Visual Culture Blog

Stan Douglas, ‘Suspect, 1950′, 2010

‘Have I seen these images before?’ one might wonder while looking at Stan Douglas’ new series of photographs currently on display at the Victoria Miro gallery. Presented under the title ‘Midcentury Studio’, the meticulously constructed black and white photographs appear to be taken in the 1940s and 50s by using old-fashioned photographic equipment and techniques. Despite being photographed in the last couple of years, the luscious digital fibre prints presented in this exhibition effectively allude to a bygone era.

Weegee, ‘Two Offenders in the Paddy Wagon’, 1942 and Stan Douglas, ‘Trick or Treat, 1947′, 2010

In carefully constructed mise-en-scène, Douglas assumes the role of an anonymous (and obviously very gifted) press photographer covering subjects as diverse as film stars, the underworld, sports, fashion and other newsworthy items. Rather than being linked by their diverse subjects, the photographs in this series are linked, firstly, in the way that they are constructed and produced, and secondly, in the way the photographs appear to tap into the viewer’s collective memory. Although Douglas presents entirely manufactured scenes from his imagination, one cannot help but connect many of the photographs with real life events, and, by extension, with photographs of such events. In this psychological trickery, Douglas apparently borrows from well-known American ‘masters’ of photography such as Irving Penn or the illustrious Weegee.

Stan Douglas, ‘Hockey Fight, 1951′, 2010

In these imagined scenes, Douglas’ attention to detail is staggering. This becomes most apparent in the photograph ‘Hockey Fight, 1951’ which depicts two men brawling as they are surrounded by various onlookers in a hockey stadium. The photograph was taken from a high vantage point alluding to the privileged viewpoint of a sports photographer witnessing the incident from the press box. This quasi-voyeuristic viewpoint into the audience reveals a surprising number of narratives within the image: a little boy, undeterred from the fight, attempts to pick up a bag of popcorn lying on the floor, a young woman’s calm facial expression stands in contrast to the violence she is witnessing, the presence of another woman, though absent in the image, is signified by an unfinished knitting project resting on a bench. From the convincingly old-fashioned clothing of the various people in the photograph to the design of the popcorn bag, Douglas appears to indulge in details that could easily be taken for granted.

In many ways, ‘Hockey Fight’ stands out from the ‘Midcentury Studio’ series as a metaphor for Douglas’ body of work as a whole. Here, the hockey fight refers to Douglas’ cultural background as a Canadian, though more specifically, his cultural background as a Black-Canadian and the potential tension of growing up in a largely white middle-class environment. Apart from such a literal interpretation, ‘Hockey Fight’ also alludes to a slippage between the observer and the observed. Importantly, in the photograph it is two members of the audience who become the spectacle on the sidelines of the hockey game. In addition to that, by incorporating the onlookers’ gaze in the image, Douglas turns the observer of the fight into the observed in the photograph. The image functions as a powerful allegory for the exchange of gazes a spectacle (or a spectacle within a spectacle) entails.

Stan Douglas, ‘Dice, 1950′, 2010

Many of the photographs on display in this multi-facetted exhibition incorporate notions of play, game, trickery, even magic. In the first instance, the games in Douglas’ work relate to the ability to ‘fool’ the viewer in believing that the images on display are historically, politically and culturally accurate representations of the past. Yet the game also refers to a broader agenda as many of Douglas’ photographs appear to represent social microcosms governed by specific conventions, which can easily be disrupted and subverted.

Stan Douglas: Midcentury Studio is available as book.

Hisaji Hara, A Study of ‘Therese’, 2009 and Balthus, Therese, 1938

The provocative paintings of the French-Polish artist Balthus are the starting point for Japanese photographer Hisaji Hara’s visually arresting photographs currently on display at the Michael Hoppen Gallery. Like in Balthus’ work, the photographs are deeply voyeuristic, sexually suggestive, and fetishistic. As their titles indicate, the photographs are a study of’ well-known Balthus paintings that Hara generously appropriated from. Here, particularly in the context of Japanese photography, Hara appears to walk on well-trodden territory. In his acclaimed series Self-portrait as Art History, Yasumasa Morimura similarly appropriated iconic images from Western culture in his photographic montages. Rather than trying to match the original image as closely as possible however, Hara used Balthus’ work as a template, or a source, to produce photographs that are visually complex and culturally loaded in their own right.

Yasumasa Morimura, Futago, 1988

The re-occurring motif of the Japanese schoolgirl in Hara’s work is less a reference to Balthus’ preference for young girls in his paintings, but rather, it more likely refers to the fetishistic value ascribed to the schoolgirl (and her uniform) in the context of Japanese culture. While this fetish is historically located in Japan’s troubled transition to a modern nation-state, it is intriguing to note that Hara’s photographs, in spite of being produced within the last two years, purposefully look aged.

Hisaji Hara, A Study of the ‘Portrait of Therese’, 2009 and Margrethe Mather, Florence Deshon with Fan, 1921

The vintage quality of the photograph is achieved in a number of ways. Firstly, the prints are black and white pigment prints which have a brown tinge to them. The location for Hara’s photographs too, a derelict privately run Japanese medical clinic from the 1940s and 1950s, creates the atmosphere of a bygone era. In addition to that, Hara’s portraits are produced with a large format camera, which inevitably has a more narrow depth of field and subjects fall out of focus more easily. The soft focus in Hara’s photographs immediately brings to mind Pictorialism – an aesthetic movement that dominated photography in the late 19th and early 20th century.

