Lecture 03 - Objectivity and Deadpan

7/29/2019 Lecture 03 - Objectivity and Deadpan

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Objectivity and Deadpan:Examples from a German context


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Main concerns:

A short history of German photography, looking primarily at those photographers who

approach their subject with a lack of style - foregrounding objectivity rather than a

subjective [snap-shot] approach.


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*August Sander and his Citizens of the Twentieth Century (begun c.1910, never completed)*Bernd and Hilla Becher architectural photography, 1960s to today

*post-Becher school of photography: Andreas Gursky, Thomas Ruff, Candida Hofer, from thevery late 1970s to today


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Key terms / areas for this session:

Objective / Subjective what is the difference? How can they work on

each other productively?

Disinterestedness + Distance approaching a subject without

affecting it how to remove oneself as a photographer whilst allowing the

subject in front of the lens to assert themselves

Deadpan as the repression of style


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Other areas:

1. SYSTEM

the archive (the gathering of data)

a chosen photographic system (and its attendant rules)

2. SUBJECT

the personal / the social (the individual / the people)

the portrait (of what?)

3. REPETITION

the serial, the sequence(non)expression


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A context:

New Vision

vs.

New Objectivity


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NEW VISION:!Lucia and Lzl Moholy-Nagy,!Florence Henri!!Fractured or flattened images, oddperspectives, a new way of

seeing!


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Lzl Moholy-Nagy, Berlin, c 1930

Lzl Moholy-Nagy, Berlin Radio Tower, c 1928


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Lucia Moholy, Portrait of Florence Henri, 1926-27

Lucia Moholy, Bauhaus-Workshop Building, 1926


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Florence Henri, Still Life with Lemon and Pear, c 1929

Florence Henri, Window Composition (view through window of the communal bath in the Bauhaus studio complex, Dessau), 1927


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Albert Renger-Patzsch,Intersecting braces of a Truss

Bridge in Duisburg-Hochfeldt,1928"

Neue Sachlichkeit!(New Objectivity)!!Albert Renger-Patzsch,!Karl Blossfeldt,!(August Sander)!!Clear lines, unclutteredimage, direct approach to

topic or subject!


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Albert Renger-Patzsch, Shoe Lasts at the Fagus Works, Alfeld, 1926


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Albert Renger-Patzsch, Kaffee Hag, 1925, design for a poster

Albert Renger-Patzsch, Round Flasks, Schott Glassworks, Jena, 1934


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Karl Blossfeldt, from Art Forms in Nature, 1928

Rough horsetail; Young shoot; rough horsetail; Rough horsetails


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Renger-Patzsch vs. Moholy-Nagy


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AUGUST SANDER


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An attempt to map an entire social culture, not just in terms of individual but in terms of classes,in terms of classifications: from the men of the earth via modern man to the dispossessed and

insane

A social typology of German society

He uses an already existing system, that of the portrait, but uses it in such a way that he

suppresses his own author function, a suppression of style for simplicity and consistency of image.

[traditional form portrait meets radical process - the system]


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August Sander:the basic thought of my photographic work Citizens of the Twentieth Century,

which began in 1910 is nothing but an attempt to make a physiognomicaltime exposure of German man


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A remarkable attempt to

document all of a society, notjust the high or low, rich orpoor, rather theentiresystem""An exhaustive and all-

inclusive approach"(An unending task)"


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Two pronged method

Traditional form: the portrait

(transmissibility of the likeness of the sitter a celebrationof their identity)

Radical form: the series, the sequence

(a form that requires a suppression of style and a focus onrelationality comparing one image to the next a giving

away oforiginality of each image [they become boring]

to allow a whole system to emerge the piece becomes a

composite portrait of a nation)


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Some notes on technique:

1. The portraits act as a critical inquiry, not a flattering likeness

2. The portraits are made in the context of the subject, their space defines them as much

as their title, pose, or clothing

3. The portraits make obvious the sitters relationship to the camera, it refuses the

glimpse of some-one elses reality, showing instead the situation: photographer-

camera-subject (hence the ugly stiffness of the figures)

4. The pictures repress

stylistic brilliance

for continuity of series: repetition oftechnique allows a picture from 1910 to be compared to one from 1930. Thus the series

becomes a series in / on time


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The photographed situation: !1. Made transparent (I am here, with you alienating? stiff?) !2. Repressed / hidden (a fly on the wall / sentimental illusion?)!


