Unbearably Beautiful: Why I Love the Photographs of Rachel Fleminger Hudson

An untitled photo by Rachel Fleminger Hudson 

rachelflemingerhudson.com

 

 

I.

 

As someone who grew up in the 1970s and remains amorously fascinated with the period - the music, the TV, the fashion, the football, the girls (not necessarily in that order) - of course I'm excited by the work of British photographer and filmmaker Rachel Fleminger Hudson ... 

 

 

II.

 

An ultra-talented graduate of Central Saint Martins and winner of the 2022 Dior Photography and Visual Arts Award for Young Talents, Fleminger Hudson's highly-stylised images recreate the aesthetics of the period within a contemporary cultural context, thereby loosening the "aura of necessity and sanctity surrounding categories of the present" [1].

 

Although often playful, her images are meticulously researched, carefully staged with authentic objects and outfits, and invested with ideas drawn from her intellectual background in cultural studies and critical theory; we can tell this by the fact that, when interviewed, she prefers to speak of hauntology rather than mere nostalgia [2], although, clearly, Fleminger Hudson is yearing for something in her work; if not for the past or for home as such, then perhaps for the intimacy of touch in a digital age. 

 

III.

 

People of a certain age - like me - might remember the '70s and even publish posts on their glam-punk childhood: click here, for example.

 

But nobody reimagines the decade better than Fleminger Hudson and it's this creative reimagining rather than a straightforward recollection that somehow best captures the spirit of the times and, more importantly perhaps, projects elements of the past into the future, so that we might live yesterday tomorrow - as Malcolm would say - rekindling sparks of forgotten joy [3].    

 

Although she's not a fashion photographer per se, it's the fashions of the 1970s that most excite Fleminger Hudson's interest; a true philosopher on the catwalk, she clearly believes that clothes maketh the period and express not only the individuality of the wearer, but embody the socio-cultural conditions of the time [4].

 

Why Fleminger Hudson has a particular penchant for the 1970s, I don't know. Arguably, she might have tied her project to an earlier decade, or even the 1980s [5].

 

Perhaps because the 1970s were a uniquely transitional time; one that was marked "by a change in values and lifestyles" as "modern society and its cult of authenticity gave way to a postmodernism based on reproduction and simulacra" [6]. 

 

 

IV.

 

Whether we think of Fleminger Hudson's work as a form of theoretically-informed fantasy, or as magically-enhanced realism, doesn't really matter. Because either way, her images are fabulous, relaying a narrative that is truer than truth [7] and revealing more about the past than historical facts alone.  

 

  

Portrait of the artist 

Rachel Fleminger Hudson

 

 

Notes

 

[1] William E. Connolly, Political Theory and Modernity (Basil Blackwell, 1988), p. ix.  

 

[2] See, for example, the interview with Gem Fletcher on wetransfer.com (8 July 2024), in which Fleminger Hudson says: "I think about the work as anti-nostalgic. Nostalgia, for me, is about being homesick for a distant past. I'm not homesick for the past because I exist in the material world of the 70s now through my relationship with objects."

 

[3] See the post on retrofuturism dated 10 June 2024 entitled 'I Wanna Live Yesterday Tomorrow': click here. 

 

[4] On her website, Fleminger Hudson says that clothing is "an often overlooked symbolic language" and that one of her aims is "to engage with our psychological entanglement with our garments". Click here.

 

[5] Fleminger Hudson recognises this in the interview with Gem Fletcher on wetransfer.com (8 July 2024): "My work isn't a glorification of the 1970s. [...] In truth, I could be using any era."

 

[6] I'm quoting from a text on the Maison Européenne de la Photographie website showcasing some of Fleminger Hudson's work. She had her first solo exhibition at the MEP in 2023, curated by Victoria Aresheva, bringing together pictures from several different series of works. Click here.  

 

[7] The Jewish proverb that suggests that stories (fables) are truer than the truth is one I first heard being spoken by the South American writer Isabel Allende in a TED talk (March 2007): click here. 

 

Punk's Dead Knot: Reflections on an Essay by Ian Trowell - Part 1: I Got You in My Camera ...

 

Sex Pistols on Carnaby Street 

Photo by Ray Stevenson (1976)

 

I. 

 

Ian Trowell's dead knot essay [a] provides a fascinating insight into how time and space are encoded in punk imagery and demonstrates how a photograph, for example, is not simply an objective or neutral representation of reality, but an artefact that is both constructed and constructive of the world as we know it.    

 

The essay analyses two visual artefacts: a photograph of the Sex Pistols from 1976 and a 30-second TV commercial for McDonald's from 2016. Here I shall reflect on the first of these, whilst in part two of this post I shall discuss the latter. 

 

 

II.

 

Ray Stevenson's famous photo of the Sex Pistols strolling along Carnaby Street in the spring of 1976 still makes smile almost fifty years later, due mostly to what Trowell terms the performative iconoclasm and punk theatricality that is here captured and preserved on film; a second of their lives ruined for life, as Rotten might say [b]. 

