Published by Pure Land Press (2020) 42 Theobalds Road London WC1X 8NW They Live Still ISBN: 978-0-9564105-4-2 Design and Production: www.purelandpress.net Editor: Anita Dawood Printed in India All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior permission in writing from the publisher.
they live still
text:Allan Parker images:Nisanth Srinivasan
they live still
“…the work in question is archival since it not only draws on informal archives but produces them as well, and does so in a way that underscores the nature of all archival materials as found yet constructed, factual yet fictive, public yet private” † Contemporary life includes bonds with the past which cannot be so easily discarded. For urban dwellers, the built landscape forms the bedrock of the look and feel of the world ‘out there’. Residual grime and combustibility threaten to disrupt any dreams of a perfected, marketable present; a project which requires a vigorous edit of the surroundings to produce sufficiently idealized images to grease the rails of commercial ambition. More insightful accounts of the present describe a more complex and less idealised account of the everyday than that offered by the lifestyle or tourist industries to which, it might be argued, they are in direct opposition. On its publication in the US in 1959, Robert Frank’s ‘The Americans’ was described by one critic as ‘a sad poem by a very sick person’ because of its unblinking account of the state of the nation. As time has passed it is now seen as a book that redirected the notion of photography in the public imagination. The presentation and form of images continues to mutate, in parallel with the continuous development of language; developing new idioms, forms and ways of communicating. Historical or found images frequently find a place in the work of contemporary artists who work with photography, or perhaps more specifically with the archival aspects of the practice, introducing textural and visual variants into the selection of images. The skillful use of visual languages, techniques of image creation and judicious use of materials are employed by image makers to create a wide range of possibilities which operate outside the narrow spectrum presented
by many consumer devices, which while guaranteeing reliable results, are predicated on convenience rather than on their creative potential. The use of these devices, embedded in the on-line world as they are, corral the public through communities of interest, defined through a particularly prescriptive type of photography. Corporate interests bank on the fall-out of personal moments and memories to which people are emotionally or existentially attached. This material is loaned out to multiple users (‘sharing’). The retention of users through links and sharing sites is then used for a range of purposes from advertising to behaviour modification or ‘nudging’ as it is euphemistically called. Large corporations are using an optimised (but reduced) version of photography to ensnare their users and drip feed them advertising and/or products. This has all been achieved through a suite of convincing promises and offers, such as free photography, ease of use and convenience, a proposed emotional connectedness, and an assumed duty to communicate and ‘make the world a better place’. The lines of communication manipulate the flows of activity giving an impression of inclusion, through which the goal of an illusory emotional closeness with products and services is created. The controlled nature of many image-making devices, the output of which comes with a ready made aesthetic, has made some aspects of digital technologies less attractive to image makers. ‘Post-Photography’ is an elastic term which describes the work of artists who explore the possibilities of what can be achieved in visual media, creating works which are unlikely to depend too heavily on the output of a single device. They may also include materials and methods not endorsed in the consumer scenario envisaged by the creators of the consumer hardware.
While we may appreciate a simplified and reliable operation for routine tasks, there is no doubt that the lack of variable outcomes, including the possibility of failure – and consequently of real choice – undermines claims that this type of consumer photography may have as an artistic medium, particularly when used as intended. Although analogue photography provided a range of outcomes wide enough to accommodate the objectivity of the Frankfurt school – and the illustrative genius of the photography commissioned by art director and designer Vaughan Oliver – the ever-present spectre of possible failure clings to the practice like a shadow. ‘Reciprocity failure’ is the term given to the breakdown of the image making process at the extreme ends of the functional limits for film and chemistry. While these limitations can be put to creative uses, they do so at the risk of alienating the casual user armed with the expectation of instant success. By not subscribing to the digital dream, in which failure is banished from the menu of consumer choices, we open ourselves up to risk, but also to success from unexpected quarters, re-discovering the oneiric and impressionistic palette which forms such an essential part of the creative repertoire. It is commonplace to see photographers employing strategies that attempt to outwit the ‘perfection’ that digital image-making devices impose on the user, and to wrest individual creative decisions from the predetermined aesthetic delivered by this technology. Shooting into the sun; draping transparent sheets or gauzes over the lens; making use of condensation or dust on glass; and re-photographing existing images are all techniques with which image makers seek to reclaim agency in a process from which they are all but excluded.
Well-judged sequences of images allow us to recalibrate our points of reference and combine memory with direct accounts of the present in a way that mirrors our lived experience, where the present is always conditioned by the past. Figures from the past appear as time travelers, surfacing in a world in which they have no cognisance, seemingly out of place, but with a defined role; much as they might appear in a dream. Digital or phone cameras provide a determinedly mimetic view of the present, while found images or images produced with other techniques, often including older technologies, might lean towards more illustrative possibilities; evoking lost times or psychological spaces. Partially destroyed or degraded images carry a charge of context and meaning as well as design potential. Personal archives may reference specific and unspecific times and locations, known and unknown protagonists or a close reading of streets and interiors to create an atlas of personal and cultural memory with all the richness and variety that implies. The creation of mood and atmosphere provided by the material aspects of photography – in which we could include printmaking techniques as well as the presence of ‘poor’ images, all conspire to evoke a psychological landscape replete with mystery and banality; its hues and textures seeping across the tonal range of anxiety and desire. The aesthetic provided by mobiles and tablets, particularly when restricted to a digital environment, diminishes this liminal world – the abstract potential of the medium – in favour of an anaesthetised middle ground. Consumer choice is the primary rhetoric of the contemporary market place but often this means choosing from a menu of pre-selected options. We can choose whatever we want, but as far as mobile phones are concerned we are
still choosing Apple or Google, Samsung or Huawei, in the process recalling Henry Ford’s dictum: ‘any colour you like as long as its black’.
† Hal Foster – An Archival Impulse, Source: October, Vol. 110 (Autumn, 2004), Published by The MIT Press