Sequence and the Languages of Subjectivty and Objectivity

8/12/2019 Sequence and the Languages of Subjectivty and Objectivity

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The Photographic Sequence and languages of subjectivity and objectivity…



One question: is a photograph ever ‘alone’? Is there ever

ONE photograph or is photography always involving

the MANY?

Three examples:

Tableau, Series, Montage





What is a Series

and/or

a Sequence? Two examples… Robert Frank Bernd & Hilla Becher











The Series: The use of photography to produce a body of images. A sequenceof images that are different yet similar enough to relate as a series.

Often bound by a shared subject: an idea, a subject, a location, a

theme… One idea / subject / location

Many photographs to delineate it… Photography: a dialectic between ‘narrativity’ and ‘stasis’

(movement of narrative and frozen image) see George Baker, ‘Photography’s Expanded Field’, October , vol.

114, 2005



The Series: The use of photography to produce a body of images. A sequenceof images that are different yet similar enough to relate as a series.

Often bound by a shared subject: an idea, a subject, a location, a

theme… One idea / subject / location

Many photographs to delineate it… Photography: a dialectic between ‘narrativity’ and ‘stasis’

(movement of narrative and frozen image)

see George Baker, ‘Photography’s Expanded Field’, October , vol.

114, 2005



Series: a collection of images produced in a way that demonstrates a relation

(a series of images of cats, for example) >a linking theme… Sequence: the way in which a series of images are put together, a way in which

images are made to be read together… >a particular articulation




(a series of images of cats, for example) >a linking theme…

Sequence: the way in which a series of images are put together, a way in which





(a series of images of cats, for example) >a linking theme… Sequence: the way in which a series of images are put together, a way in which




The ‘Kuleshov e! ect’

What happens when (in film) you follow a shot of animpassive man’s face by: food, a dead child, a woman

A key issue for sequencing…

MONTAGE









Three models of Soviet cinematic montage: Esfir Shub – #to take pre-existing footage and to recontextualise it through

image-order and caption:

The Fall of the Romanov Dynasty

Sergei Eisenstein – in the conflict between two shot meaning arises: Battleship Potemkin

Dziga Vertov – meaning comes from the rhythm of shots:

Man With a Movie Camera



Esfir Shub: …”emphasis on the fact is an emphasis not

only to show the fact, but to enable it to be examinedand, having examined it, to be kept in mind.”

The long take as a form of contemplative viewing, thecaption as a way to re-consider an image

Esfir Shub, Zhizin' moya - kinematograf ,

cited in Josh Malitsky, 'Esfir Shub and the Film Factory-Archive:

Soviet documentary from 1925-1928'



Sergei Eisenstein:

montage is a dialectical collision of images…montage is not a linkage of one idea to another – not abrick by brick approach used to demonstrate, or expound ,a concept - instead it is:

“…from the collision of two given factors arises aconcept… So montage is conflict.”

Sergei Eisenstein cited in Peter Wollen, ‘Eisenstein’s Aesthetics’ in

his Signs and Meaning in the Cinema, London: BFI Publishing, 1998,

p.30.



Dziga Vertov:

montage formed through movement and intervals…

“Cinema is… the art of inventing movements…

Drawings in motion. Blueprints in motion. Plans for the

future. The theory of relativity on the screen…

Our eyes, spinning like propellers, take of into the futureon the wings of hypothesis”

Dziga Vertov, We: Variant of a Manifesto, 1922



Two examples of the types of series to address (using the terms of

Jean-Francois Chevrier’s 1989 essay) *The lyrical abstraction (the associative essay) *The analytical comparison (the work of minimal difference) ‘The Adventure of the Picture [Tableau] Form in the History of

Photography’ originally published in Photo-Kunst: Arbeiten aus 150

Jahren (1989 ), reprinted in The Last Picture Show: Artists Using

Photography: 1960-1982 (2003)



THE PHOTO ESSAY

W EUGENE SMITH / ROBERT FRANK / THE FAMILY OF MAN



THE PHOTO ESSAY

W EUGENE SMITH / ROBERT FRANK / THE FAMILY OF MAN





The Family of Man

1955 curated by Edward Steichen



El Lissitzky & Sergei Senkin

Pressa Exhibition

1928



BIZ & Life: The development of the photo-essay



Larry Burrows

One Ride with Yankee Papa 13

1965















Robert Frank

Black White and Things 1952/1994















































































Series (linking themes):