 

According to Trowell, whilst Paul Cook is perfectly content to eat his grapes purchased from Berwick Street Market and remain not only partially obscured but as anonymous as the brown paper bag containing his fruit - and whilst Steve Jones and Johnny Rotten are both happy to clown and pose for the camera - Glen Matlock looks uncomfortable and out of place:

 

"His comportment is akin to Wittgenstein's multi-stable rabbitduck illusion in that he is both relaxed and not relaxed at the same time. He has taken the relaxed pose of a pop star going through the motions of a publicity photograph but it clearly seems that he is out of step with the posed anti-comportment of the rest of the band." [183]

 

Matlock, with his buttoned-up jacket and persona, doesn't quite fit in with a band safety-pinned together or with the wider punk aesthetic and ethos; he's just a little too smart and sensible; the slightly nervous observer of the scene, always hanging back and looking on: 

 

"It is a disorienting picture since he appears to know his time is running out, but at the same time he gives the impression of lingering with admiration and anticipation, an adumbration of what is to come evidently with or without him." [184]

 

If, due to Rotten's "hogging of the frame" [185], locating the picture's true point of magic is made difficult, neverthless, for Trowell, it's not Rotten's ugly mug but the fastened button on Matlock's jacket that forms the pictures punctum - i.e., that troubling detail that disturbs and distracts from the more general field of interest (the photo's studium); that which pricks our attention and often moves us with a certain poignant delight [c]. 

 

 

III. 

 

Glen Matlock's button and Wittgenstein's duckrabbit aside, Trowell gives us many other interesting ideas to consider; about Carnaby Street as a subcultural epicentre; about the staging of photography; and about Rotten's performance for the camera.

 

He suggests, for example, that "Stevenson's photograph bears an uncanny resemblance to Roger Fenton's 1855 photograph Valley of the Shadow of Death" [184]. I don't quite see it myself, however, and might just as easily imagine the Sex Pistols "photoshopped into the immediate foreground" [184] of many an image containing a tapering path. 

 

For instance, here's Jones and Rotten following the yellow brick road:

 

 

 

I wasn't entirely convinced either by Trowell's suggestion that we might consider Stevenson's photograph as "a precisely posed document with the four punk musicians reminiscent of the generic crouched figures of Captain Kirk and his original Star Trek crew materializing on a hostile, alien planet with their phasers at the ready to deal with the subcultural detritus that might turn on them at any moment" [186], although it's certainly an original reading.  

 

These things aside, for the most part one agrees with Trowell's interpretations and marvels at his insights. Rotten's captioning of Stevenson's photo as forced fun at Malcolm's behest is pithy, but one needs Trowell's essay to provide the theoretical and cultural context without which it's just another snap. 

 

The band may never have had much clue as to what was going on or what was at stake, but Malcolm knew exactly what he wanted to do and how he wanted the band to look: "The photograph tries to set out McLaren's deliberate positioning of punk as against the process of accumulation of all music genres and stylistic connotations and manifestations that have gone before." [188]

Obviously, in due course every image loses its power and becomes just another stock photo filed away in an archive: cultural fodder, as Trowell puts it. Some truly great pictures, however, retain their abilty to shock or seduce or to scandalise for decades; others, like this one, now mostly rely on Matlock's button to provide a point of interest.

 

Ultimately, argues Trowell, even the Sex Pistols "cannot escape time and space" [188] just as punk cannot escape being co-opted and commercialised by the forces of capital, as McLaren and Reid conceded in The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (1980).

   

 

Notes

 

[a] Ian Trowell, 'Punk's dead knot: Constructing the temporal and spatial in commercial punk imagery', Punk & Post-Punk, Volume 5, Number 2 (2016), pp. 181-199. Page references given in the post refer to the essay as published here.  

[b] Somewhat surprisingly, Trowell doesn't refer us to the following lines in the Sex Pistols' song 'I Wanna Be Me': 'I got you in my camera / a second of your life, ruined for life'.

      He does, however, refer us to John Berger who argues that the true content of a photograph is invisible as it "derves from a play not with form, but with time ... it isolates, preserves and presents a moment taken from a continuum". See Understanding a Photograph (Penguin, 2013), p. 20. 

[c] Barthes's concept of the punctum raises a problem discussed by commentators such as Michael Fried and James Elkins; if it calls forth a highly idiosyncratic response on behalf of an individual viewer, then how can that experience ever be communicated and theorised? In other words, can Matlock's button ever intensely move anyone other than Trowell himself? I might understand what he says and appreciate what he writes, but is his experience of pleasure (as of pain) not uniquely his own?  

 

 

Musical bonus: Sex Pistols, 'I Wanna Be Me', b-side to 'Anarachy in the UK' (EMI, 1976): click here.  

 

Part two of this post can be read by clicking here. 

 

 

What Was I Thinking? (28 June)

Images used for posts published on 28 June 

in 2018, 2022, and 2023

 

 

Sometimes - especially those times when, like today, I'm STILL working on an 8000-word essay to do with the Sex Pistols (and now have a deadline looming into view) - it's almost a form of relaxation to be able to look back and see what one was thinking on this date in years gone by. 

 

And so, let's make a jump to the left and a step to the right ... landing first of all in June 2018 for a post on the ultraviolence of chimps; then zipping forward to 2022 and a post on beatniks, before, finally, ending up in June of last year when it appears that the subject of glitch art was on my mind.

When I look back at old posts, I often want to significantly revise them (and in some cases even want to hit the delete button). But, as I feel relatively happy with all three of these posts, I offer them here pretty much as first published, with very little additional commentary. 

 

However, I have not reproduced the notes that came with them and readers who are interested in knowing more might care to consult the original posts and can do so by clicking on the titles.

 

 

A Clockwork Banana: On the Ultraviolence of Chimpanzees 

 

Despite what idealistic chimp-lovers like to believe, ape society is not some kind of simian utopia or one long tea-party. Indeed, researchers have conceded that chimps are natural born killers who enjoy inflicting cruelty and engaging in acts of savage (often coordinated) violence as much as man. 

 

This overturns the belief that their aggression was a consequence of being forced to live in an ever-restricted space due to the destruction of their natural habitat. 

 

Until recently, primatologists would watch on as a group of males patrolling the forest battered the brains out of any outsider unfortunate enough to have strayed on to their patch and insist that it was a sign of human impact and social breakdown. But now they admit that grotesque acts of ultra-violence, including cannibalism, are how chimpanzees actually maintain their brutal social order. 

