“blank traces” in photography

Scrablings and lights effects: “blank traces” in photography

The goal of this essay is to define the notion of “blank trace” in photography through various examples and theoretical statements. My aim will be to discuss how this notion can be a useful tool to understand our visual contemporary economy. Consequently, the purpose of this essay is to answer the question: in which ways are photographs allowing us to see beyond their visible reality?

This essay will be structured as follows:

Taking into account a statement by Susan Sontag, the introduction will present an ad that testifies of our actual frenetic images consumption. The first part will outline useful statements which will help understand the notion of blank trace. The second and third sections will focus on the photographers’ works in which we can perceive blank traces. In John Deakin’s photographs, they occur fortuitously whereas in Hiroshi Sugimoto’s Theaters, they are consciously projected. However different from one another, both examples provide arguments to Didi-Huberman’s views on the ideal stance to adopt while ‘confronting’ images.


Introduction: Don’t Think, Shoot!


Don’t think. Shoot. Don’t hang about. Shoot. With 5.1 million pixels everything stays sharp. Don’t fuss. Shoot. With 2.5 inch screen you’ll get the whole picture. Don’t stop. Do not say ‘cheese’. The processor will take better shots, fast. Don’t save it for weddings. It’s slim enough to go anywhere. So shoot. Review. Share. Enjoy. Just don’t think.
Advertising for Cyber-shot T3 (Time Out N° 1789, 1st-8 Dec.)


When researching for this essay, I was struck by this piece of advertising for the last Sony camera that I came across in Time Out magazine. This advert is clearly evocative of the famous slogan promoted by Kodak a few decades ago: 'you press the button, we do the rest', That last statement reflected the progress of automatic camera as a solution to previous complicated manual operations. However, the ad above goes further because it implies that nobody was really necessary in the process. The human being is reduced to being a simple finger or at most, an arm. The human being has disappeared from the operation. Cameras can do the work alone.

Around this focal point, we can make out the blurred outlines of a tube station. This localisation is almost surprising because it is not a common place to take pictures and this curious anonymous hand, ready to shoot looks as if there was a duel taking place: to shoot first or to be shot. Furthermore, the camera’s lens, which is situated right in the middle of the image, obstructs the vanishing point. We are directly face-to-face with the object that affirms its central and quasi autonomous status.

The text echoes a statement written by Susan Sontag in her canonical book On Photography published in 1973: “Like a car, a camera is sold as a predatory weapon – one that’s as automated as possible, ready to spring. Popular taste expects an easy, an invisible technology. Manufacturers reassure their customers that taking pictures demands no skill or expert knowledge, that the machine is all knowing, and responds to the slightest pressure of the will. It’s as simple as turning the ignition key or pulling the trigger.” (Sontag S. 1986 (1973):14). Nowadays, the camera seems to have reinforced its neutral and invisible status, despite becoming always more invasive in everyday life rituals. This frenetic consumption does not imply that people have gained more clues to reading photographic productions. Thirty years after Sontag’s observations, photography is more than ever an easy practice and the lack of consideration for thoughts ‘sticks’ to this medium as much as photographs ‘stick’ to reality. In a certain sense aesthetic consumerism of contemporary society is not far from turning “citizens into image-junkies”. According to Susan Sontag this visual addiction is “the most irresistible form of mental pollution” (Sontag S. 1986 (1973): 24).

This reflection starts from this radical warning in our inability to give meanings to our contemporary visual environment. However, rather than to draw up photophobic views regarding visual saturation of our society, the purpose of this essay is to present examples illustrating other ways of ‘seeing’ pictures: “Photography implies that we know about the world if we accept as the camera records it. But this it the opposite of understanding, which starts from not accepting the world as it looks.” (Sontag S. 1986 (1973): 22). This is why I have decided to look directly into photographs to seek any loopholes through which our glances could glide to look through the camera evident records of reality.

What is a Blank Trace?

The purpose of this essay is to provide an analytic framework in which to study photographs where traces, signs, crack or other details are ‘events’ allowing to see beyond evident visibility. Therefore, I have focused my attention on pictures singularised by what I will call “blank traces”. In that sense, the selected images are usually perplexing because their most significant feature is not really visible. For instance, they show empty signs like blank screens, printing errors, scrapings or other light effects that are normally considered accidental or communication failures in photographs. Indeed, intentional or not, these signs are generally worthless in common interpretations and in scholar analysis because they express a type of “missed encounters with the real” (Lacan J. cited in Foster H. 1996: 134). They often become a focus centre for our glances and their insistent presence disturbs our hunger to see visible signs.


Part 1: Floating Flashes: Junk photography and Opening


It is acute yet muffled, it cries out in silence. Odd contradiction: a floating flash
Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida



This photograph clearly illustrates what I understand a blank trace to be. At first glance, it looks like a typical over-exposed photograph. A spectator looking for tangible signs will be relegated to the margins of the picture where furniture, hair, clothes and the position of the people featured give enough information to classify it as a traditional family photo. Indeed, this type of mise-en-scène is a common routine in amateur photographic practices. According to Susan Sontag, this function of recognition is important because “through photograph, each family constructs a portrait-chronicle of itself – a portable kit of images that bears witness to its connectedness.” (Sontag S. 1986 (1973): 8). It also works as an essential tool to memorize and unify family life by supplying “the token presence of the dispersed relatives” (Sontag S. 1986 (1973): 9).

