New and Newer Topographics

“New Topographies”, a show curated by William Jenkins in 1975, showed the work of eight American photographers – Robert Adams, Lewis Baltz, Joe Deal, Frank Gohlke, Nicholas Nixon, John Schott, Stephen Shore and Henry Wessel, as well as the German couple Bernd and Hilla Becher. In his introduction to the exhibition, William Jenkins discusses some important photographic questions, issues and notions.

While talking about Edward Ruscha’s work which was an inspiration to a lot of the photographers in the show and to the idea of the curator, Jenkins resumes in a clear way what the topographics in photography mean: “The pictures were stripped of any artistic frills and reduced to an essentially topographic state conveying substantial amounts of visual information but eschewing entirely the aspects of beauty, emotion, and opinion.” Also, he adds what an original meaning of the topography is: “The detailed and accurate description of a particular place, city, town, district, parish or tract of land.”

Nicholas Nixon states that he loves the contradiction of photography; “The best photographs are transparent, sensual, intelligent, fulfilled, freshly arrived, enduring and, in the deepest sense, are of the world.” This thought touches on Jenkins discussion about the “the photograph’s veracity”. Lewis Baltz reduces the photographic document as a “fully exercised observation and description” where there is no place for the artist. However, I think that Baltz’s style is apparent in his work, therefore, even if looking for the most clear document of the world, he cannot escape of showing it his way.

Jenkins sums up his introduction by saying that the exhibition’s goal was to question what it means to make a documentary photograph. Very interesting indeed, however a question that doesn’t have one answer.

Robert Adams, in the introduction for the exhibition, reveals that one of his favorite photographers is Timothy O’Sullivan,  his photographs are the subject of Robin E. Kelsey’s essay. O’Sullivan photographed for the survey which main goal was to make topographic maps of the southwestern United States. The subjects of O’Sullivan’s photographs were landscape depicting mining sites or towns, landscape or river scenes, military forts and various subjects, among them, American Indians and geological formations. Here, I would put these photographs in the category “photographic document”; they really serve as a survey and even though the photographs are iconic and O’Sullivan can be recognized as the author, they don’t specifically reveal a stylistic element; yes, they are considered but a survey is a neutral document. However, as we learn later too, O’Sullivan’s work was a great influence to many American photographers.

Toby Jurovics in his writing  “Same as it ever was” looks back on the exhibition and claims it as one of the best and most influential exhibitions ever. Firstly, he compliments Jenkins on the choice of the photographers. He then tries to understand how the exhibition and Jenkins’ initiative was comprehended by the audience and what has remained until today. Jurovics believe that not only Jenkins simplified the idea of the topographies but it was for long also understood narrowly. Jurovics claims that “the challenges with interpreting New Topologies has been the inability to separate the subjects of these photographs from their meaning – what they are  of  from what they are about.” I would never describe Adams’s  photographs as dull or flat, in fact, his Summer Nights Walking is one of my favorite photographic works and peace is one of the words I’d use when describing his work.

Frank Gohlke that Toby Jurovics mention in his text has suggested that “the tension between the form and meaning is not a dialogue solely confined within the boarders of the print but rests within the subjects of the photographs themselves, in our responses to their practical uses and cultural associations.” I think in the most of the cases we respond to a photograph with associations, based on our knowledge and experience however, as lot of them come from the common pool for all the humans, it is also possible to connect with the intentions of the author. To accent his assertion, Jurovics states the following: “The photographers in the New Topographics exhibition were not attempting to isolate and distance themselves from the landscape but to re-engage in a way that would be meaningful to contemporary experience.” Jurovics opposes to Jenkins’s statement about the fragile relationship between a subject and a picture of that subject; he adds that “Photography is the least fragile medium of all”. Interesting to discover that there are Adam’s images, “near duplicates of photographs of O’Sullivan’s” survey photographs. At the end, Jurovics adds that “these artists wanted to create a language of possibility.” I think that it is one of the potential roles of photography and its dialogue with the viewer.

