Finding and Losing the Punctum

I came across this portrait of actress Merle Oberon by Edward Steichen while searching for a photograph with a clear studium and punctum.

The cleverness of this photograph lies in the juxtaposition of the face of the actress with the carved face of the statue. Both faces are presented with the soft, blank stares of statues, painted portraits, and early portrait photography. But there are other similarities. The carved head is detached from a body and Oberon’s head appears to be so, because of the dark area under her face. Both the statue and Oberon have one eye in complete darkness with partial lighting on the other eye. But, the lighting on the eye of Oberon is minimal giving it a less than life-like appearance; her stare is as vacant as the statue.

The punctum for me is the hand that emerges from the darkness to touch Oberon’s face. The fingers don’t seem to be just lightly resting, but pulling on her skin. The hand, although hers, seems detached from her. It doesn’t seem like a friendly hand; it seems as if it’s forcing Oberon to present her face to the viewer the same way that the statue does – cold, hard, perfect.

Being intrigued as I was by this photograph, I looked up Merle Oberon. Apparently she was an actress of mixed racial descent and spent her career trying to hide it – to appear as white as possible. She lost lovers when they found out about her Indian background and being afraid she would also lose starring roles, she invented a past for herself that would enforce the audience’s belief in her whiteness.

This adds an even deeper meaning to the photograph. Of course, now that I can explain it, my punctum has turned more into studium. I see Oberon’s hand, emerging from the hidden, darker side of her, trying to mold her face into a white face like the one in the statue. She seems to be trying to present as generic a face as possible for the screen. This isn’t unheard of today. How many film stars get plastic surgery to force their features into a generic ideal? I wonder how complicit Steichen was in this process. Was he trying to capture her face in a moment of generic ideality? Did he intentionally capture her fingers pulling on her face to show the futility of Oberon trying to pretend she is someone she is not?

Some thoughts (in progress)

We are the sum of our memories and experiences, but we mistake their effects, misattribute them.

We believe our memories to be representations of events that we lived. We remember our pasts. But how false this is. A memory is an impression, a fleeting sketch of an event and our reaction to it. At best, we hold on to flickering glimpses of what we actually experienced. Further, the occurrence is not our experience.

The occurrence, the experience, and the memory.

The occurrence is the event, a situation to which we are proxy, or in which we participate.

The experience is our perception of the event, and as such is subject to the limits of our senses and understanding.

The memory is our encoded recollection of our experience, not the event itself. It is subject not only to our imperfect and limited perception, but the process of recollection, which itself is subject to obfuscation and alteration: by other memories, by the experience that provokes the recollection, by personality, by knowledge. It is then twice removed from the occurrence.

The part of us that is aware, that considers, lives in the world of memory. When we draw on our experiences to inform a decision, we are really drawing on our memories of those experiences to guide us.

Experiences may inspire future reflexive reactions; if we are stung by an insect, we may draw our hands away unthinking from that insect from then on. The reflex is implanted by the experience.

But when we consider, when we deliberate, we draw on our memories of our experiences, complex assemblages of emotion, comprehension (or lack of it), and perception. Even events that we just experienced, even moments before, are filtered through the twisting river of memory.

We live, then, in a false world. Memory is faulty. Not only is it subject to revision by removal in time (how easily the tragedies of the past gain the patina of nostalgia), but we are perfectly capable of inventing memories. As occurrences lead to experiences lead to memories, we operate as if our memories stem from events we have personally experienced. But this is demonstrably false.

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Photography as an art turns on the interplay of occurrence, experience, and memory.

We may argue that a photograph is the literal truth of the event that it depicts. But this amounts to arguing that the photograph is the event in some sense. It consequently must equate viewing a photograph of an event with perceiving the event itself. In this argument, our experience of a photograph of an occurrence is equivalent to our experience of the event itself.

This is obviously absurd. Innumerable examples exist of photographs of mundane subjects arranged or captured in highly evocative and beautiful (or ugly) configurations. This is most evident in art photography. But even the most thoughtlessly executed snapshot is still constrained by the boundaries of the frame, the choice, thoughtful or not, imposed by the photographer. This choice, the limits imposed by the camera, sever the photograph from the occurrence.

Perhaps then a photograph is the depiction of an experience, the impression of an occurrence irrevocably filtered through the sensibilities and choices of the photographer.

(more to follow)

Top left, alley behind house. Lower right, near beach in Santa Cruz by Lauren Beck.

The Portrait

Portraiture is a difficult discipline. One element of the discipline that I find interesting is the role of the artist in the photographic portrait. In classical portraiture, the role of the artist is clear. A subject poses for the painter, attired in a costume that befits his rank or station. To the left, General Cornwallis appears in his military regalia, standing with the confidence of a man with the known world as his responsibility. The traces of the miltary world visible off to his distant left suggest a man undaunted by the duties that his station requires.

It is not hard to infer that the artist is, to a greater or lesser degree, reflecting the ego of the subject. Indeed, portraits like this were commissioned works, and the aim of many portrait artists was clearly to flatter and affirm their wealthy, powerful employers.


