Photograph, Meaning and the Excessive Vision  /  Madan Gopal Singh

In a way, this project deals with the beginnings, evolution and partial
denouements of a technological
drive linked up with the narrative drive of an entire people of the Indian
sub-continent. It deals with
their recorded desire to continuously cast themselves within the mirror-images
of remembrance and
imagination. Remembering the self; imagining the other. It is about the advent
of modenity and its
virtual death to-day. It is about identities and their eventual dissolution -
both joyous and painful in its
politico-cultural and often destinal sweep…

A photograph is often more than a document / The silent lure of time

It allows you to hold time, feel its gentle, dormant pulse. The time has not
only been saturated within
the image, it has also left its trace on the paper that contains the burden of
chromes. In this way, it
transforms what appears to be a mere document into a mental landscape and
history into 'hystory'
creating a moving puncept of both history and hysteria. This double register
of amazing economy
could be seen excessively at work within a single frame. On the edge of the
photographic document,
invariably, exists a resonance - inviting fictional possibilities. No other
mode of visuality quite
achieves or even aspires to achieve this double mode of articulation.

Our proposed anthology would bring the focus on a simultaneity embedded in the
image-drive rather
than on a predictably periodized documentative drive. It is our view that the
resonance of history
could also be eloquently brought about through such juxtapositions. To
understand history and also
thephotograph, it becomes important to look beyond the chronicle of
image-linearity.

We propose therefore to deal with the inevitable periodization of the last
century of images through
broadly three categories of images - namely, the landscape, community and
confluence. In all three
categories of visual experience, the emphasis would be repeatedly placed on
pluralities as well as the
inherent, ironical modes of dissonance. For instance, a landscape could be a
purely aesthetic category
of visual experience; it could be packaged as a touristy kitsch; it could be
the beginning of
topographic de-alienation and passion; it could as the eloquence of ecology
function as an activist
signpost; it could become not so suddenly marked with the presence of people
and signs of
development; it may eventually disappear and the people and "the temples of
modernity" may final
appear as the mental landscapes in lieu of others etc. The mode of
juxtaposition and simultaneity
would be as much celebrative as polemical. The attempt would be to recreate /
reconstruct narratives
of our history as well as those of the photograph.

The principal binary of the antholgy would be remembrance and imagination
vis-a-vis the self - the
self being a highly mercurial notion cutting across categories of creation,
reception and
reconstruction.

India - the Remembered / Imagined Self

Through the defile of light (and indeed darkness) images pass in a stop-go
movement. Are these the
projections of a remembered self or the unambiguous resonance of  an imagined
topograghy of yore?
Even as a nascent, modern India steps into the twentieth century, it is still
marked by echoes of stony
distances - myriad seasons of tonality! There is a distinct quality of call to
our early photographic
visuality which is not entirely explained away by the lure of nostalgia. The
new India is still an
amorphous landscape of 'imagined communities'. There exists a marked romance
of distances. The
photograph appears like a dream close to the moment of nascence - a nation, a
definable exchange
and the technology itself. Perhaps, one of the ways to vanquish distances is
to create the mystique of
'otherness' photographically. The burnished landscapes would magically
transform / dissolve into the
darkling landscapes; the shining ebony skin of the (photographic) subject
would smile through and
across  the gaze of the 'other' - the camera and the alien master / mendicant
around whose neck it is
slung - in a curious reversal of looking. The camera thus documents within the
space of the image a
meeting between two strangers - within and without the frame. The paper-image
is but an imprint of
such a meeting.

Ref: The quaint south, the northeast, the Burmese and the
close-to-mountains-Buddhism
(Lahaul-Spiti in the North, for instance), the tribals from central India and
the Andamans. The
clear division between the mainland(s) and the margins is obsessively followed
in whichever space
the technauteurs find themselves.
Asides: The sleeping landscapes bring about unusual work culture and a
consequent movement of
the body and gaze. The idea of labour, subsistence and existence changes
drastically. A lone
electricity bulb atop a hill, an open tap with its water flying off in strong
wind, a hunting
camouflage…the imagery begins to haunt endlessly. Between the mountains and
the sea are
river-beds disappearing behind an inviting curtain of forests. The cities are
envisioned from a
distance, in an oneiric haze. And then, as if, one enters the known fictive
terrain of the kasba but
why do not stop getting continuously surprised by the sounds and the smells of
the small town as
much as by the decalic photograph?

Questions: Does the photograph disband the centre-margin divide? Does it
dissolve the rhetoric of
the photograph as a master / mendicant traveller? Does it end the lure of the
spatial and temporal
romance? If yes, does it bring another joyous dimension into play? Or, is it
just the advancement
of technology which forces the agenda of neo-modernities? Where does the
photographer figure in
all this?

