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    The Critical Eye - Fifteen Pictures To Understand Photography

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    Intellect Chapter Title: Front Matter Book Title: The Critical Eye Book Subtitle: Fifteen Pictures to Understand Photography Book Author(s): Lyle Rexer Published by: Intellect. (2019) Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv36xvsd7.1 FSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive, We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor org, Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at https://about jstor org/terms Intellect is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Critical Eye This content downloaded from 185.198.136.109 on Wed, 11 Oct 2023 09:31:16 +00:00 “All use subject to ps:about stor orgs The Critical Eye Fifteen Pictures to Understand Photography Lyle Rexer e intellect $7 publishers of original thinking This content downloaded f om First published in the UK in 2019 by Intellect Books, ‘The Mill, Parnall Road, Fishponds, Bristol, BS16.4)G, UK First published in the USA in 2019 by Intellect Books, ‘The University of Chicago Press, 1427 E. 60th Steet, Chicago, IL 60637, USA Copyright ©2019 Intellect Lid (Gopy-editor: MPS Gover and layout designer: Aleksandra Szurnlas Gover image: Graciela Sacco, Bocanada, (detail of installation), urban interference, Cartier Foundation for Art, Paris, 2013. Offset printing on paper, dimensions variable Gourtesy estate of Graciela Sacco Prociuction editors: Katie Evans and Jelena Stanovnik ‘Typesetting: Contentra Technologies All rights reserved, No part of this publication may be reprocluced, stored in a retrieval system, or wansmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written consent. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Printed and bound by Gomer, UK. Princ ISBN: 978-1-78320-98¢. ePDF ISBN: 978-1-78938-042-2 Pub ISBN: 978-1-78938.041- art of the Investigations of Lens and Sereen Arts series ISSN: 262-5691 eISSN: 2682-5705 Published in collaboration with the School of Visual Ars SVAGSNYC (=>. “This content downloaded fom 155.198.136.109 on Wed, 11 Oct 2023 09:51:16 +00:00 “lus subject to hipssbout stor orgies Intellect Chapter Title: Table of Contents Book Title: The Critical Eye Book Subtitle: Fifteen Pictures to Understand Photography Book Author(s): Lyle Rexer Published by: Intellect. (2019) Stable URL: https://wwwjstor.org/stable/j.ctv36xvsd7.2 FSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive, We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor org, Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at https://about jstor org/terms Intellect is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Critical Eye This content downloaded from 185.198.136.109 on Wed, 11 Oct 2023 09:31:22 +00:00 “All use subject to ps:about stor orgs Contents Introduction: How Is a Photograph? 009 Life and Work: Does Biography Matter? 017 Reading Photographs: Decisions in and Beyond the Frame 025 The Origins of Photographies 037 Portraits: The Other Side of the Mask 049 Street Photography: Where the Sidewalk Ends 059 From Self-Portrait to Selfie: Memes Come True 069 Other Natures (Landscape in Five Views of Yosemite) 077 Beyond Fashion 085 Troubling Images: Don’t Look Now 093 Them/Us 105 Abstraction in Photography: Picture Nothing 113 Photojournalism: A World of Witnesses 128 Unphotographable 138 Everybody's Pictures 4 Bibliography 149 This content downloaded fom 155.198.136.109 on Wed, 11 0c 2023 09:51:22 +00:00 All se subject to ps. /about tor ongtems “This content downloaded fom 155.198.136.109 on Wed, 11 Oct 2023 09:51:22 +00:00 “Allure subject Acknowledgments In addition to the photographic credits in each caption, the author would like to thank the following individuals and institutions. First and foremost, the School of Visual Arts (SVA) and its president, David Rhodes, for providing support for the publishing project of which this book is a part, and for a sabbatical semester during which a significant portion of the book was written. The Visual Arts Foundation also provided administrative support in the securing of additional funding, Charles Traub, chairman of the department of MFA Photography, Video, and Related Media, encouraged the project from the outset and offered detailed comments on the manuscript, Rachel Klein read the manuscript with an editor’s eye and provided essential insights, Colleagues and students at SVA read all or parts of various drafis and provided valuable criticism: Yasaman Alipour, Stephen Frailey, former chair of the department of BEA Photography, Abby Robinson, and Steel Stillman, Outside of SVA, the author owes special thanks to others willing to read, react, and correct errors: Dan Estabrook, Christopher James, Sally Mann, Alison Nordstrom, and Mark and France Scully Osterman. Anonymous readers for Intellect Press prompted significant rethinking of arguments and examples The author also wishes to thank Karl Mann for a grant of support during the book's extensive revision stage, Parts of the final chapter originally appeared in different form in Harper’ magazine. Finally, Furthermore, a program of the J.M. Kaplan Fund, provided essential financial assistance in the securing of photographic reproduction rights. For independent scholars in the arts, the increasing cost of picture rights can be a barrier to the full presentation of their research. Furthermore is one of the very few programs in the nation targeted to overcoming this hurdle. “This content downloaded fom 155.198.136.109 on Wed, 11 Oct 2023 09:51:22 +00:00 “lus subject to hipssbout stor orgies Intellect Chapter Title: Introduction: How Is a Photograph? Book Title: The