From topographies as O’Sullivan’s survey photographs to the famous exhibition pictures, I was wondering what a similar exhibition would look like today, what photographers would be included. There are so many dealing with the questions of land, manmade space and the border between that at the nature. I would think of Michael Wolf, Edward Burtynsky, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Massimo Vitali, Simon Roberts among others.

Death of the Author and Institutional Authorship

Roland Barthes’ Death of the Author has several interesting thoughts, for instance, “the text is a tissue of citations, resulting from the thousand sources of culture.” We do use our baggage of knowledge – experience and erudition – when creating something – text or art. Sometimes it is even quite difficult to distinguish if the idea that we have comes from accumulated sources or is original to us, thus when creating something; we also sometimes discover that something we have been working on has actually been done earlier. It is not always a simple ignorance, it proves what Barthes says. Also, by announcing the death of the author, Barthes focuses on the reader; if I would look for some parallels to the photography (or visual arts), then it would mean that in creating an art work I should focus on the viewer. Or, at least, that the viewer would be the main recipient of the work. It corresponds to the idea that a finished artwork no longer belongs to its creator.

The last time I read Camera Lucida must be years ago; moreover, I read it in French, so this is quite a fresh rereading. Barthes’ approach to the matter of photography is profound from the beginning – being interested in photography, he wants to find how it is essentially different from the mass of images. Barthes looks for possible ways how to define that and understands from the first method – classification – that it is defective. So often, the first question from someone to whom I would say that I am a photographer would be: “What kind of photography do you do?” It is so limited, I prefer to answer with the themes, questions that I am interested in. Barthes says that photography is unclassifiable and searches for the source of the disorder. Barthes explains that it is easy (and only possible) to talk about a photograph and not the Photograph (Photography) which practically sounds like a divine unity. He continues by saying that the Photograph “is never distinguished from its referent”, they are joint together, two things that cannot be seen separately.

He then asks a compelling question – why do we choose to photograph one specific thing out of all the possibilities? It could be explained by an artistic vision, sensation, unconsciousness or a need. I am not sure that there is a necessity to explain that. It is more of a rhetorical question. Unless, of course, it influences the aesthetic or conceptual rendering when a photograph is put together with another one. Although that is another question. if a photograph is powerful as it is, the question why it was photographed (instead of another frame) is unnecessary.

Barthes also reveals when reading about photography he actually thinks about a particular photograph he admires (which is probably in opposition to what he tries to find himself theoretically on Photography); nevertheless, he would rather be without culture than not think that way. This makes him very human, not a scents at unreachable level. So, I will show one of the countless photographs I love. It is one that came to my mind when reading the last paragraphs of Barthes’ text.

Duane Michals

I also think that Duane Michal’s way of looking is an example of what Barthes underlines on photography, i.e., that “it is not what we see,” it is the simulacrum of the Photograph. Then Barthes states that “a photograph can be the object of three practices: to do, to undergo, to look” but as not being a photographer himself, he refuses to talk about doing. So he talks about being photographed and how, knowing that, he poses. It is rather interesting how we all change in awareness of being photographed, of being in front of a lens. Even the most natural models who are not so intimidated by the fact are still conscious of being photographed and that changes everything. Besides, as Barthes states too, the photographed person would ideally want to see himself in the image, that “my image should always coincide with my “self”” which is not possible as the image is not the person. I would like to cite Duane Michals on this subject: “How foolish of me to believe that it would be that easy. I had confused the appearances of trees and automobiles and people with reality itself, and believed that a photograph of these appearances to be a photograph of it. It is a melancholy truth that I will never be able to photograph it and can only fail. I am a reflection photographing other reflections within a reflection. To photograph reality is to photograph nothing.” It is so well said because at the end, we don’t photograph the reality, we photograph how we see it, thus, it is a reflection of ourselves. Barthes goes further when talking about the portrait taking – as there are so many ways to look at the person taken in a photograph from the perspective of the self and the photographer, he states that the person “experience a micro-version of death.” This category has always seemed exaggerated to me; the only way I look at it is again through the weird linguistic choice of English language – a synonym of “to photograph” which is “to shoot”. I agree with Barthes on the  pleasure of the sound of camera; I also enjoy it enormously. Here. he also uses another term – “studium” – to talk about his interest in photography, where it arrises from. And the other element (because Barthes defines that there are two elements, the duality that attract) is “punctum”. Studium attracts the interest, punctum is its distraction.

