Zarina Bhimji

Zarina Bhimji   The OCA study day 11^th Feb 2012

There were a number of disparate components to this exhibition, photographs and video from different works the artist has worked on. I will return to the print images later, but first wanted to describe my feelings in respect to the two video installations. The first Out of Blue and the second Yellow Patch .


The video’s were shown in a darkened room and I wrote my thoughts down, there was no chance to see the words as I wrote, I alinged my pencil to my thumb and wrote without looking at the paper. To make a new note I moved my thumb down the paper. My notes verbatim are as below and attached as a scan from my notebook.

Cleansing – fire

emptiness

exterior light and sound

loss and pain

                           evidence of people

Mozzie

shadow of people

time passing

     of places where we were

Silent embers

becoming more desolate

birds/chickens..  cockerel crowing

& then death, what was

left behind

re-birth of the land

old airport at point of departure

the cross and bullet holes

Spider’s web simile with fencing

Leaving

Apart from inadvertently writing one note directly over another, I was quite please that the notes were largely legible!

To explain my feelings about the video against each note would take a long time. So I won't begin to. Rather I think what I would like to say is that this piece is a tremendously evocative work about loss, about an exorcism of a part of the artists life. It could have been anywhere, it was set in Uganda as that is where Bhimji was when Amin's thugs enforced the no-Asian policy. The images were very clear to me, despite an unsettling opening where I had heard from the member of the gallery who said something like "fire is used (in, I suppose Uganda here) as part of the process of recycle, returning fertility back to the ground. I wasn't close to the speaker so may have misheard. The use of fire as an allegory here was for me, about cleansing, about ridding the country of vermin, of unwanted parasites. Ethnic cleansing. Maybe this would leave the country purer and more ready for growth, maybe that was it? Hitler had tried it, so had Mussolini, Milosovic, Pol Pot, Mao, the Hutu and Tutsi continuing nightmare have only succeeded in the slaughter of millions. I was moved to see later in the video a shot of some embers. I wrote "silent embers" as I saw in them that despite the fury of the flames that maybe there was still something left in the country that had an imprint of the peoples who had been "cleansed away".
There was pain in most of the images, we were left to linger on many scenes that had the haunted voice of a once present people; in the dilapidated buildings we saw the fleeting shadows of people moving, were they the ghosts of a people now displaced? The echoes of peoples also reverberated in and around the empty shells of dwellings that maybe once housed these now refugees in another country in another continent in another climate.
We were left to dwell on the graves of people of whom we would never know who they were, and what they represented, were they long dead relatives of people who would probably never have the chance to revisit and pay their respects?
The last scenes of the film were the most painful, Entebbe airport, bullet ridden with the imagery of the "cross" and shot through, pierced glass windows. And when one is leaving , the view that is the most painful, the one that pulls hardest at the heart is the one looking back. Looking back to something one knows is lost forever. The shot that these refugees all had in common as they fled the tyranny of  a military despot; the image of their home from the back of an aeroplane ripping them apart from their life they had thought was the escape from poverty they left in India a generation before.


And then they arrive in Bradford, in Sheffield, in Wembley and Whitechapel............. which is where we come in............


_________________________________________________________________________________

Yellow Patch (no translation)

Whilst I found this more beautiful, I found the imagery less powerful. Maybe this was because it wasn't about personal loss, about the transgressions to the authors family, people and past. Rather it was a gentler, almost an homage, to a time when two continents were connected by trade and this film focussed on the route within India; from Bombay (now Mumbai) through to Gujurat. There was loss depicted in this film, but there was also love and hope. I particularly enjoyed the chisel marks on the marble sculpture which panned out to the disfigured face of the only Empress of India, whose effigy can be found in all corners of the sub-continent, both in the physical form of statues and paintings, but also in the metaphorical form of the Raj which led the bureaucratic structures of the rail system and the dock authorities to produce, and still produces to this day, the mountains of paperwork depicted in the opening shots of the film. The evocation of the dusty remnants of a system buried in the past, to a time forgotten and almost frozen like "Satis House". Refusing to move on is I am afraid very reminiscent of India today in parts.
It didn't condemn the subject, but confine it to a idiosyncratic position at the end of an age where the past was provided to the viewer in so many ways. The long grey plait, the aged desert holding remnants of the past in the imprints fixed in the dried mud.