But this floating flash scrambles our ability to see the main informative features of the photograph: who are the people featured in this picture? What does this family look like?
Furthermore, this lighting zone flash is so strong that it is impossible to distinguish any traits on their faces. They become anonymous and almost invisible. This absence of the traditional signs of family happiness is so intense that it troubles our opinion about this family. We can even presume that something odd has happened or that they are not real. They seem to have disappeared, removed by a flashing blank trace.

According to popular taste, this photograph has no interest whatsoever. It is the typical missed photograph that provokes consternation when people receive their pictures from the photo-lab. Indeed, its single function for family life rituals is absent. It does not show the visible traits which testifies for the success of this union. It does not show the child or any signs of happiness. Consequently, without any faces there is no evidence of reality and this photograph would have no chance of finding a place on the fireplace besides weddings pictures. It would be rather relegate into the bin.


Blank Traces as Opening



In terms of scholar analysis, this family provides an excellent example of some recent theoretical positions about our contemporary visual culture. It is precisely because this photograph shows nothing, or hide everything, depending on the point of view, that it becomes an interesting topic for analysis. This subject is discussed by Georges Didi-Huberman in his book Confronting Images. His observations are to be taken as a critical interrogation on the contemporary approaches in the history of art. He points out that a long tradition of paintings’ analysis has generated conventional practices that do not fully reveal the complexity of images. According to Didi-Huberman, the history of art has been too attracted by the visible signs of works of art. Thus, images have been frozen in canonical categories that do not allow us to grasp the complex net of their meanings.The purpose of Didi-Huberman’s observations is also to reinforce that an image is always an uncertain event that opens up a wide range of meanings which depend on the conditions and the contexts of its appearance. His book’s aim is to reveal the “underside” functions that defy traditional understanding of paintings.

As a matter of fact, the introduction of his book expresses particular feelings that could arise when confronted to images that show less than they should be showing. As an example, Didi-Huberman takes a fresco of Fra Angelico painted on the wall of a church in San Marco (Italy) during the early Renaissance period. Taking into account previous analyses of this particular painting, he draws attention to the fact that nobody has commented on this clear area in the middle of the painting. The art historians who previously looked into this curious, ‘insignificant’, clear area concluded that it had to have occurred unintentionally. It is simply a detail.

As opposed to their real lack of consideration, Georges Didi-Huberman focuses on this very detail to get across another explanation of this artwork. According to him, this clear area is a crucial key to understand the main message and function of this fresco. Indeed, at the time this Annunciation was painted, it was imperative to clearly show the principles of geometrical perspective that had recently been discovered. Thus, this vacant area had a very precise function. It worked like a door allowing monk’s glances to go through the painting and embody their spirituality. Thanks to the fading of the vanishing point, gazes were not oriented by the rational way of seeing. They were rather disorientated by this mysterious area. Spectators looking at this Annunciation could also fill in the blank area with their own mental images and personal beliefs.

Going back to our family picture above, we can build a bridge between both examples. The family picture keeps a part of mystery and can play a contribution in rethinking actual common consumption of photographs. The floating flash does not represent strictly figurative signs. Indeed, through an interpretation that looks only at visible signs, there is nothing to see, and consequently to say, about this zone. It could be considered only through its negative dimension.

However this flash can also work as a symptom that could on the one hand force spectators to let their previous knowledge about image and as a result being captured by the image. On the other hand this enigma drives gazes beyond the sensible surface of the picture. This detail works also as a matrix that attracts glances and opens the sense of this painting to a cosmic range of meanings situated beyond visual signs. According to Didi-Huberman this intentional unawareness and this plurality of senses are two binding stages for a reading of pictures that opens original thoughts.

Part 2: John Deakin’s Scrapes

Certain details may “prick” me. If we do not, it is doubtless because the photographer has put them there intentionally
Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida



This part will outline that blank traces could be due to accidental treatment of photographs. This category of unintentional blanks resulting from scrapings will be exemplify through descriptions of the work of John Deakin. In complement to this analysis I will outline aspects of these blank traces and their relations with the notion of punctum proposed by Roland Barthes.

Photographs as Aides-mémoires

John Deakin started taking photographs in 1939 and “his most prolific years, and arguably his most creative, were those spend under contract to British Vogue in the mid-1950’s” (Muir R. 1997: 9). Besides his activity as a fashion photographer, he also worked as an urban photographer. Thus he produced a vast documentation of bohemian life in Soho, London, and in others European cities. He also frequently collaborated with Francis Bacon, who commissioned him to take portraits, and “though he never painted directly from Deakin’s photographs, they were undoubtedly important points of reference” (Muir R. 1997: 30). According to Francis Bacon, these photographs functioned as the aide-mémoire he consulted to achieve details in his paintings .

This subordinated relation with painting was crucial in Deakin’s trajectory. He wanted to be a painter and he rather underestimated his talent and the artistic status of photography. This opinion mirrored the transitory status of photography during this period and the doubts many photographers had at being called artists. It also somewhat explained his distant ways of dealing with photographs and the strange fate of his work. Indeed “at his death, his life’s work was retrieved from under his bed in Soho. Many of his vast prints were discovered frayed and dog-eared (if not torn or folded in half) together with their scattered negatives, many of which were unidentifiable (Muir R. 1997: 10). The work he had done for Vogue underwent the same misfortune because the sheer size of his enlargements made storage in the magazine’ archives difficult and painstakingly folded up into boxes too small ever to adequately hold them (Muir R. 1997: 10). Consequently, it resulted in damaged images that give a predominantly accidental dimension to his work.