The third text – Barthes’ Image Music Text talks about “the photographic message” in a press photograph. One important and interesting point in looking at a press photograph is that is is accompanied with text, thus the message of the photograph is not the same as if the image would be without the text. Then Barthes defines what photographic message is and states that it is a continuous message without a code. He readdresses the duality of an image, here, talking about the double message that an image contains – “a denoted message, which is the analogon itself, and a connoted message, which is the manner in which the society to a certain extent communicates what it thinks of it.” As the two messages – one with the code, another without – coexist, Barthes names this “the photographic paradox”. As it is interesting and easy to connect with Camera Lucida text, Image Music Text is dry and theoretical and I find it more difficult to give any examples or associate my experience with this writing. Yet, Barthes himself admits that “there is no certainty from the point of view of a subsequent structural analysis..”. Therefore he gives examples for structural terms which are trick effects, pose, objects and photogenic, aestheticism and syntax. One thought that I found interesting when Barthes talks about objects is that “objects are accepted inducers of associations of ideas.” It is true that we feel free (or rely on more symbolic, traditional presumptions) to associate things with certain qualities.

Finally, it is interesting what Barthes has to say about the relation of image and text. Firstly, “the text constitutes a parasitic message designed to connote the image.” Probably the most important text to an image is its caption. The words, as Barthes says, cannot duplicate the image but they certainly have a signification. So, at the end, Barthes resumes that the reading of a photograph depends on the reader’s knowledge but this presumption opens more questions on how people actually look at and read the photograph.

Photographic Culture and Enculturation

First reading – 5th chapter from Daniel J. Boorstin’s A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America starts off with a description of change in American culture with its most radical expression in the way how people have appropriated image in the place that until then was occupied by ideals which is also the subject of this chapter. I am not sure how much I will be able to understand as since from the beginning of the reading it was made sure it would deal with American culture which for me is a matter of knowledge through indirect source. Boorstin continues with a criticism on the lost of value in American culture; he states that no only the word itself has changed from value to the plural form but theses values are no longer a standard for living, the society create their own values as a criterion to be lived by; the values can be adjusted for the developing needs of the society. People feel powerful, they feel as creators. This assertion applies also to God – Boorstin asserts that “he is viewed as a television show only at our convenience. [..] We have made God into the biggest celebrity of all, to contain our own emptiness. [..] God himself becomes not a power but an image.” The religion has been long dependent on imagery – there is no church without an iconic painting or stained-glass window; iconography, for instance, has significant role in protestantism, the Bible study for children couldn’t exist nowadays without imagery in it and God which is, in general, an abstraction, becomes an image. The image is a tool to sell everything.

From this thought, Boorstin then continues with corporate image and its role. He describes this pseudo-ideal = image as synthetic, believable, passive, vivid, simplified and ambiguous and expands on each of those.

1. Synthetic means that an image has been created for a special purpose. The examples Boorstin gives is a trademark and a brand name. And here he mentions a lot of slogans that are not familiar to my Latvian culture, even though I understand the idea of a slogan that stays on  your mind for a very long time, something that (maybe along with a visual representation) creates an image of the company. Boorstin notes that “an image is a visible public “personality” as distinguished from an inward private “character”.” This image is the opposite of a natural representation, every detail is considered, rethought and redeveloped. There are so many companies today that are working on developing the image of an company and often also the image of a person, as president, for instance.

