Having not read nearly enough for the first half of this year I am now trying to make up for it. I've just finished the Diane Arbus book; I am also nearly done with one of the books from the reading list, and mostly through a book about Lillian Bassman and Paul Himmel. For some reason I have also just started Camera Lucida by Roland Barthes as suggested by my tutor, perhaps because my life isn't quite challenging enough!
Barthes talks about the photograph being a recent 'disturbance' for civilisation to deal with, whereby the self is for the first time able to confront itself as the other. He dismisses paintings and etchings which came before. I'm intrigued by his understanding of portrait photography. I wonder what he would make of the current 'selfie' trend. Whether we take the photograph ourselves or ask, possibly pay someone else to take it for us, there is no denying the level of activity related to this modern 'disturbance' has reached fever pitch in the last decade. I recently heard on one of the many 'fascinating facts' films my eldest son watches so avidly on YouTube that we have taken more photographs in the last... now, was it two hours, weeks or years... I don't think it matters... more photos in the last tiny amount of time than have been taken in the whole history of photography. What is this desperate splitting of the self into two entities, whereby the self gets to gaze upon itself as an other so frequently and with such alacrity about?
(Splitting is an interesting phenomena in psychotherapy and one which I read a great deal about last year, which describes an individual's inability to see the self and others as rounded, mature cohesive entities or objects. So someone who is split sees only fabulous objects or disgusting objects in the self and in others for instance. A split person cannot see herself or others as good and bad at the same time. A split person is polarised as described in a book titled Splitting: (1)"..unconsciously seeing people as all good or all bad, an extreme way of coping with confusion, anxiety, and mixed feelings. Splitting is especially prevalent under stress...")
I can't help but wonder what we're doing as a culture when we split our selves so regularly as we seem to do with the constant compulsion to see ourselves as an other - the beautiful, acceptable, desirable other we want the world to see as opposed to that which we'd rather the world didn't see. Are we and if so why are we polarising our Selves to such an extent - hidden, undesirable self and shiny, highly marketable other by means of images which we either take ourselves or get someone to take for us?
It has struck me as I read about and learn to market myself online (I still feel hopeless in this regard but I continue to battle one with it, even though sometimes it all feels excrutiatingly gormless and uncomfortably clumsy) that the world we live in has pretty much always demanded an an outer persona, a mask or several which we present to the world. Very few people get to know the inner world and person but in certain key relationships the outer persona dissolves to a greater or lesser extent. Yet today, people have an added dimension to penetrate if they are to get to know someone well - the controlled, self-concious online persona that so many of us now feel obliged to construct; a marketing tool which can be used to market the self just as much as it might market a business or service. Often people have websites or blogs, not to mention social networking pages that are primarily about themselves - indeed I do for work purposes as well as this blog. A portrait or several (or many, many portraits) are nearly always crucial in these presentations. Photographs of many different standards and styles, but nevertheless images of the self as other are plastered all over the internet and people, we, most of us to a greater or lesser extent, are scrambling to load more and more images that represent the online persona we wish to present to the world.
I will keep on with Camera Lucida - I have a feeling there will be much more in it to make me think about how, why, what in relation to the very modern habit of placing photographs of ourselves all over the internet. The book is extremely challenging to say the least but has already fed into some questions and thoughts that have been on my mind.
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I am feeling a bit lost about where I'm at with photography at the moment. I go out and take photographs of families as that is what is coming my way more often than not. I am focused on finding a voice or style but I feel at the moment I'm simply taking photographs that aren't really anything. In a way, I feel that since attempting to find a 'voice' I've got worse not better with that side of the photography I do. I imagine this is a normal part of learning and remember feeling something similar when I first started learning to use a camera in manual. I suspect it has also to do with some lack of patience I have with myself.
I recently watched a short clip online of photographer, (2) Gregory Heisler, whom I did not know. His work is very powerful and distinctive, so I'm glad I came across it. In the clip he discusses how finding a style is not an aesthetic thing - it's about how you see the world. He advises, as he was advised, to take photographs that you cannot help but take and that that more you take these photographs that you cannot help but take the closer you will get to knowing your style. In theory this sounds great - but I am just not sure what it is that I cannot help but take. I want only to take close ups of children's faces sometimes. I'm intrigued by the capacity and promise for what they might one day become that exists in their faces even when they are very young. And then I find them intensely difficult to work with and think I'd prefer never to take another photograph of a child again. Then there are times when I just want to be the master of my own mini productions with an image or series of images that explore some of the themes I touched on in my last assignment. (Pictures of self as other taken by self!) I also have found the last few months that I like landscapes sometimes - something that I had no idea about a few months ago. I think I just have to keep searching but I do wish I felt better about the family portrait stuff for now. Because as things stand I feel stuck.
1. Spitting, Bill Eddy, LCSW, JD & Randi Kreger, Raincoat Books, 2011, Kindle Edition 6%
2. Gregory Heisler video: http://vimeo.com/100946762
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