Archives, Research, and Practice

Walker Evans. Photographic archive of the American Dustbowl during the Great Depression, The Farm Security Administration, lower class Americans of the 20th century

August Sander. Made it a goal of his to create an archive of "citizens of the 20th century," archive of the the German population in the 20th century, cultural archive of the German people of the 20th century.

"The camera is integrated into a larger ensemble: a bureaucratic-clerical-statistical system of intelligence. This system can be described as a sophisticated form of the archive. The central artifact of this system is not the camera but the filling cabinet."

Allan Sekula, "The Body and the Archive"
Allan Sekula, "Reading an Archive"
George Baker, "Photography's Expanded Field"

This quote from Allan Sekula's "The Body and the Archive" lingers with me the most out of the densely packed information contained in the readings this week. To me this quote adequately illustrates photography's relationship to the archive; the necessity that both have for one another. Photography makes the archive possible and, in turn, the archive continues to bring relevance to photography; through the many technological, conceptional, stylistic, social, cultural, etc changes that have caused the importance other forms of representation and expression to dim to a mere flicker. This relationship is, at its best, abusive. On one hand photography and the archive work to heighten each others relevance within reality while continuously threatening to destroy one another (amidst their role in the destruction of the reality they so wish to be relevant within). In the beginning photography rocked the representational art world that existed at its birth, changed the public fascination with resemblance and lessened the importance of the powerhouse that was painting by supplanting it with its superior (and cheaper) means of "truthfully" showing reality to those who existed within it. In doing so photography became a theoretical object, threatened by its own representation to itself and teetered on the verge of losing its own future. That is where I believe the archive came into play and pulled photography from the whirlpool that it had created for itself. The archive gave power back to the photograph, beyond merely representing what was pictured within the image, the photograph then began to represent entire groups of people, overarching ideas, historical periods, cultures, etc (I'll even go so far as to suggest that maybe photography and its role with the archive gave birth to art history as we know it today). The archive is the filing cabinet which takes a group of scattered seemingly unrelated images of people, places, things that float in a vortex of non-importance, beyond their power to show the viewer what is contained within the frame, and organizes these photographs into groups that hint at ideologies, philosophies, histories, etc. within the culture apparatus (or within reality) so that rather than just see one can begin to understand how the world is organized and how, beyond the physical, ideas, histories, philosophies, and other non-physical forms are recognized.

But, like I said before, even though photography is seemingly heightened by the presence of the archive it was photography that created a need for the visual archive. What first comes to mind is the function and response that was created by photography in the 19th century; "The private moment of sentimental individuation, the look at the frozen gaze-of-the-loved-one, was shadowed by two other public looks: a look up, at one's "betters," and a look down at one's "inferiors." Not only was photography showing the viewer something, allowing them to see and reflect on what was in front of them, but the photograph made it possible for judgment to be passed and the physical knowledge of how someone from "high class" society might differ from someone from a "lower class," could be realized and thus fanning the flames of class struggle. At this time the archive was of great importance within the police system of identifying and organizing criminals and it was through Jeremy Bentham's proposal of The Panopticon that the (criminal) archive and (19th century) photography came together to uplift one another into higher realms of significance.

There was one example that Sekula used to illustrated the dialectic relationship between photography and the archive that very coherently explains and embodies what I have been struggling with in the paragraphs above and that was his comparison of Bertillon and Galton. "Bertillon's nominalist system of identification and Galton's essentialist system of typology constitute not only the two poles of positivist attempts to regular social deviance by means of photography, but also the two poles of these attempts to regular the semantic traffic in photographs. Bertillon sought to embed the photograph in the archive. Galton sought to embed the archive in the photograph."

Besides the dialectic relationship which exists both within my idea and in Sekula's example I am particularly interested in the idea of embeding the archive in the photograph and I find myself returning to a previous post where I illustrated Barthes idea of a "Text" with a photograph. Peneolope Umbrico's Suns from Flickr is the archive existing within the photograph, or in this case within the finished piece. Like Galton's work Umbrico composites photographs, but in her work the photographs are found and then stitched together into one large overwhelming piece that archives a cultural and worldly ritualistic obsession with photographing the sun, as well as an archive of visual physical representation of the sun itself.

The Post

Hal Foster, "1984" from Art Since 1900
Frederic Jameson, "Postmodernism, or The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism"
Jean Francois Lyotard, Into to The Postmodern Condition
Douglas Crimp, "Appropriating Appropriation"

It seems to me that the only intelligent discourse that we are capable of performing as human beings is that of resemblance. Everything else is mimicry, representation, mirror, resemblance. Through our own obsession we have broken everything in this world to representation of representations. As ancient beings we struggled to etch the world around us on the walls of the caves we sought shelter in; our faith in gods who held the stars up in the sky, kept the ground from breaking apart...we were made in their likeness and image. Our need to represent evolved into drawings on the pottery we used for practical means in every day life, to statues which adorned our places of ritual and worship, to the finely crafted paintings of the Renaissance, and many other instances within our timeline. Photography changed everything because of its ability to represent perfectly what was in front of the lens, but even that did not fully satisfy. We sought to represent reality to itself and to appropriate our own existence. Succeeding we destroyed reality only to recreate it as a "hyper-reality" where image became more sacred than touch. What does it even mean anymore to see something; something directly in front of you, something that you could reach out and touch? Is the image of a rainbow or the physical rainbow in the sky more valid; more important? Do questions like these even matter in this hyper-reality...

