Sous les pavés, la plage

I like to make a distinction – admittedly simplistic – between two sorts of photograph: those which are pictures made "of" something, and those which are pictures made "from" something. It should be pretty self-evident what I mean by this but these blog posts don't write themselves, and it does no harm to spell things out a bit.

For most people, of course, a photo is a photo, and that's all it is: a mechanical two-dimensional representation of whatever was in front of the camera; end of story. "It's just a photo" is the essence of a strong residual prejudice against photography in the art world, something I explored at length in a couple of posts I wrote around this time last year (Original Print and Original Print 2). But when it comes to those of us with a deeper interest in photography, whether as critics or as practitioners, I think we tend to fall somewhere on a spectrum which has at its extremes two camps which correspond to those two sorts of photograph. For one extreme, photography is a documentary activity, whose "indexical" relationship to visual reality is its essential feature; for the other, it's just their chosen expressive art medium, perhaps one among several. As it was put by Minor White (once so famous and influential, but now relatively unsung as a photographer): "The camera records superbly, but transforms better".

This divergence, naturally, has a strong influence on any photographer's aesthetic and technical priorities. For the documentarist, making pictures "of" things, representational fidelity is everything. Qualities like sharpness, detail, and clarity will be important, and a "good" photo is one that evidences these qualities to a high degree. At its extreme, you get the sort of obsessives who produce perfect images of the dullest clichés (what Ctein once called "perfectly-tuned pianos playing Three Blind Mice"). Less dogmatic documentarists still have strong feelings about authenticity, and a profound suspicion of manipulation of any sort, even the removal "in post" of an intrusive overhead cable or piece of windblown rubbish. By contrast, for the artist using photography to make pictures "from" things, expressive mark-making counts for much more than fidelity or authenticity, to the extent that, at the other extreme of the spectrum, pinhole devices and toy cameras with light leaks and plastic lenses are useful ways of, um, blurring the boundary between subject matter and subjective impression. Artists have no problem with digital manipulation and downright fakery, provided it delivers a novel image with a strong visual punch and an original signature "look".

Obviously, any camera is just a tool, and the same tool can be used for different ends (unless the tool is a chisel and the end is opening a can of paint, in which case my late father would have had something severe to say to you). But ends matter. If, let's say, you have been tasked with documenting an archaeological dig, it's no good using the remains in front of you as material for self-expression or experiments in ICM ("intentional camera movement" [1]). To plead "but that's how I felt about the skeleton" won't save your job. But, equally, obsessive attention to the lighting, accuracy and precision of representation of some dull, dull tabletop scenario won't get you any gallery shows (unless, of course, you're already famous for rather different work...).

As examples of what I mean, here are two postcards:

This first one, I think we can agree, is pretty dull by any standards, a real candidate for Martin Parr's Boring Postcards collection. Photographs do not get any more utilitarian than that, and its aesthetic value is close to zero. But it is nonetheless a classic photograph "of" something. To me, it is fascinating and evocative because that is the typical stage-set of my childhood, and thus a valuable keepsake simply because of what it represents; even if, like so many childhood things that once loomed so large, the scene has diminished into near absurdity. Such purpose-built rows of shops with accommodation above were scattered all over Stevenage: the creation of "neighbourhoods" was an important part of the town-planning theory of the New Town. That local retail hot-spot was where our sweets, treats, and comics were to be found. So, despite its lack of aesthetic qualities, I can vivify that particular capture of a moment in time with my lived experience, in ways that will be unavailable to a neutral viewer. I can still recall the jarring impact of jumping off an identical set of steps to those on the far right for a dare, for example, or the careful application of comparative connoisseurship and mental arithmetic when selecting a sixpenny paper bag of mixed sweets in various similar newsagents. You do have to smile, though, that – in the brave new world of the late 1950s – six random little shops would constitute a "shopping centre".

