Assignment 1: Combined image

Tutor Feedback

"A very well researched and contextualised submission, with clear evidence of experimentation and progress throughout." 

Feedback on assignment

"You have gone above and beyond the expected amount of work for this submission, producing extensive workings for both your written work, your exercises and the assignment itself.

Throughout this submission, you have sought to build upon past work, consistently questioning your approaches.

You weave the suggested references into your work and to your texts in a clear and informative way and - in the case of exercise 1.2 - have produced scholarship of a very good standard. 

In your practical work (the assignment itself) you have experimented with several approaches, which have, as you note, taken you beyond your comfort zone. This evidence of experimentation is really key. You are working with techniques that are new to you and - as you yourself note - this means that some experiments will work and others will not. You have in fact identified successfully yourself which images come together and make best sense and which don't.

For example, as you note, your composite image of Wollaton Hall works best from this series, mainly because the way that the building stands apart from what's going on around it (i.e. it's context) and the direct, frontal angle of view means that all of our focus is on the blurred and fractured edges of the building against the skyline. For the same reasons, whilst I do think the idea of producing one oscillating image made from multiple Peter Pan statue views, this idea needs perhaps to be free of people milling around it, to allow the viewer to focus only on what's going on with the statue.

As a rule, the simplest approach to solving an image is often the best (especially in regards to digital imaging, where it is always possible to keep adding more data into the mix). Of course, this is easier said than done, and breakthroughs in terms of image making usually only come after many weeks/months of experimentation. If we look at your series images combining rather spectral bodies overlaid onto the trees, for me the most successful image from this series is also the simplest. In the image of the large boulder with part of a face 'projected' onto its surface, we are presented with a surreal image that also plays with scale (with the face being blown up to gigantic proportions). 

(These remind me a little of Tony Oursler's talking heads from The Influence Machine which includes interviews with characters which are often projected onto trees of buildings as part of a multi sensory installation. http://www.eca.ed.ac.uk/InfluenceMachine Look too at British Artist Helen Chadwick’s early experimentation with layering http://www.mercerunion.org/exhibitions/west-gallery-helen-chadwick-viral-landscapeseast-gallery-martin-pearce/ and more recently, Anglo Chinese artist Gordon Cheung’s experimentations with layerings: https://www.alancristea.com/artist-Gordon-Cheung)

NB. You mention finding your final series of images a little disjointed. As you continue to develop your ideas (including this one specifically) you will find that this feeling disappears as you become more confident in working in this way." 

Coursework

As above

Research

As above

Learning Log

"Good research (thorough and well-annotated) throughout."

Suggested reading/viewing

"This is an interesting book on the war monument with an intro by Geoff Dyer and written by Paul Bonaventura.  You might be interested as sideline research. I notice that you’ve pointed your camera towards statues and monuments."

Pointers for the next assignment / assessment

"Keep working through your many interesting ideas."

STUDENT FEEDBACK:

This is the first Skype session I have taken part in. It was an informative way of delivering a feedback session which offered me the chance to ask questions or discuss ideas. I enjoyed the personal approach.

I felt my tutor had an understanding of where I was in a practical sense and with my understanding of theory, and her suggestions of further work to research were helpful. I will be following up the links.

“your composite image of Wollaton Hall works best from this series, mainly because the way that the building stands apart from what's going on around it (i.e. it's context) and the direct, frontal angle of view means that all of our focus is on the blurred and fractured edges of the building against the skyline. For the same reasons, whilst I do think the idea of producing one oscillating image made from multiple Peter Pan statue views, this idea needs perhaps to be free of people milling around it, to allow the viewer to focus only on what's going on with the statue.” This comment helped me to understand why the image of the statue did not work as a multiple layered image.

Similarly, the observation about the face on the rock in Assignment 1 working the best gave me a different way of seeing the image. I had not imagined “projecting” an image onto a structure. I have become familiar with the physical image and the course work challenges that idea. I must remember to think outside the box.