Is it a hope of mastering and integrating the other that informs the
image-production? Or is it the
other way about? Does it arise from the desire of opening up a space of
intimacy where the
'inviolable others' would meet? Or is it merely the momentary charge of
imagination where the gaze
meets the other and is returned in a flash? Does it carry traces of the edges
of a journey without a
fixed agenda? Sometime the photographs make us stop and just listen.

A pan-Indian sense of peoples in a vibrant, dancing landscape of energy begins
to emerge with the
first signs of change - of a functional and primarily exploitative development
- railways, spinning
mills, mines, the diasporic ships, the administrative network; of resistance
to colonial rulers - of
peoples movements involving journeys across lands - journeys of affinity and
subsumption even as
the carnival of protest builds up; of inscription within the world wars both
willy and nilly - the army
fighting in an alien land, people dying of a man-made famine with their boats
and bridges burnt; of
literacy - especially the semi-urban feminine literacy; of the changing
iconographic landscapes
bringing out Gandhi and Bhagat Singh and the mysterious brigand(s) on the
highways in a shared
schizoid space; of cultural risings and uprisings - of multiple lores vying
with each other for the first
ever nation recognitions; of cinema - its song, dance and exegetic narratives…
and, of course, the
joyous lure of the simple Kasba photograph.

The second phase of the images of the remembered self deals directly with
splintering of various
kinds and orders  the sub-continent with the holocaust of partition acting as
a catalytic reminder of
the return of the repressed. The first indications are found in the very
(narcissistic) realignment of the
physical spaces of power which also meant the realignment of various other
structures of power -
such as the structures of caste, religion and gender on one hand and
development of a new Indian on
the other.

The newly emerging structures of power lead to expected movements of people to
converge onto the
new centres of institutional dominance. This in turn unleashes a completely
unforseen, though in
retrospect understandable, agenda of cultural production. The photograph
aligns itself with the newer
modes of representation to effectively bring them within accessible zone of a
larger reception through
technical reproduction.

Photograph, Meaning and the Excessive Vision

In a way, this project deals with the beginnings, evolution and partial
denouements of a technological drive linked up with the narrative drive of an
entire people of the Indian sub-continent. It deals with their recorded desire
to continuously cast themselves within the mirror-images of remembrance and
imagination. Remembering the self; imagining the other. It is about the advent
of modenity and its virtual death to-day. It is about identities and their
eventual dissolution - both joyous and painful in its politico-cultural and
often destinal sweep…

A photograph is often more than a document / The silent lure of time

It allows you to hold time, feel its gentle, dormant pulse. The time has not
only been saturated within the image, it has also left its trace on the paper
that contains the burden of chromes. In this way, it transforms what appears
to be a mere document into a mental landscape and history into 'hystory'
creating a moving puncept of both history and hysteria. This double register
of amazing economy could be seen excessively at work within a single frame. On
the edge of the photographic document, invariably, exists a resonance -
inviting fictional possibilities. No other mode of visuality quite achieves or
even aspires to achieve this double mode of articulation.

Our proposed anthology would bring the focus on a simultaneity embedded in the
image-drive rather than on a predictably periodized documentative drive. It is
our view that the resonance of history could also be eloquently brought about
through such juxtapositions. To understand history and also thephotograph, it
becomes important to look beyond the chronicle of image-linearity.

We propose therefore to deal with the inevitable periodization of the last
century of images through broadly three categories of images - namely, the
landscape, community and confluence. In all three categories of visual
experience, the emphasis would be repeatedly placed on pluralities as well as
the inherent, ironical modes of dissonance. The mode of juxtaposition and
simultaneity would be as much celebrative as polemical. The attempt would be
to recreate / reconstruct narratives of our history as well as those of the
photograph.

India - the Remembered / Imagined Self

Through the defile of light (and indeed darkness) images pass in a stop-go
movement. Are these the projections of a remembered self or the unambiguous
resonance of  an imagined topograghy of yore? Even as a nascent, modern India
steps into the twentieth century, it is still marked by echoes of stony
distances - myriad seasons of tonality! There is a distinct quality of call to
our early photographic visuality which is not entirely explained away by the
lure of nostalgia. The new India is still an amorphous landscape of 'imagined
communities'. There exists a marked romance of distances. The photograph
appears like a dream close to the moment of nascence - a nation, a definable
exchange and the technology itself. Perhaps, one of the ways to vanquish
distances is to create the mystique of 'otherness' photographically. The
burnished landscapes would magically transform / dissolve into the darkling
landscapes; the shining ebony skin of the (photographic) subject would smile
through and across  the gaze of the 'other' - the camera and the alien master
/ mendicant around whose neck it is slung - in a curious reversal of looking.
The camera thus documents within the space of the image a meeting between two
strangers - within and without the frame. The paper-image is but an imprint of
such a meeting.