Yet, “at least twelve of these surviving aides-mémoire are pictures of Lucian Freud, whom Bacon painted many times” (Muir R. 1997: 31). Looking at the above picture of Freud in the 60s for the first time, one’s glance is instantly drawn towards the scrapes resulting from the awkward folding. These scrapes and stains go against the essential function of photographic images which is to reveal and “print directly the luminous rays emitted by a various lighted object. The photography is literally an emanation of the referent.” (Barthes R. 1980: 80). In this picture, like in the majority of Deakin’s production, this indispensable umbilical cord (Sontag S.) is partially removed without a trace of reality. It is as if slices of reality were missing. It modifies with the way in which we would normally define and read this photograph.

These repeated slits get our attention. We cannot help but fill in these blank with our own imaginary interpretations. According to Roland Barthes, these marks operate as punctum for the spectator of this picture: “In this habitually unary space, occasionally (but alas all too rarely) a “detail” attracts me. I feel that its mere presence changes my reading, that I am looking at a new photograph, marked in my eyes with a higher value. This “detail” is the punctum. (Barthes R. 42). There is of course many ways in which to give subjective meanings to these pictures. Nevertheless if we consider above all Deakin’s bohemian life in Soho’s semi-monde, the white marks of these damaged pictures give just as much indication of his confused life-style as they do of their own contents.

Beyond the Punctum

These blanks are also traces expressing the spatial and temporal realities that happened after the shot. They show a kind of duplicated that-has-been. The first one is mechanical and physical and it expresses the photographic act because “I can never deny that the thing has been there” (Barthes Roland 1980: 4). That one day, in one specific location, Lucian Freud was in front of a camera. The other moment araised later and it would be that slices of tangible proof of this emanation have been erased from the picture. Nevertheless this absence also points to the real, and at this point the real ruptures the photograph (Foster H. 1996: 132).

This process expresses more of a long period of time, a long event, than a “decisive moment”. Consequently, these signs of emptiness tear the smooth unity of that-has-been. Because we are touched by these signs, they impose a new visibility and allow for interpretations outside of the photographs. In this sense, they provide adequate aides-mémoires of Deakin’s personal trajectory: meetings, removals, melancholy and other tourments seem to come to “light” from this blurred cover. These failures express his untidiness and fragile way of living much better than any fashion’s magazines’ productions. They show the scars that are a testament of the pain of a photographer who has never considered his work as an art expression.

There is clearly a communication failure but this accidental aesthetic provides a coherent dimension to these pictures. They provide exceptional details to this work and an astonishing timeless beauty. According to Bruce Bernard, who curated first Deakin’s exhibition, “he really was a member of photography’s unhappiest minority whose members, while doubting its status as art, sometimes prove better than anyone else that there is no doubt about it.” Bruce Bernard cite in Muir R. 1997: 10).

This example shows that blank traces are not necessarily intentional and they can express a fortuitous destiny. The next analyses will consider more specifically intentional projects that are driven by artistic aspirations. Nevertheless, the main function of these blank traces is still always the same. They open a breach through the harmonized space of a photograph and attract glances beyond the visible surface.

Part 3: Sugimotos’s Floating Screens

«One night I had an idea while I was at the movies: to photograph the film itself. I tried to imagine photographing an feature film with my camera. I could already picture the projection screen making itself visible as a white rectangle. In my imagination, this would appear as a glowing, white rectangle; it would come forward from the projection surface and illuminate the entire theater. This idea struck me as being very interesting, mysterious, and even religious.»
Hiroshi Sugimoto




Motionless temporalities

In this part of the essay, I will consider blank traces in their “purest” form. The 1970’s series Interior Theaters by Hiroshi Sugimoto is maybe the most significant example of blank traces in representations. Above all, because they result from an artistic stance which goal is to provide this quasi-magical procedure. Sugimoto “photographs auditoriums of American movie theaters, and drive-in movies, during showings. The exposure time used for the photograph corresponds with the projection time of the film. This allows him to save the duration of the entire film in a single shot” (Helfert H.). Because of the accumulation of images, the movie “is annihilated and burnt out” (Bryson N. 1996: 121) and the result is an enlightening white screen that irradiates the space, even though architectural elements around the screen are precious indications used to distinguish each photograph. Scanning the décor, “we are drawn into the effulgent whiteness of the movie screens, a photographically mythological space of absorbed light and action which is the culmination of the film’s exposure into the camera’s aperture” (Denson R. G. 1996 : 144). Even human’s traces disappeared in the process and we are the honoured witnesses of a face-to-face between two mechanical mediums of representation.

We can also draw a parallel with our previous considerations on Deakin regarding the way of dealing with the flow of time in photography. As we have seen, time for Deakin was not really taken as an intentional part of his work. Rather than being a partner, it is more of an endured consequence. Like wrinkles on a face, time betrays aspects that we would often rather keep hidden. It marks photographs through a slow process of deterioration that gives them a lived intensity. They are non-desired details that testify of a certain aspect of his Deakin’s breakable reality.

The flow of time in Sugimoto’s work acts differently because he precisely aspires to give an evidence of this predictable process of deterioration of the visible. Thus, the consequences of the course of time are totally controlled through long exposure shots and they evidently demonstrate how traces of reality can be faded into photographs. These blank traces do not work as punctums, they do not compose details that fortuitously influence our reading of photographs. They work rather like apparent symptoms that inevitably attract our glances, to the point that we cannot turn away from this central area. Thus, these blank screens also work like a matrix in our ways of seeing reality. Indeed Sugimoto “speaks of his fascination with how the blank screen functions as a metaphor for the projection of reality within a much broader system of meaning. By emphasizing blankness, he helps us refrain from, yet get beyond, our own underlying assumptions for what constitutes the world.” (Denson R. G. 1996: 144). However, this forced attraction of our glances towards this sign of emptiness can be precarious and we have to be watchful that this flashing light does not affect us.