 

It seems that lethal violence is an evolved tactic or adaptive strategy that improves fitness amongst those animals with no qualms about using any means necessary to ensure their survival and group status by giving them increased access to food and reproductive opportunities. 

 

Thus, when I read an email sent to me which suggested that humans were uniquely evil animals who would benefit greatly by rediscovering their inner-ape, I had to smile. For some chimps would make even Danny Dyer's deadliest men look like choir boys in comparison. 

 

Having said that, it's worth noting that in the original Planet of the Apes film series chimpanzees - in comparison to war-like and savage gorillas - were portrayed as peace-loving intellectuals who specialised in the sciences.      

 

 

A Brief Note on Beatniks

 

Did anyone ever actually describe themselves as a beatnik? Or was the term purely a media invention; a way of reducing members of the Beat Generation to a cool but cartoonish stereotype? 

 

That's the question I asked at the start of this post and, although it was written only two years ago, I really can't remember how I answered it - though I suspect that, like the term punk, it was not something that those involved in the scene cared for. 

 

Indeed, I seem to recall now that Ginsberg wrote to The New York Times in 1959, deploring the use of the word beatnik and that his pal Jack Kerouac wasn't pleased either to see their philosophy become just another fad. Both authors feared that a generation of illuminated hipsters, would be replaced by brainwashed fashionistas interested only in looking the part. 

 

Indeed, so exasperated was Kerouac by the popularity of the term that he declared to a reporter in 1969 (shortly before his death in October of that year): 'I'm not a beatnik. I'm a Catholic.'

 

Like the punk generation, the beat generation was very much concerned with authenticity - but I ask you: Is there anything squarer than wanting to keep things real? 

 

Glitch: The Art of of Error and Imperfection (With Reference to the Photography of Julia Margaret Cameron) 

Thanks in large part to Jews working in the American entertainment industry, a fair few words of Yiddish origin have been adopted by English-speakers: chutzpah, klutz, mensch, schlep, schmooze, shtick ... etc. But my favourite such word is the rather impish-sounding glitch, which first entered everyday English during the period of the Space Race (1955-1975). 

 

Whilst it now refers to a temporary technical issue or a short-lived fault in a system that eventually corrects itself, glitch is derived from a Yiddish word for that which slides, slithers, or causes one to slip or skid, which is interesting; might one refer to a patch of black ice as a glitch in the road? 

 

Apart from NASA engineers ad those working within the computing and electronics industries, the term glitch is also used by those in the world of art to refer to the contemporary practice of using errors for aesthetic purposes, either by corrupting digital data or physically manipulating electronic devices. As well as glitch imagery and film, there is also glitch music (a genre of experimental electronic sound that many people simply call noise). 

 

Of course, whilst such 'errors' can be random effects, they are more often the result of deliberate manipulation and so not really errors at all. Numerous artists have posted online tutorials explaining the techniques they use to make their work and produce (pseudo) glitches on demand. 

 

Personally, however, I prefer real errors and genuine glitches to those distortions and deviations that are the result of intention. But, either way, you can end up with some amusing results, which is why glitch art is increasingly common in the world of design. And of course, there's even an app allowing those who like to edit their pics on social media to produce an instant glitch effect. 

 

Let's not pretend, however, that there's anything remotely subversive (or even all that original) about this phenomenon. Artists have played with light, sound, and colour and been aware that beauty often lies in small imperfections - that failure is often more instructive than benign success - long before the digital age or anyone was using the term glitch. 

 

Consider the case, for example, of the Victorian photographer Julia Margaret Cameron, whose controversial images were lambasted by the critics  and jeered at by her contemporaries for being smudged, smeared, or out of focus, but which are now regarded as brilliantly ahead of their time. 

 

Error, we might say, was the hallmark of her style; Cameron deliberately left the flaws that others would have attempted to disguise or eliminate, affirming an art of imperfection and happy accident and rejecting the idea of photography as a scientific practice via which one aimed at a perfect representation of the world, or an accurate and precisely detailed rendering of the human subject. 

 

Using an extremely messy - and slippery - process that involved coating glass with an even layer of collodion, sensitising it with a bath of silver nitrate, and then exposing and developing the plate whilst still wet, Cameron was, arguably, the Cindy Sherman of her day and elements in her work are not only postmodern as some commentators claim, but distinctly glitchy. 

 

Glitch: The Art of Error and Imperfection (With Reference to the Photography of Julia Margaret Cameron)

Julia Margaret Cameron: The Holy Family (1872) [1]

The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

 

 

I. 

 

Thanks in large part to Jews working in the American entertainment industry, a fair few words of Yiddish origin have been adopted by English-speakers: chutzpah, klutz, mensch, schlep, schmooze, shtick ... etc.

 

But my favourite such word at the moment is the rather impish-sounding glitch, which first entered everyday English during the period of the Space Race (1955-1975).  

 

Whilst it now refers to a temporary technical issue or a short-lived fault in a system that eventually corrects itself, glitch is derived from a Yiddish word for that which slides, slithers, or causes one to slip or skid, which is interesting; might one refer to a patch of black ice as a glitch in the road?

  

Commonly used within the computing and electronics industries - and still a favourite with the engineers at NASA - the term glitch is also found in the world of art ...

 

 

II.

 

Glitch art is the contemporary practice of using errors for aesthetic purposes, either by corrupting digital data or physically manipulating electronic devices. As well as glitch imagery and film, there is also glitch music, a genre of experimental electronic sound that many people simply call noise.

