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THE MUTTERING WORLD: MARGOT MUIR’S PHOTOGRAPHS Ashraf Jamal arttimes.co.za/mol-ashraf-jamal
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n a world enthralled by style, obsessed with the defining image, a photographer who is unconvinced by such an orchestrated luminescence is rare. Margot Muir is uninterested in the artfulness of photography, and its accompanying deceit. In fact, I’d wager that Muir is profoundly concerned, if not mortified, by the absolutism of the photographic image in the 21st century – its new world order and its ubiquity. Does one truly struggle to create a singular image in this oversaturated era? Is it not, rather, the fact that the generic image is a fait accompli? One might think me cynical, however, my deeper point is that it is well-nigh impossible, at this historical moment, to isolate a distinctive image repertoire, this because pastiche – more insidious than parody – has cannibalised the ability to single out a unique point of view. In South Africa – before this metastasized moment in global photography – photographic or documentary realism was celebrated. The purpose of the photographer was to record – in the 60s, 70s and 80s, when this genre peaked – the injustices of the apartheid regime. Photography was a political record. However, a shift occurred in the 1980s. As Simon Njami argues, photography was not motivated by politics alone, or rather, a new politics comes into being, in which photography is ‘no longer about denouncing, but about revealing’. The counterpoint is telling. To denounce is to react against, to reveal is to disclose a truth. For me, however, both assumptions are dubious. A political image is not a reaction against some oppressive reality, it is an enigmatic fragment of that inconclusive reality. As for the revelatory power of photography? That is a greater and more enduring deceit. How so? Because photographs lie. They edit and exclude far more than they include. In The Ongoing Moment, Geoff Dyer puts it bluntly: ‘In photography there is no meantime. There is just that moment and now there’s this moment
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