Portraits: A Tableau of Visual Symbols

 

For those of you who don’t know, this is a portrait of Kurt Cobain, the deceased frontman for the mega-successful, grunge-rock band Nirvana. While I’m uncertain of how shocking the lead-singer’s suicide actually was—it came amidst a continual flurry of allegations concerning his heroin addiction, extreme depression, discontentment and disillusion at the occasion of his international fame, and impending divorce from wife and rockstar Courtney Love—it was nonetheless tragic. Nirvana’s music helped give voice to a generation of iconoclastic teens and led them out of the big-haired, highly theatrical, ballad-driven music of the 80s. Grunge music was purported to be more honest, raw, and aggressively opposed to the commodification of mainstream music culture (at least, originally). Cobain was heralded as the spokesperson for a generation. Yet, like Bob Dylan before him, he was a reluctant spokesman, and the more he was proclaimed, the more he withdrew. Cobain’s self-inflicted death left the hordes of his young followers and admirers disappointed and disillusioned. 

I could probably go on like that for several pages (and probably have gone on too long as it is). However, I wanted to attempt something like a snapshot of the whirlwind of perceptions and emotions that go through my head when I see a picture of Cobain like the one above. I chose this photograph (there were many I could have used just as well) because I have an emotional connection to Nirvana as well as to the persona of Kurt Cobain. Since becoming a fan, I’ve always drawn inspiration and felt camaraderie with Kurt Cobain. He was always portrayed as an eccentric, introverted, tortured, underdog, who didn’t really settle into the lavishness of celebrity status well and, aside from writing poignant songs, didn’t seem to have any outstanding talents as a musician or singer. This portrait in particular seems to capture some of those things: his unkempt, long hair suggests perhaps a refusal to abide by conventions or others’ standards or perhaps a disdain for them altogether; his solemnity suggests an anguish or unsettledness that rests just beyond the surface of his skin; there is an enigmatic quality in the way the light plays across the exposed side of his face while his hair covers the other, creating a darker contrast.

This is the person I perceive Kurt Cobain to be, a persona constructed from often times meticulously crafted images, well-orchestrated interviews and biographies, and garage-band style music. I’ve always taken the photos of Kurt to be honest and accurate portrayals of who he was, as if they were windows into the very nature of his personhood. At this juncture, however, it is useful to recall some quotes from Berger.  As Berger says “All photos have been taken out of continuity…if it is personal, the continuity, which has been broken, is a life story” (Another Way of Telling, 91). Berger goes on to say that the discontinuity of photography (or elsewhere) always creates ambiguity. Moreover, he asserts that as opposed to drawings or paintings which translate appearances, photographs quote them and thus, he says, they cannot lie (96). This is where assumptions come that photography conveys empirical truth. However, Berger reminds us that photographs are used all the time to quote lies: “The lie is constructed before the camera. A ‘tableau’ of objects and figures is assembled. This ‘tableau’ uses a language of symbols…an implied narrative and, frequently, some kind of performance by models with a sexual content. This ‘tableau is then photographed…precisely because the camera can bestow authenticity upon any set of appearances, however false” (96-97). 

Considering what Berger has said about the nature and uses of photography, here is a volley of increasingly confused and unorganized questions: have I been completely mislead as to who Kurt Cobain was? Of course, I don’t claim to truly know that much about him as a real person; I’m not so gullible as to believe that I can accurately know a celebrity intimately per information I receive through mass-media outlets. But, I have to wonder to what degree does Cobain’s public persona, like the one portrayed in the photograph above truly correlate with his actual persona? To what extent is the photograph above quoting a lie? Was Cobain himself complicit in embellishing who he was? Or, was he aware that he was being caught up in these acts of mis-representation (if, indeed, that’s what was happening)? Really, to what extent are all portraits acts of quoting a lie? Traditionally, portraits have been thought of as conveying some intimate or deeper insight into the character of the person being photographed. They are, of course, always staged and often show what the person being photographed and/or the photographer wants them to show—I’m thinking of Barthes’ “Photography and Electoral Appeal” as evidence of this. They are a tableau (to use the same word as Berger) of visual symbols put in place to convince viewers of the implied narrative or message about the person being photographed. Portraits are mini-narratives: they tell of fictitious and actual, desired and feigned, perceived and assumed, intentional and perhaps even unintentional meanings. If this is all true, would it help us to understand portraits (or any posed photos of people) as a kind of symbiotic endeavor in meaning-making and conveying in which both photographer and those being photographed are complicit in creating a tableau of “reality” for the camera to quote?

~Ryan