 

Of course, whilst such 'errors' can be random effects, they are more often the result of deliberate manipulation and so not really errors at all. Numerous artists have posted online tutorials explaining the techniques they use to make their work and produce (pseudo) glitches on demand. 

 

Personally, I prefer real errors and genuine glitches to those distortions and deviations that are the result of intention. But, either way, you can end up with some amusing results, which is why glitch art is increasingly common in the world of design. And of course, there's even an app allowing those who like to edit their pics on social media to produce an instant glitch effect.  

 

Let's not pretend, however, that there's anything remotely subversive (or even all that original) about this phenomenon [2]. Artists have played with light, sound, and colour and been aware that beauty often lies in small imperfections - that failure is often more instructive than benign success - long before the digital age or anyone was using the term glitch.

 

 

III. 

 

Consider the case, for example, of the Victorian photographer Julia Margaret Cameron, whose controversial images were lambasted by the critics [3] and jeered at by her contemporaries for being smudged, smeared, or out of focus, but which are now regarded as brilliantly ahead of their time.

Error, we might say, was the hallmark of her style; Cameron deliberately left the flaws that others would have attempted to disguise or eliminate, affirming an art of imperfection and happy accident and rejecting the idea of photography as a scientific practice via which one aimed at a perfect representation of the world, or an accurate and precisely detailed rendering of the human subject. 

 

Using an extremely messy - and slippery [4] - process that involves coating glass with an even layer of collodion, sensitising it with a bath of silver nitrate, and then exposing and developing the plate whilst still wet, Cameron was, arguably, the Cindy Sherman of her day and elements in her work are not only postmodern as some commentators claim, but distinctly glitchy.  

 

 

Notes

[1] The photograph used here illustrates Cameron's unorthodox style; undefined edges, out-of-focus figures, etc.

 

[2] We might, in fact, best understand glitch art as a form of nostalgia on the behalf of those who remember (or wish to retrospectively experience) the days of cassettes, video tapes, home movies, and polaroid instant cameras, etc. In other words, it's an attempt to resurrect a bygone techno-aesthetic. 

 

[3] In 1865, The Photographic Journal reviewed an exhibition of Cameron's portraits, commenting: 

      

"We must give this lady credit for daring originality, but at the expense of all other photographic qualities. [...] In these pictures, all that is good in photography has been neglected and the shortcomings of the art are prominently exhibited. We are sorry to have to speak thus severely on the works of a lady, but we feel compelled to do so in the interest of the art."

 

Meanwhile, a reviewer at The Photographic News wrote: 

 

"What in the name of all the nitrate of silver that ever turned white into black have these pictures in common with good photography? Smudged, torn, dirty, undefined, and in some cases almost unreadable, there is hardly one of them that ought not to have been washed off the plate as soon as its image had appeared."

 

[4] I remind readers of the etymology of the term glitch discussed in the first section of this post.

 

Just Because the Sky Has Turned a Pretty Shade of Orange and Red Doesn't Mean You Can Simply Point a Camera and Shoot ... Or Does It?

Golden sunset and red sunrise over Harold Hill 

(SA / Dec 2022) 

 

 

I. 

 

For many serious photographers, these two snaps taken from my bedroom window - a golden sunset and a red sunrise - constitute perfect examples of cliché. 

 

That enormous numbers of people enjoy looking at such pictures doesn't alter the fact that images of dusk and dawn have virtually zero aesthetic value; their mass production and popularity only confirming their banality. 

 

As one commentator notes: 

 

"Their very ubiquity is what seems to repel; photography has tainted what it sought to cherish through overuse. It miniaturises natural grandeur and renders it kitsch." [1]

 

If you're a reader of Walter Benjamin, you might explain how mechanical reproduction devalues the aura - by which is meant something like the uniqueness - of an object or event [2]; if you're a fan of D. H. Lawrence, you'll probably start shouting about Kodak vision and how this prevents us from seeing reality, just as cliché inhibits the forming of new perspectives [3].  

 

Now, whilst sympathetic to both of theses authors, I also want to be able to take my snaps and share them with others in good conscience. And so I feel obliged to challenge those who are hostile to photography per se - even if, on philosophical grounds, I share their concerns.

 

And I also feel obliged to challenge those who are dismissive of certain genres of amateur photography - pictures of flowers, or cats, or of the sun's risings and settings - out of cultural snobbery; i.e., those who sneer at aesthetically naive individuals and speak of the wrong kind of people making the wrong kind of images.

           

 

II. 

 

I'm thinking, for example, of the Marxist academic, writer, photographer and curator, Julian Stallabrass, who is interested in the relations between art, politics and popular culture and who sneeringly entitled a chapter of his 1996 work on the widespread popularity of amateur photography 'Sixty Billion Sunsets' [4].

 

As Annebella Pollen notes: 

 

"Stallabrass's denigration of mass photographic practice is based on what he perceives to be its overwhelmingly conventionalised sameness (unlike elite art practices, which are positively polarised as avant-garde, creative and distinctive)." [5]

 

In other words, because Stallabrass sees every sunset photograph as essentially the same, he dismisses them all as "sentimental visual confectionary indicative of limited aesthetic vision and an undeveloped practice" [6]; in other words, stereotypical shit. 

Unfortunately, this attitude is echoed by many other critics and theorists convinced of their own cultural superiority. If you thought postmodernism did away with such snobbery, you'd be mistaken - which is a pity. 

 

For whilst I may agree that just because the sky has turned a pretty shade of orange and red one is nevertheless required to do more than simply point a camera and shoot in order to produce an image that is also a work of art, there's nothing wrong with just taking a snap and plenty of snaps have genuine charm and, yes, even beauty. 