In Jean-Francois Lyotard's Introduction to The Postmodern Condition he opens with "[s]cience has always been in conflict with narratives." And I wonder what exactly he means by that, is it that science opposes myth and story. What narrative does not eventually turn into fable; what was once thought science begin to morph into a narrative. Can we continue to take the world around us and photograph it, paint it, form it into words and put it into little boxes and claim that we have found the truth, or is it just a couple of hundred of years that separates science from the fable and vise versa? I am not claiming that science is not truth or valid, because to me personally I consider it very truthful. But, if the truths of the ages (from 10,000 B.C. to 1776 A.D.) have succumbed to fable what would kept science of the 20th century from doing so as well? It is in this desire of representation that we begin to deconstruct our reality again and again and in ways never thought imagined. "I will use the term modern to designate any science that legitimates itself with reference to a metadiscourse [...] making an explicit appeal to some grand narrative; such as the dialectics of Spirit, the hermeneutics of meaning, the emancipation of the rational or working subject, or the creation of wealth" and "I define postmodern as incredulity towards metanarratives [...] to the obsolescence of the metanarrative apparatus of legitimation corresponds, most notably, the crisis of metaphysical philosophy and of the university institution which in the past relied on it." So it is to my understanding through Lyotard that postmodernism is a representation of modernism to itself; postmodernism holds the mirror up in from of modernism to reveal its faults, flaws, and message.

When we can no longer be contented with representing just objects that we observe in reality but with the invention of photography we have been seduced by the representations of ideas, faith, art, culture, etc to themselves. The reasoning between why we believed that artistic practices and everyday life are separate from one another are beginning to crumble because of this obsessive nature to always need to represent some thing in reality to some thing else (when we could no longer have the physical we turned to the metaphysical, the philosophical, the political, etc). What I first thought to be a simplistic, almost pitiful, reaction to the world around us has evolved over time (and through my understanding in writing this blog) into a highly intelligent approach to figuring this structure, this cage, that we have created for ourselves. Art is the ultimate form of resemblance and it is only through it that we can begin to tell of the texture and color of the bars which surround us. But, in a way we have created our own monster; art is a response to objects in life, then to ritual and religion, then dictated by politics, to a weapon used against the ideological apparatuses that have erected all around us, and finally to reality itself whereas it is true if we merely turned things upon themselves...objects, ritual and religion, politics, the cultural apparatus, and reality are merely responding to art itself.

Theories of Originality

The Concepts of the original and the copy. Was originality simply a modernist illusion?

Jean Baudrillard, "The Hyper-realism of Simulation"
Rosalind Krauss, "The Originality of the Avant Garde"

In "The Originality of the Avant Garde" Rosalind Krauss begins by discussing Rodin and the controversey that arose through works of art he created recast after his death. Many people would view this "violation" of the artist as a meaningless repetitious "fake," but as Krauss points out in further discussion within the essay; Rodin himself would not have considered a finished sculpture an "original" had he done it himself, alive and well. For Rodin, who as Krauss pointed out may not have done all his sculptures himself in the first place, it was the actual cast which was the original and the "finished product" which came out of it, merely a repetition of the original itself, a representation of design, imagination, and idea which Rodin formed into physicality through his cast. His sculptures were meant to be repetitious of the original, that was their very purpose, all of his artwork were "multiple copies that exist in the absence of an original" because the original was not available; to display merely a casting in an exhibit would have meant showcasing something incomplete, it is the cast and action of creating a multiple as well as the copy in full form which completes his idea. Rodin was essentially working in a medium that was meant for reproduction.

But, what form of art is not a reproduction and/or representation of if not reality, then at least an idea. As Krauss goes on to explain even Abstract and Avant Garde artwork there may not be a clear resemblance of reality within the work, but a representation of an idea, such as that of the grid. Not only is the grid an unoriginal idea but it is also repetitious by nature; which for the Avant Garde artist that realization would have been a hard pill to swallow. By trying their hardest to avoid resembling reality like the photography, painting, etc. of the past the Avant Garde artists had recreated one of the most basic concepts ingrained in human nature (continuously repeating it in their artwork) that was defined by its repetitious nature; seems kind of ironic that in an effort to get away from it, they only simplified the idea of repetition and resemblance. And because of this notion then originality is unattainable because if a work of art is not made for repetition and multiplicity then it is made for resemblance. Through a repetitious medium an original is unobtainable and when artwork is made in the realm of resembling ideas and/or reality then originality cannot be grasped. So can the unoriginal have an original and can an original be original?

