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Trauma Anatomy

This post will reflect on something I touched only briefly on in the last entry and that is generational trauma. In regards to Peta Clancy’s work, I think its a major influence for her practice and a major question she responds to. A large number of her works are ‘bodily’ or anatomically focused, and explore how are bodies and organs carry trauma or memories. From her earliest work ‘The Body is a Big Place’ looking at what is ‘carried over’ after organ transplants, there is a clear message that follows on through her subsequent art. For example, ‘She carries it all like a map on her skin’, we see how the skin is being explored as a ‘map’ of a persons journey through their life. In regards to the artists we have heard from recently, again, Clancy is more specifically looking at the impacts of colonial ideologies, in particular the impacts that are long lasting and may not be visible to other people.

Similar to Phoung Ngo and Hayley Millar Barker, Clancy is forcing the viewer to ask questions about themselves and their own beliefs, instead of directly informing them on how to feel and think.    I think positioning the work like this, opens up a more empathetic response because it represents trauma as something that doesn't end with the culmination of a traumatic event, and instead as something that continues on as its repercussions are suffered by generations afterwards. Generational trauma however, is not simply an artistic metaphor, but research indicates that indeed trauma can be epigenetic, meaning is does not effect ones DNA but can effect how ones body reads DNA. With this in mind, Clancy’s work is very impactful in the way she conveys her message.

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Link to another interesting article about the epigenetic nature of trauma 

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interesting video I found about intergenerational trauma and how it is processed 

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Reclamation

Cambridge dictionary defines appropriation as “the idea of taking something for your own use, usually without permission. With that in mind, it seems fitting that Phuong Ngo’s work draws heavily from appropriating the ‘legacy’ that is left behind after colonial invasion. The complexities of generational trauma and displacement provide space for an evocative artistic response. There is certainly power in attempting to reclaim what has been stolen from you, and I think this is why Ngo’s use of appropriation is so effective. Ngo’s use of appropriation asks questions instead of giving black and white answers. It is these questions that force the viewer to reflect on their own understandings and views of the world around them. For example, Ngo’s work ‘Lost and Found’, using various collage techniques, appropriates the Notre Dame Cathedral to create questions about how the colonial ideology has impacted how we view certain cultures.

This work of Ngo’s reminded me of Hayley Millar Barker’s work ‘There we were all in one place’. Both artists use collage to appropriate ‘colonial-based’ images. I think the power of both works are conveyed by their abilities to force the viewer to question ideas or conventional ways of thing that they may not even be aware of. Appropriation gives the ability to take something that is familiar, be it the Notre Dame Cathedral or a typical Australian landscape and provide it with a new context to form new perspectives and new understandings. There is always the question as to what is a more effective way to disperse information. Is it better to tell someone an answer, or is it better to tell them how to arrive at that answer. At least from an artistic sense, I believe the latter can be very impactful.

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Observation as an art form

French American photographer Elliott Erwitt once said that “photography is an art of observation. It has little to do with the things you see and everything to do with the way you see them.” I think this provides an interesting context from which to discuss Dean Cross’s trans-discipline art, which fuses photography with sculpture and installations. Cross’s work is also heavily influenced by a background in dance choreography. In relation to Erwitt’s quote, Cross’s perspective and indeed the ‘way he sees things’ is formed choreographically, where he seems to ‘build’ the works up from ‘scratch’ in a sculptural manner.

There are of course other Australian photographers who work from a sculptural background, Shea Kirk for example, so I had considered the idea of a ‘sculptural’ photograph before, however

I think its important to understand and to realise that photography is not only about how the photographer sees things but also the way in which the viewer or the audience sees things. I think this is of particular importance with Dean Cross’s work because his Indigenous Australian heritage is unavoidably intertwined with his perspective and the way in which he sees things to form his works. At the risk of sounding overly critical, I personally didn't find that Cross’s works pierced me with, what Roland Barthes would call, ‘punctum’. In considering why I lacked this connection to the works, from Erwitts position, it may be simply related to how I am seeing them. Perhaps there is a cultural perspective that I am lacking, a perspective that may only be available to those who are a part of and share in that culture.

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Capturing the Unseen

Photographing the unseen has a long been a topic of discussion within the art and photographic world. Think back to surrealists photographers like Jacques-André Boiffard working with Georges Bataille, or to Man Ray, or even to the thinking and writings of Andre Breton. Since the early stages of photography as a visual medium there has been a fascination in ‘capturing’ what lies ‘beneath the surface’ or that which can’t be seen by the human eye. The question of course is whether or not this is possible, and if it is, what can we learn from this information. It was the surrealist ideologies that came to my mind first when hearing about Kate Mitchell’s practices particularly her attempts at photographing the auras of people taken from their portraits. I think Mitchell has produced a very interesting interpretation of what it means to capture what we cannot see, by focusing on energies around us as individuals.  In essence she is attempting to ‘capture’ or freeze in time for just a moment, how someone is actually feeling instead of how they are portraying themselves in front of the lens. I wonder what Roland Barthes would make of this concept?

Regardless, Mitchell’s work acts as a sort of archive in documenting a wide range of the Australian population and attempting to find similarities and differences that are beyond the surface level. It’s this point, where I think we can find the true value of photographing the unseen. Its gives these photographs the power to show us that we can find, what Mitchell would call ‘connection’ in our own existence to all of those we are sharing it with every day.