This second postcard is something quite different. I've never been to Ashridge, even though it is in God's own country, the chalk hills of Hertfordshire. The Ashridge Estate (now owned by the National Trust) does contain a grand house and an imposing monument, apparently, but you'd never know this from the photograph. This is a picture artfully made "from" what is little more than a partial view of some trees on a hill. When I look at it I get that aesthetic charge that a well-seen image can give; it wouldn't surprise me if you do, too. Also, quite apart from the picture itself, with its bold composition and subtle tonal range, I enjoy the unusual wide aspect ratio of the photo and its placement on the card, with space for the printed caption and the handwriting along the bottom. There's something compelling about it as an object in its own right. And yet it's a picture of nowhere and nothing in particular, entirely reliant on its evocative aesthetic qualities for its value.

And then what about this "found" image I originally came across on the late lamented Mark Woods' blog wood s lot, reposted by him from another blog arsvitaest, in turn reposted from bal des pendus, where it was given the caption "Undated. Unlocated. Unattributed.":

Isn't that an extraordinary picture? Like so many "found" images, it has become pure, perfect photography, a moment in time captured forever, but forever divorced from its original significance. You can almost hear the muffled hoofbeats, and feel the falling snow and the bite of the frosty air. And yet there's no way of knowing who took it, of whom, where, or when, or what the relationship between the photographer and the subject matter might have been. It has migrated from being a picture made "of" an occasion to a picture made "from" it, and is a reminder of how profound the simplicity of photography can be.

Of course, we are free – almost obliged – to invest such a picture with meaning; in the academic jargon, to give an open signifier some closure. For me, it evokes the very snowy winter of 1976/77, when I was a post-graduate student at the University of East Anglia in Norwich. My opinions were changing radically, as I came to see the same old things in new, confusing ways. Was the horse loose, or just being given a canter round the paddock? Is the woman with the switch in command or chasing after? That winter also saw the release of Joni Mitchell's album Hejira (up there with Blue, in my judgement). If you know it in its original vinyl version, you'll recall the inner gatefold image of Mitchell ice-skating, in semi-silhouette, flapping the black crow-like wings of a shawl, not unlike the skirts of the woman's coat in the photograph. Then perhaps you, too, looking at this photograph, hear in your mind the fluid fretless bass-lines of Jaco Pastorius, and even recall the same evocative lyrics:

Listen! Strains of Benny Goodman

Coming through the snow and the pinewood trees

But when both types of photograph come together you can end up with something really special. Here is one that combines "of" and "from" elements into a compelling image of an historically significant subject. Because this wonderfully mysterious, high-vantage viewpoint shows barricades at the Paris Commune of 1871. It was taken by Pierre-Ambroise Richebourg, about whom I know nothing, other than that he studied under Daguerre and did a nice line in plump Victorian nudes, too.

Quite amazing, don't you think? Both "of" and "from" in substantial measure, with enough detail for the documentarists – the stacked rifles, the cannons, those heaped cartfuls of cobblestone barricades, that single precarious ladder – and for the artists there are those ghostly smudged forms passing through the whole tonally-luscious sigmoid composition, plus what looks like some plate-development imperfection along the edges [2]. And then there's that one man at the top, perhaps more of a Baudelairean flâneur than the others, standing transfixed but transparent, hands in pockets. Might he even possibly be the very first to experience that quintessentially Parisian revolutionary revelation: "Mon Dieu! Sous les pavés, la plage!"?

1.  It always makes me smile, that one, with its solemn insistence that, no, I meant to jiggle the camera: this is an accidental-on-purpose image, made in the camera, not by using any digital jiggery-pokery! (Relax, guys, nobody cares how you made the damn picture...).

2. Modern-day practitioners of wet-plate, tin-type, and other "alt-processes" seem to regard such imperfections as a large part of the point of their work: see the work of Sally Mann, Joni Sternbach, or Alex Boyd, for example. I'm sure the original 19th-century guys would have regarded their work as unacceptably sloppy. But then they were documentarists, not artists...