civilized ku # 2012 ~ profundity and the tableaux vivant, expanded edition

The Goat ~ by Jeff Wall • click to embiggen

BACKGROUND: This past Sunday, at the wife's urging - "he looks so much like his dad, take a picture for me" - while we were attending an all-day hockey tournament, I made the the netminder picture. It is a picture of my grandson, Hugo, who had decided to play in net for one of his games and, truth be told, he did look a lot like his dad (a full-time net minder) at the same age. So, never one to deny the wishes of the wife, I made a few pictures.

The first few pictures were made while Hugo was playing warm-up ball-of-tape hockey with a couple of his teammates after which I was fully prepared to say that was that, picture making wise. However, the 3 older kids seen in the netminder picture appeared on the scene and, recognizing Hugo, hung around and struck up some sort of a conversation with him. So, more for me than for the wife, I made a few more pictures.

The rest of the story: Sunday evening, while I was looking at the pictures during the RAW conversion stage, my attention was drawn to the aforeposted variant of the scene. For reasons I did not understand at the time, I found the picture to be somewhat disquieting in a sort of edgey kind of way. FYI, "edgey", as defined by the urban dictionary as, "Watch out, something is about to happen." or, as Sam Hames put it (in yesterday's comments), "... the tension is visible, just at this moment. What happens next?"

One of my first impressions was triggered by the expression on Hugo's face*, one which I can not recall ever having seen before, and those of the other kids, especially the crouching one immediately to Hugo's left**. And then there is also the fact that the other kids are quite obviously much older than Hugo and the first things that flashed into my mind were Jeff Wall's tableau vivant, The Goat and, to a lesser extent, the many emotionally unsettling tableaux pictures of Gregory Crewdson.

In any event, as a result of the aforementioned, I found the the netminder picture, as opposed to my on-the-spot perceived reality of the actual situation, to be rather disconcerting / unsettling. The actual situation - a younger kid being surrounded by much older kids - evidenced absolutely no sense of the disquieting / unsettling situation in Wall's manufactured / staged picture, The Goat. Or, for that matter, of the disquieting / unsettling perception(s) of the the netminder picture, as perceived by me.

However, that said, I believe I can state with some degree of certainty that my knowledge of Wall's picture, as well as Crewdson's and those of many others, had a significant influence, in a you-are-what-you-eat kind of way, on my perception(s) of the the netminder picture. Or at the very least, my knowledge of the work of Wall, Crewdson, and others certainly set me up to look for / be sensitive to expanded meaning(s) in the the netminder picture.

Re: expanded meaning(s), nearly concurrent with my first unsettling reaction to the picture was also the perception that the situation depicted in the scene was not threatening at all. In fact, it could be perceived, in light of Hugo's hockey prowess, as form of reverse athlete hero worship****. "Reverse" in the sense that it is more often than not the young who revere / worship their elders rather than vice versa. In fact, 2nd grader Hugo is very well accepted by the 3/4/5th grade cool-guy clique***.

While there is nothing inherently disquieting / unsettling about being accepted by the cool-guy clique, there is, nevertheless a cultural / societal story to be told about the cool-guy/ athlete in-crowd phenomenon. A story which could be perceived as disquieting / unsettling, dependent upon whether one is "in" or "out" and how one uses (or experiences) that in-crowd status.

All of the preceding said, while any of the aforementioned readings / interpretations of the the netminder picture are quite valid, the cool-guy / in-crowd reading is the most true vis-a-vis the actual situation on the ground. However, there can be no denying the ambiguity to be found in the picture. And, after considering my reaction to the picture, I believe it is the ambiguity factor which led to my disquieting / unsettling reaction to it.

Which leads me to the notion of staged / constructed pictures, ala Wall / Crewdson / Sherman / my son, The Cinemascapist (to name just a few), or, for that matter, could-be-read-many-different-ways street pictures, which the the netminder picture most closely resembles (it absolutely was not staged, constructed, or directed in any manner whatsoever) ...

... IMO, the strength of such pictures, even though they are "untrue" (in the sense that they are staged / constructed or moments-in-time presented without or out of context) is their very ambiguity. By the nature of that ambiguity, the pictures can be read in many different ways by many different viewers with each viewer being able to discover a different truth. Despite the specificity of a given scene / referent, the picture made of it can have a generality which can reveal / speak to a number of different truths.

And, IMO, the truth(s) to be found in any given picture is greatly influenced by a viewer's knowledge / total life experience. You are, in fact, what you eat. That is to state, you see what you want to see and hear what you want to hear predicated upon who you are*****. Picture viewing wise, I believe that, without a doubt, it is true that the possibilities for what one sees /reads in a picture is greatly influenced by one's knowledge and experience, re: the rich and varied possibilities inherent in the medium of photography.

For some (the un-experienced / un-knowledgeable?), a picture is just a picture. For others (the experienced / knowledgeable?), a picture - the viewing thereof and the making thereof - is fertile intellectual / emotional ground for discovery and learning. For them, the possibilities are nearly endless and the rewards and enjoyment thereof are also nearly endless.

an addendum: I do have the ability to view my pictures as though someone else had made them. In case of the the netminder picture, I was able to perceive multiple meanings / readings of the picture as if I possessed no knowledge of its making or the actual on-the-ground situation. That ability is why I am so often surprised by what I see / read in my pictures after viewing the results of my, one could say, seemingly out-of-body picture making efforts.

*Nick wrote, "The goalie looks lifeless or doll-like". John Linn said, "...everyone is looking at him but he is avoiding eye contact".
**Garet Munger (no link provided) wrote, "The expression and posture of the boy hiding in the corner is disquieting as well as what seem to be aggressive postures of the two bigger boys"
***As a matter of fact, Hugo spends a great deal of time with older kids. That is true both in school and especially so at the hockey rink where it would seem that his hockey skills give him the creds to fit in with / be well accepted by the older kids. However, the older kids in the picture, with the exception of the kid in the red jacket costume de rigueur of Saranac Lake "Red Storm" athletes, do not appear to be hockey players.
****Carolyn (no link provided) wrote, "Nothing unsettling about three fans admiring the rosy-cheeked goalie."
*****Unfortunately, there are quite a few spodas ("what I spoda do, massa?") on the planet who can't actually think for themselves, leading them to believe a lot of big-lie "truths". But that's a picture viewing / reading topic for another time.

FYI, tableau vivant (plural: tableaux vivants) means "living picture". The term describes a group of suitably costumed actors or artist's models, carefully posed and often theatrically lit. Throughout the duration of the display, the people shown do not speak or move. The approach thus marries the art forms of the stage with those of painting/photography, and as such it has been of interest to modern photographers.

In recent history the photographic tableau has become a vehicle by which the medium has entered the space of the art gallery. Many photographers now define their works solely as photographic tableaux and declare that they are artefacts, created specifically for the gallery wall. Self-sufficient in nature, the tableau seldom relies on supporting documents. It can be defined as a composition of staged people, often acting out a scenario that has been directly manipulated by the artist, although it can also be used to describe a photograph that does not contain any people but resembles the tableau in form. By its very nature the photographic tableau amalgamates the art forms of photography and theatre.