2. Image must be believable. It should correspond to an imagined representation but it is also always undervalued.

3. An image is passive. An interesting thought is delivered here – “an image becomes real only when it has become public.” It might be the reality of a corporative image but I wouldn’t agree so much when it comes to an artistic imagery. This is a question that we briefly touched upon during the last class – does a piece become art only if it is shown in an institutional space?

4. An image is vivid and concrete.

5. An image is simplified; the most effective image would be simple and distinctive.

6. An image is ambiguous. “It floats somewhere between the imagination and the senses, between expectation and reality.”

To be honest, I don’t  know a lot about the advertising, corporate image simply because I am not particularly interested in the field. I cannot deny it surrounds me every day everywhere I go and I wouldn’t be sure either that it doesn’t influence me but I don’t feel competent to talk about it.

Then Boorstin goes back to the comparison of ideal and image. If an ideal demands effort to be attained, then an image is subjected to the needs. The change of thinking brought people from thinking of ideals to images. The problem lies in the simplification which on its turn led people to imitate themselves. Boorstin talks about the public image; this phenomenon is even more vivid today. With the further development of the imagery, technologies and self-awareness, people tend to think more of how they are represented that who they are. I do think that making a public image does not necessarily show who the person is, it still plays by the rules – the one mentioned above or new ones but the public image represents something that would be firstly understood by larger audience and secondly that it would play in person’s advantage.

The other excerpt is from Susan Sontag’s On Photography. Since the very beginning, Sontag touches some interesting points of what photography is and how it has changed people and their way of looking at things. There is no doubt that photography has played a crucial role in changing the way of looking, seeing. Dorothea Lange has once said that “the camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera.” Susan Sontag goes further, she claims that photography has taught us a new visual code and given us the sense that the world could be seen, understood by the images. Today, this invention has gone so far that it even harms. I think that people are no longer looking at things without photographing them and I am not sure that Lange’s thought would apply to a general public. Unfortunately, the ease of photographing (and sharing the photographs) does not always help in noticing what we are surrounded by, not talking even about understanding the world. This enormous desire to capture everything that we see is probably explained by Sontag when she states the following: “To photograph is to appropriate the thing photographed. It means putting oneself into a certain relation to the world that feels like knowledge – and, therefore, like power.” People have always seemed power, today it might be also by means of photography. Sontag sees a problem in the advanced importance of the photographed because it, opposed to the painting, does not show the full statement of the world but only pieces of it; furthermore, this evidence change the scale of the world and devalues it by its fragility. The less damaging mode to keep photographs would be in a book form, which is also the most common but that creates an issue of looking at the photographs, respectively, it raises the question if the order is imposed.

Sontag talks about another interesting aspect – photography being a proof. Today it is no longer evident as we have so many tools of correction, faking, manipulation. But another aspect of photography has on the other hand grown in its importance – the surveillance. It started to be as a helpful tool to resolve crimes and it is undoubtedly still today but the modern possibilities have lead the surveillance possibilities so far that people can feel under surveillance all the time – another extreme. And then, photography is more of interpretation that reality. Sontag illustrates it with the fact that a photographer chooses one image among many frames, a certain light, a certain angle and a certain expression. Besides, photography nowadays is a widely used tool (and even more now in comparison to the 1960s when Susan Sontag wrote the text), therefore, in the most cases, it is not practiced as art. “As photographs give people an imaginary possession of a past that is unreal, they also help people to take possession of space in which they are insecure.” This quote is an interesting statement; to my understanding, it deals much more with psychology than an average photographer would think about (or know). I am not sure if it is the same notion that Sontag had in her mind but I rather need to know a place to feel able to photograph it. On the other hand, it is true that a camera is somehow disarming tool for many people, they are curious, thus it facilitates the contact.