I will watch both again; I will talk about the photography in a later entry.

Malick Sidibe

Desert Island Discs, the venerable institution of radio whereby the guest, the "survivor" chooses 8 records from all that they have known to sustain them as an island castaway. In a photographic equivalent one of my choices would be "Christmas Eve 1963" by Malick Sidibe. The joy that emanates from this image works at every level for me. Two young people dancing in perfect harmony. From their ankles, that inflect synchronously, their standing legs bringing their bodies arching towards each other, their supplicant arms fending nothing but the temptation of the mind. Their heads meeting to complete the mirror image. The rhythm flows from the photograph to the viewer, her dress, his suit, the unselfconscious joy in their smiles. If you've danced with someone you love and desire - this is how it feels. They appear to see only each other, we see only these two young lovers seeing only themselves.

"The Hasselblad Award 2003 Malick Sidibe" published by Hasselblad/Steidl is a celebration of Sidibe's work.  Mali had gained Independence in 1960, and from political dependence on a colonial power was turned into a one party totalitarian socialist state which had significant ramifications on all parts of society. This government went the same way as many totalitarian states, it installed control into every aspect of the peoples lives and the introversion of this vision starved the people of hope for the future that had been theirs when Independence had been declared. The military then led a coup against what it felt was a failed society and economy in 1968. It is the portrait photography of the post military coup period that has fascinated me for some time. The "Christmas Eve 1963" photograph emanates from before this time and these photographs from the "party" series are full of joy and hope and reflect the optimism of the time or the pure escapism that a good party can engender.

There aren't many available photographs to link to illustrate his work. There is a fascinating video on Youtube which gives a good impression of his portraiture work (great soundtrack also) and the environment that he set his studio in - it is still the same today. The effect of colonialisation on Sidibe's work is demonstrated by the artefacts and props that his sitters bring and wear when they have their payed portraits made.
Through the period after Independence the regime frowned upon Western influence, it's decadence, it's dress, it also tried to debunk the country's heritage in the tribal systems of power and culture. The military coup succeeded to lift certain restrictions but also levied others, but the backlash that interests me is how the customers of Sidibe came to dress themselves for their portraits. A mixture of clothing and artefacts that seem, to me, to shine a mirror on the colonialists for the value systems which had drifted into the psyche of the everyday Malian. The dress, for example, had many - and more men then women, adopting western dress rather than traditional, and sometimes a curious mixture of both. A man may wear a long gown but with knee length socks and shoes, or boots with no socks and a traditional gown. Many brought radios, transistor radios or radio/cassette players and the bigger they were the more pleased the sitter appeared to be. Wrist watches were very prominent, sleeves rolled up to emphasize their presence. Cigarettes hanging unlit from mouths, from children as well as adults (and nearly all male). Trilby style hats, bell bottom flared trousers and shirts clearly copied from the appearances of Western pop stars (James Brown, Mick Jagger etc) depicted on the sleeves of imported records.
It is the value systems of the West that these sitters appear to value, leaving the failed socialist totalitarian regime behind, they pose with their conceptions of Western symbology as proof of self worth. These sitters use Sidibe as a commercial photographer, he (Sidibe) has a range of backdrops and, it appears, a selection of floor coverings, that one suspects the sitter chooses and then presents the pose for the photographer to capture for posterity. Sidibe suggests that he only takes two shots as part of the contract and if the customer wants to have two transistor radios in shot, why should Sidibe complain; he doesn't seem to complain when customers want to pose with more traditional symbols of wealth, there are a few photographs with a goat as a prop. Sidibe clearly has access to two wheeled transport, as the same moped appears a few times along with a motorbike (maybe he moved on from one to the other). But these symbols clash with the times of the people, their basic needs weren't met by the number of radios, the possession of unlaced shoes, the accompaniment of a beaten up briefcase. But I suppose escapism isn't the privilege of the West?
The abiding image for me from this period of Sidibe's work is one of a man, about mid thirties in age, wearing what appears to be demins and a traditional looking hat/headress. The poignancy is provided by a large bore rifle held firmly in two hands; around his waist is a bandolier of ammunition and at his (apparently blood-spattered) boots is the head of a boar and three(?) trotters. The "big game hunter", an exemplar of superfluous Western decadence, where the prey is preyed upon for status only. It was the West that brought these implements of destruction to Africa and this customer to Sidibe's studio appears to value this projection of power and status rather than any previous style or design of hunting weapon. It wasn't Sidibe's intention to provide the irony of this to his viewer, it was to provide a service to his paying customer. It is for us to see the pride we have engendered in this subjects eyes as he holds this "big mans gun".