My tutor's comments were helpful with “keep it simple”. I agree this is probably the most effective way of learning. I think it is all about the balance of achieving something which looks like art and knowing that it takes time, patience and experimentation to become experienced in a subject area.

Assignment 1 Combined Image

Hidden Sherwood

Part 1: Motivations

I live in the heart of the Ancient Sherwood Forest, once a Royal Hunting Forest. An area well known for its tourist spots and the history of Robin Hood. Or the beginning of the fictional character of Robin Hood, developed by Sir Walter Scott and Washington Irving in the 1800’s which brought the tourists flooding in on foot, by horse and later by car.  A National cycle trail runs through the heart of the area, crossed by several bridleways, making it easy to explore by bike too. I visited the local Tourist Information Office for some brochures of Sherwood Forest and places of interest. I wanted glossy pictures similar to a “Welcome to the Lake District” publication which I could cut up and intersect with other photographs in the style of Gerhard Richter or Joe Hamilton (using photographs instead of paint to experiment with the idea of restricted view.) Another idea I considered was Anastasia Samoylova’s landscapes containing different views of the forest; however, on reflection a series on Sherwood Forest is quite limiting for this. The local tourist office offered me a few leaflets which contained very small inserts and were covered in text (a restricted view already). They explained they would be permanently closed at the end of the month. Sherwood Forest’s is closed already, Nottingham doesn’t really feature Sherwood Forest and Newark offered me a glossy brochure which looked promising but contained adverts. My next idea was to collect postcards of the area. I managed 6 of the same place! I experimented with taking some postcard style images to join in a similar style to Bill Vazan’s Carnet de Voyages, until I realised that this probably went a bit off topic!

Sherwood Forest sat in the middle of several coal mines which left scars in the landscape and modern sculptures link art to the industrial past. This provides a link between parts 1 and 2.

 Part 1: References

Stephen Gill uses items found at the location such as dirt which he places inside his camera or picks up discarded cans of liquid, the contents of which he adds to the dark room process so that the end result is a photograph with the essence of the place. I particularly liked his flowers but the landscape was bare at the time of starting this assignment. I looked elsewhere for inspiration and came across David Hockney, Thomas Kellner and John Stezaker. David Hockney uses different planes to show multiple viewpoints, a wide space and depict time and motion within the same image, using the same principles as cubism.  The Tate explains that “Each [of Hockney’s] individual polaroid is taken separately and experienced simultaneously […] exemplifies Hockney’s interest in depicting a 3-dimensional world through 2-dimensional art forms.” (Tate, 2017) I particularly liked the portrait of his mother in which he photographed her movement so the image becomes the perspective of the photographer rather than the viewer’s perspective.  Thomas Kellner plans his images of tourist spots and architecture and takes several shots, deconstructing the image and recompiling it as if on a contact sheet, encouraging the viewer to reconstruct it.

Part 1: Methods

Using a group of 5 trees which almost met in the middle when looking up to the top, I photographed with a 50mm lens looking up the trunk to give the viewer an unfamiliar perspective. On joining the trees together, the white bit in the middle is where it didn’t quite meet.  Should this bother me? At the beginning of my OCA journey it would have done. Some of Hockney’s work shows white gaps.

Another Hockney inspired photo montage was the wheel outside Thoresby Colliery. I decided to use this one instead of a commemorative one because of its colour and lack of signage. For this I used 3 viewpoints and a 50mm lens. I was surprised at how neatly it fitted together. I was expecting the spokes to be misaligned showing more movement. This lacks depth which is one of the principles of cubism, but experimenting with my position and camera angle would give an image  in the style of Thomas Kellner.

This hand sculpture is known to locals in Clipstone and is on the site of the old colliery. Commissioned by Sustrans, local myth suggests it is to celebrate the mining heritage, although nothing is documented. This uses 4 different viewpoints taken with a 50mm lens joined by cutting the image to create a 3d effect.

