lecture 03 - objectivity and deadpan
TRANSCRIPT
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Objectivity and Deadpan:Examples from a German context
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Main concerns:
A short history of German photography, looking primarily at those photographers who
approach their subject with a lack of style - foregrounding objectivity rather than a
subjective [snap-shot] approach.
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*August Sander and his Citizens of the Twentieth Century (begun c.1910, never completed)*Bernd and Hilla Becher architectural photography, 1960s to today
*post-Becher school of photography: Andreas Gursky, Thomas Ruff, Candida Hofer, from thevery late 1970s to today
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Key terms / areas for this session:
Objective / Subjective what is the difference? How can they work on
each other productively?
Disinterestedness + Distance approaching a subject without
affecting it how to remove oneself as a photographer whilst allowing the
subject in front of the lens to assert themselves
Deadpan as the repression of style
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Other areas:
1. SYSTEM
the archive (the gathering of data)
a chosen photographic system (and its attendant rules)
2. SUBJECT
the personal / the social (the individual / the people)
the portrait (of what?)
3. REPETITION
the serial, the sequence(non)expression
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A context:
New Vision
vs.
New Objectivity
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NEW VISION:!Lucia and Lzl Moholy-Nagy,!Florence Henri!!Fractured or flattened images, oddperspectives, a new way of
seeing!
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Lzl Moholy-Nagy, Berlin, c 1930
Lzl Moholy-Nagy, Berlin Radio Tower, c 1928
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Lucia Moholy, Portrait of Florence Henri, 1926-27
Lucia Moholy, Bauhaus-Workshop Building, 1926
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Florence Henri, Still Life with Lemon and Pear, c 1929
Florence Henri, Window Composition (view through window of the communal bath in the Bauhaus studio complex, Dessau), 1927
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Albert Renger-Patzsch,Intersecting braces of a Truss
Bridge in Duisburg-Hochfeldt,1928"
Neue Sachlichkeit!(New Objectivity)!!Albert Renger-Patzsch,!Karl Blossfeldt,!(August Sander)!!Clear lines, unclutteredimage, direct approach to
topic or subject!
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Albert Renger-Patzsch, Shoe Lasts at the Fagus Works, Alfeld, 1926
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Albert Renger-Patzsch, Kaffee Hag, 1925, design for a poster
Albert Renger-Patzsch, Round Flasks, Schott Glassworks, Jena, 1934
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Karl Blossfeldt, from Art Forms in Nature, 1928
Rough horsetail; Young shoot; rough horsetail; Rough horsetails
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Renger-Patzsch vs. Moholy-Nagy
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AUGUST SANDER
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An attempt to map an entire social culture, not just in terms of individual but in terms of classes,in terms of classifications: from the men of the earth via modern man to the dispossessed and
insane
A social typology of German society
He uses an already existing system, that of the portrait, but uses it in such a way that he
suppresses his own author function, a suppression of style for simplicity and consistency of image.
[traditional form portrait meets radical process - the system]
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August Sander:the basic thought of my photographic work Citizens of the Twentieth Century,
which began in 1910 is nothing but an attempt to make a physiognomicaltime exposure of German man
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A remarkable attempt to
document all of a society, notjust the high or low, rich orpoor, rather theentiresystem""An exhaustive and all-
inclusive approach"(An unending task)"
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Two pronged method
Traditional form: the portrait
(transmissibility of the likeness of the sitter a celebrationof their identity)
Radical form: the series, the sequence
(a form that requires a suppression of style and a focus onrelationality comparing one image to the next a giving
away oforiginality of each image [they become boring]
to allow a whole system to emerge the piece becomes a
composite portrait of a nation)
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Some notes on technique:
1. The portraits act as a critical inquiry, not a flattering likeness
2. The portraits are made in the context of the subject, their space defines them as much
as their title, pose, or clothing
3. The portraits make obvious the sitters relationship to the camera, it refuses the
glimpse of some-one elses reality, showing instead the situation: photographer-
camera-subject (hence the ugly stiffness of the figures)
4. The pictures repress
stylistic brilliance
for continuity of series: repetition oftechnique allows a picture from 1910 to be compared to one from 1930. Thus the series
becomes a series in / on time
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Some notes on technique:
1. The portraits act as a critical inquiry, not a flattering likeness
2. The portraits are made in the context of the subject, their space defines them as much
as their title, pose, or clothing
3. The portraits make obvious the sitters relationship to the camera, it refuses the
glimpse of some-one elses reality, showing instead the situation: photographer-
camera-subject (hence the ugly stiffness of the figures)
4. The pictures repress
stylistic brilliance
for continuity of series: repetition oftechnique allows a picture from 1910 to be compared to one from 1930. Thus the series
becomes a series in / on time
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Some notes on technique:
1. The portraits act as a critical inquiry, not a flattering likeness
2. The portraits are made in the context of the subject, their space defines them as much
as their title, pose, or clothing
3. The portraits make obvious the sitters relationship to the camera, it refuses the
glimpse of some-one elses reality, showing instead the situation: photographer-
camera-subject (hence the ugly stiffness of the figures)
4. The pictures repress
stylistic brilliance
for continuity of series: repetition oftechnique allows a picture from 1910 to be compared to one from 1930. Thus the series
becomes a series in / on time
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Some notes on technique:
1. The portraits act as a critical inquiry, not a flattering likeness
2. The portraits are made in the context of the subject, their space defines them as much
as their title, pose, or clothing
3. The portraits make obvious the sitters relationship to the camera, it refuses the
glimpse of some-one elses reality, showing instead the situation: photographer-
camera-subject (hence the ugly stiffness of the figures)
4. The pictures repress
stylistic brilliance
for continuity of series: repetition oftechnique allows a picture from 1910 to be compared to one from 1930. Thus the series
becomes a series in / on time
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The photographed situation: !1. Made transparent (I am here, with you alienating? stiff?) !2. Repressed / hidden (a fly on the wall / sentimental illusion?)!