Susan Sontag states that “photographing is essentially an act of non-intervention.” It is surely evident in her examples but sometimes a photographer is just a photographer but his or her photograph, being an evidence or allocating more importance to an event than it might need (as she stresses earlier in the text), might make someone else react to this fact seen in a photograph. I am not saying that a photograph can change the world but I believe that it can create a chain where at some point the changes are possible. Sontag also touches on the subject of voyeurism in photography. Giving examples of naughtiness and a camera as killing weapon she shows only a marginal side of photography or photographers; also, as she points out, a camera being all the time in between subject and photographer, does not make photography the most immoral activity. It would be possible to find fantasy aspects in any profession, weather it deals with photography or not. And again, maybe it is no longer the field of photography but psychotherapy instead. The only term that has always been very confusing for me in English is “shooting”. Hearing someone “I shot him in the park” out of context may lead to absolutely different interpretation.

Sontag continues though the idea of photography as a weapon and delivers that photography renders an image of people as they had never seen themselves before. For me, it is simply a different self-awareness. In general, people never see themselves the same way as other people do. We could, of course, say that a photographed is a symbolic rendering of a person but would it be a “sublimated murder”? However, the idea of photography being a nostalgic art is more understandable to me, indeed, in a way, it has a nostalgic character, as it encompasses past. Also, photographs can shock (when showing the war, for instance) but is the shock bigger as if the event would have been seen in real life? Does this reproduced event really influences more? One thing is sure – the larger audience only (and fortunately) only sees the photographs but can the impact of the photographic document which, for sure, stays as a proof be more vivid after a while as, possibly, the memories fade away? Sontag later mentions that “most photographs do not keep their emotional charge.” Another thing is sure – photography give information; but it cannot be read directly, a photograph cannot tell anything, therefore it always remains an interpretation.

The Transfigurations of the Commonplace

This week’s reading – Arthur Danto’s The Transfigurations of the Commonplace, turns out to be a certain homage to the great art critic and philosopher as, just a week ago, he passed away at the age of 89.

Danto starts his work creating an “exhibition”. He assembles work of art to his terms of how they should be put together, for their best coexistence, there is no thematic coherence but he talks about the richness of an art work. This is interesting, he discusses the relevancy of an art work, of its theme, its title, its appearance.. He explains that “things lack aboutness and artworks are about something.” He then approaches an issue of an art work, by saying: “It cannot be simply because J is an artist, for not everything touched by an artist turns into art.” What is art, when does it stop being a thing and turns into an art work? Even Danto himself doesn’t have an answer “The nature of the boundary is philosophically dark.” The art history has a lot of examples when the art work, shown for the first time, hasn’t gotten understanding, has raised these same questions. Sometimes it is a matter of time – when something novel with potentiality has been created, it can take time to find its stable position within art framework, for instance, Pablo Picasso’s paintings, Luis Bunuel’s films or Nan Goldin’s photography – none of them were accepted straight after making their art.

One of the things I’ve been doing for the last few years is photographing the sea every time I went for a run (when I was living in Latvia near the sea). I have a whole collection of the images of the sea. I love them because, like snowflakes, you can never find two sea views the same. Still, I also cannot decide if this work is anything else, on which side the border should be drawn – thing or art.

A much as he mentioned different theories, at some point, he sums up that one of the most appropriate ideas on art would correspond with Wittgenstein’s  thought that the art cannot and shouldn’t be definable. I think that leaves more space for an artist, although an institution can put a framework to, at least, its needs. Danto continues to explore his idea about the idea in the artwork and the need to question if an artwork questions or not. He gives an example of J who exhibited a mirror. It is interesting that he mentions how the public didn’t even question if the mirror was an artwork or not. The contemporary world is indeed used to see anything in the gallery, thus anything could be an artwork but I agree that there should be some thinking, some idea behind, it cannot be a thing on its own presented in a gallery, namely, it is too little to put a thing on a wall and let the audience to understand or think about it. It is almost as using the contemporary art as a self-evident tool, that it can “work” without any further involvement of the artist himself.