The 3-foot-high miner sculpture celebrates Nottinghamshire’s mining heritage. He reminded me of The Oil Patch Warrior in Rufford Country Park. Having taken images of the oil patch warrior earlier in this assignment, I experimented with juxtaposing him onto the photograph of the miner. I enlarged some images in Photoshop and pieced them together before having the images printed. John Stezaker cuts his images diagonally. To keep the tools depicting the trades of the men, I trimmed vertically. Stezaker juxtaposes another image or landscape ontop of the original image so that the images become seen.

The Oil Patch Worker (Jay O’Meila, 1991) commemorates secret World War 2 Oil Wells drilled by Americans as part of the war effort. I was drawn to the curves of the hat and textures of the face. By photographing from different viewpoints and enlarging the image with the hat, I could make the other sides of the face fit underneath the hat brim. Again, I experimented with the enlargement process in photoshop before having the work printed.

I cut, trimmed and glued the montages onto a backing sheet before cutting around the image and photographing on a white mount board. Not satisfied with the white balance, I cut and pasted them onto a digital sheet of A4 paper in Photoshop. My preferred method would be to work in Photoshop to make a montage. I didn’t get the same results working with actual images; there was no blending unless I cut another piece of the discarded image away. Mistakes were final unless they could be glued back but then it is seen. I cut some images and interlocked them before deciding which pieces could definitely be trimmed. Having read Jerry Uelsmann’s process of making photo montages and using this as a guide I consider it a very creative process which enhanced my way of seeing.

Part 2: Motivations

One possible idea for my self-directed project in Landscape was inspired by Patricia Townsend's series on "Scylla", and using her idea of transitional spaces to explore fantasy and illusion, I began to look at placing Vikings within the landscape and using the context that the past is watching you (memories) exploring Sherwood Forest looking for traces of humanity. (Hampshire, 2016) This work was only an idea and did not make up the assignment. I have further developed this work to concentrate on the physical attributes of the surface of the trees and rocks and furthered my understanding of gaze, so this became a new piece of work.

The Ancient trees of Sherwood have a personality of their own which differs depending on lighting, weather and time of day. And memories are reawakened by different shapes which are visible in the trees. Or is this my delusion? Perhaps this is the emotional relationship with the land which Townsend refers to?

Part 2: References

 “The emotional relationship with the land can affect us and the stories we construct by projecting our beliefs, expectations and desires onto our surroundings” (Townsend n.d). Townsend uses the “photographic montage to embed the human figure into the landscape, using elements of the landscape to allude to the workings of the mind.” (Wells and Standing, 2005:31). Townsend explains that the concept of surface could be seen as a two-dimensional membrane which separates conscious from unconscious, represented by the physical surface of the photograph (Wells and Standing, 2005:41). Scylla (Greek Mythology) was a sea nymph or six-headed sea monster and Charybdis (sea monster) lived opposite her on a strait off Sicily, causing a danger for ships as they had to pass close to one side or the other (This is where the saying “between a rock and a hard place” originates.) Townsend shows Scylla as a woman transformed into stone and Charybdis as a whirlpool. In the past, Greek Myths were re-enacted to demonstrate psychological conflicts and emotions, and transformation between the land and the body creates tension. Nietzche recognised that the later Greeks built their cultural identity through art and literature to progress their society and transform their old values to become a great society through stories of metamorphosis (transformation). To link this back to Sherwood Forest, I looked at Alfred Noyes poem “The song of Sherwood” could work with the photographs.

Part 2: Methods

In the winter months, trees show their texture without foliage distracting the form. I wandered from tree to tree in old Sherwood Forest, looking carefully at the texture imagining shapes. All these trees are alive and monitored closely by rangers (additional research on Sherwood Forest can be found on the research page.). These trees stood sentinel and bore witness to over 300 years of history and cultural changes within the forest, affecting the lives of ordinary folk. I photographed ordinary folk to blend into the tree images in an attempt to create surreal photographs that people could explore. Outlaws are associated with Sherwood Forest and Friar Tuck “appeared” to a group of walkers recently which made the national papers.

