Response to Newman’s “Connotations”

While reading Hayley Newman’s “Connotations,” I became very interested in her usage of photography to construct the “documentation” of staged performance pieces, paying “homage” to her personal notebook of performance ideas. I found a connection to her work in my own work as an artist with a character I have been developing over the past few years. As mentioned in a previous blog, Alice Gorman Vence appeared before me when I was sifting through old photographs at my grandfather’s home a few years ago. When I asked various family members about this woman, no one seemed to know much about her, other than who she married and where she lived. There were no stories that were passed down or memories shared about her life.

I have used Alice in several different ways in my artwork. In an attempt to rectify Alice as a “true” ancestor (one who hasn’t been forgotten about or become lost in the back of family photo albums), I staged various scenes of a woman at her farmhouse in 1923 (the pictures posted in this blog are a few of the photographs from the “Alice” series). I printed the photographs in the darkroom using no filter, thus stripping the photograph of any prominent black and white contrast, trying to emulate an “aged” look. In other variations, I soaked the photograph in tea, staining the paper and creating an antique feel.  

            In attempting to fabricate and stage these scenes and present them as factual family photographs to my audience, I blurred boundaries between the real and fictional. Working in collaboration with another artist, I wrote a letter as Alice and received a letter back addressed to Alice, pursuing this idea of fabricating a family member’s life. By “documenting” Alice’s history, I am bringing her story to life and realizing her existence, much in the same way that Newman was bringing her own project ideas to life. Newman states that,

“Connotations provided the forum for the idea to exist without actually having to execute the piece.” (Newman 170).

In a similar fashion, I feel as though I am providing the forum for this ancestor’s forgotten story to be told, without actually knowing anything about this woman’s life.

Floating Island Steady Girl: Response to Auslander’s “The Performativity of Performance Documentation.”

On September 24^th, 2005, New-York based performance artist Kimberly Brandt raced Robert Smithson’s Floating Island to Travel Around Manhattan Island along the Manhattan coastline between Pier 46 at Charles Street and East River Park at E. Houston Street in New York, NY (Brandt, www.kimberlybrandt.com). The race lasted three and a half hours and she claims to have beaten the island by approximately four minutes. There was no audience, except one photographer who documented the race. The photographer traveled by cab from one location to another, capturing still frames of her individual feat.

While reading Auslander’s “The Performativity of Performance Documentation,” I recalled this performance piece my sister created when I read about Vito Acconci’s performance Photo-Piece. Although Brandt’s performance was not a series of photographs taken by the artist herself, I find an interesting connection between the two artists’ work. Auslander states about Acconci’s work that,

“…there were no bystanders to serve as the audience. More importantly, the only thing bystanders would have seen was a man walking and taking pictures: they would have had no way of understanding they were witnessing a performance.” (Auslander 4).

This is the same circumstance with which Brandt carried out her performance. Any bystanders who had seen Brandt jogging through city parks and streets would have justifiably assumed she was merely getting some exercise. And anyone who witnessed a photographer taking a photograph of a woman looking out at the floating island on the East River would not necessarily assume that he was meticulously documenting a performance that was happening right at that moment. In this essence, both Acconci and Brandt’s work is only available to an audience through this documentation.

What I find most interesting about these and other documentation-based performances is the transferability of the work to an audience. Auslander repeatedly refers to the “initial” audience and the role that the audience plays in a performance piece.

“… when artists decide to document their performances, they assume responsibility to an audience other than the initial one, a gesture that ultimately obviates the need for an initial audience.” (Auslander 7).

The transferability of a documentation-based performance to an audience is highlighted in this quote. Not only does the performance exist as a time-based artwork that an initial audience may or may not witness, it also exists through the documentation of the work, allowing the artwork to be interpreted by a different audience, in a different space and time, potentially obliterating the need for an “initial” audience in the first place.

Response to Rubinstein and Sluis,’ A Life More Photographic

Rubinstein and Sluis offer an interesting take on the digital “revolution” that reflects not only on the development of digital technology as a point of departure from traditional and largely inaccessible darkroom photography, but also on the integration of the Internet and the community, or network, that is created around shared images.

One theme that I found particularly interesting, which was continually referenced throughout the text, was the concept of the image or photograph having a certain “fluidity” throughout this digital revolution, as referenced on page 13: “As Daisuke Okabe has noted, currently the most fluid and immediate sharing of images happens when images are shared directly via the camera’s screen (2, 9).” The idea that images taken by and viewed on a camera speaks to this fluidity or quick “ease” in experiencing the photograph taken. This fluidity reminds me of two photographic processes that could perhaps represent a bridge between traditional darkroom photography and the “instant gratification” of a digital image and being able to immediately view the photographic results: The photo-booth photograph and the Polaroid photo (The photo-booth picture attached in this blog is of myself and three of my closest friends. We took several photographs in that booth, trying to “out-do” previous attempts in capturing a unique photo-booth picture).  I see these two processes as representing the flux between the chemically-processed, darkroom photograph (which one would have to wait at least an hour to view) and the instant ability to see a photograph (which one would only have to wait one or two minutes to view). There were, no doubt, other photographic processes that could be seen as stepping-stones between these two modes of photography, but what interests me about both the Polaroid and the photo-booth photos is that they were, and are somewhat still today, for the common consumer.