Now, of course, portraiture is simple, right? A person with a few basic tools - a camera, a spare moment or gathering, a friend -- snaps a photograph that captures the subject exactly as she is. The photographer is invisible, part of the machinery that captures and translates the replica image of the subject to paper, freezing forever a literal facsimile of a living person.

On the flip side of the coin live the professional photographers, pumping out portraits in the style of the artists of antiquity. Backdrops, careful costuming, socially affirming poses and arrangements, the portrait photographer fulfills the same role that the classical painter played.


It is easy to dismiss the professional as a purveyor of the artificial, a stage magician. His products are illusions. How many happy families are frozen on Kodak 8x10 that live hellish, fractured lives?

But are amateur efforts, "candid" flashes of truth, free of the photographer?

And if they are, are they portraits?

I think that a portrait needs to capture some essential element of the subject. There is a distinction between a snapshot, for example, and a portrait. That is not to say that a snapshot cannot stand as a portrait, but the observation that it does requires some application of the artist's eye. That moment of observation, of selection, is enough to fully incorporate the artist into the process of the photograph, eliminating the narrow claim to invisible neutrality.



from top to bottom: General Cornwallis by JS Copley, Christopher Tully-Doyle, Ryan Cheley, Dennis Doyle

Dramatic Portrait

Yesterday's challenge from the folks at Photochallenge.org was PORTRAIT. For my Theatre and Photography class, I took "Dramatic Portraits" as well as "Portraits of Actors." For this dramatic portrait of Ryan, I was inspired by early portrait photographers, such as Napoleon Sarony, who used painted backdrops and accessories that referenced the subjects' professions. Early photographs required long exposure times, and so the subjects only adopted poses that could be held (although they sometimes had help from contraptions such as head braces!) I posed Ryan in a corner, surrounded by a wall of math, peering out from behind a stack of math books. If I remember correctly, I think I bumped up the color saturation and contrast because it made Ryan look a bit more run down. For those that know that Ryan, this portrait should be self-explanatory. :-P

Defining Theatrical Photography

I recently took a PhD seminar at UCSD called Theatre and Photography. One of the topics of discussion that recurred frequently centered around the questions: What is a theatrical photograph? The essays we read discussed the idea of the theatrical photograph as “encapsulation of everyone else’s efforts” (Donald Cooper), iconic images of the text (T. J. Edelstein), as well as the “truth” of the production (Jim Carmody). We looked at and discussed photographs that were staged outside of the performance space, staged inside of the performance space, and taken during a rehearsal or production. Which of these is the best at documenting the performance? Does it depend on the production? It isn't a question we were able to answer conclusively although we each had our own opinions about strong theatrical photos.

This photo by Max Waldman serves, I believe, as accurate documentation of the production Dionysus in 69, directed by Richard Schechner at the Performing Garage in 1968. This photo is almost certainly staged and not taken during an actual performance. However, it captures the most important qualities of the production. This photo seems to be an ideal image – one in which all of the elements have been orchestrated to depict as much information as possible about the performance.

The environmental performance blurred the boundaries between performers and spectators. Often, the actors would perform scenes while leaning up against or lying on top of the audience members. This photograph places the viewer so close to the action that it evokes the sense that s/he could reach out and touch the actors – as it would have been during the show. By viewing the actors from this particular angle, the viewer of the photograph feels as if the performance is for her/him only. This fits with Schechner’s use of local focus in his productions (a technique in which the actors performed certain lines or actions in such a way that only a few people in the audience could hear or see what was happening.) The nudity and facial expressions (especially on the men at the bottom of the pile) express the overall Dionysian quality of a production that was far more concerned with the physical than the cerebral. Finally, the photo shows a bit of the conflict between the individual and the group that is present in the play. Dionysus is in the process of being born, solidifying his individuality. However, the entire group, working as a unified organism, once again evokes the Dionysian.

This photograph fulfills my requirements for a theatrical photograph: It is an artistic photo that stands alone (outside of its documentary purposes) and it serves as documentation of the theatrical event by conveying a sense of what it would be like to attend the production and portraying an important scene from the play.

Staged Theatrical Photography and Actual Performance Photography seem to be totally different art forms that take different skills. STP seems more like portrait photography and APP seems more like photojournalism. But can both achieve the same end goal – a photo that adequately documents a performance?

A frustrating excursion

Today was not the best photographic excursion I've been on. I ended up with a pile of subjectless and/or poorly framed images. The house behind the fence had a really interestingly shaped window, almost like an eye, but I failed to capture it adequately I think. I also blew out all the details in the sky, a sin I should know better than to commit by now.

Symmetry, especially the stilted artificial symmetry that humans build into their environments, I find endlessly fascinating. A cliched subject, perhaps, but a guilty pleasure I am incapable of resisting.


On the left, house in South Park, San Diego. On the right, AP&M building, UCSD

Shadow

My favorite aspect of this picture is the lack of any reference that allows the viewer to establish a sense of scale. I like images that hinge on the fractal aspect of nature. In fact, this is a one or two foot wide stretch of rock on a beach in La Jolla, shot from very close range with a very short lens. The editing is a bit rough, as this was one of the first photographs I worked with digitally.