Using Photoshop, I used layers, transparency and gradients to blend the people into the forest. Monochrome enabled the textures of the tree trunks and branches to show, whilst allowing the bodies to blend in with the image. I experimented with colour and felt the effect did not work as well.

Sherwood Forest is accessible to most people and care has been taken to prevent vehicles and motorbikes from using tracks meant for walkers and cyclists. Sabotage of trails is common in the summer ensuring people are on their guard. The trees offer protection from the cold and the wind so I have illustrated this rock with a face with an enigmatic gaze, not really looking at the viewer so the viewer may be aware of it but able to carry on walking through.

This tree naturally has praying hands in the trunk

Major Oak propped up by people as well as poles

Evaluation

At the beginning of the assignment I had an idea of what I wanted to do. I couldn’t make it work and so came up with another idea which I worked with. I find the images a bit disjointed. It perhaps doesn’t quite fit the brief but it allowed me to experiment with finding, enlarging and cutting images. I found the process was out of my comfort zone. As I worked through the course reading material, I explored Stezaker’s Third Person Archive in which Stezaker explores liminal space; the viewer becoming the third person. I had actually taken two photographs recently which relate to this idea. If I was to redo part 1, I would use the tourist book and my tourist images and juxtapose these small people into the images like Stezaker’s third person archive.

I felt more comfortable with part 2. The image I couldn’t quite make work was the last image of the major oak.

References

Hampshire, N (2016) http://nicolahampshirelandscape.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Preparation%3A%20Assignment%205 last accessed 27/3/17

Slade School of Fine Art (n.d.) Patricia Townsend: The creative process - an investigation through practice. Available at: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/slade/research/mphil-phd/patricia-townend last accessed 27/3/17

Tate Britain (2017) David Hockney: 80 years in 8 works. Available at: http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-britain/exhibition/david-hockney/80-years last accessed 28/3/17

Wells, L and Standing, S. (2005) Surface – Land / Water and the Visual Arts. University of Plymouth Press. Cheltenham. Orchard Press.

Bibliography

Focal Press, Taylor and Francis Group online (2011) Exploring Colour Photography. Thomas Kellner. Available at: http://www.tandf.co.uk/textbooks/9780240813356/thomas_kellner.html last accessed 28/3/17

Gaunt, A. (2012) Sherwood Forest Archaeology Project: The Major Oak: Icons of Sherwood Forest. Available at: http://sherwoodforesthistory.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/the-major-oak.html last accessed 4/3/17

Hakim, M. (1995) Ciel Variable: Bill Vazan: Carnet de voyages. Available at: http://cielvariable.ca/bill-vazan-mona-hakim-carnet-de-voyages/# last accessed 4/3/17

Marples, P. (n.d.) Trees of Sherwood Forest and area: Revealed in old postcards. Available at: http://www.ournottinghamshire.org.uk/page/trees_of_sherwood_forest last accessed 4/3/17

Nolan, S. (2013) “Friar Trunk: Walkers discover “monk shaped figure “in 1000-year-old Sherwood Forest believed to be connected with Robin Hood.” In: The Daily Mail [online]. Available at:  http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2263476/Friar-Trunk-Walkers-discover-monk-shaped-figure-1-000-year-old-oak-tree-Sherwood-Forest-believed-connected-Robin-Hood.html last accessed 28/3/17

Saatchi Gallery (2017) John Stezaker. Available at: http://www.saatchigallery.com/artists/john_stezaker.htm last accessed 28/3/17

Smith, R. (2016) The Materiality of images. Doncaster [Cast, 21 May 2016]. http://nicolahampshirelandscape.blogspot.co.uk/p/exhibitions.html last accessed 4/3/17

Tate (n.d.) Tate: Cubism. Available at: http://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/c/cubism last accessed 4/3/17

The Sherwood Forest Trust. (n.d.) Amazing named trees. Available at: http://sherwoodforest.org.uk/nature/amazing-named-trees/ last accessed 4/3/17

The Many faces of Robin Hood. (n.d.) Myths and legends of Sherwood Forest. Available at: http://www.robinhood.ltd.uk/on-location/144-myths-and-legends-of-sherwood-forest last accessed 4/3/14

Wells, L. (1994) Viewfindings: Women photographers: “Landscape” and Environment. Devon. Available Light.