The protective screen

Looking at this picture gives one the impression of being Tuché (Lacan J.) by these ever-increasing luminous rays and of this screen looking at us. In this sense, the spectator “is also under the regard of the object photographed by its light, pictured by its gaze” (Foster H. 1996: 139). Through a metaphor this real screen can be understood like the screen defines by Hal Foster following Lacan’s analysis. According to him the first function of a screen as “site of picture making and viewing” (Foster H. 1996: 141) is to put a distance between images and the spectator and also to moderate the gaze of the picture itself. Otherwise “to see without this screen would be to be blinded by the gaze or touched by the real” (Foster H. 1996: 140). The screen acts also like a protection against the gaze which emanes from the picture. For Lacan, this gaze can be violent and it can also “even kill, if it is not disarmed first” (cited in Foster H. 1996: 140). Consequently, these “vanished movies on the screen” allow spectators to “pacify the gaze” (Bryson N. 1996: 121) of images through negotiating “a laying down of the gaze as in a laying down of a weapon” (Foster H. 1996: 140).

The only way to operate this laying down is to learn to see beyond the visible signs of photographs. In this way, the screen becomes our contextualized and ever changing knowledge that spectators make active when they are confronted with images. This is why blank traces, while potentially disturbing our common ways of seeing, can set up a good opening for the attempt of pacification with our visual world.


Conclusion: Recently I have bought a cyber-shot…

The photograph then becomes a bizarre medium, a new form of hallucination: false on the level of perception, true on the level of time: a temporal hallucination, so to speak, a modest, shared hallucination
Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida



Some truth are sometimes difficult to divulge. A few month ago, I bought a cool pix. I thought it might be practical to have this docile assistant for my personal works. Recently, while I was in the Westminster area attempting to get some pictures on the subject of tourism, which was somewhat difficult at the times, I tried to concretely apply my presumptions about “blank traces” to my work. The result is this picture of Big Ben hidden by this sizeable billboard that denotes in some extent a do-it-yourself depiction of theaters’ pictures. In fact, I was absolutely amazed by the fact that my intention to produce blank traces did not work at all. It is simply an obstruction of our glances. Actually, this composition gives so much weight to the non-hidden portion of the image that it works almost like an accurate counter-example to my argumentation on the blank traces.

Apart from the fact that it confirms that I have not got Hiroshi Sugimoto’s skills, this attempt gave me some ways of redefining what I was expecting about blank traces. They do not work in full mode with every kind of scrablings, white panels, white screens and other signs of emptiness. To be considered as symptoms, and consequently to attract our glances beyond the visible surface, blank traces have to be imperceptibly marked by time process. They happen several times discretely, just like wrinkles on a face.

Consequently, both the accumulation of that-has-been captured by the camera and progressive scrapes on aides-mémoires are examples of how to touch this enigmatic depth. Thanks to this accumulation of temporalities, our glance can thread each time in a new way through the infinity of meanings that have these temporal hallucinations.

As opposed to the automatic instantaneity praised in advertising, sense in photography emerges from a gradual period of time. So shoot. Review. Share. Enjoy. Just think.


Bibliography

Barthes, Roland (1980) 2000 Camera Lucida, London: Vintage.

Bryson, Norman 1996 Sugimoto’s Metabolic Photography, in Parkett N°46, pp.120-124.

Denson Roger 1996 Satori Among the Still Stills in Parkett N°46, pp.143-146

Didi-Huberman Georges, Devant l’Image, Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit.

Didi-Huberman Georges 1989 The Art of not describing Vermeer: The Detail and the Patch: in History of the Human Sciences, v. II, n. 2, pp. 135-169.

Foster Hal 1996 The Return of the Real: The Avant-Garde of the End of the Century, Massachussetts: MIT Press.

Muir Robin 1997 John Deakin: Photographs, Rizzoli Publication

Sontag, Susan (1973) 1986 On Photography, pp. 3-24, London: Penguin Books.


Internet sources

Helfert Heike : http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/works/theaters/images/4/


Illustrations Credits

Figure 1 Maya Dickerhof, 2001, Family
Figure 2 Fra Angelico (1400-1455), The Annunciation, San Marco’s church, Italy.
Figure 3 John Deakin, Lucian Freud during the 60’s.
Figure 4 Hiroshi Sugimoto, 1993, Theaters, Cinerama Dome, Hollywood.
Figure 5 self-made

Between good or bad: how to consider the ambivalent aesthetic status of failed photographs?


“Aesthetics” includes theories about the nature of art as well as about the criteria of aesthetic judgement. “Sociology” here includes a variety of approaches to the arts which insist on comprehending them in their social and historical location”
Janet Wolff

“To make a picture you need a camera, a photographer and above all a subject”
Man Ray


The purpose of this essay is to outline the problems that are linked to aesthetic judgements regarding photographic productions. To this end, we will focus our analysis on the arbitrary conventions that allow us to categorise a picture as good or bad. Thus particular attention will be given to the social norms that usally identify “failures” or bad photography, through a popular and an artistic point of view. Consequently, this essay will aim to answer the question: is there any specific aesthetic experience provided by photographs?

