man & nature # 133 ~ say what? # 2

Spring trees ~ Pelham Bay, NYC • click to embiggenOver time we have kicked around some ideas regarding the medium of photography and its possibilities relative to truth and the real with the net result being that the conversation most often results in some drawing-a-line-in-the-sand polarizations.

In simplest terms, it usually reads something like; truth - there's no such thing (everything is relative) / oh yes there is (there are absolutes), and, the real - it's all in your head / no it isn't. Most often it all comes down to a battle between pragmatists and theorists; I know it (truth / the real) when I see it VS you can't possibly know anything because _________ (insert the most dancing-on-the-head-of-a-pin philosophical theory of your choice).

At times both positions can get rather trying and ridiculous.

Most recently, as I have been re-reading - actually, re-sampling - assorted essays from the photography reader which is touted as "a comprehensive collection of 20th century writings on photography". There are, in fact, 40+ essays in the book most of which get a little heavy on the arcane academic side of things and some of which, IMO, get really ... well ... strange.

One essay in particular, Re-reading Edward Weston ~ Feminism, photography and psychoanalysis by Roberta McGrath - got me to thinking about the old adage / accusation that men are often thought to be "thinking with the wrong head". If that is often true (and, speaking as a man, I think it is), then the other side of that coin has to be that woman are often "speaking with the wrong lips".

McGrath is Associate Lecturer in Photographic Theory and Criticism at Napier University, Edinburgh. In her essay, she makes her prejudices - along with her principle thesis - known right up front (kudos for that) when she writes:

As the dominant ideological ruse of 20th century art-criticism, modernism has functioned not only to suppress any concern for the wider social matrix of which all cultural production is part, but also has hidden issues of class and race - crucially - those of gender .... [I]t is therefore no accident that in the title of this essay I place feminism before photography and psychoanalysis.

I am totally on board with McGrath re: modernism's disconnect from the "wider social matrix" - that idea informs part of my bias towards the work of Sir Ansel. To wit, his pictorial aggrandizement of the natural world totally ignored the reality of what was actually happening in that world at that time re: humankind and its heavy-handed impact upon the natural world, aka - pollution.

And, it should be noted, relative to her positioning of feminism in the title, I have no big issue whatsoever with the feminist movement in its saner guises. It is a much needed idea that addresses very legitimate issues (in its saner guises).

That said, it all gets a bit weird when the message about re-reading Weston and his pictures gets turned into -

To take a photograph is to exercise an illusory control, a mastery which is a characteristic of voyeurism. But the sexual connotations of the verb are also obvious: the slang for carnal knowledge. It implies a physical penetration of the other while the photograph is a penetration of the space of the other ... Weston often referred to his camera as his "love", reminiscent of the traditional ascription of femininity to photography, as female as a 'hand-maiden", a box with an aperture that passively receives the imprint of an image - but only in negative ... (the word "negative") suggests woman as less than, more incomplete; possessing, perhaps, only a negative capacity?

Carnal knowledge, penetration, box, passively receives, women as less, negative capacity ... Ummm, OK. Sure. Why not?

But McGrath doesn't stop there in her carnal knowledge tour de force:

... Stieglitz wrote to Weston: 'For the first time in 55 years I am without a camera.' Weston replied: 'to be with out a camera must be like losing a leg or better an eye.' Not worse, better. Castration - and by anology - death, are clearly in the air. It indicates Weston's desire ... to usurp Stieglitz the Father of Modern Photography.

McGrath goes on to tell us - her "lips" to our ears - that Weston liked to print on glossy paper because "the gloss of the paper ... the shine also connotes a moistness which is associated with sex...", and, (I really love - in the platonic sense - this one) Weston liked contact printing because "the negative bonds with the paper, the hard surface of the glass plate with the soft surface of the paper form this union to issue a print." (italic emphasis, mine) - I don't think that Weston used glass plates all that much, if at all, but McGrath still rather firmly drives her point home.

And so it goes. On and on. Freud, Oedipus, the description of Weston's Graflex camera as a "giant eye on three legs", and, lastly, the idea of the "edifice of patriarchal (photographic) discourse" all make an appearance. Nevertheless, if the whole enterprise weren't so damn entertaining, I might not have finished reading the essay.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I think I'll take a cold shower.

And, oh yeh, lest I forget, I'm really happy that I have such a long (and hard) lens - for my Olympus, that is.

Comments

[Mauro Thon Giudici]

I've come across those kind of theories several times. While I am generally available to theoretical discussions, and more if they have a different point of view than mine, in the specific case I quickly call me off. The main reason is that I simply feel that this is more an exercise in rhetoric and worse an artifice to avoid confrontation (a thing very usual in the academy).

On the funny side I always ask myself how a theory of art from the point of view of the platypus could be ?