 

In the end, even a bad photograph can seduce and what Barthes calls the punctum - i.e., that which is most poignant (even nuanced) in a picture - is often the failure, fault, cliché, or imperfection. Perhaps, in this digital age of imagery shared via social media, we therefore need to rethink what constitutes a good or bad photograph.    

And, ultimately, Stallabrass is simply wrong: no two sunsets (or dawns) are ever the same and no two photographs of sunsets (or dawns) are ever the same; there is an eternal return of difference (not of the same or to the same). 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Annebella Pollen, 'When is a cliché not a cliché? Reconsidering Mass-Produced Sunsets', eitherand.org - click here. 

 

[2] See Walter Benjamin's essay 'The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction' (1935), which can be found in Illuminations, ed. Hannah Arendt, trans. Harry Zorn, (Bodley Head, 2015).

 

[3] See D. H. Lawrence's essay 'Art and Morality' (1925), which can be found in Study of Thomas Hardy and Other Essays, ed. Bruce Steele, (Cambridge University Press, 1985), pp. 161-68. 

 

[4] Julian Stallabrass, Gargantua: Manufactured Mass Culture, (Verso, 1996). 

 

[5] Annebella Pollen, 'When is a cliché not a cliché? Reconsidering Mass-Produced Sunsets', op. cit.

 

[6] Ibid.

 

 

Derealisation

Derealisation (A Cursed Image)
SA (2021)

 

 

After a Greek art student described the photos on my Instagram account as cursed images, I was encouraged to investigate this term and write a short post on the subject [1].  

 

However, whilst in some instances this description might seem appropriate, I don't think it holds true for all of the pictures and I certainly wasn't aiming at producing images that could be categorised as such; nor do I like to be seen as a follower of trends. 

 

Further, it could just as easily be argued that the photos are, in fact, symptomatic of my disordered mental state and represent how I perceive the world, rather than exemplify a deliberate aesthetic. 

 

This is why the images are, for example, often lacking in depth of feeling or emotional resonance; why there's no sympathy or sincerity in them, even when contemplating corpses. It's as if everything were seen from an ironic perspective by someone who is detached, distant, and dissociated from reality. 

 

I don't know if this is caused by some kind of brain dysfunction, but it's pretty much how I've always seen things - even as a very young child observing the world of animals, grown-ups and school friends. 

 

It might have something to do with my birth sign (Aquarius), or it might be due to the fact that I spent so much time watching TV that eventually I saw real life as if it too were being played out on a screen - who knows? 

 

And, indeed, who cares: it's never been something that's particularly bothered me or caused any anxiety. In fact, my ability to be objective - to see things with a little coldness and cruelty - made me feel not only different from other children, but superior - like an alien being, or a god. 

 

And what young boy doesn't want to feel like that? [2]

 

 

Notes

 

[1] See 'A Brief Note on Cursed Images' (21 September 2022): click here. Readers interested in judging my photos for themselves should go to: @stephenalexander9383

 

[2] I'm thinking here of Nietzsche's remark: "One would make a fit little boy stare if one asked him: 'Would you like to become virtuous?' – but he will open his eyes wide if asked: 'Would you like to become stronger than your friends?'" 

      See §918 of The Will To Power, trans. Walter Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale, (Vintage Books, 1968), p. 485. 

 

A Brief Note on Cursed Images

The first image posted on cursedimages.tumblr.com 

(28 October, 2015)

 

 

For those who don't know, a cursed image refers to picture - usually a photograph - that in someway unsettles the viewer. The term originates from a Tumblr blog established by an anonymous female film student in 2015 and rapidly spread across all forms of social media. 

 

But what, I hear you ask, actually constitutes such a picture? 

 

Well, an image might be described as cursed due to its content, some technical aspect, or the context in which it was taken or is viewed. Or it might simply possess a mysterious quality that is not quite possible to pin-point, but which nevertheless gives people the willies. 

 

As one commentator rightly says, if a picture needs a caption underneath to explain why it's cursed, then it isn't cursed. 

 

Uncanny ambiguity and a kind of abject (and amateurish) surrealism are key and the very best images oblige the viewer not only to wonder what it is they're looking at or try to figure out the intention of the photographer in taking such a shot, but question the nature of everyday reality and their own place within it. 

 

Thus, cursed images have an existential import, as mundane objects - such as a crate of tomatoes - suddenly appear uncanny, even evil. And yet, as Matt Moen notes:

 

"In a chaotic world that seems to defy logic more and more with each passing day, the cursed image offers us a perverse sense of comfort by reaffirming the fact that it's not just us who seem to be going crazy." [1]

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Matt Moen, 'Cursed Images: Finding Comfort in Discomfort', on papermag.com (09 Dec 2019): click here. 

      In the same piece, Moen also makes the important point that the cursed image presents a direct challenge to the carefully photoshopped or deepfake picture by "positing a reality that is far stranger than anything we could fabricate".

 

 

A follow up post to this one on derealisation suggests my photos are more the product of mental dysfunction than the desire to follow social media trends, or subscribe to a creepy aesthetic: click here.  

 

Might as Well Jump (Jump!)

Philippe Halsman:  

Grace Kelly Jump (1954) 

philippehalsman.com

 

I. 

 

As much as I admire Byung-Chul Han - and as much as I enjoy reading his books - I do slightly worry that he's just a teensy-weensy bit of a miserabilist. 

 

That is to say, the sort of philosopher who, when asked if he's a happy person, responds by first pointing out that, in his view, this is a meaningless question before then insisting that happiness is not a condition that he aspires to anyway.

