II: The Still Image as a Document

II

THE STILL IMAGE AS DOCUMENT

In 2011, as part of the Twelfth Istanbul Biennial, Kutluğ Ataman exhibited a two-page official document that had been issued by the military hospital in that same year. The document, mounted on a warm-coloured reflective surface and framed with wood, hung on a dark grey wall in the gallery space. Curated by Adriano Pedrosa and Jens Hoffmann, the Biennial composed of five group shows and more than fifty solo presentations. Ataman’s work sat in “Untitled” (Ross), the section that departed from Felix Gonzales-Torres’ 1991 installation with the same title, which was homage to his lover Ross Laycock who had died from complications of AIDS. As the curators state, the show blends the ‘personal into the political, exploring themes of love, relations, family, identity, desire, sexuality and loss. [As a whole] the Biennial explores the rich relationship between art and politics, focusing on artworks that are both formally innovative and politically outspoken’.27

Ataman’s piece titled jarse belongs to a collection of works he calls fiction, which ‘consists of a number of very personal works that make the artist the subject of his own gaze and practice.’28 The work received a lot of media

attention in Turkey at the time and was repeatedly pointed out as a must-see piece by the art critics. The document from the military hospital can be considered as a mixed media print made in collaboration between Ataman

and twelve other individuals working for the military in varying roles, including a psychiatrist. The first page holds Ataman’s details: full name, date of birth,

27 ‘12th Istanbul Biennial’, Adriano Pedrosa and Jens Hoffmann (17 September 2011) <https://bienal.iksv.org/i/assets/bienal/document/12B_JENS-HOFFMAN-ADRIANO-PEDROSA.pdf> [Accessed 15 May 2019].

28 ‘Artworks’, Kutluğ Ataman, (No Publishing Date) <http://www.kutlugataman.com/site/artworks/work/230/> [Accessed 13 March 2019]. Translated to English, jarse means jersey.

and I.D. card number, which has been crossed out smoothly in black. The blackening-out of the number on Ataman’s piece acts as a protective device for the artist by preventing potential institutional transactions being carried out without his authorisation.29

Figure 1, Kutluğ Ataman, jarse, 2011.

Printed or stamped with ink, various dates are scattered around the document to demarcate: when the health report was requested, when the medical

inspection was carried out and when the document was validated by the military personnel in ascending order of title. It appears that to reach its status as an official document, the piece of paper with the photograph of Ataman had been disseminated in time and space for an approval through a hierarchy of power. It can be assumed that the pencil scribbled date at the top of the first page without a reference refers to when Ataman first accessed the

29 The eleven-digit I.D. number functioning as a personal barcode in Turkey must be memorised for the daily set of exchanges in various institutions: schools, banks, hospitals, private companies, etc. It is considered an offence not to carry the card.

document; less than two months before the exhibition opening and more than eight months since requesting it.

Under the heading purpose of the examination, the psychiatrist states for the reason the specialist deems fit, asserting his dominance over Ataman and anyone else who may question the document’s purpose in the future. The psychiatrist appears as if he has no one to answer to, but the document still requires authentication by his colleagues with superior titles. Ataman is finally diagnosed with homosexuality and declared by the panel as unfit for the military service during the times of war and peace. This conclusion is reached by a set of findings that place Ataman further away from the heteronormative masculine realm. His speech, tone of voice, mannerisms, gestures and movements are marked as effeminate; the fundamental marker of gayness in

contemporary Turkish culture as discussed in the previous chapter. The psychiatrist notes that Ataman’s forefront thoughts are his attraction to men

and his disinterest in women, linking this current behaviour to playing girly games with girls since childhood and having sexual relationships exclusively with men since the age of seventeen. The report is finalised with a reference to another document dated June 2006: Ataman’s gay marriage certificate from overseas. This additional document further validates the health report’s documentary claim and thus finds Ataman’s declaration of I am gay as truthful.30

The psychiatric examination, the diagnosis and the conclusion of unfit for military service relies on the fact that the individual in question is indeed the individual whose photograph is attached at the top right corner of the document’s first page. The passport-sized photograph with the red

30 Please refer to the appendix for the translation of Ataman’s psychiatric examination.

background carries the psychiatrist’s signature in red ink as well as a faded red stamp where the initials T.C. can be seen.31 The same stamp is visible four

more times throughout the document. The signature and the stamp validate that Ataman is indeed the signifier, signified by the attached photograph.

Despite the layers of authentication embedded within the health report, such

document can still be untrustworthy. In September 2017, Sedat Peker, a convicted Turkish criminal leader, received substantial media attention when

his alleged military health report was shared across social media. It became apparent that the document diagnosing Peker with homosexuality and drug addiction had been montaged from Ataman’s jarse piece.32 The montaged document under Peker’s name had the I.D. number blacked out and was

affixed with Peker’s photograph. When the truthfulness of a document is questioned, the photograph, which is part of it, also comes under scrutiny.

Providing his marriage certificate augmented Ataman’s claim and hence military’s legitimisation of his deviant and dangerous nature. Unlike some of

the applicants, Ataman didn’t need to provide photographs depicting him in the sexual act. As discussed in the previous chapter, these sorts of images have its own set of rules that have been formulated by a collective of past applicants who had various levels of success in obtaining exemption from their conscription. Roland Barthes asserts ‘every photograph is somehow conatural with its referent.’33 The photograph asserts the truth that the thing has been there and that ‘the photograph possesses an evidential force [where]

31 T.C. short for Türkiye Cumhuriyeti, meaning Turkish Republic.

32 No Author’s Name, ‘Sedat Peker Hakkında Yayınlanan Rapor Sahte Çıktı!’ Son Dakika Türk, 6 September 2017 <https://www.sondakikaturk.com.tr/gundem/sedat-peker-hakkinda-yayinlanan-raporsahte-cikti-h52985.html> [Accessed 10 April 2019].