A portrait

Sporadically I have used Jeff as a sitter and over the past few years I have photographed him in various poses and places. Jeff has also featured greatly in the coverage I have made of "The Reunion". I have pulled these photographs together as an alternative "Portrait - assignment 1". The first shot, against a white paper background to isolate him - his brief was to wear something he felt comfortable in and stand relaxed. I had thought of cropping tighter - but that de-contextualises him in a somewhat barren context! The layout of these images have been carefully thought about, to try and make each level of shot "talk" to each other, as it were. For example the full frontal at the top, depicting "all" of Jeff, whereas shot 2 appears to watching himself perform.

Left - at the first rehearsal shows Jeff focussing on the role, his director(s) and left, rehearsal five and "in role". Both shots below are again in role, showing disparate aspects of the character.















The next layer depicts Jeff listening to himself read?

 I've included this shot, despite the use of exotic technique (HDR) as it does seem to express a view of Jeff that is recognisable. This is a  pose and works best in isolation, however the feeling of confrontation is contrary to Jeff's natural character.

The next three shots come from rehearsal five and are taken in quick succession, depicting various "animations" in his role. The fourth shot in the quartet is a profile shot as he watches events on stage - I guess this is Jeff as much as the first photograph. The position of the profile shot appears to have him studying the various guises of his stage personna.

 A close up left, again in character, counter pointed with him in motion as part of the "Assignment 8" from Roswell Angier. Jeff left looks incredulously on at the right hand Jeff

 Whereas these last three images come from a single session using a single tungsten lamp, working with contrast. All of these photographs have the point of focus on the one eye or another. The technique was to use a narrow depth of field (all these are f2) and by the placement of the lamp to redact the facial elements from the image. I had made these studies before I read the text by Angier and his chapter on a self portrait without a face. I hadn't intended to remove any part of Jeff's face, rather to highlight particular elements of his face and continue with this process until it removes the recognisability of the subject.

I am still struggling with the concept that the portraitist can elicit a view of the subject that expresses to "a" viewer an "essence", an "air". I am still of the opinion that the viewer brings with them the "view".
If we look at Karsh and one of his most famous images that of Churchill. We are lucky that Karsh has written some accompanying text. But what do we who see Churchill "see"? We know of course of his role in the second war, we know less of his role in the Sidney Street siege, we know of his role as a senior statesman on the world stage.

The Sidney Street Siege, 1911 (b/w photo)

English Photographer, (20th century)

Private Collection - Bridgemam

 He had an "imperious"quality, he relished in the public view that he was a great leader and we see that in Karsh's portrait. I have seen the print in Ottawa, along with other Karsh portraits where they hang in the Chateaux Hotel (where he had a studio) nearby the Parliament building. It is set high and the viewer has to look up to view it, enhancing it's particular power. It has the appearance of a painting, it is set in a large frame emphasizing it's grandeur. There have been many formal painted portraits of Churchill, the approach that "Winnie" had to having his portrait made must have been relaxed - so maybe the view we have of him via Karsh's image is his "air" because of that. Some more portraits of Churchill:

Winston Churchill aged five, from 'A Roving Commission by Winston S. Churchill', published by...