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Ham, L 2019. ‘Self Portrait with First Born’ https://thedesignfiles.net/2019/04/photography-art-contemporary-moranprize-australia/

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Randall, N.  Breckon, A. 2018 ‘Rear View’ ,high definition digital video, multi-channel sound, https://www.breckonrandall.com/

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Kirk, S 2019, ‘Vantages’, https://ccp.org.au/exhibitions/all/vantages

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Pleasure in Repetition

There is something to be said for the power of repetition and the pleasure we seem to find within repetition. Nat Randall’s work ‘Rear View’, from my perspective, explores how repetition works to form and perpetuate social and cultural norms and tropes. This work looks specifically at film tropes and subverts these by featuring two women who self identify as ‘queer’. By positioning themselves in traditionally male positions, or traditionally heterosexual couples positions, the viewer is forced to confront how many times they may have seen this same image or trope repeated with slight variation. Reflecting on this work led me to think where else we are seeing repetition in the media or perhaps more specifically how it works to perpetuate the zeitgeist of the post internet era.

I think primarily of the reality tv shows, which of course purport to show ‘reality’, but produce an ‘uncanny valley’ derivative of the reality we know and share. The repetition in these shows is laid bare with no attempt at concealing it. After all, often the only changes on these shows is the number at the end of the title, and the casts members being replaced by another to play their ‘reality’ role. I have always been confused as to why exactly these shows draw the popularity and audience they do. But looking at the ideas Randall touches on, I’m beginning to think its popularity is directly caused by its repetition. Is it possible, practically regardless of what it is, that if you show the same images or tropes repetitively enough, people will simply enjoy it due to its repetitive nature and the comfort that this repetition brings.  

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Self Portrait Power

After hearing from Liz Ham on her creative practices, a message that stuck with me was the potential power and impact of the portrait photo. Although last entry I discussed truth in photography, or the lack thereof, I do believe that at least in some ways , truth and power are not mutually exclusive, that is to say that sometimes there doesn't need to be a larger truth for a photograph to hold power. This is particularly true when we discuss the self portrait. The self portrait can be powerful simply by capturing the ‘self’. It creates a tangible point to which we can anchor ourself, if we choose.  

Fortunately we were granted access to Liz’s personal collection of self-portraits. Liz spoke to her own metamorphosis in terms of her relationship to self portraits, going from camera shy and avoidant, to purposefully taking meaningful self portraits. Not meaningful because her self portraits attempt to show some sort of objective truth about herself to the viewer, but meaningful purely because of their composition. In the photograph we see a mother and her children together. We see people captured in a moment experiencing one another’s presence. We as the viewer could ascribe any potential meaning retroactively to the photos, coming up with our own narratives, however all these narratives are likely irrelevant to Liz. To Liz these photos act as evidence of her own metamorphosis and as an intensely intimate representation of a moment shared amongst a family, and that is powerful enough.

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Perspectives

I have always found the relationship between sitter and photographer in portrait photographer to be complex. Often I have felt, regardless of which position I was occupying in this partnership, a strong feeling leaning somewhere towards violation. The increase of ‘photographers’, which these days is a term applicable to anyone with a phone, has only fractured this relationship further. Too often I have seen photographs of myself, where I can not ascribe the person I see in the image to my own self. Indeed it is said too often that other people feel the exact same way, or perhaps that they didn't ‘like’ how they looked in the image. This always led me to the obvious conclusion that who we believe we are, more directly, how we look, is impossible to capture or freeze in a moment of time, and since this is the case, it is a violation of our own self identity to attempt to do so.

However, after looking at Shea Kirk’s work ‘Vantages’ and listening to him discuss his work, I have begun to re-examine this conclusion. When I look at a photo of myself or of other people, my first instinct is to expect to see the truth, or an objective representation of a moment experienced. Shea’s work however illustrates just how poorly photography represents the truth of our experiences. By capturing two different perspectives of the same moment in time, we the viewers are forced to consider just how much of our own experiences are shaped by our perspectives in a brief moment of time. So, perhaps violation is the wrong way to consider this portrait photography relationship between sitter and photographer. Its best to give up the idea of a true identity caught in an image, its all a matter of perspective.

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Mapplethorpe R, 1977. Cedric, Gelatin Silver Print, Getty Museum USA

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Photography as exploration

Listening to Polly Borland discuss her work, I was struck by her honesty. It was refreshing to hear an artist emphasis the fact that not all good work needed to be embedded deeply in concept, and that sometimes pure imagination is enough. This sentiment echoed what Polly said in an interview saying her personal work is a “visual articulation of my gut feeling about what it is to be alive”. For Polly, photography it seems, at least her personal work, is based on her instincts and imagination.

With this in mind, something that stuck with me was Polly’s interpretation of who the “best” photographers were, and her opinion that all the best photographers are “explorers and sociologists”.

This raises an interesting discussion about the potential growth of photography in the future and perhaps its ‘seat’ in technology today. Susan Sontag’s essay on Polly describes other photographers who would fall into this category of explorers; Diane Arbus, Roger Ballen, Robert Mapplethorpe. One commonality these artists shared is that they worked in a pre internet pre mass media landscape. Think of Mapplethorpes ‘shocking’ images, too controversial to show, now accessible by children on the internet within a few clicks.  

In fact, Mapplethorpes photographs would be considered extremely tame in comparison to other images accessible on the internet today. Of course, what made Mapplethorpes photographs striking at the time was the previously unseen actions taking place within them, would they be striking for the current generation of young people?

To me, there is signalling here that the idea that the best photographers are ‘explorers’ is becoming outdated. It is becoming evermore difficult to ‘explore’ when the Internet continues to oversaturate digital landscape with never ending amounts of images. To explore is to discover what has been unseen, and what now is left unseen?