The second example relating to the “fluidity” of the contemporary image is highlighted by consumer-friendly computer applications such as iPhoto and Picasa (pg. 15). Rubinstein and Sluis relate the ability to “scroll through” sequences of photographs to the integration of ease and accessibility of the photographic experience to the consumer market.  Personally, I have always appreciated the ease with which to view my digital photographs in iPhoto on my computer. I am also an artist who appreciates, and uses traditional, darkroom photography. Instead of experiencing dissonance between these two “worlds,” I find a broad freedom and an expanded creativity in blending both traditional and digital photography.

Later in the text Caterina Flake, Flickr’s founder, is quoted, stating “the nature of photography now is it’s in motion… It doesn’t stop time anymore, and maybe that’s a loss. But there’s a kind of beauty to that, too.” (Harmon). The fluidity, or constant “flow” of the contemporary photograph could be seen as having a negative impact on the practice of photography.  But I agree with Flake—the constant documentation of our lives to be shared, viewed and commented on by others is, in itself, a tie that binds a large community, using this unique “visual speech” (pg. 18) as one of our languages.

Response to Roland Barthes’ Camera Lucida

To begin, I’d like to mention that while reading excerpts from Roland Barthes,’ Camera Lucida, I was struck by the language Barthes used to address the reader. Barthes has a personable voice to explain and define his journey and exploration of the “essence” of a photograph. He eloquently balances both the critical theory surrounding the practice of photography (and other art practices, such as painting) with his own emotional response to the practice or understanding of photography. For example, in chapter three, Barthes states:

What does my body know of Photography? I observed that a photograph can be the object of three practices (or of three emotions, or of three intentions): to do, to undergo, to look.  (Barthes 9)

He goes on to define the Operator as the Photographer, the Spectator as ourselves, or those of us who participate in the act of “looking” at photographs, and the Spectrum  as the target or the “referent.” In these two sentences, Barthes not only defines the three theoretical intentions of the act of taking a photograph, but also places himself within this practice from observing what he understands, from presumably acting at some point in his life as the Operator, the Spectator, and the Referent.

In this same respect, I would like to respond to Camera Lucida with a critical, yet also personal voice.  In the last few chapters, Barthes describes the experience of going through some of his mother’s photographs shortly after she had passed away.  He explains that he wasn’t necessarily looking for the exact, “right” photograph that would portray her essence, but no photograph in the bunch necessarily “spoke” to him directly in this manner, until he found, what he calls, the Winter Garden Photograph. In this photograph he sees his mother at the age of five, standing with her brother outside of the house the two children grew up in. The photograph resonated with Barthes; her expression, gesture, and/or pose reflected her presence, her essence to him as he knew her.

            This particular description of Barthes finding the Winter Garden photograph resonated with me and my own artistic endeavors. A few years ago I was visiting my estranged, paternal grandfather, who I had not seen in seventeen years, to interview him (along with other family members) about the demise and eventual death of my severely alcoholic father. I was also interested in learning more about past ancestors, since I had no relationship with ancestors on my father’s side of the family or “stories” about them. Most of the photographs were interesting enough, but nothing “spoke” to me until I came across a photograph of a woman named Alice Gorman Vence (as pictured in this blog). I was deeply moved by this photograph because I had never seen a photograph of an ancestor within whom I found a resemblance to myself (my mother was adopted, so I have no biological knowledge of my mother’s side of the family).  There is something about Alice’s facial structure (her raised cheekbones, perhaps her eyes) that I found similar to mine.  Her hair was the same color (and amusingly pinned up in the same fashion in which I wore my hair).  Alice, in her own “essence,” also represented an “essence” and connection within me, the viewer.

            Alice became an indirect subject in my film that I was working on at the time, and has continued to be a “character” that I develop and use in various art pieces.  At this point, I’d like to focus on my subject, Alice, with a “critical” eye in relation to Barthes’ ideas about the “effigy.” He describes the photographic ritual as a “social game.” He describes the game as such:

…I pose, I know I am posing, I want you to know that I am posing, but… this additional message must in no way alter the precious essence of my individuality: what I am, apart from any effigy.  (Barthes 11)

            Barthes is willing to play the “social game” of posing for the camera, but does not want the spectator of that photograph to assign an essence to his individual self. For example, perhaps a photograph was taken of him and he was smiling, yet slightly turned away from the camera. One could assume he was acting coy or shy in that moment, but the overall essence of Barthes himself as an individual is certainly not just purposely bashful. That one representation of himself, that one effigy, does not sum up his entire existence or individual essence.

            In terms of creating and developing my “character” named “Alice,” it is essential that I work, in a somewhat backwards sense, from this one “effigy” I have to understand Alice.  Why was she turning slightly away from the camera?  What human condition was she enduring to not “smile for the camera.”  Why did she choose to wear a black dress? Since I know nothing about this woman, I am forced (artistically speaking) to experience her essence through this photographic representation, to imagine and then create what her unique individuality was.  In my film, she was the keeper of memories, and thus the teller of memories, which in reciprocity represented me, the artist.  I continue to develop and create Alice as I hope she would want to be represented.  Unlike Barthes’ notion of not being able to reproduce the Winter Garden Photograph for the reader (because the reader would only interpret it as what he calls an “indifferent” picture),  I find great responsibility to reproducing Alice’s picture in an attempt to justify and honor Alice’s “essence.”  She was a forgotten, vague ancestor whom I am resurrecting.