English School, (19th century)

Private Collection - Bridgeman

Winston Spencer Churchill in 1904 (b/w photo)

English Photographer, (20th century)

Private Collection - Bridgeman

Winston Churchill with his mother, Lady Randolph Churchill (b/w photo)

English Photographer, (19th century)

Private Collect - Bridgeman

Sir Winston Churchill as a Lieutenant in the 4th Hussars in 1895 (photogravure)

English School, (19th century)

Private Collection - Bridgeman

At the time Karsh took his photograph Churchill was 65, there were already multiple portraits of him, painted and photographic as well as cartoon. I would think that he knew exactly how he would pose; Karsh was told, apparently in no uncertain terms, that he could expose one frame. I don't think Karsh captured Churchill's "essence" I think Churchill gave it to him. Certainly Karsh had set the lights, exposed correctly, printed it expertly - but that "hand on the hip" pose, looking slightly down the nose, looks practised to me.

Amitabh Bachchan - Bridgeman

I think therefore that all (formal) portraits of famous or infamous people are vested with a public "air". The persona that rests in the image has either been carefully nurtured or has entered the public consciousness via some circuitous route to inform us all. It might be worth some research to look at icons in other societies to see if, for example Amitabh Bachchan "Big B", the most famous film star on the planet "speaks" to us, delivers to us an "air" or whether because they are not known to us that their "essence" is invisible to us.
What does this (albeit small) portrait tell us? For most westerners probably not a lot; but for asians and especially in the sub-continent it is a huge story. With a life that reads like a soap opera and whose every move and image is precisely managed, all portraits of him are tethered to a specifically controlled message or meaning. The portraitist has no power whatsoever to delineate their own narrative and is only a tool in the wider process of image control. But the west has no real view of "BigB" so what do we (the westerners) read into his image, we who are free from subversion from the Indian media? A google search will produce a million images - try not to read any of the accompanying text if you do to see whether you "get" him. I have really enjoyed some of his movies, which are classics in the largest movie industry on the planet.

There is a link between Jeff and Bachchan, they both have grey beards and both can lay reasonable claim to be actors. But whilst Jeff wouldn't say he was close to penury, the riches BigB has had, lost, and has again, are beyond the dreams of not only his fellow citizens in India but also that of most of the world's population.

More to think about in the search for the truth behind the smile.

Portraits and Persons by Prof' Cynthia Freeland

Freeland is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Houston, Texas and her book "Portraits and Persons" is published by OUP in 2010.

I was troubled by this book from the outset. Chapter One - "Animals".
Can there be portraits of animals? 1 was the first sentence; the chapter goes on to describe that a portrait is not a one dimensional piece of art, but can, and surely does at least with humans as a subject, bring self awareness and self presentation and other metaphysical qualities to the cooperative venture that is portraiture. Freeman concludes with a qualified yes, animals can have portraits, they .."meet my first two criteria for portraits, representing a recognizable living object in an image that also expresses consciousness and inner states."2 Freeland goes on to say that "...I am sceptical about the chance that animals can fulfill the third criterion required for portraits in the fullest sense, which can be met by adult humans, the factor of posing or of self-presentation."3 In my view that means that pictures of animals are one dimensional likenesses, and if one of these animal sitters looks remotely in the right direction for goodness sake take the picture.

Chloe feeling rested, and apparently wondering about the next meal or sleep.

Chapter two - Contact, discusses the moment when she and her mother search through photographs of her grandmother to determine which one has her "air" as Roland Barthes describes it in his book Camera Lucida, whilst searching for a picture of his mother. The fundamental issue I have with this is that whilst Barthes discusses the one picture that for "him" is the one which captures her, the one that defines for him the "essence" of his mother, he doesn't share it knowing that it is his picture, it is the recognition by him of her, from all that he knows of her. A deeply personal and almost reverential iconic representation of his mother. Whereas Freeman proposes that anyone could possibly recognise the essence or air of her grandmother in her found photograph. This premise that a sitter can display their innermost personality in a photographers studio is I think fanciful.

