Thoughts on Contemporary Photography: Three Beginnings: Theatrical or Anti-theatrical, Tableau & Absorption (For Week 3)

Fried provides us with a clear layout from which contemporary photography stemmed in the first chapter of his book. The first of the three beginnings accounts for the new uses of photography by three young photographers.

Beginning 1: Theatrical or Anti-theatrical

The first beginning starts with three contemporary photographers, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Jeff Wall, and Cindy Sherman. In the late seventies all there photographers began looking at the same subject matter but in different ways; the movies and where movies stand as an art form or not. Film of course had been around since the late 1800's starting with silent films and modifying over time. (Film, much like art has been changing with technology over the years.) By the 1970's movies have become much more complex with strong adventures narratives and impressive cinematography.
Although no matter how impressive or even artsy film can be Fried says that film is not modernist art, no matter how experimental it can be. (p. 13) The experience of losing yourself in the movies (that the three artist above are somewhat interested in) embodies the idea of the modernist, using the inherent qualities of the medium to it's full potential and function over form. Movies are a sensory experience, the viewer is visually and audibly stimulated. Also the viewer is given a place to sit or remain through the whole film, that and the darkness allow the brain to focus entirely on these other experiences. Movies are also modernist in the sense that they have come from traditional theatre but they are expanding on it. "Cinema escapes theatre" as Fried says (p. 13) On page 13 Fried also states that cinema can't be modernist art because it is no better than theatre it only has the power to have more control over it''s audience.

Hiroshi Sugimoto became interested in what would happen if he shot long exposures in movie theaters throughout the entire film length. These pictures seem to be especially successful because of their lack of people in the audience. Leaving the exposure open for hours causes the screen to become a perfect glowing white box that beautifully drapes light over the vintage interior . Fried says that the blank screens become a sort of abstraction and its shinning references a hypnotic object. (p. 14) This goes back to the idea of cinema being used to control the audience, the large screen seems to have a power over the viewer, usually even bad films hold the attention of the viewer for quite sometime.

The second artist mentioned for her part in working with the idea of film through photography is of course Cindy Sherman and her famous Untitled Film Stills. Sherman worked on these iconic images from 1977 to 1980. I have seen these images numerous times where she stages scenes from B movies where she the acts out the role of the female actress but I had never read until now that she purposely looked for scenes where the actress looked expressionless she did this in order to make the scene less emotional and less cheesy. While Sherman is "performing" for the camera she is not acting in a theatrical manor. (p. 7) The theme of hypnosis just like in Sugimoto's work is present here in the lack of emotion. the characters seem to be focused on some sort of internal thought rather than influenced by their surroundings.

I believe that somewhere in the text Fried references a comparison between Sherman's work and the plays done by Bertolt Brecht. I have studied Brecht a bit for another class so of course I found this comparison interesting. It is also interesting with in the idea of theatre sucking the viewer in or the viewer getting lost during a film. Of course Brecht was a playwright so film does not apply here but Brecht was known for epic theatre and using techniques such as breaking "the fourth wall" and Verfremdungseffekt also known as the distancing effect. Brecht would do things like switch scenes to musical numbers abruptly and use signs to note the switching of scenes. The actors would also break out of character and address audience members so that the audience did not become to immersed in the roles and would instead become a critical observer. Technically Cindy Sherman is interested in this sort of "breaking the fourth wall" moment within a still, the viewer is suddenly lost as to what is happening because the character is not giving us any information.

This is kind of a stupid example but incase you are a little bit lost here's an example of breaking the fourth wall used in the show Scrubs.

I've spent a bit too much time on this first section but I found it particularly interesting and I don't want to leave Jeff Wall out completely especially because as an artist I am very interested in Wall's methods of displaying work. I am interested in how Wall's use of light box prints (and light box prints in general) change the context of a photo.

I think that especially now these light box images at large sizes especially have an essence about them that is much like watching a movie screen or a flat screen tv. I also think that people are attracted to things that seem bright and shiny much like a moth to a street lamp. Wall's Movie Audience Portraits relate very well to Sugimoto's images of the movie theatre screens. Both are strangely blank. Also Wall is similar to Sherman here, connecting the blankness of the people depicted in the portraits.

The movies seem to have a hypnotic effect in many ways and all three artist seem interested in ways this can be seen or broken. All three also eventually show how film and photography are uniquely different in the ways that viewers experience them and how they affect the viewer. A viewer can get lost in photograph but they don't have to or in other words photographs are less controlling than films.

Beginning 2 : Tableau

I got a bit rambley on the first part so beginning number two might be more to the point. Again Fried brings up three artist again to represent this other movement in contemporary photography. The idea of the "tableau" previously brought up in last weeks readings. Between 1978 and 1981 Jeff Wall (Fried's favorite?), Thomas Ruff and Jean- Marc Bustamante were all making large scale prints intended for the wall. Previously photography had of course been displayed as art in frames on the wall but it was at such a small scale that made it seem segregated from large works such as paintings. The small size was also more intamte, it could be held or seen in a book. I made a note to myself on the side of the page saying:

small photos = can be put anywhere (frame, matt, wall, book, hands, in a box, anywhere)

large photos= has to be hung on a wall, what else could you do with it?

