Photography's Relation to Object-Love

"I attempt, through much of my work, to animate all things—even so called 'inanimate' objects—with the spirit of man. I have come, by degrees, to realise that this extremely animistic projection rises, ultimately, from my profound fear and disquiet over the accelerating mechanization of man's life, and the resulting attempts to stamp out individuality in all the spheres of man's activity—this whole process being one of the dominant expressions of our military-industrial society. ... The creative photographer sets free the human contents of objects, and imparts humanity to the inhuman world around him.

Clarence John Laughlin, as cited in Sontag (1979, pp.186-187)

To collect photographs is to collect the world.

Sontag (1979, p.3)

The notion of objects being human, is clearly symmetrical to the notion of humans being objects. The inanimate is animated through object-love as the animate is inanimated by photography.

Photographic Style

The photos draw on three aesthetic styles of photography. The first is the cliché of the photos couples take of themselves. They are generally of low quality, with an emphasis on the subjects and their enjoyment or bond in the current situation. They serve as a souvenir of that moment, especially useful considering the volatile nature of interpersonal relationships.

The second was the infamous 'myspace' technique, characterised by a profound acknowledgement of the subject being the photographer (through oblique angles taken by stretching the arm out and/or up in order to move the camera further away, photographs via mirror, and often personal scenes such as bedrooms), and of the subject being the major focus of the photograph.

The third was the traditional black and white 'art' photograph.

The first and second styles hold an obvious relation to the project. The first in that they are intended to capture affection (in this case between model and object). The second in that they will be taken by one person with limited equipment.² While the photographs are about two 'beings', they also have to acknowledge that there is only one person there.

The third is of more oblique necessity. As is a growing theme in my practice since Dartington, the aesthetic of this piece is geared towards emphasising both artifice and realism. This contradiction resolves itself through emphasising the artifice in reality, and trying to inject reality with artifice. Perhaps not 'artifice' in the sense that it is false, but in the sense of artifice. The etymology of 'artifice' may lend a hand in deciphering:

1530s, "workmanship," from M.Fr. artifice "skill, cunning" (14c.), from L. artificium "making by art, craft," from artifex (gen. artificis) "craftsman, artist," from ars "art" (see art (n.)) + facere "do" (see factitious). Meaning "device, trick" (the usual modern sense) is from 1650s.

Etymology Online article for Artifice

This also referencing the creation of situations outside the dominant and oppressive reality, á la situationism.¹

Two further points relating to style should be made:

"We regard the photograph, the picture on our wall, as the very object (the man, landscape, and so on) represented in it."

Wittgenstein (2009, p.216)

The first is the relation of taking photographs to the models that objectum sexuals make of their lovers. While it seems quite odd that objectum sexuals would make models of their lovers and then treat them as if they were their lovers, in light of Wittgenstein's observation on photography, it seems quite a natural progression.

The second is that the kind of photos that resulted from this project are actually very unusual. The kind of photographic styles I was referencing (the 'myspace' technique, and photos of couples) evolved—I believe—after black and white film photography was consigned to enthusiasts and professionals. The camera I employed, a Rollei Black and White Single Use camera, is quite an odd and anachronistic object from this perspective, but fits this project very well. To see photos of this 'disposable' aesthetic, on black and white film, is quite unusual and interesting.

Darkroom Affects

Adding to this, my development of the prints was often less than perfect. One infuriating blemish was the presence of my fingerprints, marked into the photographic paper from where I'd positioned it before exposure. However, as I continued developing the photographs, many seemed to appear in oddly significant places. The heart on Jessica's hand, for example, marking a rude intrusion of the darkroom operative onto this private moment³ ⁴. I recalled the following passage exploring the presence of a fingerprint on a photograph of a war scene:

Forensic evidence registered on the same plane as the ghostly trace of the distant photographic event. How did it come to be part of the story? The prime suspect (and key witness) is certainly the photographer tampering with history. This faint trace of touching might either have its origin in the preparatory operations preceding the taking of the photograph (touching is the foreplay of seizure), perhaps in the coating of the clear glass plate with the layer of photo-sensitive chemicals or in loading the camera, or it might have been left after the event, during processing or printing. But others might also be implicated: archivists, researchers, civil servants, army officers, journalists, flea market traders... – anyone handling the picture (re-visiting the scene, so to speak) at any time during the last three-quarters of the century. Or, again, it might be that the finger-print marks the current ('second') negative, the one from which these (re)photographs have been made. At any rate, the finger-print so clearly present here is asynchronous with the photographic image.

This accidental mark confirms a paradox of photography: wholly composed off the material residue of a specific, singular incident in the past, the photograph (not the 'image' but its dimensionless 'site,' acknowledged here by someone's careless handling of the negative or the print) is always anchored in its own history rather than in time.

Büchler (1999, p.74)

Footnotes

¹ To do this, however, one requires a door, or a portal, which is (perhaps) one of the goals of my practise. The idea of a portal also seems quite caught up in photography.

² The 'myspace' technique, like many aspects of youth culture, came about initially as a result of the circumstances of young people not having the money or privilege to allow them access to sophisticated equipment.

³ I have always, perhaps naïvely, wondered what it must have been like for an operative in a darkroom that takes reels of film from the public to develop for them. What kind of things might they have seen?

⁴ Also, the darkroom, with its low red light and its solitude, lends a certain sinister air to this act. I am reminded of the activities of certain males on the internet printing out photos of women, ejaculating over them, photographing the result, and uploading it to the internet for other people's (sometimes the subject of the initial photograph) pleasure.

References

Büchler, P., 1999. Ghost Stories: Stray Thoughts on Photography and Film. London: Proboscis.

Etymology Online, 2001, [Online] Available at: http://www.etymonline.com/ index.php?term=artifice [Accessed 18th November 2009]

Sontag, S., 1979, On Photography. London: Penguin.

Wittgenstein, L., 2009, Philosophical Investigations. 4th ed. Translated from German by Anscombe, G. E. M. Hacker, P. M. S & Schulte, J. Chichester: Blackwell.