Despite my reservations on the underlying philosophical proposition of the book I ploughed on through it because it dealt at the end with some post modernists photographers, Sherman, Goldin and Morimura whom my tutor had recommended to me after seeing my self portrait work earlier. I have to say that I needn't have taken it all in, there was little to add to my research elsewhere, other than to say that his more recent work with respect to political reconstructions have a more cutting edge.

I was though interested in her view of Lucien Freud's nudes, about which she quotes Freud as saying "...I used to leave the face until last. I wanted the expression to be in the body. So I had to play down expression in the nudes" 4,5 This seems to go against all the text in her book that treats the face/portrait as the means by which the sitter delivers the "air". Freud attempting to express the essence of his model through their bodies, their limbs as he tried to equate their heads to.

At about 300 pages it is a long read.

1 - p4
2 - p40/41
3 - p41
5 - p201
6 - Lucien Freud quoted in Judith James, 'David Hockney: A Lifetime in Portraits', 15th March 2007, The Independent, downloaded PDF file from the website, p1

What does a picture tell us?

I suppose it's inevitable that part of the process of studying photography is the "pull" of looking back, and the looking over, of old photographs. I had asked my mother to search out any old photographs she had, although I already knew there wouldn't be that many as my father, before he died, had already relegated all the negatives and the vast majority of the family archive - and who knows what else - to the bin. It's a shame as, I suppose like a lot of children, the feeling is that a part of your history was deemed superfluous. Never mind, no use crying over spilt silver.

I therefore didn't expect there to be any "really old" photographs in amongst the bundle I was given last week; but I was surprised with a few photographs and I have uploaded one here. A photograph of my parents - centre - on their wedding day.

What to say: well it is the widest view I have ever had of my entire gene pool. They are all smiling (that is the people - not sure about the genes!). The couple to the far left are my paternal grandparents; the lady far right and the gentleman second from the right are my maternal grandparents, their daughter, my aunt and mother's sister, is between them. And of course the happy couple are my parents. My aunt Sylvia has an "eye" moment it would seem. The salubrious surrounding is the back garden of the vicarage of St Peters, Bushey Mill Lane in Watford. One can almost hear the peal of the bells.

Eric Wishard who is standing at the back, to my father's right, had the role of "Best Man". My father hardly knew Eric, he happened to be the boyfriend of a friend of my mother. The original choice for looking after my father had, according to mother "let everyone down" and Eric was roped in for the day. Knowing that, it is easy to see why he stands where and as he does. I do not think he is closing his eyes to "disappear" from the shot as it was taken - he is probably suffering a similar moment as aunt Silvia. But there are other signs and signals. Why is my maternal grandfather (whom I worshipped as a boy) not standing next to his wife (whom I also loved)? They were married, lived together until she died, long after they had retired. In the photograph both of his daughters seem to "upstage" him, he has been relegated to the second row, not shoulder to shoulder with the rest of the family.

A clue maybe found in the detail. Mother and daughter are holding hands, providing support for each other. Aunt Sylvia has her engagement ring on - she was to marry later that year to Charles (Charlie), he was probably away in the Navy at the time. Well, my grandparents were going through a "rough patch" as my mother politely puts it. My grandmother had left him twice and my aunt Sylvia had decided never to forgive him, she was the eldest daughter and no doubt decided that she had the responsibility to keep the peace for her sister's wedding. My grandmother was living at home at this time and they did stay together in, I think, relative happiness for many decades more. Neither sets of parents approved of their child's choice in this marriage, so there were other undercurrents in motion - but I cannot discern them.

The wedding was on a cold January day in "rationed" 1953, the couple had planned a wedding in July, but the frostiness of the season was perhaps matched by the same feeling at home and so the couple re-arranged the wedding in quick order to bring it as early as possible. My twin sister and I were born in the following September. A testament to the clemency of the time perhaps?

