Faces and Proportions

(c) J.A. Tillmann

Fundamentally, photography is the extraction of a spatial detail from the flow of time. Some part of the visible whole is excised, and without the possibility of fluctuation, the moment preserved in its finality. By comparison, the prevailing recording technique, whatever the procedure may be, i.e., analogue or digital, is of secondary importance. What is definite is that the depiction is established by that extract and remains unchanged. The world and its observation is fundamentally a question of proportions. It is revealed to us as moving between the relations of near and far, within and without, the tangible and the unattainable. Photographs contribute to the perception of this system of ratios. The “joy of photography is perhaps connected to this,” Kapielski fittingly concludes. “The world is somewhat disenchanting when beheld in terms of the big picture, the panorama of the senses. Through an extract, on the other hand, and from unexpected visual angles, it is perfectly understandable.”

Nature – extracted

In accordance with the above, nature photography is a true source of joy: The choice of viewpoints and sections can generate “illuminating” images even if the subject is not some sort of exotic distant land, but simply from our customary surroundings (i.e., usually not even deemed worthy of attention). Occasionally, this is reinforced by an object placed in the natural environment, or by cultural contrast. In the Gabriel Orozco image, all that has been placed between the tree trunks is a ball; however, the presence of that pure geometric form, the perfect sphere – something that is actually not to be encountered in nature – defines the forest environment as itself a quotation. (p. ) This emphasizes the otherwise common scene by placing it in a kind of negative frame. In the pictures of Canadian artist Rodney Graham, likewise everyday natural objects are visible, yet they are arranged in a way that is decidedly out of the ordinary – or “upside-down” – and in this way almost engender new shapes. (p. ) Olafur Eliasson belongs to the other basic type of nature photographer. His photographs portray unusual colours and light, rarely seen celestial and terrestrial phenomena. (p. ) The viewpoint of his pictures is often questionable: It is difficult to determine whether the perspective is micro- or macroscopic, whether we have before us an aerial photograph or are seeing the contours of an unknown continent outlined in the texture of an ice-floe. What is indisputable are the unprecedented wealth of shapes, the sheer size and grandeur of the natural structures. The majesty of nature is manifest even in the landscapes marred by the ecologically-damaging intervention of humans. The photos of Inge Rambow detail the various opencast lignite mines in the former GDR – most of which have since been subject to recultivation. (p. ) As a result of the mining technique, they are reminiscent of barren pre-historical geological configurations shot through by the patterns of the excavation machinery. Yet, shortly after the mines closed down, time already started to “correct” the picture in these “industrial landscapes” in the form of the traces of erosion by rain, the lakes that arose in these pits, and the trees and bushes of living nature. The simple beauty of natural materials and forms also appears in the case of works in which nature only makes up part of the surroundings, as in the oeuvre of Mario Merz. (p. ) Arte Povera discovered the wealth inherent in the poverty of nature – and rendered it perceptible by contrasting it to the white cube of the exhibition space.  

The image of the intangible part of the body  

“While all the arts are founded on the presence of man, only photography benefits from his absence.” This weighty assertion stems from André Bazin, that scholar of the ontology of the photograph, and one cannot deny that his pronouncement is valid to a degree. The human being is at best an attendant circumstance specifically if the camera functions in line with its “destiny”, i.e., fulfils the instructions of the programme. (S/he has purchased the equipment, has put it into operation at a particular place and for a specific occasion – “click here and the photo is ready.”) Contrary to this, Vilém Flusser writes of “a model of human freedom”, the artistic practice of photography: “A number of human beings are struggling against this automatic programming: photographers who attempt to produce informative images, i.e., photographs that are not part of the program of apparatus.” This is primarily true of portraiture. The effort required when producing images of humans is anything but minor: What has to be depicted, represented, and rendered visible is precisely that which truly is not visible – the personality. The most crucial part here is the soul: or what J. K. Arnim terms “the part of man’s body which is unfathomable”. Contrary to the customary clichés it is not the eyes, but the face that are the “mirror” of the soul. If the photograph shows only the eyes, they might be practically anyone’s. Instead it is the features of the face around the eye (or more precisely, the eyes) that display the personality, and not the spheres of our organ of seeing, even if they are intrinsically beautiful, colourful and profound. Mapplethorpe’s Self-Portrait evokes this borderline situation: He documents his face from the closest possible distance, with the frame beginning at the outer corner of the eyes, where the face is still a face. (p. ) Though he records only the detail of a face, he nevertheless captures the entire personality contained within it: the piercing eyes, the gaze, the arch of the guiding and focusing muscles of the eyes in the face. We can discern the effort of concentration in the wrinkled lines of the forehead. The photograph is not merely the image of an organ or of an object of study, but that of a human being, and shows his personality. Emmanuel Lévinas states for this reason that “what makes a face a face is simply that which cannot be reduced to perception, and the approach to a face is of an ethical nature at its root.” Man, and in particular his face, is not simply one object among objects: “If you see a nose, a forehead, someone’s chin or eyes, and you can describe them all, then you will turn to the Other as if he or she were an object.” The task of the portrait photographer, moreover, is all the more complicated because he must resolve all this amidst the inflationary number of human images available and the homogenisation of the ideal of beauty: “The key parameter for the beauty of a face is whether it is universal in nature,” writes brain scientist Detlef B. Linke. “Since we look at an increasing number of faces, the ideal of beauty becomes increasingly generalised.” The solutions – and the opportunities for artistic liberties – are many: One possibility is presented by Marie-Jo Lafontaine’s Liquid Crystal series, in which the youths portrayed, visibly grappling with the prevailing ideal of beauty, attempt to develop their own “image”. (p. ) Gottfried Helnwein travels a different path in his Faces series: Those featured in his portraits have no need to form an “image”, because they are already “faces”, known personalities who have left their mark on some field, art genre or community. (p. ) And these traces are revealed not only in their oeuvres, but also by their faces, with striking, pronounced features that are intensified by the crisp illumination and the camera, with its no-frills view of them. Thus, one of those who sat for Helnwein’s camera, William S. Burroughs is right to say that his pictures provide an occasion for “surprised recognition”.

