Various Democracies
Photography as Collection
The exquisite corpse: the future of photography, it is not about any one person’s work, it is about the mass.
How collecting other work saves you from making your own?
These were all titles I considered for this follow-on piece. I am trying to put it in a bigger context. Where are we going in photography? Or where did we think we were going because we misunderstood the past…
By Tim Barber’s own admission, he functions more as a collector than as a curator. The web creates the possibility of bringing together unlimited numbers of photographs and the attraction is to ffffind something in that mass. I think this is where some confusion sets in. I think it is one thing to see collection as a valid strategy for curation (which it is in my opinion) and another thing to see collection as a valid strategy for making work. The trouble that TB gets into is that he conflates the one with the other. See it is perfectly fine to work in the typological mode, which is essentially being a photographic collector of types. The Bechers, Sander, etc. But they are not collecting ANYTHING, they are curating what they collect. Water Towers, Professions.
To curate a show based on the photography of EVERYTHING, in other words to be a collector of photographs of anything is where you can get into trouble. The defense is that photographs can BE about ANYTHING. Yes, a photograph can be about anything, but it doesn’t necessarily follow it is a good photograph…
It makes me think of The Democratic Forest by William Eggleston. Thousands upon thousands of photographs. When asked what he was working on lately Eggleston responded, “I have been photographing democratically.” There is a lot in that statement.
This the “rationale” about Various Photographs, and the basis of a lot of photography, that it is somehow “democratic” because it is an artform that nearly anyone can do. And further, that this should be a good thing. I have a friend who is legally blind, who reads text at a distance of about four inches, but who makes the most astonishing photographs I have ever seen. In the sense that photography is universal, you could say that photography is democratic. Anyone can take a picture. The act. Looking at it that way you can say anyone can paint. The act. But we are not so accepting of that, although David Letterman has some great Elephant paintings to show you. So there is the act, and there is the intention. An elephant can make a great painting but he or she cannot intend to make a great painting. At least as far as we can tell…
So what did Eggleston mean when he said he was photographing democratically? My sense of it is that his democracy was of the subjects within the frame. Do not read that as “all subjects are equal.” You can read that as “you can photograph anything.” But it is not about “the subject” it is about everything in the frame.
His “war with the obvious” was not about showing us the beauty of the ordinary, which is how I believe many people take it, his war was with “obvious” subjects. A single object depicted in space in the center of the frame. Eggleston’s democracy was to see everything and depict with equal weight all objects in his frame. This is why he talks about the reproduction of Bresson’s Decisive Moment, typical of the era in that it was flat, open, and low contrast, it depicted all elements in the frame equally, whereas when he saw the originals they were standard prints. It was the democracy of the reproduction that made the pictures work. Go back to read the afterward in the book and you will see what I mean.
This is the problem: how do you see THE FOREST for the trees. How do you see it all at once when you are looking at details. I believe the garden variety understanding of Eggleston’s importance is misunderstood, we think of him as a photographer of the mundane details (this is what Eudora Welty says in the introduction) that reveal existential meanings and the presence of life. My understanding of The Democratic Forest is the opposite, the book begins with a photograph of a solitary tree and a dedication to “The memory of my aunt, Minnie Maude Schuyler”, followed by a photograph of a map of the United States and world globe titled “Memphis, at the Travel Agent’s.” You don’t even need to see these pictures to get the implication-this is the war with the obvious, a dedication to a late loved Aunt who would not understand what was to follow save for this lone tree, an fitting photograph of a simple lovely subject dead-center in the frame. But that was not what he wanted to show, The Democratic Forest is the problem of how do you see the FOREST, all of it, the map of the United States and The Globe, and depict it from Memphis Tenn? How can you be simultaneously everywhere and here? How does a picture make itself out of the world?
So I am back to Barber. His show demonstrates what we have done with the legacy of Eggleston’s Democratic Forest. We have been concerned with people up trees. And the mundane, and the ephemeral, but I don’t think we have absorbed, or maybe we have abandoned the lessons of Eggleston which is to make pictures democratically, not “of everything” but of everything equally. In other words, photography is not about “the subject.” It is about the total, the picture, the picture “problem.” It is people AND trees if that is your bag.
Why do I think Various Photographs is problematic?
It adopts the view that authorship is incidental, that photography can be characterized as collecting, and that you can photograph “anything.”
It is the reverse: authorship is everything, photography is not collecting and it is not about photographing “anything,” it is about treating everything in the photograph as equal.
How do I know I am right? When you come out of looking at that show, or any similar collection like that you do not want to take pictures. Your reaction (my reaction) is, god, everything has been photographed. You are exhausted. Subject matter has been exhausted. Which is why it is not about the subject. To photograph everything is not to “see” anything. This is the sickness of the collector. It is impossible to collect everything. Collyer syndrome. And collection is only a substitute for understanding. If we could only collect, catalogue, name, describe, everything then we would know and control and understand. To dissect the exquisite corpse.