Why have I posted this, well in part because it opens a part of my life that I can look into and subsequently feed into myself and my work today. But also it also plays into some thoughts I have about portrait photography. I am not sure what anyone else - other than than this writer, with his narrative knowledge - could bring to this other than innocence. I don't think that there is anything that can discerned from this otherwise, disparate set of people, connected on the day by the bonds of marriage. There seems to me to be no display of internalised narrative in any of the participants here:

From a personal perspective, both sets of my grandparents look happy (my memories of them are happy). The photographer has either succeeded in cloaking all of the various undercurrents or, as I suspect, has no perception of them whatsoever and in his oblivion of them manages to create a "happy family" photograph for perpetuity. I have shared this photograph to a wider circle including most of my my family, with the caption "what does this mean to you?" I shall be interested in the feedback.

And yes, I have edited the layout thus on purpose.

Assignment One

Assignment brief - … take (a photograph of) one person as a subject and create between five and seven different portraits.

Portrait.

Painting, picture, drawing, sketch, likeness, image, study, miniature, portrayal, representation, depiction, impression, account, profile. Oxford Thesaurus.

Representation of a person or animal, esp. of the face, made by drawing, painting, photography, etc. Oxford Concise Dictionary.

1

In his book – “Camera Lucida” - Roland Barthes describes the process of finding a photograph, of his deceased mother that has the “air” of her, as a momento. Barthes goes on to describe how this image is the essence of his mother, the one image that carries the “authenticated” version of his mother. The “Winter Garden” photograph he declares has the “air” of his deceased mother, it is an image taken of her as a young girl.

Dr. Cynthia Freeland in her book “Portraits and Persons” discusses a similar process whereby she and her mother, hunt through some photographs of her grandmother and when her mother asks ‘Isn’t this one just really her?’¹ Freeland writes “(I) knew exactly what she meant….. the photographer had caught some essential truth about her expression….” Daughter and granddaughter were equally convinced that this was “the” photograph.

2

Richard Brilliant in his book "Portraiture" states... "Portraits partake of the artificial nature of masks because they always impersonate the subject with some degree of conviction. What, if anything, lies behind he mask can only be inferred by the viewer from the clues provided by the mask, which may mislead as well as inform through the use of conventions of representation. Ultimately, the emergence of the subject revealed in the portrait must take into account the fact that self-effacement be hind the mask is consistent with the social nature of men and women, all of who (re) present themselves in public."⁵

I tend to favour Brilliant’s view, inasmuch as a sitter will adopt a pose, whether prescribed or not by the artist. A viewer perusing a portrait of any person, known or unknown, can only judge the "air" by their emotive response to the image in view. Seeing, for example, the Mona Lisa, the age old questions arise about smile, who and why?There has been a lot said about this lady, though no-one has definitively said what this portrait says about the model. Da Vinci hasn't elaborated and is unlikely to do so now. So we are left to derive for ourselves whether it is a smile, and if so, what is she smiling at? 

I have struggled with this concept that a (single) portrait can capture an essential truth, some expression of the “soul” of the person being portrayed, either as a painted or more specifically photographed portrait.

3

My contention is that a portrait works when the treatment of the subject offers a transcendence that elicits a metaphysical response from within the viewer, and it does this because the viewer comes to the image equipped with their own portfolio of emotions that are ready to be tapped. A “good” portrait is one which bridges this distance between the two dimensional object and the sub-conscious mind of the viewer. It is clearly easier to do this if the image is of someone known to the viewer, but a skilled portraitist is able to do this with an unknown subject. There is but one quality that a portrait needs and that is engagement. If the portrait (or for that matter any image) can capture some attention long enough for the narrative to develop between viewer and image then it has passed it's first hurdle. With a portrait there are further tools to be considered, whether there needs to be extraneous clues or whether like Avedon a white background suffices? If there are semiotic clues and if so how prominent should they be. My own portraits for this exercise make use of both animate and inanimate objects to "paint" a picture of my sitter.

4

5

Portraits have, for the greatest amount of “image making history”, largely been the domain of the painter and their benefactor. Painters have been commissioned to portray the royal and the regal, the statesmen and the nobility. The rich and powerful have, for many reasons, needed to present portraits of themselves which are hung in prominent positions – those reasons will be left unexplored here. The other chief protagonists of the portrait have been the domain of the non-secular members of society, whether to create icons in the guise of particular religious figures, or to create icons of the members of the church establishments. These portraits, painted in increasing technical brilliance, have portrayed people in the likeness as described by the benefactor, more usually the subject. These portraits are likely therefore to deliver whatever was the demand delivered to artist. He who pays the piper calls the tune.