Wilkinson, D. (2006) Nietzche and the Greeks. Bloomsbury.

University of Rochester (n.d.) The Robin Hood Project: A Robbins Literary Digital Project: Alfred Noyes – A Song of Sherwood. Available at: http://d.lib.rochester.edu/robin-hood/text/noyes-song-of-sherwood last accessed 31/3/17

Verve Gallery Contemporary Photography (2017) Thomas Kellner. Available at: http://www.vervegallery.com/?p=artist_biography&a=KE&photographer=Thomas%20Kellner last accessed 28/3/17

5election (2010) 5election: David Hockney’s joiners. Available at: http://www.5election.com/2010/09/05/david-hockneys-joiners/ last accessed 4/3/17

The photographic image in digital archives - Nina Lager Vestberg

Source
Lister, M. (ed. 2013)The photographic image in digital  culture. Abingdon: Routledge. (Pp113-30)

Georges Didi Huberman, Allan Sekula and John Tagg "investigated the uses and abuses of photographic archives in institutional surveillance, control and punishment." Theorists viewing the material with regards to ownership and control of the photographic production. Materialist approach - "attending to the historical, material practices and institutions by and through which photographic archives come into being. " (Vestberg, 2014: 114) "Recover the perspective of those who were subjected or constrained by the archive."

In the 1990's stock industry or visual content industry developed. 1990's - 2010 - development of archive systems. Literature written around "mapping the cultural inpact and significance of an industry that provides "the wallpaper of consumer culture." (Frosch 2003 as cited by Vestberg, 2014:114) Blaschke - commercialism of images from historical development of picture archive to image bank. Language developed around it to allow people to access images.

Digitisation "rendering of existing analogue content into digital formats" and "computerisation of working practices" (Vestberg, 2014:115) So digitisation is change which has affected images.

Computerisation "changes that have affected people."

Archives old filing systems, typewriter, index system, contacts book, fax machine, metadata on back of images

Picture library computer, catalogue, printed cross reference index, name, date, keywords, metadata, high res file

Change from manually finding something - labour intensive to the computer finding the image with ease.

Beginning of picture library people were developing systems. Different institutions such as museums, newspaper groups, stock image companies used their own according to their budgets, needs, size and technical expertise. Analogue archivist "mediate(d) between the image and the user" and digital archivist "mediate(d) between the image and the system." Tope and Enser, 2000 as cited by Vestberg, 2014:116)

Photographs in analogue archive
Archive - valuable to society. Skip is where unwanted objects go. Who should decide what goes where? Newspaper reported mistake of tate gallery for clearing out duplicate files. Newspaper thought readership would be interested in cultural issues of archiving. (Tate - duplicate or archived photos?)

Print catalogue from Guardian Exhibition at time of move from analogue to digital displayed recorded information (such as different coloured pen, copyright stamps) on the back of the real images as images in the exhibition catalogue. Exhibited as analogue only. Hard copies of original prints archived safely.

Photographs in digital archive
Analogue archive                         Digital archive
Metadata                                       ?metadata not as accurate
Hulton Archive                             Getty Images
Few keywords                               More keywords (some not related e.g nail file)
Licence type  - rights managed  
Image specified for royalties to photographer Royalty free (user pays one fee)
can use digital copy                      More expensive?
New edition - new licence            Fee allows use of image in other publications
                                                      model release form
                                                      property release form

"Keywords assigned to  digital files are not so much intended to indicate the location of the hidden image but the need to stand in for it.... Keyword cluster aspires to be synonymous with the image - or create a textural image." (Wallace 2010 as cited by Vestberg 2014:123)

Residual archives
Residual media - Williams "argued for dynamic division of cultural forms into the "emergent" and "dominant" and "residual". "Residual is "that which has been effectively formed in the past but is still alive in the cultural process. (Williams, 1973 cited in Ackland, 2007 cited in Vestberg, 2014:126)
Residual is a place where the past and present overlap and both can still be used.