Jeff Wall's large scale light boxes are brought up again here with Destroyed Room. At five by seven and a half feet small details can be picked out of the busy scene. Perhaps not solely pertaining to this new contemporary way I found the fact that Wall was referencing old french paintings through his photography to be very interesting.

Jean- Marc Bustamante was also making his own 'tableaux' at three feet by 4 feet. Bustamante usually photographed desolate scences that seemed to once has a human precence but now felt abandoned. Bustamante thought that through the large scale, lack of color and the scene itself made the viewer responsible for what they saw. In other words or a long the lines of art historian Ulrich Loock's statment on page 21, the scenes do not suck the viewer in right away but their empty eeriness and lack of detsil forces the viewer to look for meaning.

I see Wall and Bustamante's work being similar for of course their size, the fact that they are both trying to draw the viewer in (thorugh different methods) and the way that both reference past paintings.

On top is Delacroix's Destruction of Sardanapalus and below is Jeff Wall's Destroyed Room.

While Bustamante's Tableau no. 104 ( of the cypress trees) is not a direct reference to any painting it is comparable to the minimalist work of Barnett Newman (on the left).

Not to overlook Thomas Ruff who was taking "passport style" portraits of his fellow art school students and blowing them up to a couple feet wide and long. There is no real reason that these images need to be this size but the larger size now gives them more power to be confronted by the viewer or to confront the viewer.

Beginning Three: Absorption

In the third part of this chapter Fried talks about three writers or specifically three pieces of writing. Of course all three relate to photography not through subject matter neccesarliy but through their approach or analysis.

The Story of Adelaide is a typical love story which ends in tragedy but the tragedy itself is what we are interested in here or as Fried states, "as the pictorial issues of the time."(p. 26) The author of the story purposely sets up the fatal scene in a sort of literary picture. First the scene itself is grandiose, set in cathedral. Next the monks (and Adelaide's husband) are pictured to be deeply absorbed in a religious ritual however the husband glances at his desperate wife but looks away from here and reverts back to his absorption, thus leading to her death.

Fried speaks of mid 1750's french paintings that only depicted people absorbed in their work. If it was not believable that the subject in the painting was absobered in their task or thought than the painting was concidered theatrical and unworthy of being shown. The painters at this time were not concerned about the viewer or rather they were not making the pieces for the viewer.

The idea of absorption depicted in this way is relatable to Cindy Sherman's film stills yet again, her characters (while she is performing) are absorbed in something other than the viewer. I will mention again later Jeff Wall's Dead Troops Talk again but the soilders depicted in that photograph are all absorbed in something in the photo and not the viewer as well, not one of them stares out asking anything from the audience. Of course Wall is also a contradictory to this idea of the french painting absorption, those paintings were not made for the viewer but the idea of the tableau is solely to be viewed.

There is also the story The Temple of Dawn by Mishima who speaks of voyeurism, perhaps the main essence or practice of photography. In this story he speaks of the dangers of voyeurism leading to and obsessive like state (absorption) where the viewer beholds what they see without ever really seeing it in it's true form. The same goes for photographs. Photography allows us to see people, places, and things in states (or just in general) ways that we would never actually see them in real life. This can lead to a disconnect between the work and the viewer if thought about too hard.

The third writing of Susan Sontag talks about the way photography attempts to capture a person absorbed in a moment. She also talks about the idea of voyeurism in the large tableau photographs. Specifficaly Dead Troops Talk. Here she notes the absorbed soldiers who do not waste their time on the viewer because the viewer is only a voyeur, they can't relate to the devastation in the image. She suggest that there is always sort of a disconnect through viewer and subject in images of pain or suffering. She also says that images of suffering should not be well done or even tableau in a way because their beauty will over ride the subject matter that the viewer is supposed to feel for.

The top image is of course Jeff Wall's Dead Troops Talk. The bottom image is an example of Diderotian French painting (the absorption idea) done by Jean-Baptiste Greuze.

Fried ends the chapter in a remark that I found interesting. What I took from it was that we live in a world or an age that is constantly "contaminated" by being beheld, photography is perhaps the only esthetic that beholds this contamination. (p.35) Photography in its simplest form is voyeuristic, and photographers are almost always looking at contamination in some form, trying to raise questions about it and sometime answering them. Photographers behold the contaminated world.

Employing These Ideas Now:

When I tried to think of a contemporary photographer currently using all three of these begging themes; a reference or a critique to/on theatrical or cinematic, the tableau form (with the viewer in mind), and the idea of the subject being absorbed and the audience beholding the subjects I thought of two photographers. Of course together they produce the same work. Canadian brother Carlos and Jason Sanchez make large scale dramatic work that have a narrative quality. The scenes are often physiological reflections of the subjects and/or dark, frightening and eerie. Their images have been compared to film still most likely due to their strong sets, lighting and subject matter. They are tableau in the since that there are made large so that the viewer will be drawn in to analyze the scene and piece together their own account of the narrative at hand. All the subjects in their photos seem to be entirely absorbed in either the scene or themselves, their subjects never look at the viewer. I see their work being similar to Jeff Wall's work with maybe more of a continuing narrative.