And it also brings up the 'rights of the subject' in poetry, an area
that often made me uneasy in some of Lowell's very personal sonnets -
and a point of contention in the Australian literary world with the
legal suppression of some of Dorothy Hewett's poems. Often poets will
lampoon other poets, and maybe they are fair game, but when it comes
to others, where does one draw the line? I asked Elizabeth Jolley once
if I could publish a poem about her and her husband because it painted
a not-so-flattering image of him (and he was very ill and not capable
of 'defending himself'), and she said, 'Publish anything you like. I
believe in absolute free speech.' I am yet to be tested if I believe
in that much free speech. (I didn't publish the poem. I
self-censored.)
Andrew
On 16/09/06, Douglas Barbour <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> I found your whole post thoughtful & provocative of thought, Mark. And
> responses such as Fred's.
>
> I think you're absolutely right about the moral abysm of putting these
> up for sale. But as I try to track from photography to poetry, I'm a
> little unsure. Does just approaching certain subjects, or is it that
> the poet/poem can't help 'exploiting' it?, put it in a similar moral
> space? Or would it be in the use (again, perhaps to be called
> 'exploitation?) of documents? I am thinking of what I see as proper
> use, & one which strikes me as 'political': that of Susan Howe (for
> example; I know, I keep coming back to her work), which seems to me to
> be a highly 'moral' attempt to come to terms with historical violence
> manifest in various times & ways.
>
> We still see poetry as definitely a form of art; photography remains
> ambiguously on the border, sometimes in, sometimes out. Which does
> bring us back to your comments on intention, of both photographers &
> subjects, as well as just exactly what was the intention (beyond making
> money off them) of the curator here...
>
> Yeah: makes me think...
>
> Doug
> On 15-Sep-06, at 1:44 PM, Mark Weiss wrote:
>
> > Last night I went to an opening of a photography show at the Steven
> > Karsher Gallery in NY's Chelsea. Some of the issues it raised for me
> > resonate with recent discussions here.
> >
> > It was a show of mug shots from about 1930 to the mid 60s, apparently
> > discards from five or six midwestern police stations, bought, and
> > framed for exhibition. In maybe 3/4 of cases there was no identifying
> > documentation, but where there was the alleged crimes were fairly
> > petty--vagrancy, check kiting, unlawful assembly, forgery of small-sum
> > checks, shoplifting--and many had not yet been tried, and a few had
> > had their charges dropped. But context made them all into hardened
> > criminals. Most of the faces betrayed no clearly-identifiable emotion
> > (though a few appeared mildly defiant and a few others looked
> > terrified) during what must have been among the most humiliating
> > moments of their lives. The photos, all by anonymous cops who weren't
> > out to make art or engage the sitters, were interesting largely
> > because of hair and clothing styles and the lurid context in which
> > they were made. The subjects appeared to be overwhelmingly working
> > class or sub-working class, people that the dressy crowd at the show
> > would be unlikely to notice.
> >
> > I was extremely uncomfortable. It was impossible not to query these
> > anonymous faces, but to what end? They had become art by virtue of
> > their placement on the walls of the gallery. No one had asked their
> > permission. In some cases the subjects were presumably still alive, as
> > they were young when their photos were taken in the 60s. In the
> > instances in which their names were known no one had attempted to
> > contact them or their heirs. It seemed to me that they had been turned
> > into freaks for our delectation, that there had been an essential
> > violation.
> >
> > I thought about my very different reactions to other shows of
> > unwitting subjects by anonymous photographers. Some years ago I saw at
> > the Los Angeles County Museum a show of photos taken for bureaucratic
> > record keeping just prior to the subjects' executions by anonymous
> > photographers, from childhood to extreme old age, charged with no
> > crimes, victims of Pol Pot's insanity and the army of sociopaths he'd
> > managed to assemble. They were terrified, and eloquent. Last year the
> > New York Historical Society mounted an exhibition of lynching
> > postcards--that's right, they were commercially produced and sold like
> > hotcakes immediately after the events, to be sent to one's loved-ones.
> > On permanent display at the Holocaust Museum in Washington are family
> > pictures of 1500 people, all that's left of the 5000 killed by the
> > nazis in one stetl. In each case it was almost unbearable being in the
> > room with them. But I didn't feel the queaziness that I felt last
> > night. I think the setting, and the motive, had a lot to do with my
> > feelings. These were museum shows, mounted for an explicitly political
> > purpose, as an indictment not of the subjects but of their killers,
> > and a plea fro remembrance and for such things never to happen again.
> > Faint hope of that, but one's moral position in their presence was
> > unambiguous and unambivalent--these people were being appropriated,
> > but it was hard to believe that they would have objected to this shred
> > of their humanity being preserved. And they weren't for sale--the
> > gallery was offering its wares for between $500 and $700 for each of
> > the 1x2 inch photos, and one could also buy a copy of limited edition
> > poster-sized blowups of four of the shots, signed by the curator as if
> > he was the artist, at $500 a pop, suitable for hanging over one's
> > expensive couch. The worst moment of someone's life, perhaps, sold to
> > the highest bidder. Utter corruption, it seemed to me. The show was
> > called "Least Wanted." The irony of the photos being sold as luxury
> > items seemed to have been lost on those involved.
> >
> > I own a few anonymous portraits of anonymous subjects, tintypes and
> > daguerotypes that I've found at tag sales. Much of the interest is
> > historical nostalgia. I'm certainly violating someone's space, but
> > between me and the subject is a photographer paid or persuaded to take
> > the picture, with whom the subject is collaborating--the image put
> > forward is meant to be a shared image.
> >
> > Some of the pleasure of photo portraits is voyeuristic, irreducibly
> > so. The morality of photography is I think about channeling that
> > voyeurism by means of explicit intentionality, and the judgement one
> > makes is about what that intention may have been. Belloq's portraits
> > of Storeyville whores are so clearly the product of a shared
> > intentionality that they transcend the moral qualms one would have
> > expected to be present.
> >
> > When I expressed some of these thoughts to a friend at last night's
> > opening she asked me what I thought about Diane Arbus. Arbus shot a
> > wide range of subjects, but some of her best work, and certainly her
> > most famous, was portraits of freaks of one kind or another. Her
> > subjects knew what she was doing--they consented to the portraits,
> > usually shot in their homes. And there was something else. Arbus, who
> > as a young woman was movie-star beautiful, seems to have thought of
> > herself as a freak, and in the portraits there's both a sense of
> > identification and a compassion that have been noted by critic after
> > critic. Either it's there or Arbus was able to fabricate it pretty
> > convincingly. The portraits appear to have cost her something, as did
> > Belloq's. The cost behind last night's mug shots was nonexistent for
> > the curator, who I think was right in a sense to sign his name to the
> > posters--he was the one who decided they were art, and he was the one
> > who would pocket the cash. As Carlos just told me, he was signing a
> > check to himself.
> >
> > Mark
> >
> >
> Douglas Barbour
> 11655 - 72 Avenue NW
> Edmonton Ab T6G 0B9
> (780) 436 3320
> http://www.ualberta.ca/~dbarbour/
>
> Latest book: Continuations (with Sheila E Murphy)
> http://www.uap.ualberta.ca/UAP.asp?LID=41&bookID=664
>
> Where philosophy stops, poetry is impelled to begin. He was
> a man, far away from home, biting his nails at destiny.
>
> Susan Howe
>
--
Andrew
http://hispirits.blogspot.com/
http://www.bam.com.au/andrew
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