Looking At Art Photography With Graham Clarke

Truthfully, I’m not really one for photography (despite that page link you see up above). I know very little about formal photography—most anything I could say would come out of my journalistic endeavors. I’ve always felt that I can identify a fine photo: good lighting…neat composition…good subject matter. But only in the context of a newspaper layout. I’ve never felt comfortable about identifying good “art” photography (or, for that matter, good paintings or sketches or sculptures).

That said, I just finished Graham Clarke’s The Photography—part of Oxford History of Art series. At the risk of sounding slightly hyperbolic, it was one of the most illuminating (no pun intended) books about the art world that I’ve ever read. Thankfully, the book isn’t Photos-for-Morons or some pseudo-intelligent garbage like that. Clarke does not skip out on the heavy stuff—there are easily half a dozen Roland Barthes quotes—and that lends the book an academic blueprint that’s relatively easy to follow. But importantly, he makes the analysis of art photography not only seem easy but seem attainable (for the average schmuck like me). I offer an example from Clarke’s book at length, that investigates the dichotomy between a denotative and a connotative approach:

“In discussing the photographic message, [Barthes] identifies two distinct factors in our relationships to the image. The first, what he calls the studium, is ‘a kind of general, enthusiastic commitment’, while the second, the punctum, is a ‘sting, spec, cut, little hole’. The difference is basic, for studium suggests a passive response to a photograph’s appeal; but punctum allows for the formation of a critical reading. A detail within the photograph will disturb the surface unity and stability, and, like a cut, begin the process of opening up that space to critical analysis. Once we have discovered our punctum we become, irredeemably, active readers of the scene.

A Family on their Lawn... by Diane Arbus; via google.com

Look at [this] Diane Arbus image, A Family on their Lawn One Sunday in Westchester, New York (1969). One the surface this is an image of an average New York suburban middle-class American family, but once again, the more we look at it the more its meaning changes… Spacially, for example, the geometry of the image is crucial. The lawn takes up two-thirds of the photographic space and indicates precisely the sense of emptiness, sterility, and dislocation that pervades the image. Equally, the trees at the back have a looming presence that suggests a haunting otherness. Even at this level the atmosphere seems gloomy, empty, and depressing. A literal, physical configuration has given way to the beginnings of a compelling connotative register suggestive of a psychological and emotional inner space.

This is the setting for the figures in the image. The parents are separate and alone, and every detail of their figures and bearing adds to this sense of difference. The man is tense (rather than relaxed, as we might expect) and holds his head in his hand. His right hand looks to touch and make contact with his wife, but remains inert and separate. The mother also ‘relaxes’ but in a seemingly ‘fixed’ mode, just as she is dressed in a stereotypical bikini and wears make-up. Their separation is made obvious by the way in which the lounge chairs are presented formally to the camera, with the round table between them: a circular reminder of unity and wholeness, although the slatted lines imply a rigid familial and psychological geometry—a connotation further suggested by the solitary child who stares into a circular bathing pool. The boy plays alone and is turned away from his parents. The title itself ‘frames’ our terms of reference and guides us into the symbolic structure of the photographic message. Punctum follows punctum, so that each aspect resonates as part of a larger map of meaning, especially in relation to the associations implied by ‘family’, ‘Sunday’, and ‘lawn’. An image of family relaxation seems to have been inverted and emerges as a psychological study of estrangement and loneliness which, in its compulsive effect, speaks about a whole culture’s condition…”

Clarke continues by pointing out that Arbus’s photograph has opened up new ways to “play and question codes of meaning.” There is much more I would love to share with you about this fantastic book, but I will restrain myself. (Or possibly post more later this week…we’ll find out!)