Critical Eye Book Subtitle: Fifteen Pictures to Understand Photography Book Author(s): Lyle Rexer Published by: Intellect. (2019) Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv36xvsd7.3 FSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive, We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor org, Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at https://about jstor org/terms Intellect is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Critical Eye This content downloaded from 185.198.136.109 on Wed, 11 Oct 2023 09:31:25 +00:00 “All use subject to ps:about stor orgs Myoung Ho Lee, Tree #1, 20068 Piyoung Ho Lee, couresy oss Mil valick jot pee! (nique, 50 4 This content downloaded fom 155.198.136.109 on Wed, 11 0c 2023 09:51:25 +00:00 All se subject to ps. /about tor ongtems Introduction: How Is a Photograph? Ta geal this ino one photograph he had to acquire an extraordinary ehnical skill, but only then would Antonina quit taking pictues, Having exsted evry possiblity at the moment when he was coming fll irl, Antonino realized that photographing photographs was the only course that he had let— ox rahe the true course he had obscurely been seking allthis time Italo Calvino, “Ihe Adventure of a Photographer” les only a wee. [Lisn't an actual tree, of course, but rather a picture of a tree. The backdrop erected behind it in the photograph reminds the viewer of the fact. It recalls the philosophical joke told in various versions about a man who sees a sign advertising a sale in a shop window only to find that the sign itself is really what is for sale, The photographer, Myoung Ho Lee (b. 1975), from Korea, shot a series of such trees (2005-16) — each one different but all of them, in a broad sense, the same. His purpose, he tells tus, was to focus altention on the fragility and beauty of the ““peings” in the natural environment by framing each tree with a background cloth, as if the photographer's studio hhad been moved outside and nature had been treated as a valued customer: Iti the unmanipulated record of an act, of concern, if not reverence. Yet Lee's image is also a suggestive metaphor for much that has happened in photography in the recent past, especially in art photography: It deliberately separates the subject from its photographic context, and in doing so incer- rupts the surface continuity of the image and whatever re- sponse a viewer might have to it, Above all, it ealls attention to the photograph as discourse, a structured communication that is not merely a direct outgrowth of the scene itself. “e's a picture," we want to 5 Very much a picture, The cloth recalls the fabric backs drops and painted scenes photographers of an eatliert tused to stage their portrait subjects, whethe ‘ron the street. Inthe thoroughfares of Tokyo or the wilds of British Columbia, in Bamako or Teheran, backdrops in the studio ramed the subjects, cut out extraneous elements, and c ated a restricted and often fantastic space for what amoun- ted to a sill performance. The photographer captured it all ‘on glass plate or coated tin or silver plate or paper. It was a perfect illusion of presence, but sometimes the photo- .grapher would pull back to do a test, and the image would show assstan alding holding up the background, the whole flimsy structure of contrived credibility: Such images fascinate us now because they reflect a heightened sense of photography as an arranged presentation, a game played with appearance and expectation. Lee's photograph serves as a starting point for a book ‘about photography because it suggests that the environ- ‘ment in which people encounter photography is atleast as important as the subject within the frame, and that envit= ‘onment, the atmosphere of looking, has changed. Myoung, Ho Lee has a deep appreciation for the precise descriptive powers of a photograph, but he also seeks, beyond mere ac- ceplance or rejection, pleasure or instruction, a more active role for the viewer — and the photographer. It is a role re- quired by the changes going on in and around the medium. It's the goal of this book to promote that active awareness So as much as this is a book of photographs, it must be equally a book of words that respond to those photo- graphs. The words are meant to serve as an introduction to the shifting universe of photography, to identify some of its themes, problems, and practices by questioning what is visible. Photographs need words in order to be understood, appreciated, and shared, It’s not just that photographs “This content downloaded fom 155.198.136.109 on Wed, 11 Oct 2023 09:51:25 +00:00 “lus subject to hipssbout stor orgies often need captions to limit their visual generosity (they ean show a great deal without always hinting at what ought to be thought about them). Photographs participate in many discourses, so making clear the specific audiences and the probable intentions of the photographer, as well as the cir- cumstances of photographic production and reception, all contribute to an understanding of particular pictures and. the construction of meaning around them. As philosopher Roland Barthes suggests, meaning is never inherent in the pictures themselves.’ And often it isn’t stable or settled. Probably; photographs need the woreis now more than, ever: They need more active viewers, Not because they have become more mysterious or difficult but because they have become so common. We are constantly aware of them, not to say dependent on them. Photographers and recipients alike know enough and have seen enough not to believe that 1 photograph grants direct, transparent access to a world beyond the viewer. Yet in spite of Lee's reminder and all that \we know, photographs have never been treated more trans- parently, as objective, unmediated, and true. What a contrae diction! They are the world’s wallpaper, a wordless clamor arising everywhere, an avalanche piling up in immaterial Himalayas and melting away just as fast on Snapchat, They can be as bodiless as a dream and as solid and poignant as a tombstone. ‘To gain perspective on this proliferation, the method of this book is to look at photographs themselves. Rather than beginning with general principles, the approach allows the pictures to seduce, disturb, and inform, and from that concrete experience suggest some general conclusions, Fifteen photographs prompt fifteen extended discussions, and within each discussion, several more photographs amplify the topic. Each chapter opens by describing what the lead image seems to show and by asking questions about it, Some of the questions can seem obvious, but in this concrete way, the book explores a variety of approaches to thinking about photographs. It pays attention to key genres (portrait, sellportrail, and landscape especially). It ‘examines photographers’ decisions and haw they affect the twansaction of meaning-making. It explores such topics as the impact of social media and the digitization of photo- graphy; various professional uses of photography including photojournalism and fashion photography; and certain problems in the history of the medium and its technolo- gical evolution, Several of the book's topics are exceptional in introductions to photography: abstraction, the desire 0 ‘The Criscal Bye to censor images, and the problem of unphotographable subjects. The impact of changing ideas about gender and race is dealt with explicitly as well as implicitly in many of the examples. All the discussions taverse historical time in ‘order to show the shifting uses of the medium as well as its durable characteristics 1 this book issues from the background of an art school, iis reasonable to expect much of the discussion to. focus on art photographs. The photographs in this book, however, are drawn from a variety of sources, quite a few having nothing to do with fine art. Photography is not strictly speaking an art medium, the way oil painting is. Tt is more like a Swiss Army knife, a single tool with many applications. [is an optical technology, producing images in a range of formats and employed for a wide variety of pur poses, from surveillance to sexting. Artis a small island in an ‘ocean of images, and the expanding uses of photography, some of which have been opened up by technology, are ‘what make photography at this moment so exciting ~ and sometimes so overwhelming, Nevertheless, contemporary art photographers like Myoung Ho Lee play a special role in photography today. As the opening image implies, they attend nat only to the pictures they make but more broadly to the evolving role ‘of images in our lives. They are the sharpest crities of the idea that photographic practices can be neatly separated into fine art, commercial, and vernacular domains, Thus, this book follows their lead in freely mixing very different lypes of photographs in order to make some wider abserva- tions about the medium. Paying attention to their work can help viewers learn more about the pleasures and perils of| photography in its many guises, as well as its history. In this book, photographic history is observed very much through the lens of contemporary artistic practices, Perhaps the most important advantage of looking through an artistic lens is to recognize the degree to which photography is being explicatd by its makers, as the word is used by the Dutch philosopher Peter Sloterdij (b. 197)! ‘Tat is, aspects of the medium formerly taken as means oan end or accepted as given in the attempt to capture an image have become the subject of many photographs circulating in the art world, even when they appear to be about something else. The work of contemporary photo- ‘graphic artists often leads us outside of, around or behind the immediate subject of the picture to ask questions about ‘what is being shown, how it came to be in front of us and “This content downloaded fom 155.198.136.109 on Wed, 11 Oct 2023 09:31:25 +00:00 “lus subject to hipssbout stor orgies ‘Anonymous, detalef Photo 1D, basges, 19801-50s, Maral and gelain her, Couey he Boheny Mision Collecion why we and others are looking at it, Often such works ‘go even farther, questioning the desires, prejudices, and socio-economic situation of audiences themselves, In the case of Lee's photograph, he recalls the early history of the medium, its techniques of staging under the guise of direct reporting (and of audience demands for authenti- city) as well as technical problems like slow emulsions and, shutter speeds that long ago made such controlled staging ‘essential. Again, the medium itself isthe implicit subject, in all its complexity: cultural, historical, material, economic, technological, generic, and political. No wonder there has been an explosion in the type of objects one might see Introduction: How Ie a Photograph? aond® under the name photograph. Every component is being laid bare by photographic artists, This incisive scrutiny can produce objects that don’t look like photographs and others that look like they could have been taken by anyone. They ‘can be nothing but distressed photo paper or softwareegen= ‘erated images that are not meant to be seen at all. They can also be obvious and didactic, teacher rapping you on the knuckles with a ruler. What they ‘cannot be is naive. “Ve most revealing comparison to be made with Lee's ‘ce and what it represents in this book isa statement by the documentary photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson ike an old-fashioned school “This content downloaded fom 155.198.136.109 on Wed, 11 Oct 2023 09:31:25 +00:00 “lus subject to hipssbout stor orgies ‘eh Lambert, Nothing on the Bad of en Epson Scanner Digital sean, no simension, Courtesy the ai (1908-2008 He wrote, “Above all, I craved to seize the in the confines af one single photograph, of some situation that was in the process of untolling itselt belore my eyes."