This essay will be structured as follows:
Starting from an accidental serie, the introduction will ask some initial question about our subject matter. The first part will outline the main differences that photography has with former artistic practices and how its causal nature has slowed its recognition as a fine art practice. The second part will show some conventions which restrict depictions in the photographic field of representation. The third part will be focusing on the case of the popular aesthetic and the social concerns that go with amateur practices. The fourth part will show the recuperation of popular conventions by contemporary practioners. Finally, we will focus on Paul Graham’s “End of an Age” serie, whose aesthetic deliberately looks “failed”.


Introduction: The Light Leak as Serendipity


“Sometimes the very first or last picture on your roll of film captures what is called a light leak from your camera. This is what most likely happened in this photograph. The colors can vary, and the types of anomalies that show up in the photograph can range in shape and size. This is why we disregard every picture from our rolls of film that where the first and last ones taken if they contain this type of photographic anomaly.”
http://www.ghostfiles.org/mistakes/1stlast.htm











The starting point of this essay is essentially based on this accidental, yet quite common circumstance called “light leak”. A few months back, one of my films came back from the photolab showing this curious incongruity. The four first pictures of the film were scrawled and consequently completely unreadable.
It is quite difficult to determine the exact conditions that have shaped this serie: Was the film incorrectly engaged in the camera? Was it out of date or spoilt ? Was the subject too luminous or the camera not adjusted well enough? These questions could be relevant if we were to give a mechanical meaning to this curious anomaly. However the practical causes that have given rise to this visual arrangement are not what’s interesting. This anomaly shows an exact illustration of what we do not give any importance to when we receive our photographs. However, I find these “apparitions” rather pleasant.

Indeed, although initially surprised by these accidental features, I have been rapidly attracted to their vibrant force and somewhat quite apparent sequential progression. A bit like fire, the composition and colours of the pictures mark an evolution in the direction of something less organic and more abstract. As a result, the colours and forms have been completely wiped away as if the film, and the supposed subjects recorded on it, have been submitted to a total combustion. The radiating and ardent red and yellow tints of the first pictures seem to have burnt all the constituents of the pictures. Following this subjective interpretation, the last grey picture could be viewed as a metaphor of ash.

This progressive attenuation of visible signs to monochromatic images is the exact thing that never fails to attract my attention. This strange removal echoes bizarrely with some observations that were made in my previous essay on the possible interpretations of photographic blank traces.

However, can we understand this failure as potentially beautiful art? Is there anything aesthetic in this breakdown? To go beyond this personal interpretation, it is necessary to put this sequence in a more general context. In this way, these pictures will work as an initial counter-example to outline the selected principles and rules that provide artistic status to photographic productions. Coming from nowhere and completely unexpected, these visual mistakes will be considered as the point zero of any aesthetic experience.

According to Henry Allison’s statement, “the basic idea, which governs everything that follows, is that art, as distinguished from nature, is conceived as the product of conscious human intent and skill. In order to be regarded as a work of art, an object must be assumed to have been deliberately created for the sake of some end” (Allison H. E. 2001: 273). Taking this description as starting point, these pictures do not achieve the basic condition of artistic production, that is to say: an intentional stance. This is the reason why they will be considered essentially for what they are: a unintentional mechanical failure. Thus, rather than to display ambiguous norms that could qualify what a good photograph is, it could be more pertinent to outline which norms allow us to consider a photograph as being unsuccessful. What makes a picture good or bad?

This accidental serie also operates as a “serendip effect”. This denomination is used by Clément Chéroux to refer to the methodological providence that analysis of failures can bring to photographic knowledge. Indeed, according to the dictionary, serendipity is “the fact of something interesting or pleasant happening by chance” (Chéroux C. 2003:43). Thus, the pleasant impression created by these pictures will be the first step towards asking questions about the prospective significance of failed photographs. Consequently, this serendip serie set an initial limit to categories and notions that allow to consider photographic productions as artistic or non-artistic artifacts.

This essay also follows three main moment, which are: an inquiry on the nature of the photographic medium (the camera); an analysis of its productions (the subject), and a description of its practionners (photographers). It outlines some initial conditions that precede any aesthetic experiences related to photographs. This argumentation follows a rather unusual approach. As we will see, following art history precepts, artistic artifacts are usually define through their ability to attain pure beauty. Consequently, it is common to define photographic art works through features and examples that characterise good models of older artistic ways of depiction. In this sense, with regards to these artistic principle of beauty, it is not easy to specify status and originality of photography.

Part 1: The Servant of the Science and Arts

“Any work of art reflects the personality of its creator. The photographic plate does not interpret. It records. Its precision and fidelity cannot be questioned”
Encyclopédie française (cited in Bourdieu P. 1990 (1965):73)


This section outlines the main difference that the realistic photographic depiction has made to the former pictorial media. In this way, we will see the difficulties that photography initially met in order to gain its own aesthetic status within former arts. Even if photography embraces many similarities with other artistic forms, it radically varies on fundamental issues. Photography has suffered the comparison with other pictorial media such as painting, drawning, engraving and collage. Following Jonathan Friday’s theories, the pictorial media have been labeled under the general name “manugraphy” (Friday J. 2002:38). One of the main differences between manugraphy and photography is found in the mode of production. In particular, because “photography are causally dependent on the world they depict, but manugraphs have an intentional relation to the world in that the beliefs thoughts and skills of the manugrapher are the sole determinant of the world depicted in a manugraph” (Friday J. 2002:39)

The principal issue with recognising photography as an art expression remains in this causal relation to the world. Through its mechanical and photochemical process, photography removes any human intervention during the decisive moment of the creation. This situation was paradoxal enough to achieve any artistic status. Following traditional Kantian conception: “art in general may be defined as an intentional activity of human beings that aims at the production of certain objects and that requires a significant degree of specialized skill or talent of some sort. Correlatively, the product of such activity are works of art. Art so defined, however, is obviously not equivalent to fine art, which is alone the concern of taste. Thus, in an effort to arrive at the required definition, Kant first divides all art into mechanical and aesthetic, the difference lying in the nature of the end intended” (Allison H. E. 2001:273).


