Page 75 - Studio International - July August 1974

established for Arbus, and by Arbus, and she wanting people to spend their whole lives beautiful. There are also pictures of his wife
establishes it for all her subjects. If the reading 'Finnegans Wake,' has a point. The (who spent six months a year without him in
humanitarian interpreters of her work wish to point that essentially the artwork attempts to Mexico), who was tough, an independent
infer a statement about 'all humanity' to take you away from the material and the spirit, an important American painter,
assuage their guilt, there is nevertheless no relations at hand. And that in that sense Joyce's Georgia O'Keefe. Years spent with her before
reason to comply in this attitude. The portrayal revenge, as J. J. called it, is every artist's. marriage. What else ? The book is printed
of effect, not cause, is to not explicate the The transparent portraits by Sander, extremely well. The whole history of Stieglitz,
victimization. The persona is victim. seemingly not taking in a class position, of his gallery of modern art, his associations with
Nadar's photographs are often of famous course do so, for there is no way to de-class the Duchamp, Picabia, Strand and Marin, is given.
people looking at the camera: Baudelaire, subject (merely equalizing quantitative Much of it from Stieglitz's personal not before
Sarah Bernhardt, Corot, Courbet, Kropotkin, distribution is certainly not the answer). published conversations with Dorothy Norman.
Proudhon, George Sand, Flaubert, etc. They Sander's work was burned by the Nazis, but About the pictures there is little to say except
are deadpan. They stare back. And when they this does not necessarily make for its that Equivalent 27 c, 1935 is a picture that does
don't, they stare away from the point of the delimitation within a category of correct class not mimic the other arts, doesn't make clouds
lens or the photographer; they are staring consciousness either. To not take a and wind in the trees roll like Turner, doesn't
away, self-consciously. There is no subject condescending class position seems almost as make light and shadow emotively
inside the picture, but rather there is the laudable as taking a class position against the metaphorical, etc. What it does is frame an area
relation between photographer and ruling class. But both are mystified here as in of space, then crop that area (vertically!) and
photographed. And always the pictures look all work which transparently reproduces a leave you with some clouds and some space and
posed. The tradition of portrait photography reality, thus the work always mythologizes an the edges of some branches and leaves
started here. The pictures are of largish size, essentially ideological impetus and result. Are intruding at bottom and lower left + right hand
the book has about 100, all full page, and the people not mythologized in their singular frame-edge, and you have a picture, its
text is in Italian. An important book merely presentation as subjects 'separated' from class pictureness primary. You also get in this
because Nadar's photographs are nowhere else and history. Is photography thus not an book the absurdly romantic sayings of
to be found to such an extent. essential medium of the myth ? As opposed to Stieglitz, and the double-bind-have-it-both-
As to Walker Evans; pictures of housefronts, one that seems to consistently make myth ways-liberalism (in this case with reference to
of deserted woodframe houses standing in the as if there were a choice. women) that is still the epitomy of middle class
landscape which is dominated by these What criteria make for a good photograph ? bourgeois reaction, eg, 'Woman feels the
structures. They are. They do not attempt What is cropping ? More than a formal(ist) world differently than man feels it. The woman
an expressionism but of course they do attempt notion of 'the good composition' ? Somewhere receives the world through her womb.
an expression of isolation. No stark shadows, no along the line, Malone Dies ripping in two a That is the seat of her deepest feelings. The
hinting metaphors creeping in, 'pure' pictures. daguerreotype. (An impossibility.) Photography mind comes second . . (And man for some
Of course there is no such thing, but pure in the has developed to the point where the picture reason doesn't feel the world primarily through
sense of straight, what is there without attempted is no longer questioned, and the criteria his prick but through his mind). 'All the
symbolization, though one cannot reject the (as always) adopted under the guise of search attempts until O'Keefe were weak because the
fact that each image, image segment, for the 'good' photograph presents a series of elemental force and vision back of them were
construct, is a signifier, etc. Although the ideological functions, the import of which are never overpowering enough to throw off the
pictures fall into a tradition which must now undeniable, the exact location of which remain male shackles. . . 'Anyway, he wasn't much of
be totally rejected, as a method of the past it obscurely submerged beneath formalist a philosopher, though no different from most,
sufficed. These pictures are `of' a particular conceptions of the abstract decisions of frame- but it is the work that matters, of which some
time and a particular place; true, one of the edge, off-bled images' arena, expression- is good and surprisingly unsentimental.
motives of the Farm Security Administration enhancing effects of chiaroscuro, etc. Which is The last book on the list is one on art and
was to show the dignity of poverty, but this not to deny that those functions cannot be photography, giving many instances of both
needs no comment. The ideology is steadfastly ignored. But the position in which they are (Hill, Talbot, Dürer, Brady, Atget, Degas,
built into these as into all photographs, all located resting as it does in ideology must be Bacon, Coburn, Man Ray, Moholy-Nagy,
reproductions. The stark straight flat grey excavated. The exhumation of the ideology Warhol, Hamilton, Richter, Dibbets, etc.) and
pictures are uncomplex, and the trace of image must now begin as the exhumation of the image of neither, and is fuller than full. It is
is not alluding to nearly as much outside of had already, with the invention of photography interesting because it raises the issue of art and
itself as most. The subjects of these pictures, itself. And a series of contexts must be photography by its very bland presentation of
an extraordinary (in their 'non- carefully thought so that, for example, as in both. Most photographs and artworks function
extraordinariness') manifestation of the people conventional art (re Warhol, its most useful) as the 'I' solidified. The mystery, and essence,
of Alabama within their American landscape. determinant factors of effectivity and the idea, are to be, finally, expunged from both q
Alabama Negroes, standing around, waiting. operative use (less/ful) ness can be judged PETER GIDAL
Gas-station, pre-pop, Coke posters, streets. (or researched).
The Tengle Family, father , mother, sisters, How does the production of meaning Andrei B. Nakov is an art historian living in
various views, same faces from different operate in a photograph ? In other words from Paris . . . Norbert Lynton is Director of
directions, slowed down life. Who needs those of Julia Kristeva, how is it how it is what Exhibitions at the Arts Council of Great
Vermeer if you've got picture Number io ? it is; to what degree can individualism and the Britain . . . Reyner Banham is Professor of
But in that lies also the seed of the insidiousness it implies be annihilated ? The History of Architecture . . Cornelius Cardew
retrogression of such work now. This book has production of important works rests on the is a marxist composer of music .. . Theo
most of the pictures from 1935 to 1938, and is adequate resolutions to such problems but the Crosby is a Partner of Pentagram Design . . .
the catalogue from which prints can be ordered. theoretical tasks to be dealt with need much J. P. Hodin is an eminent author and Foreign
Hollis Frampton wrote in Artforum some time more space and time. That's not an apologia, it Relations Officer for Studio International . . .
ago, something to the effect of someone spending is an assertion of fact. Michael Spens is an architect and film-
their whole life watching someone else's life Alfred Stieglitz, An American Seer is by maker . . . Brian Rushton is Managing
on film . . . apropos of what, I forget. The Dorothy Norman, who worked with Director of Warehouse Publications . . .
story, paraphrased from Joyce's notion of Stieglitz. She was (and probably is) extremely Peter Gidal is a film-maker.
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