The grid utilized in Greek architecture...

...and simplified in Mondrian.

In "The Hyper-realism of Simulation" by Jean Baudrillard he fully breaks down the notion of reality and explains its destruction through imagery and art. It seems that the idea to advertise and project is somehow ingrained in us naturally; before the mass printing press or photography existed the entire human race was always set on advertising or representing our reality to ourselves, almost as if it would make reality more "real" and concrete. I think this need for representation is almost like the idea of religion: a coping mechanism created by us as a way to deal with our existance and our place within what exists, "reality." With the invention of the mass printing press and then photography this urge heightened and the means to represent our reality was refined. We no longer merely resemble reality and our place within it, but we have gained the power to recreate it; thus reality becomes hyper-reality. Through hyper-realism what is decidedly imaginary becomes blurred as does the idea of the "real." Through repetitious media, such as photography, we no longer needed to see or touch an object to know of its reality or existence, that was dictated to us by its image within advertisements and books. Now with the birth of photoshop and other aspects of the digital environment we can create new realities for ourselves; "reality is stranger than fiction." I question what exactly this means for not only myself as an artist, but as a human being. Have we reached our ultimate level of resemblance and advertisement or is there still yet another avenue that would not only destroy reality and blur the lines between fact and fiction, but perhaps make the imagined a reality?

(Our new reality. Fictitious and imaginary standard of beauty that is unattainable, brought to us by a medium that is thought to only depict what is real and manipulated into a fantasy by the digital environment. For some who viewed this advertisement this ideal became their reality and was not longer rooted in the imaginary)

Art as Popular Culture; Art as Critique of Popular Culture

Is art the conscience of culture?
Clement Greenberg, "Avant Garde and Kitsch"
Rosalind Krauss, "Reinventing the Medium"
Guy Debord, excerpts from the Society of the Spectacle (Chapter 8)
Richard Hamilton, "For the Finest Art, Try Pop"

Riding upon the melancholy, hopeless wave that I felt from last weeks set of readings; of our inability to separate ourselves from the structure of our culture as a bourgeoisie controlled apparatus and industry, one that consumes everything in its path and mutates it for its own means I felt a little lost as an artist. But, though my understanding of the readings assigned for this week I have come to have a more optimistic outlook on myself as an individual and for the art industry as a whole.

Art can be used as a weapon against the Culture Industry and Ideological Apparatuses of our society by creating works that directly reference our understanding and acknowledgment to this structure in which everything in our lives is contained. We may not be able to be free of these structures, but by utilizing various artistic mediums to illustrate our awareness of this predicament we can turn it back on itself and use the cycle of Culture Industry for our own purposes.

In "Reinventing the Medium" by Rosalind Krauss she specifically equates a "reinventing" of all art to photography and that through its obsolescence all other medium changed from mere resemblence to awareness. I believe that Krauss uses the word "obsolecence" to define the idea that photograph's reference to the world it captures is also a reference to itself, therefore it is obsolete because it is continually referring to itself while referring to itself. This obsolescence is what transformed photography into a theoretical object and "in becoming a theoretical object, photography loses its specificity as a medium," once again the cyclical nature of photography is highlighted in its essence and purpose. Photography has become more than aesthetics and historical relations, it is a theoretical object that has transformed the preconceived notions found within all mediums. After the introduction of photography in the 1800s, painter during the early 1900s responded to photography's superior method of resemblance by creating paintings which referred to the very aestheticism of painting, its method of being as a physical technical form; painting was referencing itself to itself much like photography has the innate capacity to do. And although this has been viewed by many, including Clement Greenberg in "Avant Garde and Kitch," as an unproductive period of time for painting I believe that it was vital for the medium to show it's awareness of the photographic medium by this shift towards aestheticism and obsolescence so that it may transcend beyond itself and become reinvented as relevant instance within society.

It is this mode of transformation and evolution highlighted in "Reinvention of the Medium" that we must be aware of and use when creating works of art so that we may use the structure and Culture Industry system to sustain artistic forms and combat the dumbing down, repetitious, and "kitschy" modes of the Culture Industry and Ideological Structure. We must take back kitsch and use it for our own means as discussed in "Avant Garde and Kitsch" to make it less useful for the bourgeoisie (ruling class) and to turn its impact against the cyclical structure that the Apparatus and Industry has created by using the idea of the politeriate as a collective whole, as a "mass" against ourselves. We will then use their "kitsch" against them. In recent contemporary art it has been Pop Art which I feel that has been the most useful in utalizing this method against the Industry/Apparatus and it is the idea of the "Happening" which may reinvent it anew. As long as we continue to cycle ourselves, reinvent, and evolve with the overarching culture structures we will be able to contend with its overpowering domination of the idea of the individual and in some instances, keep ourselves one step ahead.

Suns from Flickr by Penelope Umbrico (Text)

Regarding Roland Barthes essay "From Work to Text" I have selected a series of photographs titled Suns from Flickr by Penelope Umbrico to illustrated what I fell is the best representation of "Text" within a photograph.