Visual Communication

Visual Communication http://vcj.sagepub.com/ The 'other' Europeans: the semiotic imperative of style in Euro Visions by Magnum Photos Giorgia Aiello Visual Communication 2012 11: 49 DOI: 10.1177/1470357211424686 The online version of this article can be found at: http://vcj.sagepub.com/content/11/1/49 Published by: http://www.sagepublications.com Additional services and information for Visual Communication can be found at: Email Alerts: http://vcj.sagepub.com/cgi/alerts Subscriptions: http://vcj.sagepub.com/subscriptions Reprints: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.nav Permissions: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav Citations: http://vcj.sagepub.com/content/11/1/49.refs.html >> Version of Record - Jan 25, 2012 What is This? Downloaded from vcj.sagepub.com at University of Leeds on January 26, 2012 VCJ11110.1177/1470357211424686Aiello: The ‘other’ EuropeansVisual Communication 4246862011 visual communication ARTICLE The ‘other’ Europeans: the semiotic imperative of style in Euro Visions by Magnum Photos GIORGIA AIELLO University of Leeds, UK ABSTRACT In this article, the author examines Euro Visions, the exhibition created by Magnum Photos to portray the new countries that joined the European Union in 2004 and 2007. She begins by observing that this project’s deviations from the world-leading agency’s trademark humanist style of photography were discursively ascribed to Euro Visions photographers’ authorial style. In this regard, she identifies two key semiotic resources – typing and juxtaposition – that were mobilized as markers of individual style. She then argues that both typing and juxtaposition should instead be seen as generic semiotic resources rooted in corporate styles of visual communication, which contribute to othering the ‘new’ Europeans. She also argues that in Euro Visions, the notion of ‘distinctive’ authorial style was deployed as symbolic currency for a global(ist) market that rewards cultural production and, broadly, aestheticization. She finally posits that, in projects like Euro Visions, what is mostly (generic) design may get passed off as (specific) representa- tion, and that this aestheticization of styles and identities may be mystified as the substantial honouring of difference and diversity. KEY WORDS aestheticization • Euro Visions • European Union • juxtaposition • Magnum Photos • photography • social semiotics • style • typing Between 2004 and 2007, 12 new countries entered the European Union (EU)1 in an unprecedented move that almost doubled its size. Today’s EU includes 27 countries, with the majority of its most recent entries belonging to the for- mer Eastern Bloc. As a response to this latest round of EU enlargement, world- leading photo agency Magnum Photos conceived the large-scale exhibition project Euro Visions – The New Europeans by Magnum Photographers. Euro SAGE Publications (Los Angeles, London, New Delhi, Singapore and Washington DC: http://vcj.sagepub.com) Copyright © The Author(s), 2011. Reprints and permissions: http://www.sagepub.co.uk/journalspermissions.nav/ Vol 11(1): 49 –77 DOI 10.1177/1470357211424686 Downloaded from vcj.sagepub.com at University of Leeds on January 26, 2012 Table 1. List of the Euro Visions photographers and a description of their work Photographer Country Description of work Carl De Keyzer Malta 14 colour Chromogene proofs, 81 x 108 cm each, and some 60 photographic portraits projected on three separate screens. Peter Marlow Cyprus 152 colour Chromogene prints, 50 x 50 cm each. Patrick Hungary Photographic installation with 43 colour and b&w prints of Zachmann variable dimensions and interactive sound and music system. Alex Majoli Latvia Multi-screen projection, running time 7 minutes. Editing: Alex Majoli and Lorenza Orlando. Chris Slovakia 14 photo books. Steele-Perkins Martin Parr Slovenia 15 colour Chromogene prints: 8 prints 100 x 130 cm each, 7 prints 50 x 60 cm each. Mark Power Poland 15 Diasec-mounted colour prints: 4 prints 132 x 104 cm each, 11 prints 104 x 132 cm each. Lise Sarfati Lithuania Colour slide projection with sound, running time 12 minutes. Sound: François Adragna; Director: Lise Sarfati. Editing: Roger Ikhlef. Martine Czech Projection made from b&w prints, running time 17 minutes. Franck Republic Editing: Olivier Koechlin and Martine Franck Donovan Wylie Estonia 32 colour Chromogene prints, 60 x 70 cm each. Visions was first shown to the public from 15 September to 17 October 2005 at the Centre Pompidou in Paris. The exhibition was then shown in Milan in January 2006 and travelled to Budapest and Warsaw until October 2006. It later ended in Brussels, during the 2007 celebrations for the 50th anniver- sary of the Treaty of Rome, which established the foundations of the EU as we know it today. Euro Visions originally featured the work of ten Magnum photographers, who were each sent to a different country (see Table 1). In Brussels, the exhibition had grown to include two additional photographers, Bruno Barbey and Paolo Pellegrin, to reflect the inclusion of Bulgaria and Romania into the EU on 1 January 2007. As a group, the photographers produced nearly 700 