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The photographed situation: !1. Made transparent (I am here, with you alienating? stiff?) !2. Repressed / hidden (a fly on the wall / sentimental illusion?)!
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The photographed situation: !1. Made transparent (I am here, with you alienating? stiff?) !2. Repressed / hidden (a fly on the wall / sentimental illusion?)!
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The demonstrative gesture:
I am here, doingthis, foryou to
see
Bertolt Brecht: The prerequisite for producing the
[alienation] effect is that the actor must accentuatewhat he has to show with a clear demonstrative
gesture. It is necessary, of course, to abandon theconcept of a fourth wall fictionally closing off the
stage from the stage and creating the illusion thatthe staged scene takes place in reality, in the
absence of the audience
This in turn gives the audience an attitude of
inquiry and criticism towards the scene
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BERND + HILLA BECHER
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Some themes:
The particular vs. the general
The self-evident as non-self-evident the obvious AS oblique
Artworks as showing us the real world as refracted (as altered) through noncommunication, in-
expressiveness
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Their work seems to strongly resist, or even evacuate, subjectivity, rejecting this for typographicstudies, comparing buildings and their types [coal bunkers, grain silos, water towers etc.].
Bechers: You have to be honest with your object to make surethat you do not destroy it with your subjectivity
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The images are so particular to their project they seem to resist semiotic analysis
- in terms of coding, they seem able to reject all readings a kind of non-stick / wipe-cleanphotography
Their relation to realism / documentary could be seen to be problematic as the images deny
motivation, affect or event, seemingly rejecting the capturing of the moment replacing that with theplay of infinite and minute variation.
- The multi-part nature of the works denies the singularity of the photographic image
Theodor Adorno: out of nothing, something happens
Are the Bechers photographs in-significant - do they refuse to signify?
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The work of comparative analysis
Talbot, Muybridge, Bechers
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The work of comparative analysis
Talbot, Muybridge, Bechers
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The work of comparative analysis
Talbot, Muybridge, Bechers
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Bechers / Walker Evans: vernacular architecture, the everyday conditions
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The method of frontality
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Some notes on technique:
*A refusal ofsubjective interiority
*Refusal of figuringman and concentration on spaces that define man
*Their deadpan frontal approach refuses the dynamism of technological utopia used by Moholy-Nagy or Rodchenko, lack of horizon lines or of visual dynamics in the Bechers work
*Denial of narrative time through serial typology of an archaic modernism
*An isolation of the utopian narrative of technological progress in decline
*Situations of work, not the figure of the worker
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POST-BECHER SCHOOL:GURSKY / RUFF / HOFER
From the series to the tableau
The epic (the everyday) (the
ungraspable) and the relational
The work of the cognitive map?
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ANDREAS GURSKY:
Social architecture - Social systems, the object filled with subjects, some
conditions of modern life
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An impossible subject to picture: the economy?
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An impossible subject to picture: the economy?
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A model of street photography!Where is the street here?
Not a contingent point of view but a meta overview turningthe public space into an ant-hill for inspection!
epic distance a tableau not a series
(comparison within the image not between images)
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THOMAS RUFF:
Where is the person in their own face, where is the action, what kindof photograph is this
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Ruff: Im interested in reproduction, in howpictures are taken. The picture I take of a
person has nothing to do with the personanymore. It has its own reality, its own
autonomous existence. It becomes independent ofthe person it presents. It is aphotograph of
a person, taken at a particular time, under
particular conditions
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The portrait as convention not as special
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The portrait as convention not as special
The portrait between identity and celebration
The portrait as convention not as special
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The portrait as convention not as special
The portrait between identity and celebration
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CANDIDA HOFER:
Bodies of knowledge, knowledge-production as the work of relationbetween bodies
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*What bodies of knowledge are we given here?
*Li ll b di d f k l d (f h i i
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*Literally, bodies arranged for knowledge (for the scientist
and the child)
*A tension: are these photographs ofbodies or of spaces or
of systems of arrangement? (images of the way knowledge is
transmitted)
A final tendency in conclusion:
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The work of comparison as the work of relation No thing stands on its
own no single image or single body instead these works operate via
readings
between
things
There is objectivity in the image, whilst there is always subjectivity in the
comparisons made or there is a question about how subjectivity is
produced (nation, factory, economy, museum as subjects, as sites of
subjectivity production
)
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