 

Or the sort of philosopher who finds the world cruel and confusing and thus almost impossible to comprehend: "That is also why I am not happy. I rarely understand the world. It appears quite absurd to me. You cannot be happy living in absurdity. To be happy takes a lot of illusions, I think." [1]

 

And the sort of philosopher who, when offered a nice piece of cake, says: I don't eat cake ...

 

This perhaps helps explain how it is that Byung-Chul Han has kept his trim, somewhat boyish figure and also why it is that he hates people jumping with joy (particularly in front of a camera lens) ...   

 

 

II.

 

In a short piece first published in Die Zeit, in 2016, Byung-Chul Han claims that young people being photographed these days love to "jump around wildly" and that this phenomenon seems to have spread "like an epidemic" [2]. 

 

He asks: "Are they really jumping with joy? Is jumping an expression of the increasing vitality of our society? Or are these jumps rather pathological twitches of the narcissistic ego?" [3] I'm not sure I know the answer to these questions, but I do know that individuals jumping in front of cameras is nothing new (even if more widespread).  

One recalls, for example, the astonishing pictures of Philippe Halsman, about which I have written previously on Torpedo the Ark [4]. This includes the above photo of American film star (and future Princess of Monaco) Grace Kelly, taken in 1954, which I will always love, no matter what arguments Han puts forward.  

 

However, I am prepared to consider his arguments ...

  

 

III. 

 

According to Han, in earlier times, when photos "served primarily as mementos, people being photographed presented themselves in a calm and civilized manner" [5]. No one, he says, would have dreamt (or dared) to leap about in front of the camera:

 

"The aim of a photograph was mainly to preserve the moment [...] People held back, and the event came to the fore. They receded behind the moment or occasion that was to be remembered. No one wanted to present themselves, let alone make an exhibition of themselves." [6]

 

Looking at old photos - and I'm talking about very old photos - there's obviously some truth in this. But perhaps this is for the same reason that, in most old photos, people aren't smiling either; namely, that early pictures required such long exposure times that the subject had to stay as silent and as still as possible. 

Of course, it's true that after 1900 exposure times became much shorter, thanks to the invention of the box Brownie, which ushered in the age of the snapshot. And yet, smiles were still uncommon in early 20th-century pictures and people were not, as a rule, jumping about in front of the camera; thus there were doubtless cultural conventions in operation (and not merely technological considerations). 

 

For example, photography was still not regarded as a unique art form with its own aesthetic; it was still heavily indebted to the tradition of portraiture in painting. People may or may not have taken themselves more seriously then than now, but they certainly took photography more seriously; having a picture taken was still a big deal and one didn't want to be immortalised acting or looking the fool.    

 

Han says that today, in the age of Facebook, self-exhibition is an absolute value and people vie for attention and for likes. That they have lost that which once gave photographs a certain austere charm and aura (lost their inwardness, their reserve, their humanity) and the world become "merely a pleasant backdrop for the ego" [7].

 

Han concludes: 

 

"We are witnessing the development of a kind of photography that is free of remembrance and history, a photography that is permanently on the hop, so to speak, that has an altogether different temporality, which lacks width and depth, a photography that exhausts itself in moments of fleeting emotion, a photography that is not narrative but only deictic." [8] 

 

The thing is, however, I rather like this kind of photography. One is even tempted to call it (à la D. H. Lawrence) the photography of the immediate present; instant photography in which there is "no perfection, no consummation, nothing finished" [9] (or, as Han would have it, no age, no fate, and no death). 

 

I don't want to stare at old black and white photos of the past, or Roland Barthes's mother, and think this is how it was ... If that makes me a spider monkey who leaps about jumping for attention whilst remaining fettered to the moment and "devoid of the [human] virtues of understanding and wisdom" [10], then so be it.

 

Notes

 

[1] See the conversation between Byung-Chul Han, Niels Boeing and Andreas Lebert, entitled 'I am Sorry, But These Are the Facts', in Capitalism and the Death Drive, trans. Daniel Steuer, (Polity Press, 2021), p. 135. 

 

[2] Byung-Chul Han, 'Jumping Humans', in Capitalism and the Death Drive, p. 49.  

[3] Ibid.

 

[4] Let me remind readers who can't be bothered (or don't have time) to click here, that Halsman produced a celebrated series of pictures of famous people jumping in the air, 178 of which were published as a book in 1959, along with an essay containing his philosophy of jump photography that he termed jumpology. 

      Essentially, Halsman was interested in seeing his subjects lose a little self-control and reveal character traits that would otherwise remain hidden. I suppose, that being the case, I would understand Byung-Chul Han's opposition to the project on the grounds that such a desire for transparency has fatal consequences.

 

[5] Byung-Chul Han, 'Jumping Humans', Capitalism ad the Death Drive, p. 49. 

 

[6] Ibid., pp. 49-50.

[7-8] Ibid., p. 51. 

[9] D. H. Lawrence, 'Preface to New Poems', in The Poems, Vol. I, ed. Christopher Pollnitz, (Cambridge University Press, 2013), Appendix I, p. 646. 

[10] Byung-Chul Han, 'Jumping Humans', Capitalism ad the Death Drive, p. 52. 

Readers might like to be reminded of my own contribution to jump photography (and the poetry of the present), in a 2017 post featurning the Lithuanian artist Gedvile Bunikyte: click here.  

Auschwitz-Geschichten 1: In Memory of Prisoner 26947 (Czesława Kwoka)

Czesława Kwoka (1942/43)

Photo by Wilhelm Brasse 

Auschwitz-Birkenhau State Museum

 

 

I. 

 

Most people find it extremely difficult to look at the heaps of emaciated bodies left to rot in the Nazi death camps once the system of extermination began to break down.      

 

And, of course, such unparalleled scenes of atrocity are horrific; no one likes to think of human beings reduced to base matter or witness mounds of anonymous corpses showing signs of advanced decomposition or still marked by traces of suffering [1].   

