Page 74 - Studio International - July August 1974

who go. Fergusson went, and remembering the can be employed are clearly, if concisely, Atget's pictures of deserted streets are such.
fate of Charles Rennie Mackintosh, who at detailed without the hindrance of the This is not to deny their transparency, at
that time could blame him. As the industry's jargon (for the neologists, a polyglot another level, an essential transparency wherein
traditional itinerant Scot on the continent, glossary is included as an appendix). The lies their fault (fault in the sense that to
Fergusson chose Paris, arriving there in 1905. considerable up-dating here includes such photograph that way now is retrograde; then :
Henri Frantz, writing for this Journal in comparatively recent advents as photo- discovery). The invention of techniques cannot
Paris at the time, set him on the path to the composition and computer-assisted setting. be separated from the avant-garde act of
Salon d'Automne. In 1913 he found a hut on the What is surprising is that the second part of producing a work, within a given time, within
Cap d'Antibes where he could settle and work, the book, which covers design (and occupies a given plane, through a means of production as
and Meg Morris joined him there by the two-thirds of the volume), provides only given, implying (wrongly or not) a consciousness
Christmas of 1913. The war brought him home, sparse and dispersed information on the as given . . . At the level of early invention
reluctantly, to a period as a naval war artist graphic techniques involved in designing books colliding with persistent avant-gardist tendency
when, like Bomberg, he was drawn to the where text and illustration are interwoven into (in the literal and non-derogatory meaning of
subject of camouflage ships. But there followed what has come to be referred to as the 'picture' that term), there's a fundamental import which
a return to the Cap and to a very productive book. Although the history of the disciplines is not of two separate occurrences coinciding, but
period, enriched by his friendship with others that combine in this, now common, form are rather, a necessity, a determining instance
working there, such as Picasso (`Ah, mon vieux well documented, no mention is made of the (Althusser) of production of work which
copain Fergusson') who told Fergus, at the page grid — hardly a recent innovation. This is all demands this. Here is where the basic, and
Hotel du Cap, 'You do not fit into this place' the more surprising as the developments in general, misreading has always to be
and picking a sprig of bog-myrtle from a bush, photo-lithography which led to the popularity apprehended when discussing currently
handed it to him saying, 'This is you'. of the mixture are well represented. produced work and the relations that work has
Margaret Morris's wealth of revealing The only other criticism, which, it seems, can to other work.
anecdote enlivens the background through the be levelled at all printing encyclopedias, lies in The momentary 'captured' time of Lartigue:
warmth of her feeling, exposing a depth of the examples shown of illustration and snapshots in the simplest sense of the term,
understanding that a more formal biography typographic design: the historical are excellent; photographs taken (mainly as a child) of a
could never reach. This life in any case was as the recent are poor and hardly indicative of the moment captured (someone running down steps
much foreground as background. Fergusson standards to be seen in any bookshop today. q behind the photographer, the quick turn, the
never separated mind from feeling, as his BRIAN RUSHTON unconscious moment.) These photographs speak
unpublished essay ,`Art and Atavism', at once of a (real) reality captured, and of a
included at the end of the book, demonstrates consciousness moulding the photograph, an
with superb ease. There remain areas where Photo collection artist behind the camera in the sense that there is
even this insight provides no further clue. For Walker Evans (Photographs for the Farm no implication merely of a static a priori reality,
instance the enigma of Fergusson's few but Security Administration 1935-1938). 26o pp, but rather of a moment of action both before and
memorable sculptures; in their rarity they 488 photographs, distributed by Idea Books, behind the camera. Thus a consciousness
leave many questions unanswered for art 18 Endell Street, London WC2. £15.25. outside the frame is inferred, through the
historians. Nadar by Prinet, Dilasser, and Vitali. 406 pp, methodology of the work's production. Yet that
In 1939, Fergusson returned from Paris to 116 photographs. Distributed by Idea Books, methodology is an idealist one. For the
Scotland, like the salmon, as Meg says. The 18 Endell Street, London WC2. £11.00. influence of 'What is outside the frame' is here
time had come to help the young independent Combattimento Per Un Immagine: Art and the illusory presentation of an absence.
painters, if there were any, Fergus says. He Photography by Daniella Palazolli and Luigi The notion of an 'essence' being produced
died, happily back in Glasgow (he rejected Carluccio. 45o pp, 40o photographs. Distributed through the snapshot, through the capture of a
Edinburgh, wisely), while working on the last by Idea Books, 18 Endell Street, London WC2. person's 'unconscious' is not necessarily
magnolia picture, of two nude female figures £8.00. concomitant with a notion of photography as
surrounded aptly by magnolias. He understood August Sander: Photographer Extraordinary employed (for example) by Lartigue. That is to
all materials, stone, oak and metal included, by Günter Sander, foreword by Golo Mann. say, the idealist reading into the picture of a
because above all he understood life, which 316 pp, 275 photographs. Thames and Hudson. universal essence, let alone a specified
very much included Margaret Morris. And as £18.75. diminution (through the very momentariness
this book so fully reflects, she greatly understood Alfred Stieglitz An American Seer by Dorothy and unconsciousness of the act of capture), is
him.q Norman. 254 pp, 150 photographs. Distributed one that is precisely that: read into the work.
MICHAEL SPENS by Idea Books, 18 Endell Street, London WC2. The residue of such an essence is nowhere to be
£9.95. found, in no artwork. What was it in 1963
that made an Arbus photograph of a boy and a
Bookmaking Photography has come to be defined as a sub- girl arrest my eye ? The boy's arms too short, the
The Making of Books by Sean Jennett category of nostalgia and/or art. With portraits girl's back in the picture slightly disfigured,
554 pp, 209 illustrations. Faber. £8.00. of people, we always have the possible cliché thus the freakishness. All this went unnoticed
rationale of 'that's how it is' but never 'how it is for ten years. Was it the reading into the
This, the fifth edition, is still an impressive how it is'. Thus the cliché becomes solidified, picture of some other 'essence' ? A manner of
compendium of the old and new elements that and the myth is conceived and perpetuated reading severely needing to be corrected.
continue to stimulate a fascination in the skills through that usage. The frame through which Freaks become metaphors for freakishness;
collectively known as book production. Whilst you view the image is just that, and the image in using the given cultural cliché one makes of
not intended to satisfy those who are just that, but the two together are a difference, the victim precisely that. Somehow one must
immersed, daily, in print production, it would the crux of that difference resting precisely in get through the immediate response to Arbus
be remarkable if any one of those such pseudo-documentary's dichotomous to her essential voyeuristic manipulative act.
practitioners' knowledge matched this book's nature, when a parallel to 'nature' is attempted. The woman as seen in Bertolucci's Last Tango
total content. That is the basis of the problematic. not as weak, as victim, but as weak, biologically
Throughout the first part of the book the There's the notion of a record, and this one determined and determining weakness inherent
multitude of technological possibilities which must set against the notion of a record of time; in the sex. It is this which for freaks is

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