Danto proceeds with discussing the theory that the art is a mirror of reality; it is quite restricting though. He continues: “if nothing more were asked of an artwork than this, there would be no criterion for distinguishing mirror images, which by common consent are not always artworks, from more routine instances of mimesis.” He questions the necessity of pure realistic images, a copy of reality as the reality is behind our eyes. Nevertheless, Danto  states that Socrates had forgotten one very important thing, that the mirror serves a an important tool as seeing ourselves, thus as an instrument of self-revelation. In this context, Danto talks about the Berkeleyan philosophy and Sartre’s Pour-soi and Pour-autrui, explaining that Pour-soi without Pour-autrui would be “metaphysically sideless”.

Also, Plato’s theory of forms and things is worth considering – “only forms are real, since things may come and go but the forms these things exemplify do not come or go – they gain and lose exemplifications but they themselves exist independently of these.” Also, Plato’s theory includes the thought that philosophy and art are antithetical and that mimetic art is a substitute activity. To my point of view, art as duplicate is not truly topical but the other idea of art as a gap between life is more current.

It is interesting to follow the further arguments of Danto that resemblance does not make one an imitation to the other and that imitations contrast with reality, summing up that “the art lover is not like Plato’s cave dweller, who cannot mark a difference between reality and appearance: the art lover’s pleasure is exactly based upon a difference he is logically required to be able to mark.” I think it comes not only with intellectual knowledge but also with the training of the eye – by seeing a lot of art one develops certain qualities, not only the proficiency. Effectively, it is proved that children who are trained in arts from an early age develop a lot of skills, problem solving, focusing and dedication among others.

Danto goes back to J’s bed as art, explaining that anyone knows what to do with a regular bed but when it comes to a bed as an artwork, it creates confusion. I understand why. There is a funny story about that kind of contemporary art. Once in an art gallery, a man was going around the exhibition, looking at artwork and stopped at the extinguisher; the gallerist approached him to ask what he thought of the exhibition and the man, still looking at the extinguisher, said that it is very intriguing. The gallerist had to disclose that that particular extinguisher was really only a extinguisher. This is a good point to discuss when talking about the uses of the contemporary art.

An interesting thought is rendered, mentioning Nietzsche – that “it is not art unless it defies rational explanation, and unless its meaning somehow escapes us.” I think this is another extremity – one is to say that art is a mirror of the reality, the other that art has to be incomprehensible to be art. There must be something that a viewer could relate to or be intellectually challenged. It doesn’t have to be a duplication of something, the most abstract art can bring a meaning. Here I think of one of my favorite painters Mark Rothko whose paintings have brought revelations in my life.

One thing is sure – not every new thing produced becomes art. There are many inventions that don’t have anything to to with artistic expression, even though many inventions demand mind alike the artist’s. At the same time, a simple thing that anyone would consider an real object, within the context, could become an artwork. As defined by theoreticians – artwork as Purposiveness without Specific Purpose. Still, this bring us back to the starting point, i.e., there is no true premise that would define an object an artwork or not and the border between them is brittle.

Playing with ideas

I’ve found that portraiture is a good leveling instrument – it always sends me back to square one.

Wolfgang Tillmans

It was always September the 1st when standing still, dressed in a school’s holiday uniform (the difference was in apron – a black one for regular school days and a white one for holidays) I waited with my sisters for our grandfather to take a picture. It was the beginning of the school year and we often had grandfather’s dahlias on the background. I frequently had a vertical wrinkle on my forehead for two reasons – I was impatient to wait but I was also trying to understand what the grandfather was doing when measuring the light, for instance. Even if my grandfather didn’t have any artistic, conceptual purposes and his project was, as Walter Benjamin would categorize, moustly “the cult of remembrance of loved ones”, he created an archive and a ritual that could fall within the context of contemporary art.