images for the exhibition, which were also made widely available through a book and Magnum’s online archive. In this article, I focus on Euro Visions as a micro-textual case that may illuminate some of the more ‘macro’ dimensions and social implications of contemporary processes of aestheticization in relation to key visual communication industries (see Hesmondhalgh, 2009). On the one hand, this case offers critical insights into some of the ways in which the meaning(s) of Europe are fiercely produced and reproduced via transnational flows of images (Hall, 2003; also, Aiello and Thurlow, 2006). In light of contemporary processes of European integration, the version/vision of Europe that is achieved in Euro 50 Visual Communication 11(1) Downloaded from vcj.sagepub.com at University of Leeds on January 26, 2012 Visions is one that relies heavily on the exoticization and overall ‘othering’ of marginalized identities – and which works to confirm, rather than dispel a widespread image of Eastern and Southern Europe. On the other hand, as a case study, Euro Visions is a leading example of key shifts in the political economy of photography. In particular, Euro Visions is emblematic of the corporatization of ‘art’ discourses and genres – e.g. personal aesthetic/style and the art exhibition format – which have become increasingly prized and profitable in the global marketplace of symbolic exchange. These two different dimensions converge and interact in the semiotic practices that are at work in Euro Visions images. Based on textual and archival data and fieldwork conducted during the Warsaw exhibition’s opening events, I propose a detailed social semiotic analysis of the nexus of the visual production of Europe and the corporatization of photography as it is realized through and within specific semiotic resources. This social semiotic analysis offers significant linkages between Euro Visions’ deliberate aesthetic and the broader economic and political processes in which Magnum Photos is implicated. In doing so, this analysis also contributes to further debunk- ing Magnum Photos’ mystique as profoundly independent and disconnected from dominant cultural and social structures (Forbes, 2001). I begin my investigation by observing that Euro Visions’ deviations from Magnum’s trademark humanism were actively ascribed to the photographers’ authorial style and framed as a cutting-edge commentary on the new EU members. In particular, I identify two key semiotic resources – typing and juxtaposition – that were mobilized as markers of individual style. Instead, I argue, both typing and juxtaposition should be seen as generic semiotic resources that are rooted in corporate styles of visual communication and which work to semi- otically (re)produce and other the ‘new’ Europeans. I then argue that this very notion of ‘distinctive’ authorial style was discursively mobilized as symbolic currency for a global(ist) market that rewards design, cultural production and, more generally, aestheticization (see Featherstone 1991; also Lash and Urry, 1994). Mobilizing style as symbolic currency has become an imperative in a neoliberal system of rewards that privileges distinction over sameness, and where difference is actively managed and deployed in the service of capitalism (Fairclough, 2000; also, Harvey, 2007). Finally, I posit that, in projects like Euro Visions, what is mostly (generic) design may get passed off as (specific) repre- sentation and that this strategic aestheticization of styles and identities may be mystified as the substantial honouring of difference and diversity. FROM HUMANISM TO DIGITIZATION: MAGNUM PHOTOS AND THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF STYLE Euro Visions was proposed as a travelling art exhibition with multimedia ele- ments, a book and an online archival collection. This project also marked the first collaboration between Magnum and the Centre Pompidou, an historical Aiello: The ‘other’ Europeans 51 Downloaded from vcj.sagepub.com at University of Leeds on January 26, 2012 institution of European modern and contemporary art. These were all novel dimensions for an institution with a particularly well-established identity. As an agency founded by photographers such as Robert Capa and Henri Cartier- Bresson and cooperatively owned by its member photographers, Magnum’s sense of ‘self’ is tied to an authorial conception of photography. The distinctive Magnum Photos style of photography and the agency’s name itself are highly regarded as a top quality brand in the global panorama of profes- sional image-making and, in particular, photojournalism. At the same time, Magnum Photos prides itself on the diversity of its photographers’ individual styles (see Magnum Photos, nd: para 2). With the advent of television earlier and the internet more recently, Magnum has had to adjust to a number of shifts in the political economy of news- and image-making and distribution. Most notably, there is now a ten- dency to position Magnum photographers’ work as art, an approach that used to be shunned by the agency’s members at large (Ritchin, 1989: 426).

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