrical with its greatest strength: absolute fidelity to a photographic concept that is powerful, subtle, profound and narrow, and dedicated solely to the exploration of stripped, essential camera vision”. (Mirrors and Windows 1978, pp23/4) “And his work has demonstrated that photography can give visible and permanent shape to experience so complex, unpredictable, subtle and evanescent that one would have thought it uncommunicable”. (Winogrand, Figments from the Real World, 1988. P 40).
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(L to R) Gary Winogrand, New York 1961. Figments From the Real World, MOMA New York, 1988. P 80, & New York 1969. Figments From the Real World , MOMA New York,1988. P93 |
What receives scant consideration in these accounts is that Winogrand (excepting in Szarkowski’s nodding reference to “Women are Beautiful”) is engaged in a kind of photo practice aspects of which had already become seen as highly problematic in many photographic, photo educational and critical circles. Whether we are prepared to designate the photographs as documentary or not, they are achieved by the same means as a certain form of documentary photography, i.e. without the prior acknowledgement or consent of their subjects – the extreme paradigm of which is perhaps Weegee’s infra-red photographs of cinema audiences – and raise issues about intrusion, privacy, the legitimate use of processes, and power and gender and the rights and responsibilities of those who use them.
All of us have perhaps had the experience at least sometimes of being alone in a (busy) public space, for example of sitting on one’s own in a café surrounded by tables occupied by animated groups and intense couples; of crossing a Station Hall, or walking a street where others’ social interactions fall within one’s field of vision. At some time we all overhear snatches of others’ conversations, catch the interchange of glance and gesture, glimpse fragments of other people’s lives. Public spaces are not just the arena in which public/impersonal events are transacted, (travelling, eating etc) but that of intimate private ones too. Therein lies their fascination and their discomfort. Other people’s lives are potentially on view, but one does not know where to direct one’s eyes, for fear one will be caught looking, (e.g.by a Travis Bickle). For Winogrand at least qua photographer one can’t help but wonder if this was not his basic relation to the world. His most interesting photographs are those that enable us to stare/gaze at moments we ordinarily only glance at, - people in private in public – they give us access to a domain of fascination without fear of reprisal. In that respect we might say that they show us what the world looks like photographed, not in the way that microscopic or flash photography can give access that are unavailable because of the physiological limitations of the naked eye, but because they allow us access to a domain that social convention prohibits.
In that both their pleasure and discomfort lie. Whatever photo-theorist have told us, we all get pleasure from looking, and all photography, even when the subject acknowledges the camera’s presence turn the subject in to an object for viewing. All photography is in that sense voyeuristic, coming clean about it, openly voyeuristic photography is perhaps preferable to that that disclaims it, for in the former case we are at least forced to confront the site of out pleasure rather than bury or disavow it. Again despite what has been argued not all our looking is problematic: there are many social situations where not only is it OK but actually considered good, the look of love, at sports events, theatres, movies. The problem is not the looking but the relations within which it takes place; or better since looking is always inscribed in relations, there is no looking in itself, but like photography only kinds of looking which cannot be identified in separation from the relations within which it which it is constituted. Looking can be mutual, reciprocal one way and agreed, or not agreed, but even in the latter case it does not necessarily entail a desire for ‘mastery’ of the subject, or vicariousness, or prurience, we do/can look at others to learn, to enlarge out understanding (including our understanding of the values socially condoned and proscribed in certain kinds of looking ie. their ideology).
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(L to R) Gary Winogrand, Women Are Beautiful, (1975) Printed 1981. International Centre of Photography, & Ivar Theater, Los Angeles 1982-83, Figments From the Real World, MOMA New York, 1988. P243. |