 

But is it any easier to look at this photo of a young Polish girl taken shortly before her death in Auschwitz ...?

 

 

II.

 

Czesława Kwoka was born in a small village in Poland, on 15 August, 1928. 

 

Along with her mother, Katarzyna Kwoka, she was deported shortly before Christmas 1942 and then sent to Auschwitz. She died on 12 March, 1943, aged fourteen, less than a month after her mother; just one of many Polish children murdered by the Nazis [2]. 

 

Czesia is among those memorialized in the permanent Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum exhibition The Life of the Prisoners. Her picture was taken by Wilhelm Brasse, a talented Polish inmate whom the Nazis pressed into service upon discovering that he had trained as a professional photographer prior to the German invasion of his homeland [3].       

 

Along with Anne Frank, Czesława Kwoka has become representative of all child victims of the Nazi killing machine.    

 

  

Notes

 

[1] Having said this, it's worth recalling Nick Land's argument that it's the corpse that wasn't cleanly and efficiently incinerated which functions as a sign of impersonal resistance to the final solution and that the real horror of the death camp comes when the system is in full operation and producing lamp-shades made from human skin and bars of soap from the body fat of the exterminated. See The Thirst for Annihilation, (Routledge, 1992), p. 139.

 

[2] Although details of her death are not known for certain, it's likely that Czesława was killed with a lethal injection of phenol - a favoured method amongst SS physicians. However she died, Czesia was just one of approximately 230,000 children and young people aged under 18 deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau between 1940 and 1945. As might be expected, the vast majority - over 90% - were of Jewish descent; the others had ethnic backgrounds including Polish, Russian, Ukranian, and Romani. Most arrived as part of families and were not listed in camp records. Less than 1000 survived to be liberated by the Red Army in January 1945. 

 

[3] Although he survived the War and still owned a camera, Brasse was was unable to return to his profession because, as he confessed, when he looked through the lens all he could see were the faces of the dead. A 50-minute television documentary about his life and work, The Portraitist [Portrecista], was made in 2005, dir. Irek Dobrowolski. A trailer, with English subtitles, can be viewed on YouTube: click here. 

 

 

To read other tales from Auschwitz, click here and here.         

 

 

Reflections on The Rokeby Venus

Diego Velázquez: The Toilet of Venus 

aka 'The Rokeby Venus' (1647-51) 

Oil on canvas, 122.5 x 177 cm 

nationalgallery.org.uk

 

D. H. Lawrence once jokingly suggested that his painting The Rape of the Sabine Women (1928) might best be described as a 'Study in Arses' [1]. 

 

And perhaps something similar might also be said of the only surviving female nude painted by Velázquez - the so-called Rokeby Venus - which has a lovely looking bottom as its focus point (one hardly notices the rather blurry face reflected in the mirror held by Cupid). 

 

Although paintings of the naked Venus had been popularised by 16th-century Venetian painters, such an overtly sensual picture would, of course, have been highly controversial in 17th-century Spain; the Catholic Church strongly disapproving of such risqué images. 

 

Amusingly, it's a picture that has continued to provoke outrage amongst moralists and militant ascetics of all stripes, including fanatic suffragettes such as Mary Richardson who, on the morning of March 10th, 1914, entered the National Gallery and attacked Velázquez’s most celebrated work with a meat-cleaver [2], and contemporary feminists concerned with the imperial male gaze and the sexual objectification of women, etc., etc. 

 

On the other hand, since its arrival and public display at the National Gallery in 1906, this extraordinary painting continues to inspire a wide range of artists, including the photographer Helmut Newton, who in 1981, took this beautiful photograph, after Velázquez, in his apartment in Paris, for an edition of French Vogue [3]:

 

 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] See D. H. Lawrence, The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. VI, ed. James T. Boulton and Margaret H. Boulton, with Gerald M. Lacy, (Cambridge University Press, 1991), letter 4370, sent to Aldous and Maria Huxley [2 April 1928], p. 353.  

[2] Frustrated by their failure to achieve equal voting rights for women, some within the suffragette movement, including Mary Richardson - a loyal supporter of Emmeline Pankhurst - favoured the adoption of increasingly militant tactics. As well as the attack on The Rokeby Venus, Richardson committed acts of arson, smashed windows at the Home Office, and bombed a railway station. She was arrested on nine occasions and received prison terms totalling more than three years. Perhaps not surprisingly, considering her penchant for political violence, in 1932 she joined Oswald Mosley's British Union of Fascists (as did several other leading suffragettes, including Norah Elam and Mary Sophia Allen). 

      For an interesting online essay on all this, see Philip McCouat, 'From the Rokeby Venus to Fascism', Journal of Art in Society - click here. 

[3] To be honest, this photo has always meant more to me than the painting that inspired it and those who attended my Visions of Excess series at Treadwell's in 2004 might remember that the final paper on nihilism, culture, art and technology, featured an adapted version of this picture on the poster designed to advertise the talk.     

 

 

What if the Shoe Were on the Other Foot?

Photo by Chris Buck for O - Oprah Magazine (May 2017)

chrisbuck.com

 

 

New York based photographer Chris Buck is known for his unconventional portraits of various celebrities and politicians - and celebrity politicians - including Presidents Obama and Trump. His arresting images have appeared in many top publications and he has been involved with a number of high profile commercial campaigns, including the controversial Be Stupid campaign for Diesel. 

 

Like many people, however, I know of him primarily for his pictures in the May 2017 edition of O - The Oprah Magazine, which played with the idea of a reversal of class and race roles, in which whiteness was suddenly disprivileged, at best, if not subject to systemic discrimination in this alternative universe.