This subordination has not failed to be noticed by many observers of the beginning of photography. Charles Baudelaire, for instance, was a virulent critique of this new technology as being a product of industry. He argued that photographs provided an impression of reality that did not reveal the spiritual momentum defining art works. In his famous text “Le public moderne et la photographie” published in 1859, he declares that "If photography is allowed to supplement art in some of its functions, it will soon have supplanted or corrupted it altogether....its true duty... is to be the servant of the sciences and arts - but the very humble servant, like printing or shorthand, which have neither created nor supplemented literature” (www.jahsonic.com)

Photography embodied a perfect demonstration of a mechanically governed mode of production. Besides any aesthetic considerations, this exemplary status could by itself eliminate photography from any pretention of fine art recognition. This disparity is still obvious nowadays when we say that a painting is made by the painter and a photograph is taken by a photographer.

This situation is also due to imperative requirements of realism and objectivity that have largely banned photography from having any aesthetic recognition for a long period of time. In a way, it is principally due to the intrinsic nature of this particular “pictorial medium” (Friday J).


Part 2: 10 Tips for Great Picture

“Have you ever got your photos back only to discover that something that looked awe-inspiring at the time looks dull on paper? This is because your eye needs some reference point to judge scale. Add a person, car, or something of known size to indicate the magnitude of the scenery.”
10 Tips for great pictures



According to Clément Chéroux’s rather clever suggestion, we will show how to understand aesthetic dimensions of photographic production by using norms that define what is commonly accepted as bad photographs. To achieve this assignment Clément Chéroux asks a basic but nevertheless crucial question: How can a photograph be regarded as unsuccessful?

He remarks that it is as problematical to answer this question as it is to identify the qualities of a good photograph. However failures have the huge benefit to be rigorously normed. Thus, a photograph is always regarded as unsuccessful according to strict preconditions. It is always a picture that does not completely fulfill its mimetic function for different reasons: the shutter has been accidentally tripped, the photograph is over- or under- exposed, the situation or objects in front of the camera have suddenly changed during the shot, superposition, red-eyes effects, blurry or contrasting pictures, etc. All these technical obstacles are almost the same from the beginning of photography to today and the risk of failure photographs is still seen as the one worry that photographers have.

Besides these essential technical problems, rules of style have also been established. These norms are strict and easily identifiable for any photographers. They are generally prescribed by different intermediaries like photo-clubs, professionals, photolabs, magazines and others manuals which provide strict recommendations. As an example, these 10 Tips for great pictures article is extracted from one of the numerous photography manuals: Hold It Steady; Put The Sun Behind You; Get Closer; Choose A Format; Include People; Consider Variety; Add Depth; Use Proportion; Search For Details; Position The Horizon. Each tip is accompanied by an advice like the one at the beginning of this section.

According to Pierre Bourdieu, these prescriptions are the results of an arbitrary selection. These cultural choices define objects and topics that are worth showing and the correct way of depicting them. These strong principles have helped normalise social uses of photography and firmly allocate its fundamental function. “Photography is considered to be a perfectly realistic and objective recording of the visible world because (from its origin) it has been assigned social uses that are held to be “realistic” and “objective” (Bourdieu P. 1990 (1965):74). In this sense, photographs should follow above all visual conventions which embody their social functions. That is to say the practical concern is to take the most standardised and common pictures of the world.

Part 3: Towards a Popular Aesthetic

The depreciated status of photographic productions in the art world is not so effective anymore and it is quite difficult nowadays to contest its place in the sphere of fine arts. The question of the causality, even if it is still a current issue does not work as a central and discrediting argument to judge photographic aesthetism. Considerations related to the medium tend to outline the part of creativity and intentionality which stick to every production. Thus, it is actually more common to state that “photographers must choose their subject matter, the position from which to photograph it, as well as the equipment and materials to be used and, in doing so, they may be guided by a conception of what they want to achieve. In all these ways the photographer’s intentions dominate the use of the medium and – so the argument goes – reference to photography as a causal mode of depiction is misleading” (Friday J. 2002:40).

Pierre Bourdieu’s analysis of the mid-60s outlined that this conception was not so clearly established. Photography was situated in a middle level between popular and fine arts. At the same time, this process of recognition had also provided strong delimitations about the aesthetic stances to adopt regarding photography. Bourdieu’s observations during this transition period also allow us to outline the aesthetic categories that were clearly noticeable when photography was still a “middle-brow art”. According to him, these diverse perceptions, whether legitimate or popular, are representative of a hierarchical division of contemporary society.

This apparent distinction is mainly due to cultural capital of individuals looking at and taking photographs. As for traditional manugraphic works, people use different tastes in order to read photographic productions. However, the main particularity of photographic perception still remains in their realistic appearance. As we will see, the natural correlation of photographic representations with the real world implies strong preconceptions.

