“Whereas representation tries to absorb simulation by interpreting it as false representation, simulation envelops the whole edifice of representation as itself a simulacrum. These would be the successive phases of the image:
1 It is the reflection of a basic reality.
2 It masks and perverts a basic reality.
3 It masks the absence of a basic reality.
4 It bears no relation to any reality whatever: it is its own pure simulacrucm.“Jean Baudrillard
“The question of nuance (within unity) is linked to the model, while difference (within uniformity) is linked with mass-production. Nuances are infinite, they are an inflexion, renewed continually by invention within a free syntax. Differences are finite in number and result from the systematic bending of a paradigm. We must not make a mistake here: if nuance seems rare and the marginal difference unquantifiable, because it benefits from being diffused widely, structurally it is still only the nuance which is inexhaustible. (In this way the model is linked to the work of art). The serial difference returns into a finite combination, into a system which changes continually according to fashion but which, for each synchronic moment in which it is considered, is limited and narrowly restricted by the dictates of production. When all is said and done, a limited range of objects is offered to the vast majority through the series, while a tiny minority is presented with an infinite variation of models. The first social group is offered a repertoire (however vast) of fixed elements, while the latter is given a multiplicity of opportunities (the former is given an indexed code of values, the latter a continually new invention). The question of class is therefore fundamental to this whole business. Through the redundancy of its secondary characteristics, the serial object makes up for the loss of its fundamental qualities. The colors, the contrasts, the ‘modern’ lines are given extra significance — the idea of modernity, at the moment when the models detach themselves from it, is accentuated. While the model retains a life of its own, a kind of discretion, a ‘naturalness’ which represents a high point of culture, the serial object is limited by its need for singularity—it is part of a restricted culture… There is another aspect to this redundancy: the question of accumulation. And if there are too many objects, it is because there is too little space. Rarity brings with it a reaction of promiscuity, of saturation. And quantity makes up for the loss of quality in objects. The model has its space: not too near, not too far. The model interior is made up of these relative distances and tends towards the opposite of redundancy, connotation through emptiness.”
Jean Baudrillard, The System of Objects, 1968
“no ideas but in things…”
William Carlos Williams
“Photography produces a kind of thunderstruck effect, a form of suspense and phenomenal immobility which interrupts the precipitation of events. The ‘freeze-frame’ is a freezing of the world. However, that suspense is never definitive, since photographs refer on one to another and the image’s only destiny is to be an image. And yet each is distinct from all the others. It is through this kind of distinction and secret complicity that photography has recovered the aura it had lost with the coming of cinema.”
“What I bemoan is the aestheticization of photography, its having become one of the Fine Arts, culture having taken it to its bosom. The photographic image, by its technical essence, came from somewhere beyond, or before, aesthetics, and by that token constitutes a substantial revolution in our mode of representation. The irruption of photography throws art itself into question in its aesthetic monopoly of the image. Now, today, things have turned around: it is art which is swallowing up photography and not the other way about.”
“… the only true photograph is the one which eliminates all the others”
Jean Baudrillard
“The magic of photography is that it is the object which does all the work. Photographers will never admit this and will argue that all the originality lies in their inspiration and their photographic interpretation of the world. As a result they take photographs which are either bad or too good, confusing their subjective vision with the reflex miracle of the photographic act.”
Jean Baudrillard
“In art it is difficult to say something which is just as good as saying nothing at all.”
Ludwig Wittgenstein
It has taken some time but I have increasingly come around to the view that there is much truth in what Baudrillard says in the quote above (well, not just Baudrillard, Barthes, for one, has said much the same). I say “come around” because I’m not totally in agreement (being a photographer probably has something to with that and most likely explains my reticence to fully “let go” of my illusions, if “illusions” they indeed be…). In truth, I still hold fast to the belief that a truly great photographic image (and here I probably still mean “print”; a physical object in other words) can indeed be a thing of beauty, an “art object”, in its own right. Albeit that I still feel a little uncomfortable with the realisation that the values attached to what is, after all, a potentially infinitely reproducible article (the more so in our brave new digital world) have been artificially constructed and inflated to suit the needs of a burgeoning art market in such “objects”. Be that as it may, I find myself more interested now in actually what a photograph (and here I almost mean any photograph) is, or can be. Or more precisely what it may mean, how it may mean and what it is possible for it to express. Or in other words how much of any notional meaning is actually communicable to the viewer with any degree of reliability.
To answer my own question, especially in the case of the single, “one off”, “art object” photographic image I have come to the conclusion, “not very much…”. And here I should explain I refer to “meaning” as to the intent of the photographer, not meanings and associations as projected onto an image by the viewer according to how an individual may “read” it. In fact the whole notion of “reading” a photographic image is, in itself, problematic… a discussion for another day, another post, however. At any rate, the upshot of all this pondering, which may or may not be of any interest to the reader, is that I no longer feel a need to chase the chimera of the “beautiful”, “elegant” (and all those other terms people use to describe an “eye-catching” image) single, one-off image (dare I say the “masterpiece”?), something of which I have been as guilty of as anybody, even when I may have appeared to work in discrete “series”. Perhaps more than a little Baudrillardean logic has infused me, after all. Perhaps there is no need, any longer, to try quite so hard. At least for the issues I now seek to explore, it has maybe become an unnecessary “distraction”…
As related to the images I showed yesterday, the image above actually precedes them (not as images, obviously, but in their “treatment”). Looking at the image it is fairly self evident that it “represents” a sort of map of my perambulation around my garden. If indeed “reading” an image is possible, this one would seem straightforward. But there is also more than that to it. My close friend Anna Lee Keefer has referred to the image as the “shape” of my walk, which seems as succinct a description as I could imagine. You will notice that, starting from the bottom, at first my “steps” before stopping and taking a snap appear to be short ones, lengthening as I progress. I should add that the composite image here is a faithful representation of both the shape of my garden and the points where I stopped to take a snap. On the face of it, this “lengthening” of my steps establishes a kind of “rhythm” to the walk. It could mean (“mean” as in depict a fact) I sped up as I progressed. What it actually “means”, or shows, quite prosaically, is that I rapidly realised that at the rate I was stopping and photographing I would end up with an unwieldy number of images and so I “slowed down” not in speed but in my rate of stopping and image making, adjusting accordingly so that I could “represent” the shape of the garden in the subsequent composite image. No more, no less. In the end, I like the “rhythm” thus established. That is purely accidental, however.
In the sense I have described above the resulting images, especially in the composite shown here, may or may not be appealing to anyone (they may like the resulting “shape” for example). But it is pure documentary, honest and faithful too, of an act which, as I have “performed” it hundreds (if not thousands) of times before, is of little interest to me per se and I see no reason why it should be of any interest to anybody else. A photographic record of a purely banal act resulting in individually banal images. It is through the banal that I believe, however, is the best route to exploring the formal issues of photography that I spoke of above. Indeed, banality is, I believe, a crucial aspect of the photographic enterprise as opposed to the “heroic” image making of say, Ansel Adams et al, which speak of many things perhaps, but have little to say about the essence of photography, or indeed image making in general. But on that, to some no doubt, “heretical” note I shall leave the discussion for a future post…
My name is Ian Talbot and I am an artist and photographer living in London.
This blog is intended as an insight into the research, thinking and connections that precede the projects I undertake. I will also show new and experimental work. Naturally, not all of the work shown here will eventually make the cut. These are very much 'works in progress'...
You can see a complete collection of my work at my website:
Ian Talbot :: Objectively Speaking