For instance, many photographers have worked with a certain recurrence method and even the idea of the series has a successional similarity in its basis. A good example would be the famous photographer couple Bernd and Hilda Bechers. Their photographic typologies – black-and-white photographs of variant examples of a single type of industrial structure – are carefully and meticoulosly planned and executed images with a methodical repetition. They are never the same but the formula is very important.

One may ask what other purpose except a formal documentation they could have had. A possible answer can be given with the words of John Szarkowski: “An artist is a man who seeks new structures in which to order and simplify his sense of the reality of life.” And indeed, I can confirm this assertion within my experience too. As one of the convenient ways for me to perceive the larger space around me is by examining it while riding the bike (the movement, different from walking, allows to feel the size and environment in a particular way), then another method is by photographing it. Looking through the lens allows to firstly see the world with a different point of view. Different because the attention, dedicated to choose the frame within the vision, is unlike the way of just watching the world. Secondly, by looking at the pictures taken, a viewer (most commonly, the photographer) builds a certain opinion, his perspective, even a system. It can be done the other way round too – the matter in which a photographer is interested can be explained through visuals. Here, I also think of Thomas Ruff, for example. His systematic approach was executed through portraits – the same manner for a passport like images for which Ruff requested that his models be as expressionless as possible. He photographed them wearing their ordinary clothes, against a plain background. Interestingly, Ruff’s portraits of human being are actually less human that the images of the Bechers’ industrial objects.

Even if theoretically a portrait is a common representation for a human being, here is an example where the practice can prove the opposite. But even so, Ruff’s images on the other hand show a perfect example of how Szarkowski defined an artist – Ruff offered a new structure, a new way to look at a portrait photography. Another photographer who not only introduced a new portraiture but also changed viewer’s involvement -Diane Arbus who photographed before the photographers mentioned above. Her photographs of peripheral people were an intimate, multi-layer images for her but striking and even shocking for the audience who wasn’t used to looking at that kind of portraits. With this explicitly human rendering she challenged the viewer and his sense of reality.

Furthermore, it may be even more apparent in self-portraiture and the practice where important personal, intimate questions are addressed through photography. I can identify myself with the words of Graciela Iturbide who said that being a photographer is like a therapy. Again, it proves that through the lens, there is a possibility to order the world in comprehensible terms, and, to my opinion, to deal with the reality too. I would like to mention a Finnish Nina Korhonen. Her self-portraits and photographs of and with other members of her family are visually harmonious but her stories are very personal self-therapy, through which Korhonen deals with the loss of two important women in her life – her mother and her grandmother, as well as with the sickness of her partner. This trial brings fragility to her visual expression, shows a certain border between life and death where there is recovery on one side and surrender on the other. She also reflects on a middle age woman’s life through femininity, fear and development. Her photographs are also a ground for familiar, common experiences.

The way Thomas Ruff uses portrait is mere reticent, he doesn’t agree that a portrait could express any emotions, a complete opposite of the two women photographers mentioned above. A portrait as a mirror of the involved person on the other hand is, of course, a tricky presumption but I could not deny that it is an option how to show an individual in an authentic way and for a sitter, to reach another self-awareness. A portrait can be poetic which leads us to more abstract terms that I could intensify with the lanes from John Ashbery’s “Self-Portrait in a convex Mirror” which are astonishingly close to what Ruff expresses too. Different forms, different ideas which at the same time can be pulled together; two opposite perception of reality with a point where they meet on a plane:

The soul has to stay where it is,

Even though restless, hearing raindrops at the pane,

The sighing go autumn leaves thrashed by the wind,

Longing to be free, outside, but it must stay

Posing in its place. It must move

As little as possible. This is what a portrait says.

Then I thought again to the autumn pictures my grandfather made. Even as simple as a tool of remembrance, they offer a conversation about the essential – human interaction and refer back to the words of Wolfgang Tillmans where the simplicity and frankness are qualities that bring a depth in a human exchange where honesty is important. Back to square one.