7

6

Whereas the rich, the landed and the establishment, had the wherewithal to have the portraits painted in the style that best suited their “view” of themselves; the eventual democratization of the portrait didn’t happen until the invention of the “physiognotrace”, a device that enabled the tracing of a person’s silhouette in quick order such that the price became within the means of (at least the wealthier end) on the general public. It was said that whilst a painted portrait might cost about $50 the “shade” might cost about 6c! ² At its peak, studios were producing 1000’s of these “likenesses” a year. This volume of imagery was further dwarfed by the development of the daguerreotype, which reproduced the likeness of the sitter in a way that surpassed even the most skillful fine artist in terms of veracity and so popular were they that by 1853 there were eighty six galleries producing a total of three million images a year in New York city alone³ – such was the demand for likenesses to be created and for all the same reasons we take pictures today. Eastman Kodak with the Brownie and then the advent of digital technology have taken these “early adopter” numbers and stretched them beyond anyone’s wildest imagination. Flickr – just one of the social networks specializing in image storage - had about 5 billion uploaded images in 2011 and it’s community were uploading more, at a rate of 3000 per minute; what percentage of these were portraits probably isn’t known, but it is probably safe to suggest that about a quarter have people in them?

8

The portrait is now no longer a domain defined by the size on one’s estate, though it is still a sociological remnant that the painted portrait continues to carry a level of authority that a photograph cannot aspire to, at least not yet. The painter edits the portrayal “off canvas”, the inclusion of any stroke of the pen, brush, charcoal is a determined effort; whilst the photographer aims to do this by exclusion of extraneous imagery and by technique to engage with the viewer. However the painted portrait still carries a “status” imbued by history as an emblem, almost fetishized in halls of power and privilege as recognition of achievement. The need for people to have “portraits” of themselves or of their loved ones, was demonstrable even before the availability of even reasonable mirrors that could discern for the sitter whether the likeness was indeed very strong, leaving the third party viewer to impart the affirmation of whether the portrait had the “air” of the sitter.

10

9

“Our social personality is a creation of the minds of others.” Marcel Proust, 1918 “⁴. I would contend that Freeman is at best optimistic in her being able to obtain “a” photograph that depicts a universal “air” of her grandmother that anyone might deduce from the portrait. Barthes decides not to publish his memento of his mother, claiming it has significance only for him. Brilliant goes close by his corollary of the mask.

The first pass at a “portrait” of Mark was done a few weeks ago – I had a few things in mind – son, father, husband, musician – different traits of a young man that I hoped I could depict. Most of the images I had in mind seemed to work and I have added a few more. To test my theory I printed the images chosen for this assignment and sought answers from people. I can’t say that this process is in any way scientific, the sample size is way too small, but the findings are as below and interesting only as far as they go. The photographs that I added were the husband and wife shot, the brother shot, the hand shot. I asked everyone the same question; “pick out one photograph that shows the “air” of Mark, his “essence”. I said that no-one could pick more than one – it did produce some interesting conversations!

The first person I asked was his mother, my wife. Isn’t it true “no-one knows her son better than his mother”?? Well Alison’s choice was number 4. Closer still to the subject (at least to a different side) is probably his wife, Natalie chose 6. Nana chose 9, Granddad chose 8, Grandma chose 6, Auntie Lynn chose 4, Cousin Helen chose 1. I did ask Mark himself and for interest only, it was also 6 – his choice will be discounted as choosing your own “air” smacks of self delusion. I jest. I did not choose as I have the full back catalogue in my possession and can peruse at will.

Mmm, not entirely convincing evidence for the Freeman argument, that “a” photograph could provide an essential image that conveyed the “air” of a subject. These were all “close family”. I may ask people who have never seen Mark, whether the same question and see at least whether any of them choose the majority shot.

