Page 59 - Studio International - July August 1975

Photographic Practice

and Art Theory'

Victor Burgin

I the encounter, particularly from One such representation is reproduced
`... Jess than at any time does a . this fetishistic, fundamentally here (fig. 1a) alongside the Diane Arbus
simple reproduction of reality tell us anti-technical notion of Art with which version; no further comment is required.
anything about reality. A photograph theorists of photography have tussled for Or again, consider the series in the
of the Krupp works or GEC yields almost a century without, of course, second row. Here the two Arbus pictures
almost nothing about these achieving the slightest result. For they (figs. 2b, 2c) have a component in common
institutions. Reality proper has sought nothing beyond acquiring in the pose depicted. This pose is a
slipped into the functional. The credentials for the photographer from the conventional sign for sexual desirability
reification of human relationships, judgement-seat which he had already allied, at least in principle, to accessibility.
the factory, let's say, no longer overturned'. 4 Although its origins are probably
reveals these relationships. Therefore The fetishistic and anti-technical elsewhere, in our own time it belongs
something has actually to be notion of art is no less prevalent now to the visual vocabulary of the
constructed, something artificial, than it was at the time Benjamin named `glamour pic', an example of which is
something set up.' it. Its correlate is an equally fetishistic provided here (fig. 2a). The quotation of
These remarks by Brecht were quoted and anti-technical notion of the this form by Arbus is in each case rendered
nearly fifty years ago by Walter production of meaning. It seems to be ironic through its amalgamation with an
Benjamin in his article 'A Short extensively believed by photographers anomalous content.
History of Photography'. 2 In the that meanings are to be found in the Yet again, the effect of the Diane
intervening years considerable attention world much in the way that rabbits are Arbus photograph of identical twins (fig.
has been paid to the mechanics of found on downs, and that all that is 3a) is largely an effect of similarity itself,
signification, work of great relevance to required is the talent to spot them and just as the press photograph reproduced
those concerned to construct meanings the skill to shoot them. A certain alongside (fig. 3b) gains its effect,
from appearances. However, and leaving je ne sais quoi, which may be recognized conversely, from the dissimilarity between
aside film, the influence of such theory but never predicted, may produce art its main elements. It is not a matter of
within art has so far been confined to a out of the exercise. But those moments `genius' on the one hand, and the lucky
very few of those manifestations which of truth for which the photographic snapping of a 'moment of truth' on the
have attracted the journalistic tag opportunist waits, finger on the button, other.
`conceptual'. One thing conceptual art are as great a mystification as the The point is : the basis of any 'mood'
has done, apart from to underline the notion of autonomous creativity. or 'feeling' these pictures might produce,
central importance of theory, is to On the back cover of my paperback as much as any overt 'message' they
make the photograph an important tool volume of Diane Arbus photographs I might be thought to transmit, depends
of practice. The consequence of such can read the opinions of two `authorities'.' not on something individual and
moves has been to further render the One tells me 'Her pictures . . . . . are mysterious but rather on our common
categorical distinction between art and concerned with private rather than knowledge of the typical representation
photography ill-founded and irrelevant. social realities . . . . . Her real subject is no of prevailing social facts and values; that
The only gulf dividing the arts today less than the unique interior lives of those is to say, on our knowledge of the way
separates the majority still laden with she photographed'. The other, having objects transmit and transform ideology,
the aesthetic luggage of Romanticism and informed me that Arbus is 'a legend', and the ways in which photographs in
Romantic Formalism (Modernism) goes on to say of her pictures : . . . it is their turn transform these. To
from the rest. their dignity that is, I think, the source of appreciate such operations we must first
Benjamin accurately described the their power'. Typical of the romantic lose any illusion about the neutrality of
debate over the respective merits of aesthetic attitudes which continue to objects before the camera.
painting and photography as . . . devious prevail today is the notion that there are
and confused . . . . . the symptom of a unique essences within things and II
historical transformation the universal people which are ordinarily concealed Obviously, photography only takes
impact of which was not realized by from us by appearances but which place where there is light and a
either of the rivals'.' In the nineteenth artistic genius can reveal to us. Typical substance which reflects light. This
century the arts of painting and of the 'criticism' informed by such substance is the stuff of our material
sculpture entered a crisis from which notions is the luxury of being equivocal environment; amongst it we
they did not recover. Increasingly about what is already vague. discriminate between hard and soft stuff,
estranged from their social context by the animate and inanimate stuff, and so on;
processes of democratization, they Now consider the Arbus photographs we discriminate between physical things.
suffered added displacement with the (see overleaf). For example fig. ibis of a Certainly it is these 'things' which
invention of photography and the family, perhaps the most important photography provides pictures of, but
harnessing of this invention to the means basic structural unit in society. The things are never simply things to us.
of mass-production. In 'The Work of Art desirability, the 'closeness', and the joy Externalizing his physical needs, man
in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction', of family life are centrally important ascribes a use-value to the things about
Benjamin describes the functional concepts in legitimating and supporting him (for example, he opposes the edible
dislocation of works of art which this unit. In an environment of to the inedible). Further, he intervenes
occurred when their mechanical billboards, popular press, television, in the environment, re-forming through
reproduction severed them from their and commercial cinema it is difficult to his labour the substances given in nature.
cult value as autonomous objects. He pass a single day without encountering A stone which is first a brute physical
finds that photography also suffered in some visual representation of the family. substance becomes here a hammer, there
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