John Stezaker - Too much too little - David Campany Deutsche Borse Photography Prize 2012

Deutsche Borse Prize awarded to John Stezaker in 2012 for his exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery.

Source: Campany, D (2012) John Stezaker: Too much too little. Available at: http://davidcampany.com/john-stezaker-deutsche/  last accessed 1/4/17

Photography and  appropriated photographic image makers share similarities and concerns of image making such as how to present part of the world or person in a different light.

Started in 1930's by documentary photographers, it took time for others to use the technique.

1st half of century -  Dada, cubism, surrealism, 2nd half of century - pop, situationalism, conceptualism, post modern. Now exploration of image archive and re-imagining the cinematic. Stezaker covers all the genres using books, postcards and film stills as his source material.

Collage means holding on, giving think time, acting on something, iconophilia (enjoying images) and (iconoclasm (destroying images). Time is suspended in Stezaker's images. He uses voids (empty spaces) repetition, doubles, mirroring an recurrent motifs to bring order and logic to images.

Goal of a photography exhibition is suspension of time in which viewers get lost in the images.

Stezaker - The third person archive is a series of images from the same book (Countries of the World, John Hammerton 1920). Stezaker uses miniature people images printed onto one page. The people are so small they become ephemeral, sometimes made up of pixels, unrecognisable in all but shape. When a person meets another person they face accountability and "relations of self and other." (Campany, 2012) These people share our visual culture and space. "If we sense an image is photographic and we sense that it contains a person then we are in the presence of a trace of another subjectivity, another consciousness. (Campany, 2012) It doesn't matter that we can't recognise the person in the image. Images can be "treacherous...elusive, laconic." (brief or concise) (Campany 2012) Rene Magritte called it the Treason of Images. World is tied up with genre and language (name, date, commentary). It is the commentary that has no rules. We are bombarded by images and Stezakers work makes us reflect on the problems of mass media.

References
Campany, D (2012) John Stezaker: Too much too little. Available at: http://davidcampany.com/john-stezaker-deutsche/  last accessed 1/4/17

Additional reading around John Stezaker
John Stezaker - role reversal in some images by rearranging the order of the photograph.

Stezaker fascinated by the "obsolescence of images, the point at which they become illegible, mysterious, at which they touch another world." (Butler, 2012)

Situationists relied on language in images. Stezaker abandoned text in favour of cultural and psychic associations of the image itself.

Stezaker comes across images like a flaneur - except that he lets the images find him. Mixture of situationalist and surreal (beauty is found by chance) methods led him to look at juxtaposing images in an unexpected way to give new meaning and experience. "Exploration of how images are codeified by social and commercial systems." (Butler, 2012) By changing the images the manipulated image becomes noticeable. When a film still or advertisement is placed outside of its natural surroundings, the image takes on a different quality - one of heightened tension or a directed narrative which he sees as a "spectral and shadowy underworld." (Stezaker as cited by Butler, 2012)

Stezaker's work has a liminal space - the viewer becomes the third person - party to an event and objectified or distanced from it. (Liminal - transition - time between what was and what is next, waiting, not knowing.

Third person work - original figures from book were small like film extras. Stezaker makes them central but because they are grainy or pixelated they are mysterious. The viewer participates but doesn't know why they are there.

Shadow - Karl Yung shadow is an example of the unconscious - stand in for the viewer, artist, underworld, invitation to enter the dream world.

