The image I have chosen is an iconic image of Martha Graham, a modern dance pioneer. It is a moment in the work "Letter to the World" circa 1940. Not surprisingly, I settled upon a dance image, but this particular one has haunted me since the 8th grade when I was first solidly introduced to Martha Graham, her technique, and her. choreography.
When I look at this image, her body appears to be defying gravity and breaking the boundaries of stillness. She is moving but this is a still image, not video. As a dancer, I look at this from multiple perspectives. First the photographer chose the capture her from, presumably the front. This is a performance piece, and so it would "make sense" that she is photographed from that location. However, there are many positions in the "house." This image makes me wonder if it would be "aesthetically pleasing" from the wings? How did the moment and the photographer coincide so seemingly perfectly? This is something I frequently wonder in regard to photographers of dance. Each moment is a "picture"...in fact that is a frequent mantra in technique class and choreography rehearsals. The problem (based on experience) is time.
The material of her costume is billowing and moving, making shapes based upon the shapes she has created with her body. It is difficult to differentiate where she ends and her costume begins. For me the movement of her costume is the most intriguing part because it looks like it is still moving, but I don't know where it will end up because "all photographs are of the past, yet in them an instant of the past is arrested so that, unlike a lived past, it can never lead to the present" (Berger 86). Her costume is forever caught in motion, as is her body.
While I would potentially argue for a narrative tradition, I can more effectively support the claim that this image is in the aesthetic tradition. This image is a representation of the concept of beauty. At it's time, it was a controversial depiction of beauty in dance because it strayed from the accepted schools of classical dance. This image is also an image of another form of art; there are multiple aesthetic layers. However, we know that Berger suggests "an art of translation [painting] cannot usefully be compared to an art of quotation [photography]. Their resemblances, their influence one upon the other, are purely formal; functionally they have nothing in common" (111). This raises a question for me based on the "nature" of this image. In what ways could this image fall into the category of translation since it reflects another form of art? But, it is also a quotation; it is an instance in time, in dance. It is almost like a quote pulled from a text out of context.
So why would I argue for a narrative tradition? Well, this image is a moment in a performance. The shadows, the facial expression and the movement do tell a story, though an incomplete story. Unlike classical ballet, Graham's works tell stories in the abstract and there is not a specified "story" the audience should see...it is up for interpretation.
Although I sprinkled a few questions above, here are a few more directed questions I an interested in based upon this image and some in the Berger text.
1) In what ways does photography account for motion? Obviously, the image I shared shows motion, but I am also thinking of the image of the blind girl scratching at the screen (p. 15) and the discussion where Mohr "deliberately moves the camera" to distort his self portrait (39). What does motion/movement do to images and how we interpret/analyze them?
2) How does photography act as a quotation? How do we know the "realness" of an image? Does this connect to the degradation that Hill discusses in relation to teaching visuals? I mean for all we know, Martha Graham could have simply repeated that one moment of her dance until the "perfect" image was captured to represent a moment in the dance it first appeared.
3) In what ways do lighting and color (black and white) affect the aesthetic quality of this image? What roles do these two factors in design play to the composition of the image, and other images?
Hi Molly,
ReplyDeleteThis is a beautiful picture and I really appreciated the detail you gave to contextualize it. Give the context you provided, I’d like to think on your question about photography as quotation and “realness.” Yours is not the only post to ponder on the authenticity of a moment, whether the photo has been posed, manipulated, or distorted. Based on your explanation of dance, narrative, and the viewpoints of an auditorium, and your question itself, I’m guessing it matters to you, to some degree, that the image be authentic. I wonder if you could further elaborate on that? It seems to me that if dance is narrative, or the image is to convey some sense of that narrative, or even if the image itself is only a complimentary composition, to pose the picture might constitute invention, while to retake the photo could constitute revision. Does that make the moment captured here any less meaningful? It doesn’t seem that this picture was taken as part of a performance, but was rather posed at a rehearsal or something. Does that make it less authentic or real? Does the manipulation of the lighting in the room affect the authenticity of the image?
I guess I’m wondering how you would define “real” in terms of this moment (dance, imagery, expression?) and why and how that authenticity matters when we know that, as you say, this is a moment captured and taken away from its temporal and geographical space. Does any of that make any sense at all?
Great picture and very interesting post :)
Heather
Hi Molly,
ReplyDeleteI'd also like to weigh in on your question about quotation and realness. I thought Berger's arguments about how cameras "quote" reality was fascinating. I've been satisfied, for some time, that photographs are not objective...anyone who has ever looked at a house after seeing photos online knows that photographs are half-truths at best. We quote the text, but often miss the context. And of course, in our era of Photoshop, any image can be suspect. Berger had no idea. ;-)
I'm not sure how important the "realness" of an image is, though. We have thought, for so long, of photography as the "realist" medium, but what if it isn't? What if the photographer has as much freedom as a the painter to depict whatever s/he wants to communicate, using whatever techniques are available? Would this detract, in some way, from the power of the medium?
Why, in other words, do we not ask these questions of oil paintings? What if photographs could be novels instead of memoirs?
Just some thoughts.
Hi, Molly!
ReplyDeleteI’m particularly interested in two concepts that you address, vantage points and Berger’s idea of the “photograph-as-quotation,” because I hadn’t really thought about them in dialog before. Obviously, this photograph is a particular moment in time that is presented within a particular frame for a particular audience within a particular context. All of those particulars could be altered and the perspective in the photograph and our perception of it would be changed, the “quotation” would be changed. I wonder if we might be able to use something like this to teach students something about scholarship and research. For instance, what I find most problematic about Berger’s concept of the “photograph-as-quotation” is that it implies that the photo can “speak for” its moment even though the photograph, as a material object, has been separated in both time and space from the subject/object it depicts/represents. The same goes for quotations and research that we include, and that our students include, in writing: it has been “removed” from its context to “speak for” something else. How might we compensate for that removal without telling half-truths, the way that Berger asserts photographs do? Or, could we teach students about this using different photographs of the same subject/object from different perspectives?