 

The photos - which quickly went viral - were for the most part positively received, though, predictably, some found them offensive. Buck claims that his pictures were intended to stimulate questions, but not necessarily provide answers and that he's pleased to know that different people had different reactions:

 

"I want everyone to feel like they can vocalize their feelings about it, whether they’re positive or negative. More talk about this is a good thing. I’d rather people not get upset or offended, but if that’s their reaction then I think that’s totally fair too." *

 

For me, they illustrate something I think we all know at heart: that given the opportunity, everyone is capable of behaving as a cruel, selfish, exploitative arsehole who doesn't give a shit about those who are regarded as inferiors. 

 

In other words, no one is innocent. And those currently oppressed or subject to injustice and violence would behave just as appallingly - if not worse - given the upper hand. Slave morality - for all its fine words - is, let us not forget, a resentment-fuelled desire for revenge; a reactive expression of will to power. 

 

And so, even if the shoe were on the other foot, it would still mean a kick in the face for someone ... Is the solution then that we must all learn to go barefoot (were such a thing possible)?

 

* Note: I'm quoting from an interview with Chris Buck by Jennifer Berry. See: 'The Real Story Behind the O Pics That Have Been All Over Your Feed', Flare, (23 May, 2017): click here.  

Forever Dead and Lovely: Notes on Melanie Pullen's High Fashion Crime Scenes

Melanie Pullen: Untitled (ELLE), 2014 

From the series High Fashion Crime Scenes (2003-17)

melaniepullen.com

If, like me, you love Izima Kaoru's Landscapes with a Corpse for their drop dead gorgeousness and thanatological interest, then you're also gonna love the work of Melanie Pullen in her photographic series High Fashion Crime Scenes ...


Born in 1975, in New York, but currently living and working in Los Angeles, Pullen grew up in the West Village in a family home regularly visited by poets and painters, including Allen Ginsberg and Andy Warhol. She acquired her first camera as a teen and began shooting images of rock bands for various publications and record labels.     

Pullen is most noted, however, for her extensive series of  pictures based on vintage crime scene images taken from the files of the NY and LAPD. Inspired by cinematic images and photojournalism, she employed not only well-known actresses and models, but the services of a huge technical crew so that her photo shoots often resembled elaborate movie sets. Each of her pictures could take up to a month to create and the High Fashion Crime Scenes series used millions of dollars worth of designer clothing and accessories. 

Surprisingly - or perhaps not - Pullen claims to dislike violence. She is curious, however, about the role that violence plays within the arts and wider culture, as well as the response that people have to violent images. Her work might therefore be described not as an attempt to make violent crime seem glamorous or stylish by dressing up bodies in haute couture, but a critical examination of the way in which the horror and traumatic effect of murder, rape and suicide can be diminished via its aesthetic interpretation and/or portrayal in the media.  
 

Pullen herself has expressed concern with the way that images and descriptions of female corpses - often naked or semi-naked - are used to titilate or add sleazy sensational interest to a narrative; be it a film, a play, a news story, a coroners report ... or even a blog post.

See: Melanie Pullen, High Fashion Crime Scenes, with an introduction by Luke Crissell and essays by Robert Enright and Colin Westerbech, (Nazraelie Press, 2005), 128 pages.  

To read a sister post to this one - Notes on Izima Kaoru's Landscapes with a Corpse - please click here.

Forever Dead and Lovely: Notes on Izima Kaoru's Landscapes with a Corpse

Izima Kaoru: Kimura Yoshino wears Alexander McQueen #484 (2007)

Part of the Landscapes with a Corpse series

Galerie Andreas Binder (Munich)

artnet.com

 

No matter how we die, we will travel up to the world 

beyond the sky without regretting how we lived

The phrase drop dead gorgeous, popular with necrophiles and thanatologists alike, also inspired the Japanese fashion photographer Izima Kaoru to stage elaborate death scenes featuring attractive models and well-known actresses dressed in expensive designer outfits that oblige viewers to consider the cultural fascination with the beautiful female corpse.

The sequence of images begin with wide-angle shots and gradually narrow to close-ups of the model. The resulting pictures look rather like film stills and remind us that there's nothing more cinematic than the death of a beautiful woman (to paraphrase Poe), although Kaoru's work demands to be contextualised within a wider art history; one that includes traditional Japanese woodcuts [Ukiyo-e].

It's also important to understand the influence of the Buddhist practice of maranasati - a musing on one's own mortality using various visualisation techniques - upon Kaoru's photography. Thus it is that, prior to taking any pictures, Kaoru asks his models to imagine the circumstances surrounding their deaths (where, when, how, etc.) and to consider also what would constitute the most sightly way of exiting this world (leaving behind a beautiful corpse is never an easy task). 

In sum, Kaoru's pictures are a highly stylised and aesthetically pleasing form of what we in the West term memento mori and not merely images to do with fashion, sex, and cinema born of the floating world (though even if they were that alone, they'd still appeal to me). 

Izima Kaoru: Kimura Yoshino wears Alexander McQueen #483 (2007)

Part of the Landscapes with a Corpse series

Galerie Andreas Binder (Munich)

artnet.com

See: Izima Kaoru, Landscapes with a Corpse, German and English text by Roy Exley, Yuko Hasegawa and Peter Weiermair, (Hatje Kantz, 2008), 192 pages, 171 colour illustrations.

See also the documentary film by Chad Fahs, Landscapes with a Corpse (2014), which follows Izima Kaoru on a journey to create new work and perhaps find the answer to the question of what best constitutes a beautiful death. 

Readers interested in a sister post to this one - on Melanie Pullen's High Fashion Crime Scenes - should click here.