Black / White / Things

(allegory of photography?) Black/White: mood? color? Things: ‘subject’ of photography, the thing is that which is hard

to name…

Sequencing (articulation):

Beginning, middle, end? (a story?) Circularity, association, openings and recurrence…



Series (linking themes):

Black / White / Things

(allegory of photography?) Black/White: mood? color? Things: ‘subject’ of photography, the thing is that which is hard

to name…

Sequencing (articulation):

Beginning, middle, end? (a story?) Circularity, association, openings and recurrence…



Sarah Greenough, ‘Fragments that Make a Whole: Meaning in Photographic

Sequences’ Black White and Things as a rejection of Life magazine essay format… An effort to make ‘otherwise’ than ‘beginning-middle-end A range of emotions (hope/despair) and that which ‘falls-out’ (things) Things:

“on one level they are pictures of parades…”but on an other they represent courtship/cruelty, attachment/loneliness,

devotion/inhumanity… The expectation ‘overturned’: children as cruel, doll as suffocating…

A revolt against photography as ‘universal language’







Clear symbols used, but meanings are not made evident… Frank: “Something must be left for the onlooker… He must have something to

see. It is not all said for him.”

Rather than ‘explication’ there is a sequence that is:

“disjointed, circular, ambiguous and tentative. It demonstrates that there are

no decisive moments, no instance when the truth is clarified through theperfect combination of form, gesture and expression” (Greenough) No ‘truth’ just ‘things’ somewhere between hope and despair…



Expectation? Symbols? Potentiality (the child) The unifying ideal (the flag) How do these work on each other?

R b t F k



Robert Frank

The Americans 1959



















Series: linking places, symbols and themes? America (place: between ideal and experience) Car (object, practice: driving, the road… [fantasy of freedom?]) Flag (as unifier, as symbol of unity, as covering)

Sequence: particular articulation

-Works through emphatic and unemphatic images (the ‘punch’ and the ‘pause’) -The ‘ramble’ or wander through a series of places and symbols, not ananalytical / didactic exposition… -Single image per spread: no juxtaposition; a procession utilising the viewer’s

active “recollection and anticipation”



Series: linking places, symbols and themes? America (place: between ideal and experience) Car (object, practice: driving, the road… [fantasy of freedom?]) Flag (as unifier, as symbol of unity, as covering) Sequence: particular articulation

-Works through emphatic and unemphatic images (the ‘punch’ and the ‘pause’) -The ‘ramble’ or wander through a series of places and symbols, not ananalytical / didactic exposition… -Single image per spread: no juxtaposition; a procession utilising the viewer’s

active “recollection and anticipation”



Frank: The attempt to make a “visual study of a civilisation”

“I speak of things that are there, anywhere and everywhere – #easily found, not

easily selected and interpreted”



A visual style: free / loose; the associative leap, the “impassioned cries”

[ & the cut-up] … link to Beatnik authors: Jack Kerouac / Allen Ginsberg

[ & William Burroughs] importance of experience over ‘concept’ The concept ‘worked through’ by sequence… Allen Ginsberg: “Spontaneous glance – accident truth”

Robert Frank



Flamingo 1996









































Series? The retrospective The ‘quiet’ moment… The reflection on the past from the present

Sequence? The multi-panel (all on a page) The image-(repetition)-word relation… Cinematic montage / Oblique non-narrative…



Series? The retrospective The ‘quiet’ moment… The reflection on the past from the present Sequence? The multi-panel (all on a page) The image-(repetition)-word relation… Cinematic montage / Oblique non-narrative…



Michael Schmidt U-NI-TY

1996 (Scalo Press)









Annelies Strba Shades of Time

1997 (Lars Muller Publishers)



Alec Soth

Niagara

2006



Yto Barrada A Life Full of Holes: The Strait Project 2005

THE WORK OF ANALYSIS B d & Hill B h



THE WORK OF ANALYSIS: Bernd & Hilla Becher





Bernd & Hilla Becher



Typologies 1990



























































Series?



Series? BuildingsDisappearance (the about to be demolished) Sequence? Buildings grouped by type Never a single image, always a cluster The grid format… Neutrality…

Series?



Series? BuildingsDisappearance (the about to be demolished) Sequence? Buildings grouped by type Never a single image, always a cluster The grid format… Neutrality… Objectivity?



