Dennis Dunleavy

Sizing up a candidate

When the light reveals many truths to us

When her guest failed to appear from the bathroom after some time, she
peeked in through the half-opened door to find, in bemusement, her friend
standing with camera in hand transfixed on the light in the window.

This is what happens when  light occupies the photographer's eye and
imagination. Time stands still until the light is gone.

Reading light is addictive. No matter how commonplace
objects appear to some, the photographer sees differently. The seeing
photographer intuitively evaluates space, shape, form,  and line, in terms of
patterns, tones, and contrasts.  Long before cell phones came along
to distract us from being present in the world, there was little stopping
the photographer from nearly driving off the road when the elements
cooperated to fix and freeze a moment with the camera.

Frederick Franck in "The Zen of Seeing" observes:

"I still feel most at home on those days
when gray clouds sail through the skies
and shafts of  sun make islands of light
in the meadows. For these were the first
intimations of the beauty of the earth for
the artist within the child."

We go through our days open to the moments when the light reveals its many
truths to us. All of the things we choose to make images of create for us a map
in our mind that  become part of who we are.  In other words, as photographers
our identities  become closely aligned with the things we see and photograph.
This is how we pass from one day to the next -- by seeing and by dreaming of
seeing.

   

What do you see? What do you remember?

The body is lifeless – embedded into the very concrete and  dust that once was a school. Framing the faceless gray form, a handful of Chinese soldiers in green camouflage gently sweep the ground around her.  There are five soldiers, two with shovels, one is pointing at an object inches away from a limp hand. The viewer is forced to look down upon shadows and rubble. We do not know this person. She is one of thousands of victims from the earthquake that shook China to its core two weeks ago.

Photo Credit: The New York Times

The image inflicts upon us a burden that weighs heavily on the psyche. A traumatic memory etched on the conscience. This is not a picture of rescue; it is a farewell. In a single frame, we see the futility of a nation frozen and fixed in time – one that exceeds the capacity of verbal expression. Photography of this nature resists the rhetoric of control and rational explanation. It presses the act of witnessing such an event through the media into a theater of spectacle erupting onto the public sphere of global opinion.  The image leaves us as helpless as the soldiers clearing concrete and steel. 

The function of photography is to connect context with memory – to make the past continue into the present and future. As Allan deSouza notes, “Photography is now so vital to memory, as a safeguard that the past will not be erased…. photographs have become so central to the process of remembering – not necessarily private, but certainly collective.” Suzanne Lacy and Pilar Riano-Alcala conceive of memory as “a never-ending source of collective positioning.” The idea of positioning certain events as cultural and collective memories presumes that some images will be remembered while others fade into obscurity.

Photographs function, as Mortimer Adler suggests, through a constellation of formal signs –– those meanings we come to know as true and irrefutable in relation to the whole of the content. The picture symbolizes a definitive force and emotional response that cannot be suppressed. The picture becomes a reference point for past representations of suffering, both natural and human made. There are also ideological implications that become attached to such images. From a semiotic perspective: the soldiers signify the index of state authority.  The soldiers perform dutifully with precision. The dead woman buried in rubble is not the central focus of this image – it is a shovel and the soldier pointing to an object. The shovel points toward the work at hand – an indexical referent to a recovering nation. And what is it that the soldier seems to be pointing at? A wedding ring? We are left guessing.

Death is symbolic as the antithesis of life –– humility symbolized by the monotony of clearing rubble around the exposed corpse. The symbolic action of this image is resolutely rhetorical in that it reminds us that one day we will all be dead. What remains, meanwhile, is to only wonder when and how this moment may come for us.  For Barthes, photography is ultimately an "elegiac" art – a form of expression that brings into focus the space and time between the living and the dead.

Back to the blog

I've been away for a stretch of time -- trying to catch up with other
projects. So many blogs, so little time. I've enjoyed submitting
regular columns to Black Star Rising on a variety of topics and
have been extremely busy developing a school blog called SOU
Today. Unfortunately, the Big Picture has suffered from neglect.

Now, onto something to think about.

East Kodak's collection called Machines of Memory brings to mind the
rapid advances technology has had on photography. For example,
in 1966, engineers created this camera for the NASA Lunar Orbiter to
shoot the surface of the moon. What is most revealing about this camera
is that there is appears to be little energy spent on cosmetics. What
engineers worried about were much more pragmatic issues such as weight,
image quality and retrieval, and of course withstanding the rigors of
space. There was little margin for error. Everything done during these
times represented a first. It was the beginning of the digital age for
photography.