The pictures of another realist, Andy Warhol – “ America ’s greatest realist ” as Barbara Rose has called him – are striking in their multiplicity of genres: There are “standard” good quality pieces of photojournalism (e.g., of John Paul II), which could even be marketed to a news agency. Then there are pictures that – owing to their incidental quality and technical simplicity – could be regarded as “family” snapshots taken by an amateur. (p. ) And there are some others which could even be snapshots caught by professional paparazzi – hunting prominent figures, in which the position of the personages, the framing and the lighting (sometimes using a flash) refer mainly to the circumstances of hasty production. Of course, this is all presumably intentional carelessness, since some of the VIPs frequented Warhol’s own world, and those who crossed the threshold into the Factory were asked to stand before the camera. And thus, the shortcomings and low quality, if not necessarily originally intended, were subsequently left the way they were – since in the case of the fame of the photographer or the person depicted, it did not really matter. The arbitrary nature of the post-modern is discernible in the trend taken by the notion of the “anything goes” that became so pervasive in Pop Art. Warhol’s self-portrait visualises the double game of concealing and revealing: He is positioned behind a raised pistol, but with the characteristic details of his face and hair, and in the company of his trademark object – his tape recorder (or his “wife”, which he took everywhere with him, the reason why members of the New York crowd termed him the “Recording Angel”). (p. ) Some of his portraits could also be considered “masked” self-portraits – such as that of Truman Capote, reclining at home. The milieu of Warhol’s secret apartment in the city may have been similar (furnished in American Biedermeier, though presumably less cosy than Capote’s), where he sometimes retreated from everything and everyone.

With his In theAmerican West series in 1979, Richard Avedon proved to be an even greater realist than “ America’s greatest realist”. (p. ) He travelled to remote, out-of-the-way places, to the heart of America, to photograph the people working with raw materials with a raw immediacy appropriate to them. In line with the work of his predecessor, August Sander, in his large-scale tableau, Face of Our Time – People of the Twentieth Century, in his own series Avedon offers a true panorama of Unmasked People.

For decades, Seydou Keita has made individual and group portraits in Bamako. (p. ) Since time passes differently in Mali, the grand tradition of studio photography (deriving from painting) survived longer here than elsewhere, and as a result, took on a new quality. Since its “discovery” in the 1990s, the rich universe of patterns and forms of local attire, the composed order of individuals and objects, and the ensemble of human behaviour appear in the world of the contemporary image as an island caught in time. By his own admission, Keita works in the same way as the old-time photographers, using the greatest care: “It’s easy to take a photo, but what really made a difference was that I always knew how to find the right position, and I was never wrong. Their head slightly turned, a serious face, the position of the hands […] I was capable of making someone look really good.”

Memory-pictures

In the majority of his works Christian Boltanski makes use of photography as a medium of memory, often using photographs produced long ago. His series entitled Gymnasium Chases also evokes the past: it is based on the class photo of a pre-War Viennese Jewish high school. (p. ) By means of a 19 th-century printing procedure, the technique of heliogravure, the accentuated faces appear almost as death masks. Photography and memory are brought closest to each other here, as the portraits produced with photogravure seem to be blurred, obscure mental images from memory.