TYPOLOGY / TAXONOMY / ARCHIVE



TYPOLOGY / TAXONOMY / ARCHIVE

Donald Judd / Andy Warhol: the logic of repetition and seriality



Donald Judd / Andy Warhol: the logic of repetition and seriality

ONE THING AFTER AN OTHER



ONE THING AFTER AN OTHER

(no beginning-middle-end, but no associative narrative either…

InfiniteInterminable

SCIENCE?



Bechers:

“The approach begins with a description of the outer appearance of an animal orplant, everything that can be recognized on the outside, such as size, colour, and therelationship of parts to the whole. Then the inner organs are investigated, the structureor anatomy. Finally the developmental history and questions of function are lookedinto, including the niche each species fills in its environment and in its own specificbiotype. If you transfer this method to other areas, it is possible to investigate any kind ofsubject. You can say for example, that a blast furnace built in the last century that hasbeen continually updated and pipe systems added on has undergone stages just like aninsect. In both cases it is possible to follow the development historically and compare itwith similar or dissimilar forms.”

The work of objectivity?

SCIENCE?



Bechers:

“The approach begins with a description of the outer appearance of an animal orplant, everything that can be recognized on the outside, such as size, colour, and therelationship of parts to the whole. Then the inner organs are investigated, the structureor anatomy. Finally the developmental history and questions of function are lookedinto, including the niche each species fills in its environment and in its own specificbiotype. If you transfer this method to other areas, it is possible to investigate any kind ofsubject. You can say for example, that a blast furnace built in the last century that hasbeen continually updated and pipe systems added on has undergone stages just like aninsect. In both cases it is possible to follow the development historicallyand compare it with similar or dissimilar forms.”

The work of objectivity?

The different works of comparison: IN h f R b F k



IN the frame: Robert Frank

BETWEEN the frames: Bechers

The different works of comparison: IN the frame: Robert Frank

BETWEEN th f B h




The different works of comparison: IN the frame: Robert Frank

BETWEEN th f B h




The images are so particular to their project they seem to resist semiotic analysis

[in terms of coding they seem able to reject all readings – a kind of non stick /



[in terms of coding, they seem able to reject all readings a kind of non-stick /

wipe-clean photography] Their relation to realism / documentary could be seen to be problematic as the

images deny motivation, affect or event, seemingly rejecting the capturing of the

‘moment’ replacing that with the play of infinite and minute variation. [The multi-

part nature of the works denies the ‘singularity’ of the photographic image] Theodor Adorno: “out of nothing, something happens”

Are the Bechers’ photographs ‘in-significant’ - do they refuse to signify? If so, why? Blake Stimson: the Bechers’ work = “an anatomy of relations between constituent

parts” – a non-heroic engagement with industry / machine-age technology, against

‘decisive moment’ or human interest via affect / sentiment from ‘The Photographic Comportment of Bernd and Hilla Becher’ in his The Pivotof the World: Photography and its Nation, MIT Press, 2006


[in terms of coding they seem able to reject all readings – a kind of non-stick /



























[in terms of coding, they seem able to reject all readings a kind of non stick /










Another serial series - August Sander: “the basic thought of my photographic work Citizens of the Twentieth Century,which began in 1910… is nothing but… an attempt to make a physiognomical

time exposure of German man”







August Sander: a two pronged method… Traditional form: the portrait

(transmissibility of the likeness of the sitter – a ‘celebration’ of their

identity) Radical form: the series, the sequence

(a form that requires a suppression of style and a focus on

relationality – comparing one image to the next – a giving away of

‘originality’ of each image [they become ‘boring’] to allow a whole

system to emerge… the piece becomes a composite portrait of anation)



Rineke Dijkstra





Candida Hofer





The serial structure: the

informational display… Information not ‘experience’

Hans Haacke Shapolsky et al. Manhattan Real

Estate Holdings, A Real-TimeSocial System, as of May 1 1971 1971





William Wegman, Ray-O-Vac, 1973



Eleanor Antin, Carving: A Traditional Sculpture, 1972



Ed Ruscha, Twenty Six Gasoline Stations, 1962









Ed Ruscha, Thirty Four Parking Lots, 1967



Ed Ruscha Every Building on the Sunset Strip, 1966 Repetition of point of view: de-privileging the photographic moment…









Douglas Huebler Variable Piece no.101

1973



Sequence and the Languages of Subjectivty and Objectivity

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