Ref: The quaint south, the northeast, the Burmese and the
close-to-              mountains-Buddhism (Lahaul-Spiti in the North, for
instance), the tribals from central India and the Andamans. The clear division
between the mainland(s) and the margins is obsessively followed in whichever
space the technauteurs find themselves.
Asides: The sleeping landscapes bring about unusual work culture and a
consequent movement of the body and gaze. The idea of labour, subsistence and
existence changes drastically. A lone electricity bulb atop a hill, an open
tap with its water flying off in strong wind, a hunting camouflage…the imagery
begins to haunt endlessly. Between the mountains and the sea are river-beds
disappearing behind an inviting curtain of forests. The cities are envisioned
from a distance, in an oneiric haze. And then, as if, one enters the known
fictive terrain of the kasba but why do not stop getting continuously
surprised by the sounds and the smells of the small town as much as by the
decalic photograph?

Questions: Does the photograph disband the centre-margin divide? Does it
dissolve the rhetoric of the photograph as a master / mendicant traveller?
Does it end the lure of the spatial and temporal romance? If yes, does it
bring another joyous dimension into play? Or, is it just the advancement of
technology which forces the agenda of neo-modernities? Where does the
photographer figure in all this?

Is it a hope of mastering and integrating the other that informs the
image-production? Or is it the other way about? Does it arise from the desire
of opening up a space of intimacy where the 'inviolable others' would meet? Or
is it merely the momentary charge of imagination where the gaze meets the
other and is returned in a flash? Does it carry traces of the edges of a
journey without a fixed agenda? Sometime the photographs make us stop and just
listen.



The second phase of the images of the remembered self deals directly with
splintering of various kinds and orders  the sub-continent with the holocaust
of partition acting as a catalytic reminder of the return of the repressed.
The first indications are found in the very (narcissistic) realignment of the
physical spaces of power which also meant the realignment of various other
structures of power - such as the structures of caste, religion and gender on
one hand and development of a new Indian on the other.

The newly emerging structures of power lead to expected movements of people to
converge onto the new centres of institutional dominance. This in turn
unleashes a completely unforseen, though in retrospect understandable, agenda
of cultural production. The photograph aligns itself with the newer modes of
representation to effectively bring them within accessible zone of a larger
reception through technical reproduction.



1. Landscape

a) Landscape as the aloof locale of mystery - natural space.
b) Landscape as the space of meeting - social or socio-political space.
c) Landscape as the site of development - a nationalist agenda of subsuming
nature within the hegemony of culture
d) Landscape as the site of consumption and kitsch with attendent technology -
a touristy touch.
e) Landscape as fortuitous critical construction / montage
f) Landsacpe as the site of metaphysical reconstruction and gaze
g) Landscape as the recovered site of inverted ecology
h) Landscape as a rythmic site of a pulsating carnival

The camera fetish - the earlier technolgy of power
The first photographers sighted outdoors
Technologies of space and virtuality

2. Community

a) Imaging and imagining the self - the absent community
i) Absent icons
ii) The doubles - imaging and becoming
b) Narratives of desire - creating a possible / impossible community
c) Narratives of home - and homelessness
d) Narratives of street / bazaar - fetish, fact and function
e) Of the celebrative edge and the desolate self
f) Signs of community - the missing humans
g) Towards a New Community - Self-reflexive image

The fading lure of technology - widening circle of accessibility
Camera as a participant - converging spaces of technology perception and
politics
>From the kasba studios to the metropolitan chambres - from representation to
recreation and eventual technologies of reproduction

3. Confluence

a) photograph as part of the new imaginary - confluence beyond the industrial
mode of production in an age of infinite electronic doubles
b) the changing spaces of the public and private domains
c) narratives of institution, resistance and nationhood
d) narratives of history and hysteria


Paul Hansom wrote:

> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> Date: Mon, 27 Sep 1999 16:45:01 -0700 (PDT)
> From: Paul Hansom <[log in to unmask]>
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: cfp: LITERARY MODERNISM AND PHOTOGRAPHY
>
> I am currently seeking article proposals for a volume on Anglo-American
> modernism, which explore the connections and cross-overs between
> literature (in all its forms) and the photographic image. The articles can
> take the form of single-author studies, movement studies, as well as
> literary, philosophical, and textual explorations. The articles can
> also explore the intersections between the visual and verbal forms,
> literary modernism and the evidentiary, documentary reportage and
> fine-art, images and written identity, photographers and writers,
> modernism and memories, and the links between photographic techniques and
> literary experimentation.
>
> The volume will be part of a series titled "Border Crossings," published
> by Garland Press, which explores the many faces of modernism.
>
> Those interested in the project should send a brief cv and a 250-500 word
> proposal to:
>
> Dr. Paul Hansom, Editor,
> Literary Modernism and Photography
> 6518 1/2 Orange Street
> Los Angeles, CA 90048
> USA





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