Various aspects and problems of memory appear in the works of Jochen Gerz. His Berkeley Oracle, Questions Unanswered and The Witnesses of Cahors are also “plural sculptures”, a “social sculpture”, whose creation or mode of existence are bound to a specific social space. Often, he consults people who are members of the community in which the work is to be placed. (This is not some marketing strategy. His statements reveal that the open issues of art and its milieu, its public space and the confusion when faced by art prompt him to take such a course.) His visual art of “inquiring” is not always successful: In his The Bremen Questionnaire, for instance, barely half a percentage of those polled by the 50,000 questionnaires he sent to the leading business and cultural members of the city responded despite the fact that all three questions related to the community’s interests or to creating a shared concern: What topic should the artwork address? Do you think your idea can be realised by artistic means? Do you want to participate in making the artwork? The title of his Internet project of 1998, Berkeley Oracle, Questions Unanswered, refers on the one hand to the venues of the 1968 student movement, and on the other to the location of the Delphic Oracle in Greece. Both the modern-day and the Classical locations are places where questions are asked: In the former, they related to general, common issues, and in the latter to essentially personal questions. The Berkeley Oracle (p. ) does not offer answers to questions, but simply confronts you with questions: In the photographs depicting the ruins of Delphi, we see in part the “major”, universal questions of life (Where am I going? Where am I coming from? What can I hope for?) and in part obvious issues (If TV is holy, then what is religion?), and in part the most personal, eternally unanswerable existential questions (When will my last day come?). Here, self-reflection, the questions related to art, are also present, indeed in an intensified form: Would art exist if time and death did not exist? And Gerz obviously knows the answer full well, even if he has not formulated it perhaps with such acute precision as did literary scholar and theologian Northrop Frye: “ The fact that we are going to die is primary in our consciousness, which means that all the works of our hands, all the achievements of our civilization, are expressions of an awareness of death. Our works are mortal because they are symbols of the death in the power that created them.” Alongside raising questions, the other primary subject of Gerz’s art is collective and individual memory. His two best-known artworks, Monument against Fascism, which is located in a district of Hamburg, and2,146 Stones – Monument against Racism,both represent the dual nature and the paradox quality of the present past as our immediate prehistory. The former is a 12-metre column, which was gradually sunken into the earth over a period of ten years; today, only its top is visible from “bird’s-eye view” – at street level. The names of all those German townships in which Jewish communities once lived were carved into the 2,146 Stones. Their carved surfaces were sunk into the earth, so that this monument composed of stones is indistinguishable from the others and thus truly invisible. Yet it is precisely because it is invisible that it can refer to the lack of memory, the ruptures and erasure of memory. The past is likewise present in a special way in Gerz’s The Witnesses. (p. ) It was the trial of the French politician Maurice Papon that prompted it: The trial revealed that during the Vichy regime which collaborated with the Nazi occupiers, Papon took part as police commissioner in the deportation of Jews from the city of Cahors. During the week when the court reached its judgment, Gerz carried on conversations with the residents there, discussing in light of the events what they thought the truth was from a personal and social point of view. Poignant excerpts from these conversations can be read mounted on the portraits – it is a broad spectrum, ranging from personal memories, via universal aspects of truth, through to opinions on the political impact of the truth. Despite the disparity and contingency of the approaches to truth, a specific pattern of memory and the interpretation of truth emerges here. The images and the texts mounted on them contrast, while the faces render the messages personal, and at the same time authentic. Barbara Kruger constructs an entirely different contrast of word and image when she inserts her own juxtaposed text into the picture – or as the frame around the picture. (p. )

Visualisations

Taryn Simon’s series, entitled The Innocents, casts unusual light on the “objectivity” of photography. (p. ) The background to this work was a job she was commissioned to do in 2000 by the New York Times Magazine: to take portraits of unjustly convicted people, in whose trials photographic evidence played a role (which later proved to be false), as subsequent DNA tests proved the indicted to be innocent. Simon began to research similar cases, at the same time interviewing those involved, and photographing them in locations which had a particular significance for their conviction – on occasion in places were they had truly never been. The images thus staged attest to the unusual interference between documentary and fiction. Sybille Bergeman did not have to stage the figures of Das Denkmal [Memorial], 1975 – 1986: reality itself (or more precisely, “GDR socialism”) was the director. It was only necessary to “document” the sculptures under construction of the “Great Teachers” of the working class (Marx and Engels) at the right moment in order for their empty pathos to attain their deserved place in the pure comedy. (p. ) Australian artist Tracey Moffatt presents the visions of film images and those evoked by her imagination. The works are in part ironic and in part dramatic. Her series Up in the Sky could be read as excerpts from a documentary on events in the Australian desert. (p. ) The individual images can thus be viewed and interpreted as a portion of a coherent narrative. The images of Something more, by contrast, form an ironic collection of platitudes, a possible ensemble of overly colourful episodes from standard film scenarios. (p. ) Gábor Gerhes’ pictures are likewise characterised by carefully staged arrangement and irony. He takes his cue not from the cinema or the TV, but from art history. Resting Mothers marks the intersection of two classic types of image: With scathing irony he derives the subject matter and the composition from the reclining nudes that have been painted countless times, while he culls his title from portrayals of the Madonna, who has been depicted no less frequently. His irony can be said to be general: He spares not even himself. His A Faith of His Own – “homage” to landscape painting and beach photography – is at once evidence of a personal attitude and an allegory of photography. The “transcendent” extract opens our eyes to a white hole, which, owing to its thick black frame, could even be viewed as a bleached black hole. It is a neutral surface onto which anything at all can be projected or presented.