Hisaji Hara, A Study of ‘The Salon’, 2009

Apart from creating images that look purposefully aged, the optical devices applied by Hara also contribute to the voyeuristic dimension of his gaze. In A study of ‘The Salon’, Hara appears to change the focus of the camera, comparable to the cinematic technique of split-focussing, by using multiple exposures. Like the masculine gaze naturalized by the cinematic apparatus, Hara’s focus is highly selective, voyeuristic, even intrusive.

Hisaji Hara, A Study of ‘The Room’, 2009

Noritoshi Hirakawa, Angel in El Paso, Texas, undated

The apparent voyeurism is further emphasized by photographing his subjects from low vantage points, from a distance, or through open doors and windows. The door or window frame at the edge of some of Hara’s photograph are poignant references to the framing of the photograph: a process in which visual information is not only included, but also excluded. In other words, the door and window frames function as an allegory for the dialectical relationship between inclusion and exclusion so elemental to the act of photographing. Hara’s photographs are however less about the process of photography than they are about the process of looking. Here, Hara appears to tap into a lineage of photographers such as Kiyoshi Yoshiyuki or, more recently, Noritoshi Hirakawa, whose work deconstructs and problematizes the act of looking itself.

Hisaji Hara, A Study of ‘Because Cathy taught him what she learnt’, 2009

In A Study of ‘Because Cathy taught him what she learnt’, Hara thus sets out a complex scenario in which the apparent voyeuristic nature of the image comes to the fore: though his eyes are hidden by a hat, a young man can be seen looking at a girl kneeling on the floor. His downward gaze is emphasized by his body diagonally leaning forward on a chair. Hara meanwhile, the apparent stage master of this scenario, produces a photograph which is being looked at in context of the gallery. These multiple levels of looking are completed in the realization that the young woman – the clichéd object of the photographer’s gaze – is knowingly looking straight back at us.

If you are interested in Japanese photography, please download my essay:
Marco Bohr (2011). ‘Are-Bure-Boke: Distortions in Late 1960s Japanese Cinema and Photography’. Dandelion Journal. Vol. 2, No. 2.

Al Jazeera’s news coverage of the Libyan Revolution currently unfolding is hugely symbolical: the left hand of the screen depicts jubilant crowds who have gathered in Benghazi following the news that the ‘rebels’ have taken control of Tripoli, the right hand side of the screen depicts precisely these rebels as they are trampling, kicking, hitting and even driving over a carpet that depicts Muammar Gaddafi. Al Jazeera thus sets out one of the overriding dichotomies evoked by the Arab Revolution: hope symbolised by the jubilant crowds in Benghazi and fury symbolised by those defacing the image of Gaddafi.

The defacing of Gaddafi’s image in the Al Jazeera’s news footage has been, in fact, a reoccurring theme during the Arab Revolution. As the autocratic regimes of Tunisia and Egypt were toppled, it was representations of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and Hosni Mubarak respectively that were attacked by protestors. Even in countries where the political shift has yet to occur, representations of dictators such as Ali Abdullah Saleh of Yemen or Bashar al-Assad of Syria are a common target for those seeking the end of their reign.

The Libyan Revolution in particular vividly illustrates that the defacing of a dictator’s image holds, in itself, a political power protestors appear to tap into. A recent news photograph depicts rebels as they poke their guns into a Gaddafi poster. The gun penetrating the surface of the poster is symbolical for the rebels penetrating the instruments of power of the regime in Tripoli. Importantly, in the photograph a hand holding a mobile phone can be seen reaching into the image. The mobile phone is recording an action which is similarly performed all over liberated parts of the country. The defacing of the poster is not simply an action worth recording on the mobile phone, or, by extension the news photographer on site, but also, it becomes a recognisable gesture symbolising the eventual toppling of Gaddafi himself.

To deface, as the dictionary notes, is to mar or spoil the appearance or surface of an image. Derived from the Old French word desfascier, it literally denotes the disfigurement of the ‘face’. In the true sense of the word, defacement of an image presumes that the image depicts a human being. As all the aforementioned regimes are ruled by individual men, it is only natural that it is their image that is consistently attacked. In other words, an autocracy, or a form of government in which one person possesses unlimited power, is the very precondition for the popularity of the defacement of rulers during the Arab Revolution. In Libya, after being visually bombarded with images of Gaddafi in heroic poses for more than four decades, the frustration of the Libyan people is most bluntly observed in the way they attack Gaddafi’s image. Attacking representations of Gaddafi becomes the conduit for political and ideological opposition.

Another news photograph depicts a little girl as she is kicking a drawing of Gaddafi. A reading of the photograph suggests that while the little girl is not participating in the armed uprising as such, she is, symbolically, standing up against his tyranny. The defacement of Gaddafi thus becomes a gesture that is not exclusive to those participating in the armed struggle. In the photograph, like in many other similar photographs, the physical contact between the shoes and Gaddafi’s face connote the ultimate insult in Arab culture as George W. Bush once famously dodged shoes at a press conference in Baghdad.

It is important to note however that there is a significant difference between defacing an image and destroying an image. Representations of Gaddafi are penetrated, torn, drawn over, kicked, hit, spat at, maybe even burnt – yet ultimately, as an image, it often survives. In the photograph above, the paint of a Gaddafi street mural is crumbling away in parts where it has been most consistently kicked. Yet Gaddafi right hand fist can still be seen as it is defiantly raised towards the sky. So rather than concentrating on what defacement is doing, let me spell out what it is not doing: it is not entirely getting rid of an image, a representation, a poster or any other type of visual propaganda imaginable. The partial preservation of Gaddafi’s image suggests that, ultimately, in order to move towards an unknown future a reminder of the past must be stay in sight.

For more on cultural production in the Arab world, please read Arab Cultural Studies: Mapping the Field edited by Tarik Sabry.