John Austin Photography

PHOTO IN C21

JOHN AUSTIN
Quinninup, 2024.09.20

 

PREFACE

This brief text is an attempt to codify my late career thoughts about photography in C21.  It is divided into three parts, firstly my Modernist position in a period of continuing Postmodernist confusion, following this a critique of the continuing Postmodernist attempts to force photography to the level of Art, then the current state of photographs on the Wise and Wonderful Web and finally photography’s environmental and social obligations in C21.

These observations are my personal feelings.

I describe myself as photographer, not artist.

 

1: PHOTOGRAPHIC INDEXICALITY*

Sesshu

After years in China
Emptiness achieved
He painted
With the fewest of strokes
The hardness of rocks
The twistedness of roots

Kenneth White
1936 - 2023

I first read this in 1971 and it has motivated my practice ever since.

At its root, a photograph is a document of an event.  It is also a trace of the light illuminating that event, like a laying on of hands.  The strengths of photography are its directness, its indexicality* and its ability to hold a moment of time in stillness for longer seeing and consideration.

In addition to striving for objectivity, photo-documentation needs to use aesthetic and compositional clarity to enable the viewer to easily read the content - exactly like the use of syntax in writing, but the use of compositional norms for clarity is two edged.  The second edge is the tendency of photography to aestheticise that which is being depicted, which has its roots in our Eurocentric colonialist viewpoint.  

Regarding colonial viewpoint, it is difficult to be objective in Australian photography as our practice comes from our visual learning being based on European traditions.  The currently popular idealised colour landscape photography and our ethnographic depiction of the First Australians are evidence of this.  We need to learn to see Australia with Australian eyes and ignore our Eurocentric visual norms.

For landscape this means we need to slow down, learn to walk quietly through this land and to stop where we feel a resonance.  Sit and let the land and the light open to you, then quietly photograph what is offered.  If this land has been damaged by the greed of forestry, mining or farming, photograph what is there, especially areas to be further degraded.

Photography of Australia’s First People at the moment has the condescending stench of C20 ethnography, making them look like foreigners in their own land.  Perhaps the best answer to this is to equip and encourage First Peoples with tools to write and photograph their own stories.  Their continuing tradition includes being natural story tellers.

CONTENT

Reading the content of a picture is one thing, real understanding of this content is another, this requires intelligent and educated viewing on the part of the viewer.

No image is ever perfect, but an imperfection can act as a Barthesian punctum** to prick and liven the viewing of a picture.  As Francis Bacon said:

There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion.

Francis Bacon
1561 - 1626

• Indexicality, ability to point to, as in index finger.  (In semiotics indexicality is the phenomenon of a sign pointing to some element in the context in which it occurs.)
• Punctum, in photography punctum was a term used by Roland Barthes to refer to a poignant detail in a photograph.  A punctum is personal and subjective.

 

2: FINE ART PHOTOGRAPHY

The contemplation of things as they are, without error or confusion, without substitution or imposture, is in itself a nobler thing than a whole harvest of invention.

Attributed to Francis Bacon
1561 - 1626

And Albert Renger-Patzch in 1927.

“The secret of a good photograph - which, like a work of art, can have aesthetic qualities - is its realism . . .”

There are several current photographic terms that give me the shits, two them are Photographic Artist, and Artist Photographer.

People have tried to shoe-horn photography into Art since the beginning of the medium.  In an illogical prolongation of some nineteenth century photographer’s feelings of inadequacy, current photographers continue to adopt wet plate, pinhole, cyanotype, bromoil, gum bichromate and other “alternative” photographic methods in attempts to create Art.*

The photography-as-art push was exacerbated in the 1970s by the need of commercial art galleries to find new affordable and profitable products, at which point all photography was dragged into Art.

When someone describes themselves as a Photographic Artist I wonder what anxiety is crippling their practice.

As John Roberts has pointed out in 2014:

“If a photograph has directness and strength it does not need to be called Art to secure its cultural identity.”

A photograph ultimately stands or falls by its ontological strength, and no amount of mistiness or strange printing will raise a dead image.

• These people include my wife and many of my friends, so I may soon be divorced and bereft of friendship.

 

3: FUTURE OF PHOTOGRAPHY IN C21.

“Not merely of the exterior eyes, but also of the mind, so necessary for the contemplation of nature.   . . . just as the lynx, with its superior vision, not only sees what lies outside, but also notes what arises from within.”

Francesco Stelluti of Fabriano
Society of Lynxes
1577 - 1652

In the days of black and white, making a photograph was a considered activity.  For me the making of photographs is still a considered act, and ‘though I constantly carry a 1940s Leica for the Snapshots and the Signs and Situations portfolios I only use it when something special is in front of me.  I treat digital camera use in the same way.

The introduction of the small practical fully digital cameras from Fuji and later Sony was over thirty five years ago.  These cameras offered technical freedom and a democratisation of photography.  The introduction of the Kyocera VP-210 camera-‘phone in 1999 accelerated this trend.

Camera-phones have enabled the making of billions of images of everything - remember the flood of sourdough loaves boasted on the interwebs during Covid-19?  Worse is people around a scene of a car crash using their camera-phones instead of doing something useful.  This criticism does not apply to situations like Ukraine, Darfur or Palestine where camera-phones are used to report to the world.

This image plethora, granted by the freedom and democratisation of camera-phones, was annexed in 2004 by outwardly benign social media channels like Facebook.  Outwardly benign because once an image is on the interwebs there is no control over theft and misuse and the worse abuse occurs from the owners of these platforms.  Just because we can make an image public does not mean we have to, keeping images for private and family use is wholly valid.

In 1949, when George Orwell wrote Nineteen Eighty Four I doubt he imagined that not only would we accept constant location and camera surveillance, but that we would gleefully buy the machines ourselves from our own money.

In 1988 the introduction of Photoshop finally ended the myth of truth in a photograph.  With Photoshop’s editing facilities, falsification of images became normal and since the introduction of AI* this ability to falsify or assemble fake images has expanded by many orders of magnitude; to the point where deep fake videos are possible with a home laptop.

• Artificial Imagery, I refuse to call it intelligence.

 

3:FUTURE USE

Despite capitalist annexation, it remains the duty of writers, photographers and other recorders to document and show current environmental and social events for both immediate and archival uses*  Photography should point, should question and should violate the veils of secrecy shrouding International Capitalism and make us question, debate and reject what is happening around us.  International Capitalism tries to prevent observation and questioning and watches our social media closely.  It is also why so many journalists are being intentionally targeted by snipers in occupied Palestine and by governments around the world.

This section might read as though I am against digital photography.  I am not, I use digital media extensively, along with traditional silver gelatine photography, but I use them as appropriate, based on the intended use of the images.

However, I do feel it is necessary to be aware of digital’s shortfalls and dangers, mainly when an image is made public on a social media platform.  The fault is not with digital cameras, but the thoughtless or intentional misuse of images.

An aspect of digital photography I will criticise is the ill mannered habit to suddenly turn from the subject to look at the play-back function on a camera.  This shows a lack of confidence, and when working with people it rudely breaks the subject-photographer engagement.  Learn to know what you are doing and trust your technique and equipment so that this crucial engagement is maintained.

With film there was no way to check an image ‘till the film was processed.  Traditional silver based photography still has validity in areas where its use is worth the extra skill, time and effort needed.  And a darkroom is a very peaceful place to work compared to the demented battleground of a computer screen

• Archival value, with human global civilisation possibly ceasing by 2050 any archival value is dubious.

 

 

© John Austin
Quinninup, 2024.09.20