However, following the recent evolution of photography, the case of popular “aesthetic” is particularly interesting because it has never completely considered as an expression of (fine) arts. Photography is not viewed as an autonomous sphere and it should rather evoke an explicit continuity between (mechanical) art and everyday life. By definition, popular productions tend to give a more important place to the function than to the form of photographs. Bourdieu defines it as the exact opposite of pure aesthetic: “the popular aesthetic expressed in photographs and in the judgments passed on photographs follows on logically from the social functions conferred upon photography, and from the fact that it is always given a social function” (Bourdieu P. 1990 (1979):39). By adopting a practical perception and refusing “the criterion of disinterestedness” (Wollf J. 1993:36) “this aesthetic of the simple man” (Bourdieu P. 1990 (1965):84) embodies “barbarism par excellence” (Bourdieu P. 1990 (1965): 246).

It induces an aesthetic attention that is essentially focused on the realness and on the information value provided by the photograph. The quality of the pictures is also essentially considered through their informational significance and the interpretations that they provide about the world. The goal is also to give the most normal vision of a reality that is already known and referred to personal experience or judgements. Thus, these experiences “have nothing to do with the pursuit of beauty in and for itself” (Bourdieu P. 2002 (1979):85). Rather than to put a distance between reproduction and reality, that to execute a break with ordinary attitude towards the world, barbarous tastes use photography to come closer to real things or human-beings.

To be considered as a good photograph, a picture should also follow the basic principles of a highly normalised aesthetic and “the ordinary photographer takes the world as he or she sees it, i.e. according to the logic of a vision of the world which borrows its categories and its canons from a vision of the past. Pictures which, making use of real technical possibilities, break even slightly away from the academiscism of vision and ordinary photography, are received with surprise.” (Bourdieu P. 2002 (1979):75). As we will see, the status of this poor aesthetic has been notably modified in the last ten years. Hence norms that disqualified popular productions to any artistic recognition have been re-evaluated through the works of contemporary photographers.

However, mistakes can be interpreted differently. Realism and objectivity are always subject to modifications depending on places of exhibition or the rarity of the picture itself. In a photo-album, for instance, mistakes like red eye effects and blurry or contrasting pictures are less important and people tend to disregard them. Memories of a moment or the people depicted are more important. It is this rather sentimental value which guides the appreciation of the quality of pictures. It does not matter that pictures present imperfections, their rarity give them a particular affective status. This observation is even clearer in historial documents or reporters’ scoops. In these contexts, photographs can be considered as rare testimonies of exceptional events, their apparent mistakes having lost their failed aspect: they become documents. As we will see at the end of this essay, mistakes and failures can also become aesthetical elements.

Part 4: Barbarism but Pure

"I use magazines as an extended exhibition space"
Wolfgang Tillmans


Bjork by Terry Richardson


The massive recognition process of photography as fine art during the 80’s has been rapidly succeeded by a trend of intentional deficient photographs. This provocative counter-aesthetic follows a quite usual artistic logic: “the easiest, and so the most frequent and most spectacular way to “shock the bourgeois” by proving the extent of one’s power to confer aesthetic status is to transgress ever more radically the ethical censorships which the other classes accept even within the area which the dominant disposition defines as aesthetic. Or, more subtly, it is done by conferring aesthetic status on objects or ways of representing them that are excluded by the dominant aesthetic of the time, or on objects that are given aesthetic status by dominated “aesthetics”. (Bourdieu P. 2002 (1979):47) This consideration is particularly relevant when we consider the impact that cheap photography has had during the nineties especially in fashion and lifestyle magazines. Rather than focusing on objects and topics represented in these productions, I would rather outline the influential collision that trash photography has generated between popular and pure aesthetic.

This trend instigated by fashion magazines since the beginning of the nineties spread in the photoghraphic world. Through an assortment of provocative subjects, a new generation of photographers, like David Sims, Terry Richardson or Wolfgang Tillmans, popularised a trend commonly known as trash photography. Terry Richardson, for instance, shows a sincere respect for the poor stylistic amateur conventions and only takes snapshots. They are, according to him, “idiot proof”. He deliberately contested the principles of good tastes praised within institutional photographic networks. But taking pure aesthetic conventions into account, his provocative, and sometimes shocking pictures flirt with bad taste.

The main interest of these productions for our purposes lie in the fact that they have clearly knocked down the last enduring boundaries that distinguished traditionally popular aesthetic from pure aesthetic. And, consequently, the boundaries that traditionally allow to differentiate good photographs from bad ones. Working primarily as professional photographers for magazines or commercial activities, Terry Richardson and co. are massively present in galleries and art books. Through these various activities, they simultaneously occupy three sectors that used to be traditionally clearly distinct from one another: amateur, professional and artistic. Nervetheless, it is sometimes difficult to perceive the artistic stance that motivates their work.

Paul Graham: Between Two Worlds


“Why Does Red-Eye Happen? Red-eye typically happens in low-light conditions because our pupils are wide open to let in more light and thus reflect back enough light from a flash to show the color of the blood vessels inside our eyes. Therefore, to avoid red-eye you need to shine additional light on your subject before photographing them in low-light conditions.”
Kris Butler & Donn Clark, Remove Red-Eye



This final part will aim to show how popular aesthetic, and particularly aesthetic failures work as elements within artistic activities. Indeed this inclination to generate cheap or trash photography was also adopted by contemporary photographs/artists. The case of Paul Graham is particularly significant in the sense that his artistic intentions clearly differ from the aesthetics presented in magazines and they reveal a stance that is situated far away from fashion standards and commercial interests.