Appropriation - "one of the strategies used by artists to question the ideologies behind the apparent neutrality of the photographic image and its ubiquitous dispersal in consumer culture." (Butler, 2012)

References
Butler, K. (2012) Kemper Art Museum: John Stezaker. Available at: http://kemperartmuseum.wustl.edu/files/StezakerGuide.pdf last accessed 2/4/17

Why do we call it love when we mean sex? Joan Fontcuberta

Source: Fontcuberta, J. (2014) Why do we call it love when we mean sex? Pandora's Camera. Mackbooks. UK (pp 183-188)

Fontcuberta explores the documented history of the beginning of the photographic age - illustrating the fact that it was process orientated: scientists looked for the means of rendering a scene onto photosensitive paper and "truth" was captured. Fox Talbot documented reality in "The pencil of Nature".  Photography was not seen as an act of expression.

Artists later started to take more creative images and make installations. Conceptually they were not understood by the public and became mislabelled e.g. Bernd and Hilla Becher make sculptures with the camera etc. Semiotic confusion - image identity is compromised. "Museum curators ...interested in the work [rather] than the technique". (Fontcuberta, 2014:185)

We move further away from traditional photography every time we make a photograph. Camera is a machine and the photographer is not an android. Photography is subjective and should be about documents becoming art.

Pictorialism -  amateurs slated for being too pictorial. In the 1980's photography became more cultural and expressive.  Now digital is becoming pictorial. Stark difference between digital and analogue - like the difference between writing and inscribing.

"It has not always been said that photography was the "writing of light" but that apercu is increasingly shifting from metaphor to literal truth." (Fontcuberta, 2014:187) (Apercu - comment or brief reference that makes an illuminating point)

Perfection is something which should be strived for but not achieved because perfection is divine. Perhaps as critics of our own work we don't think we have reached perfection? I wonder if this is different among other art forms?

Perhaps there was hope that digital would be the answer to conceptualism as the photographer could create the images they thought of mentally? Is digital photography still photography? Or should it be called something else?

Manufacturing discontent: John Heartfield's mass medium

Source: Kriebel, S. (2009) Manufacturing discontent: John Heartfield's mass medium. New German critique 107, 36 (2), pp.53-88 [online] Available through OCA Student links. (accessed 05/02/2017)

Kriebel critiques 9 of Heartfield's works. Heartfield was born with a German name which he changed in 1916 and was already involved with the KPD and Dada, designing book covers and election posters for the communists.

May Day marches by communists and socialists had been symbolic of the working class demonstrating pride and solidarity. In 1928, Zorgiebel banned all outdoor demonstrations to avoid violence between the three main parties; communists, socialists and National Socialists. What started out as a peaceful demonstration by the communists ended in violence over several days by the riot police. Clashes of police and crowds led to innocent bystanders being killed resulting in the labelling of May as Bloody May by the radical left party.

Heartfield's response to this was to create a photomontage (Self Portrait 1929) which appeared in the AIZ magazine in September 1929, a communist magazine, answerable to Moscow Communist International rather than the KPD. In this self portrait, Heartfield holds a pair of shears representing the beheading of Zorgiebel, chief of police a victim. This appealed to the public by offering them justice for the past events.

Self Portrait, (1929)

The image is fantasy, the cut lines of the photomontage demonstrates actual separation of the head from the body and the gaze of Heartfield is important because it is directed at the viewer,so he is not watching the violent act.The gaze is meant as a pause between summoning the viewer and making the cut.

"Walter Benjamin wrote in 1935 that the Dada montage "hit the spectator like a missile,"forcefully intervening in the beholder's consciousness." (Kriebel, 2009:61) Doherty describes the photomontage as the "alienating experience of modern industrial life and war trauma using the phrase " montage as violent vivisection". (Kriebel, 2009:61) The photomontage is based on what was happening at the time in the country - technological warfare, destabilized gender roles and capitalist phantasmagoria.

Rosalind Krauss "It is spacing that makes it clear - as it was to Heartfield [...]- that we are not looking at reality, but at the world infested by interpretation or signification, which is to say reality distended by the gaps or blanks which are the formal preconditions of the sign" (Krauss as cited by Kriebel, 2009:62) denying the image the illusion of presence. Burger describes the photomontage as "subjective, partial, heterogenous" Kriebel, 2009:62) with the ability to disassemble the world the way it was and put it together so that people saw it differently, understanding the relations of politics, commodity and social relations.