33 Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida (London: Vintage, 1981), p.76.

the power of authentication exceeds the power of representation.’34 However, if I were to provide a photograph of myself that appeared to be made during the sexual act with the intention of proving my penetrability, I would follow the conventions of what that sort of image should entail, as formulated by

past applicants. The camera would authenticate that I have been there –naked and penetrated by another man, but as John Tagg argues ‘the existence of a photograph is no guarantee of a corresponding prephotographic existent.’35 Outside of this photograph, this penetrating lover who for all purposes could be a complete stranger, acting for the camera based on the guidelines I give him: not my real and truthful lover. After all:

Every photograph is the result of specific [and] significant distortions which render its relation to any prior reality deeply problematic and raise the question of the determining level of the material apparatus and of the social practices within which photography takes place. […] The indexical nature of photograph – the causative link between the prephotographic referent and the sign is therefore highly complex, irreversible, and can guarantee nothing at the level of meaning.36

Tagg claims the photograph only becomes meaningful in certain transactions. In this case, my created image would yield significance in front of the military panel who are looking to evidence my sexual misdemeanour and diagnose me with homosexuality. Outside of this institutionally created meaning, the image might be viewed solely as pornographic. The photograph here is ‘a material product of a material apparatus set to work in specific contexts, by

34 Ibid, pp.88-89.

35 John Tagg, The Burden of Representation: Essays on Photographies and Histories (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 1989), p.2.

36 Ibid, pp.2-3.

specific forces, for [a] defined purpose.’37 Apart from my on-camera lover and myself, no one would have access to the pre-photographic reality. The panel

with the psychiatrist – i.e. my intended audience – would have ‘no choice but to work with the reality [they] have: the reality of the paper print, the material

item’ that I provide them as my evidence. 38

Tagg contends photography and evidence coupled in the second half of the nineteenth century with the emergence of new intuitions and practices of observation and record keeping, including the use of photography in criminology.39 As discussed in the previous chapter, homosexuality is not a

criminal act in Turkey but it is considered to be a punishable immoral act under the Turkish Military Penal Code. My hypothetical constructed image thus turns into somewhat of a crime scene photograph where I am both the

criminal and the detective.

Lela Graybill states, ‘understanding crime scene photography as a form of evidence places it in the realm of empirical science, with the photograph archiving and preserving proof of misdeeds and functioning as an aid to the detective’s forensic pursuit of truth.’40 She iterates that crime scene

photography emerged at a time when ‘verbal testimony was increasingly aligned with the subjective and emotional, and material evidence with the

37 Ibid, p.3.

38 Ibid, p.4.

39 Ibid, p.5.

40 Lela, Graybill, ‘The Forensic Eye and the Public Mind: The Bertillon System of Crime Scene Photography’, Cultural History, 8:1 (2019), 94-119 (p.96).

objective and cerebral.’41 Using Alphonse Bertillon’s metric photography as her case study, Graybill asserts that these images are doubly indexical. The corpse in the image is already an index of what has transpired; a death that is possibly linked to a crime. Similarly, my constructed image of intimacy could be doubly indexical: I may bear marks from my lover on my skin, carry his bodily fluids on my flesh, and hold an expression of satisfaction as he

penetrates me.

Bertillon foresaw that crime scene photographs were destined for the courtroom and for the eyes of the jury, not to be a ‘vehicle of objective proof but rather an emotional catalyst for conviction.’42 Until a few years ago, this was the case for gay men requesting exemption from the military service. In that situation, the detective (me) would have provided photographs of the

criminal (also me), to the jury (the military personnel), to convict me (exempt me from the military service). 43 The image I provided them would have had a likeness to a crime scene, not to convict me of that particular crime (i.e. being penetrated by that man) but to assert that I am capable of such crimes in the future, specifically within the military during my conscription.

My utterance of being gay, my verbal testimony, could be seen as subjective and emotional by the institution, but only become objective and cerebral when I provide a doubly indexical image to demonstrate my penetrability.

Although not every exemption applicant needs to provide such imagery, it

41 Ibid, p.97. The Bertillon metric photography is a standardized, mechanized set of rules and procedures that ensured the most objective view possible when photographing a crime scene. The essay uses specific examples of his images to highlight the technique and its cultural significance.

42 Ibid, p.96.

43 This practice of evidencing your sexuality is still being carried out today with the exception of using photography and/or video. The practice came to a halt as it gained an elevated awareness internationally thanks to news media.

does help in verifying their actual or perceived sexual orientation. Ataman used another form of document – his marriage certificate – to build a strong case against his masculinity and hence be exempt from conscription. This culturally significant practice, in the words of Tagg, ‘constitutes a site of struggle’ because it maintains ‘the relations of domination and subordination in which heterogeneous social identities are produced.’44 Following the formulated visual rules spread from mouth to ear and via unofficial online platforms, in the photograph I hypothetically construct I allow my body to be dominated by a man of my choosing, to subvert my perceived masculinity in front of a jury to evidence my dangerous and corrupt flesh that has a capacity of corrupting other bodies. For this reason, I am stopped from entering a formal relationship with the state and forfeit the role of an ideal Turkish man.

44 Tagg, p.30.