A photographic portrait is a limited tool to deliver a sitter’s personality, but a series could possibly do so. The range of shots of Mark cover certain aspects of his life, display some of his character.

1/2/3 - Portraits and Persons – Cynthia Freeman – OUP 2010 p42,43/64/69

4 - Face. The new photographic portrait - Thames and Hudson, William A Ewing, 2008, p106 

5 - Portraiture - Richard Brilliant - Reaktion - 1991, p89

Can photography kill?

Maybe it's because I have stuck with studying Tina Modotti, whose life reads like soap opera, that I am concerned with the potential that can be associated with an image. Looking at her work more closely I can see that there might be potent subversive and political messages, contrived by composition, in her work. If so, they can only come from her and not her photographic mentor Weston, who appears not to have much truck with politics.
A couple of images come to mind: El Machete depicts a group of "peasants" surrounding a newspaper and ostensibly reading it. The newspaper is the voice of the Mexican Communist Party, it's signature emblem, the hammer and sickle (part of the title banner on the newspaper) sits almost centre of the photograph. The headline reads "Toda la Tierra, no Pedazos de Tierra", which translates as:  "All the Land, not Pieces of Land". Six men around one newspaper. What does this signify? Well on first sight I saw this "just" as a piece of reportage, the peasants - the proletariat - connecting with the "voice" of the people. The two - paper and people - are intertwined, the one is connected inextricably to the other.
What I didn't immediately take in was a second level of sub-text, which is that Mexican peasantry was largely illiterate. However the people who came to see exhibitions, who paid to see pictures that people like Modotti created were literate and what this picture says, very clearly, is that the Mexican peasants are gaining literacy and are reading about communism. The photograph was taken in 1928, eight years after the "official" end of the Mexican revolution which had failed to deliver emancipation for the masses; now they were reading about Marxist theory that suggests that the land "belongs" to them, the people, as well as the means of production. However the body language of the "readers" do not seem "right" to me. Clearly some are the wrong side of the paper, but the more I look the more they seem staged and on closer inspection one of the "viewers" at the top of the image is actually looking to the camera - which devalues the image, from that aspect, considerably for me.
Perhaps a more powerful image taken by Modotti, is that of her lover's typewriter which when I first saw it thought - well this is an interesting, if not, utilitarian image of her lovers typewriter. It surely represents a very significant part of her lover's life, it was with this that Mella described his views on the revolution (or the revolution to be in Cuba) and an instrument that is an extension of his personality and political expressionism. Mella was a revolutionary, a Comintern, he needed to make speeches, he needed to write pieces for newspapers, for periodicals and thus the photograph, the image, of the typewriter was a natural instrument to represent a significant part of his life. A part of him. What I hadn't realised, until I read Albers biography Shadows, Fire, Snow The Life of Tina Modotti was that the words on the typewriter were part of a text by Trotsky that links Art and Politics by talking of the synthesis between art and revolution. Margaret Hooks reading of it in her biography Tina Modotti: Photographer and Revolutionary, that Modotti's "use of the photograph as the means of reproduction can be read as a powerful pronouncement on the marriage of art and politics."
The words state "inspiration...artistic...in a synthesis...exists between the..." this only matters because the prevailing spirit in the Mexican communist party, the support from Stalinist Russia, the Cuban revolutionary position were all Stalinist and almost as opposed to Trotskyism as they were to Capitalism. It would therefore been seen as a transgressive act. Could Modotti have signed her lover Mella's death warrant by publishing this as he was assassinated within a couple of months of this photograph being taken? Probably not as Machado (Cuba's dictator) had previously tried to have Mella assassinated.
Last picture is one of Modotti's most famous and certainly the one most widely reproduced. It is of Mella whose death presaged Modotti's decline as a photographer and rise as a political activist/Comintern and  whose art was eradicated by Stalinism and the need for conformity to the cause of Joe's totalitarian vision. Whether Tina's photographs contributed to the death of her lover, probably no-one knows, but his death certainly contributed to the demise of Modotti as a photographer. And I think there is a direct link between the two.