No answers from me, but I was trying to point to the perhaps romantic
concept of cost, as well as intention.
Let's throw in the Kuleshov effect, about film but equally applicable
to photography. There's a good summary at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuleshov_Effect. The Russian director
Kuleshov, shortly after the revolution, used a piece of pre-existing
film of a famous pre-revolutionary actor. He used it three times, in
three different contexts, and the critics praised the emotive power
of the actor, his emotional versatility.
Mark
At 11:44 AM 9/16/2006, you 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
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