Page 43 - Studio International - April 1970

all the photographs here. Their factual source objects, should protect their authenti- Air de Paris, 1919. That sample of the atmos-
appearance is maintained through even the city ultimately. In the present instance, in phere is contained in a sealed glass ampule, of
most problematic relationships. `Artists & Photographs', the contents of the which one would have to say, this is not a
One of the uses of photography is to provide catalogue are variants of the items in the piece of laboratory equipment, etc. The
the co-ordinates of absent works of art. Earth- exhibition, not reproductions. Both the exhibi- artists in both cases work against the reduc-
works, for example, such as Robert Smith- ted 'object' and the catalogue 'entry' are tion of the photograph or the object to a
son's, can sometimes be experienced on the permutations made possible by the repeata- channel function.)
spot, but not for long and not by many bility of the photographic process. Michael Kirby takes 'clarity as the only con-
people. Documentation distributes and makes Michael Heizer has discussed the role of scious standard' in both shooting and develo-
consultable the work of art that is inacces- photography in relation to his own work. Of a ping his photographs, but the result is not
sible, in a desert, say, or ephemeral, made of work in Nevada he writes: 'It is being photo- record but source. In Pont Neuf he uses six
flowers. The photographic record is eviden- graphed throughout its disintegration'.3 The photographs, taken from one point, to pro-
tial, but it is not a reproduction in the sense run of photographs records the return of vide views of the surrounding space: the work
that a compact painting or a solid object can probability to his initial interruption of the can, as it were, be inferred backwards to the
be reproduced as a legible unit. The docu- landscape. He points out that photographs converging point. Jan Dibbets's work is in-
mentary photograph is grounds for believing are like drawings, as the basic graphic form of conceivable without monocular vision (that
that something happened. his big works in the landscape is recovered in is, a camera) ; his 'perspective corrections',
Photographs used as co-ordinates, or as aerial photography which shows the earth's whether constructions built in a field or areas
echoes, soundings that enable us to deduce surface as an inscribed plane. Related to the ploughed on a beach, demand one absolute
distant or past events and objects, are not the concise graphism of photographs is the viewpoint to be effective. Only from that one
same as works of art in their operation. Max camera's effectiveness as an image-maker. point can his inversion of distance give the
Bense has divided art and photography like Heizer's own bleak landscapes, like excava- appearance of flat squares and posts of
this: 'The aesthetic process in painting is tion sites, Smithson's photographing of identical size.
directed towards creation: the aesthetic pro- mirrors in a pattern in landscapes to make a The artistic ideas and operations that need
cess of photography has to do with trans- compound play of reference levels, and Rich- photographic documentation are especially
mission'. 'Painting reveals itself more strongly ard Long's walks in the country with regular those that are modified in time. Time, in fact,
as a "source" art, and photography more stops for documentation with a camera (of is central to photography. In the case of
strongly as a "channel" art.'1 the view, not of the walker) presuppose a Christo there is data on the wrapping of a
Dennis Oppenheim classifies photographic photographic step in the work process. As tower, some of it prospective (diagrammatic
documentation as a 'secondary statement ... Oppenheim has said : 'Communication out- or simulated) and some of it memorial; the
after the fact',2 the fact being, of course, the side the system of the work will take the form work process is arrested at different points in
work out in the field. He feels restricted be- of photographic documentation ...'.4 time. Sol LeWitt's Muybridge III takes a
cause 'the photograph gives constant reference Other artists in this exhibition/catalogue use classic image of motion (successive views of a
to the rectangle. This forces any idea into the the camera as a tool with which to initiate walking nude) and encloses it to be viewed
confines of pictorial illusionism.' However, ideas rather than to amplify or record them. directionally. Dan Graham's work alludes to
the distinction between source art and channel Edward Ruscha is represented by Baby Cakes, Muybridge's measured walking images, but
art enables us to disregard the four edges as a one of the factual series of photographs which here it is the walkers who take relational
design factor; the area of the photograph is began as early as 1962 with his book Twenty- photographs of one another. The slides are
simply the size of the sample of information six Gasoline Stations. This book, like his later then projected quickly on two screens, com-
transmitted, a glimpse. Common to both the ones, is neither sociological (the sample of pressing the original time sequence. Robert
absent original and to the photographic subjects is arbitrary) nor formalistic (the Morris's piece is a record of a 'continuous pro-
record is phototopic or day vision, with light imagery is casual), but it is a concordance of ject (altered daily)'. Only by photography
as the medium of perception on the site and decisions, unmistakeably aesthetic, for all can the temporal route of a work of art be
in the record. The works are, after all, their deadpan candour, in the absence of recorded in such terms homologous to the
photographable. other purposes. Similarly Bruce Nauman's original events. It should be stressed that it is
There is the possibility that documents, as photographs of the air (sky?) over Los not a question of memorializing a favourite
accumulating at present, may acquire the Angeles solidifies the channel functions of state, catching the work's best profile, but of
preciousness that we associate with, say, photography into a source art. In such works following the process.
limited-edition graphics. The development of the photographs are themselves an object, an These artists occupy various points in a zone
Earthworks or Street Events is resistant to the original structure projected by the artist. The that includes Conceptual Art, Earthworks,
possession of art as usually understood and information that Nauman's photographs Happenings. Conceptual Art, to the extent
photography resists becoming personal pro- carry cannot be decoded as news of weather that it is to be thought about, or repeated, or
perty by its potentially endless reproduction. or pollution or as a lack of unidentified flying enacted by others, insists on documentation
The fact that photographs are multiple objects. (The information that Nauman's systems originated by the artist himself. This is no
originals, not unique originals, as well as one's LAAIR does not carry, though it looks as if it less true of performance arts, such as Happen-
sense of them as evidence rather than as might, is different from Marcel Duchamp's ings or Events, which survive verbally as