By the way, one version of an “exquisite corpse” is a drawing divided in three completed by different individuals. Maybe the single line of photographs was never intended…?
I’ll leave it there. My intention is not to tear down but to challenge. I write about what I react to, and what moves me strongly. In terms of the future of photography, whatever that possibly could mean, and Various Photographs, there is something there to consider. I think many people who saw the show saw “the photographs” and to them it looked like what they have come to expect from photography now, at least on the web. That met expectation, at least as I gauged it from the people at the show, the Saturday crowd, the more everyday crowd, not the photo-crowd, that met expectation is very much a barometer of where we are. Perhaps it is the failure of one kind of photography and the success of another. Perhaps photography has become “democratic” by becoming what many people wish, as opposed to photography being democratic by nature.
Robert,
I just came across you’re website while looking for photos of my show on-line. I’ve never seen your photos before or read your writing, and was surprised to find your long critique of my contribution to the New York Photo festival.
I’m glad that my exhibition inspired such a ferocious response from you, and I think many of your points are valid and interesting. All the back and forth with yourself about forests and trees and everything and anything got a little jumbled, and I’m not sure I follow you’re insights into Egglestons’ war (call me ‘garden variety’), but overall you bring up some good points. Is authorship incidental? How important is intention? Is your blind photographer friend like an elephant with a paintbrush? Are the photos astonishing because the author is blind, or because they are simply astonishing? Is the beauty then in the seeing eye of the beholder?
The big difference between us is right there. You talk about your blind friends’ astonishing photographs and use their example to further your statement about intention and the photographic act.
But if I knew about these great photographs, I would show them on my website, using the photographs to further my statement about what I think are good photographs, and let the work speak for itself.
You didn’t talk about my website at all. You know that’s where this Various Photographs project comes from right? I’m not a Becher collecting photos of towers, you’re right, but I’m not collecting “everything” as you say. I show about 3% of the photographs and artwork that get submitted to the site. I look at thousands of photographs in consideration for it. It’s not anti-elitist or elitist, it’s selective, based on my opinion and taste. I wouldn’t even really call it democratic, but if you want to use that word it’s ok. The photos in the Various Photographs show were chosen from this archive of images 3 years in the making. Like I said, what I’m trying to do with the site and the show (to quote my own statement) is to create an accessible venue where images can exist and co-exist, to build an expanding abstract narrative, an archive of images. I’m interested in the range of what photographs can do, how far they stretch outside their frames, and how they communicate with one another.
Now to quote you, from your ‘work in progress gallery’ on your site:
“The reason I picked up a camera in the first place was to experience the world and understand it. Later I realized I was primarily investigating my relation to the world and making meaning out of it for me… the process for me is like trying to decipher a language. Characters appear, and then a syntax. What does it mean? The same symbols over and over. A context changes, the symbol remains. A clue.”
Amid all your photographic cliches I can tell what you are trying to say, and I understand. In fact I think we are doing the same thing! It’s all about trying to make sense of things for yourself! And here’s to the hope that other people might see things the same way, or at least understand where you’re coming from. Isn’t that what Eggleston and the Bechers were doing? Isn’t that what everybody’s doing, trying to understand and be understood? Isn’t is all about communication? I just prefer to let the photos do the talking.
And how could you tell they weren’t “photo” people there on saturday? Was it their hats? It must have been awful for you, watching all those “everyday” people enjoying themselves in ignorant bliss. THAT is elitist Robert. And condescending. You assume you know more than them? Can you “see the forest” or whatever? You know what you do when you assume, right Robert?
I’m not claiming to know what the future of photography is (although my favorite answer to that question is ‘3D scratch and sniffs’), and as you noted, I don’t even really see myself as a curator, that word doesn’t really fit what I do. I’m a fan of photography, and I enjoy working with people who’s work I appreciate. It was significant to me that I could not install the work in Various Photographs in a singular line, because I wanted each piece in the show to have equal space and prominence, out of respect for the photos and photographers. Plus, half the job of editing the show was sequencing the work and with a grid I could not affectively do that. It’s not “back-peddling” to mention that, it’s an explanation of the the way the installation ended up.
You say that your reaction to the show was “god, everything has been photographed,” that it makes you “not want to take pictures”. It’s safe to say that that is your own personal problem (too bad, god knows we need more miserable photos of shopping malls… Zing!). How do I know I am right? Because I get dozens of emails everyday from photographers all over the world who have seen my website or been to one of my shows and have been inspired to not only take photos but to share them with me and the rest of the world. And THAT is really the point for me, to keep myself and hopefully others excited about photography.
Sorry it didn’t work for you.
- Tim Barber
….and then, the wind blew……