® Cartier-Bresson expresses succinctly the traditional “philosophy” of photography: There is a pre-existing reality o be captured, this reality makes sense, and its significance can be discerned and communicated by a photographer through a single image abstracted from. experience, Photographs describe reality but don't construct i The image is created through a series of decisions ~ sometimes instantaneous and even unconscious, sometimes more calculated. The audience far such produc tions is assumed to be unitary, if not universal, and to stand in a passive relation to the photographer and the image. The further implication is that without the defining gestures of the photographer, reality is bound to appear ct puzzling, or blankly familiar. The camera as a value-neutral instrument of vision and communication isa given. In response to this version of photography, the first thing to be said is that, laying side the personal nature 2 The Criscal Eye of Cartier-Bresson’s quest, every one of these nations is contestable or applicable only in a limited way. Many of | the photographs discussed in this book challenge such a vision, even when they seem at fist to align with it. Again, there are many reasons for making photographs and many audiences who might want or need ta look at them; very do with the kind o ive communication Cartier-Bresson is talking about, that ‘decisive moment, ally put it, Surveil- lance and CGT images have become part of the fabric of societies, recording interior and exterior activity when no few of them have direetly to express: one is looking, Merely entering an office building guaran- tees there will be a new picture of you, and that picture cannot help being decisive, in its way. Google covers the entire planet with a itself, Images return to us from satelites millions of miles which cannot see but only capture and transmit raw data, The photogs nstantly changing visual eopy of aphs are assembled from code so humans can comprehend and satisfy a desire for eyes outside their bodies, This is the age of sourceless images, \inerate images, divorced from their ori- in digital space with completely olors, and resolutions, none unique the mind’s ability to organize just pictures, ginal contexts, circulati fungible dimensions, or expressive, defeatin them all and forming a kind of atmosphere. They are so pervasive they don't seem to have anything to do with the technologies of the past, or with cameras at al, oF, matter, with human intentions, And if hundreds of advert= ising images culled from magazines by Swiss artists Peter Fisch (b, 1952) and David Weiss (1946-2012) for their hilarious project Sun, Moon and Stars (2009) reveal anything about the meaning of life is only that every stage from cradle to grave is an opportunity for someone to sell you something via a photograph, Likewise, the majority of the millions of ima by phone each day have litle in common with Cartier- Bresson's lofty intentions. They are closer in spit to the 1 that s shared photographs made decades ago in photo booths, often ‘impulsive, not always made to last but sometimes fel worth savin be oday’s images on social Among other thi ‘communicate real-time ir “meaning” ly in the way they are used by others. Photo- media are meant to signal identi, information, or act as an instant archive. unfolds larg graphers’ de nly in limited ways. One profound consequence of the rise of popular photography ~ especially in the age of the ‘sions are important, but they bind viewers This content downloaded fom 155.198.136.109 on Wed, 11 Oct 2023 09:51:25 +00:00 All se subject to ps. about tor ongtems Pater Fahl David Weis, Sun, Moon, and Ss, fnsaation ve, Mathew Marks Galery, New Yor, October 29, 2009-Janary 16, 2010 Polo: Ron Avnet, Peter Fish ard David Wes, courtesy Mathew Mires Galery, Internet —has been a deliberate exploitation by artists of ordinary themes in a near stereotypic way, where the pre- lense of making a meaning or delivering a content is nearly nil Tt appears more important to them to understand why people make such photographs than it is to achieve an “ori ginal” point of view. Aleriness to all these contradictions informs any en+ counter with photography today. This book pays signi- ficant attention to formal choices and the imaginative contributions of image makers past and present, from, Cartier-Bresson to Zanele Muboli (b, 1972), a black South Introduction: How Ie a Photograph? Affican artist who champions LGBTQ rights and recogni- ton of that community, By no means does it subscribe to the idea of “the death of the author," the idea that social forces embodied in language largely determine the form and significance of any aztistic communication. Even as it respects the how and why of what photographers do, how= ‘eves, the book secks to shift the focus of discussion beyond such concerns. Now more than ever, looking at pictures ‘means looking beyond them, especially at who is looking: ‘This book is committed to an investigation of sill images single images, or collections of images that talk to 1 “This content downloaded fom 155.198.136.109 on Wed, 11 Oct 2023 09:31:25 +00:00 “Allure subject abou torongtems Yio Barada, Sra Rjec! Gillin Red Tangier fom A Lie Ful of Holes The Sta Project, 1999. Chromogenic print, 124.5 x 124.5

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