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The demonstrative gesture:

I am here, doingthis, foryou to

see

Bertolt Brecht: The prerequisite for producing the

[alienation] effect is that the actor must accentuatewhat he has to show with a clear demonstrative

gesture. It is necessary, of course, to abandon theconcept of a fourth wall fictionally closing off the

stage from the stage and creating the illusion thatthe staged scene takes place in reality, in the

absence of the audience

This in turn gives the audience an attitude of

inquiry and criticism towards the scene


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BERND + HILLA BECHER


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Some themes:

The particular vs. the general

The self-evident as non-self-evident the obvious AS oblique

Artworks as showing us the real world as refracted (as altered) through noncommunication, in-

expressiveness


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Their work seems to strongly resist, or even evacuate, subjectivity, rejecting this for typographicstudies, comparing buildings and their types [coal bunkers, grain silos, water towers etc.].

Bechers: You have to be honest with your object to make surethat you do not destroy it with your subjectivity


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The images are so particular to their project they seem to resist semiotic analysis

- in terms of coding, they seem able to reject all readings a kind of non-stick / wipe-cleanphotography

Their relation to realism / documentary could be seen to be problematic as the images deny

motivation, affect or event, seemingly rejecting the capturing of the moment replacing that with theplay of infinite and minute variation.

- The multi-part nature of the works denies the singularity of the photographic image

Theodor Adorno: out of nothing, something happens

Are the Bechers photographs in-significant - do they refuse to signify?


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The work of comparative analysis

Talbot, Muybridge, Bechers


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Bechers / Walker Evans: vernacular architecture, the everyday conditions


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The method of frontality


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*A refusal ofsubjective interiority

*Refusal of figuringman and concentration on spaces that define man

*Their deadpan frontal approach refuses the dynamism of technological utopia used by Moholy-Nagy or Rodchenko, lack of horizon lines or of visual dynamics in the Bechers work

*Denial of narrative time through serial typology of an archaic modernism

*An isolation of the utopian narrative of technological progress in decline

*Situations of work, not the figure of the worker


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POST-BECHER SCHOOL:GURSKY / RUFF / HOFER

From the series to the tableau

The epic (the everyday) (the

ungraspable) and the relational

The work of the cognitive map?


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ANDREAS GURSKY:

Social architecture - Social systems, the object filled with subjects, some

conditions of modern life


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An impossible subject to picture: the economy?


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An impossible subject to picture: the economy?


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A model of street photography!Where is the street here?

Not a contingent point of view but a meta overview turningthe public space into an ant-hill for inspection!

epic distance a tableau not a series

(comparison within the image not between images)


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THOMAS RUFF:

Where is the person in their own face, where is the action, what kindof photograph is this


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Ruff: Im interested in reproduction, in howpictures are taken. The picture I take of a

person has nothing to do with the personanymore. It has its own reality, its own

autonomous existence. It becomes independent ofthe person it presents. It is aphotograph of

a person, taken at a particular time, under

particular conditions


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The portrait as convention not as special


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The portrait between identity and celebration



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The portrait between identity and celebration


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CANDIDA HOFER:

Bodies of knowledge, knowledge-production as the work of relationbetween bodies


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*What bodies of knowledge are we given here?

*Li ll b di d f k l d (f h i i


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*Literally, bodies arranged for knowledge (for the scientist

and the child)

*A tension: are these photographs ofbodies or of spaces or

of systems of arrangement? (images of the way knowledge is

transmitted)

A final tendency in conclusion:


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The work of comparison as the work of relation No thing stands on its

own no single image or single body instead these works operate via

readings

between

things

There is objectivity in the image, whilst there is always subjectivity in the

comparisons made or there is a question about how subjectivity is

produced (nation, factory, economy, museum as subjects, as sites of

subjectivity production

)


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Documents

Lecture 03 - Objectivity and Deadpan