By 1930, Heartfelt's next image "Whoever reads Bourgeois papers becomes blind and deaf", the emphasis is on the discomfort felt by the man who is wrapped in newspapers. The illusion becomes a hallucination of reality. The man is dressed in uniform and the image includes text as a visual continuity between the photograph and the text. The context of this photograph was to encourage communists to join the party who would question rather than be a passive member. The image represents a doppelganger, or a resemblance of ourselves, encouraging party members to act.

Wer Burgerblatter liest wird blind und taub! (1930)

 Kriebel disagrees with Benjamin's missile, explaining that Heartfield's photomontage is more seductive, absorbing and captivating than this, as its aim is to stimulate and re-educate its viewers. Heartfield developed his work to minimise seams between the cutouts to make it look like a complete "real"image. He photographed real subjects such as frogs to make the composite look as lifelike as possible. This, Kriebel argues, is not how Left critique should be, supporting the dream worlds, bourgeois representation and fascist aesthetics, which accounts for his critics thinking that he was a retrograde, following painting techniques rather than a revolutionary.

Kriebel theorises that the making of the photomontage is a rupture or trauma to the viewer and the suture (in film terms) is how the image is assembled to activate the viewer to see the image as a psychological and ideological subject. By looking at Heartfield's work, one can identify the what was culturally important at the time and the actions taken by readers of the AIZ would demonstrate whether Heartfield engaged and turned the readers from passive to active members.

1920's - photography becoming more accessible and more popular. Photographs more visible as a medium. Language changing e.g "New Vision" regarding photography. Concerns around lack of critical depth. Linked to capitalism.Needed a contextual frame. Text or another photograph can falsify the photograph and make people believe whatever the editor wants them to believe. Therefore photography was seen and used as political propaganda.

Heartfield 's photomontages "stage our illusionary, unstable apprehension of the world by exploiting the discourses of our illusion, by engaging in and reproducing its very terms. In manipulating the discursivity of photography as an imprint or transfer of the real - as a "photochemically processed trace causally connected to that thing in the world to which it refers," to use Krauss's phase, Heartfield provides an illusionary, seemingly transparent, relation to that world." (Kriebel, 2009:72) Although Kriebel argues that Heartfield undermines the transparency because he challenges the place of photography by constructing consciousness, letting the viewer experience both illusion and disillusion, myth and demystifying the situation.

Zum Krisen Parteitag der SDP (1931)

As the crisis party conference in Leipzig met to deal with the world economic crisis, Heartfield produced this image in response to a comment on adaptation of the capitalist society rather than reform. The text is outside the frame so that the viewer concentrates on the illusion of the photograph. The viewer is asked to decode the symbols such as the tiger's head, the swastika symbols on the tie and be connected psychologically with the work thinking about how they should act. Ideological truths are shown to the viewers. Destabilisation of signified and signifier. 

Der Sinn des Hitlergrusses (1932)

Kriebel uses Althusser's theory of ideology suggesting that "ideological [...]relationships are conditioned by and through culture, and they are continually reproduced within that culture." (Kriebel, 2009:73) He defines ideology as the "imaginary relation of those individuals to the relations in which they live." Kriebel, 2009:73) This includes educational systems, legal systems, arts, the media, communication. So Heartfield's use of  Hitler's words"Millions stand behind me" was illustrated by Hitler receiving a handout from the capitalist society - the play being on money rather than supporters. Heartfield's montages could be seen as an allusion (reference) to the illusion.

Heartfield's photomontages draw on traumatic memory, they look backwards and forwards whilst being anchored in time by the date in the magazine.The images came at a time when people needed something to help them look at their situation and make sense of it.

References

Kriebel, S. (2009) Manufacturing discontent: John Heartfield's mass medium. New German critique 107, 36 (2), pp.53-88 [online] Available through OCA Student links. (accessed 05/02/2017)