Through their conceptual force, these pictures are in line with a fine art approach. For the cover of his catalogue “End of an Age” published in 1999, Graham presents an overstressed red eye effect. This initial mistake also gives the aesthetic tonality adopted in this specific work which presents an intentional non-professional aesthetic. Thus many common “mistakes” avoided by photographers are clearly presented. “Graham eschews the most basic convention of portraiture -the direct gaze of the subject - along with most rules of professional photography. Some images are out of focus; others are almost entirely obscured by color cast” (Levi Straus D. 2000)





This work presents a portrait collection of young people shot in rave parties all around Europe between 1996-1998. Any sign of specification like nationality, group or cultural appartenance are abandoned. The people in these pictures do not express themselves through their looks or through a particular attitude that ordinarily act as communicative “tools” in these kind of places. This is in total contradiction with fashion photography

All these anonymous portraits show a rather collective representation of contemporary youth. In this sense, raves can be considered as emblematic, in-between places of expression for many youths that are about to enter adulthood. However, rather than showing marks of exuberance, sensuality or excesses that usually go with these recreational places, Graham’s portraits show people with a deeply concerned gaze and attitude. In "End of an Age", the deeper subject is the passage from innocence to experience. The club kids in these pictures are suspended in that liminal zone between childhood and adulthood, or between the personal and the social. It is significant that they all are portrayed as spectators. They stand around the edges like actors in the wings waiting to go on. They drink, smoke, listen, and watch. Their utter absorption makes them appear even more vulnerable, and that state has a particular expectant beauty that Graham captures splendidly. But the tenderness is undercut by a certain zombie freeze” (Levi Straus D. 2000) It could be the effect of drug or the effect of light on the eyes, one trait is however always present, “nearly every one of these kids wears the same expression: an open, somewhat stoned, searching look”. Additionally, this apparent seeking stance gives these peoples something of a “slightly predatory”nature.




It is not only their manifest and visible aesthetic properties which give Graham’s pictures their artistic dimension. Intentionally adopting the codes that define mistaken pictures, Graham outlines the role of indecision and indistinctness that characterises this transition period. Through their simplicity, the pictures give an impression of proximity in the same way that amateur photographs do. But at the same time, all of these pensive and anonymous subjects seem very far-away. They remain between a familiar state, which could be interpreted as childhood, and an imprecise future. They gain a sort of iconic status as representatives of a generation balancing between two ages.

Hence, through his artistic stance, Graham alters our established ways of reading this type of pictures and gives another meaning to this traditional failure. His non-professional aesthetic allows to reveal both the proximity that usually sticks to these failed pictures. And, through the collection of anxious gazes, he positions these anonymous people at a substantious distance.

Consequently, this photographic work can be considered as fine art thanks to its “aboutness”. That is to say “they endeavor to make a statement (for Danto a reflexive, theoretical statement) about the nature of art itself, and for one to regard them as work of art is just to view them in this light (as objects susceptible of interpretation).” (Allison H. E. 2001:275). To be effective, this ability to provide susceptible interpretations must be intentionally produced by the artist/photographer. What gives a real exemplarity and originality to this work is the fact that Paul Graham has chosen these simple “aesthetics attributes” to achieve his conceptual intentions.

Conclusion:





In conclusion, I would like to return to the initial “leaking light serie”. It is clear that they remain clearly outside any aesthetic norms and both popular and artistic tastes. This essay has been primarily focusing on a number of social aspects that define photographic aesthetic according to arbitrary conventions. Consequently, it is still difficult to interpret what I find a somewhat pleasant effect.

Even if the leaking light series do not have any artistic issues, they have helped confirm my personal disposition for conceptual photographic productions. Through their unexpected apparition, that is to say through their serendipity, they have activated a specific “affect-oriented account of aesthetic experience” (J. Friday): to be agreeably surprised and to look forward to activating this affect again.

As a result, while looking for photographs to illustrate this essay, I came across some works whose composition echoed this light leak effect. That is the case of this blurry picture of Hubert Kretschmer or this monochromatic blue sky of Paul Graham. I was quite surprised to see how many photographic projects could be associated with it. I did not know that this type of abstract approach was so widespread.

At a time when traditional fine art seem to have reached its limits in many fields, photography still has an incredible potential for artistic progression. It is rather hard to find any explanation to this phenomenon. It could possibly lie in the prejudice against photography as an artistic practice.

As a mechanical and causal medium, it always leaves something to indecision. In this sense, even if the intention is always to control indecisiveness in photography, being good or bad, it is intrinsically stamped by serendipity. The photographer is an adventurer whose discoveries are always uncertain.


Bibliography:

Allison Henry E., K 2001 Kant’s Theory of Taste: A Reading of the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment; Cambridge University Press.

Bourdieu Pierre, Photography: A Middle-brow Art; California; Stanford University Press.

Bourdieu Pierre 2002 (1979), Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, London; Routledge

Chéroux Clément 2003 Fautographie: Petite Histoire de l’Erreur Photographique Crisnée; Yellow Now.

Friday Jonathan 2001 Aesthetics and Photgraphy; Ashgate

Levi Strauss David 2000 ArtForum
www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0268/is_7_38/ai_61029109

Wolff Janet 1993 Aesthetics and Sociology of Art, University of Michigan Press

Internet sources

www.bartleby.com/61/93/S0279300.html
www.ghostfiles.org/mistakes/1stlast.htm
www.jahsonic.com
www.acdsystems.com

Illustrations Credits

Richardson Terry
Graham Paul "End of an Age 1996-1998", 184 x 143 cm
Graham Paul "33 :18 (113)", 184 x 143 cm
Kretschmer Hubert