Reading and Remembering Place Through Digital Photography: Exploration of an Ancient Site Diane Goodman University of Wollongong
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Recommended Citation Goodman, Diane, Reading and remembering place through digital photography: exploration of an ancient site, Master of Arts thesis, University of Wollongong. School of Art and Design, University of Wollongong, 2010. http://ro.uow.edu.au/theses/3174
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Reading and Remembering Place through Digital Photography: Exploration of an Ancient Site
A thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the award of the degree
Master of Arts Research
from
University of Wollongong
by
Diane Goodman
School of Art & Design Faculty of Creative Arts
2010
VOLUME 1
Certification
I, Diane Goodman, declare that this thesis, submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the award of Master of Arts, Research, in the School of Art & Design, Faculty of Creative Arts, University of Wollongong, is wholly my own work unless otherwise referenced or acknowledged. This document has not been submitted for qualifications at any other academic institution.
Diane Goodman May 2010 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
A very special thank you to Professor Diana Wood Conroy for her continuous supervision and support throughout this project. It would have been impossible to complete the project without her encouragement, compassion, humour and warmth, and above all, her belief in my ability to overcome the various personal obstacles I confronted along the way. I would also like to wholeheartedly thank Dr Brogan Bunt and Jacky Redgate for their valuable guidance and special insights into the various aspects of my research.
I have been most fortunate to have many guides provide and point me towards the knowledge and information I needed to research the Paphos project.
Thank you to the staff at the Bundanon Trust who allowed me to gather the research needed to lay the foundations for this project, from 2005 to 2007.
Thank you to the University of Wollongong for the opportunity to travel to
Cyprus in 2006, through funding provided by a Vice-Chancellor’s Challenge
Grant and the Sonic Arts Research Network. Thank you also to the 2006
UOW Sonic Architectures Project: Mapping the Ancient Theatre Through
Sound and Image team: Diana Wood Conroy, Brogan Bunt, Ian McGrath and Stephen Ingham for sharing their expertise and skills. The UOW
Creative Arts graduates Cameron Candy videotape of my mapping of Paphos Theatre provides a valuable overview of the process and has been included in the Appendix of this project.
Thank you to Emeritus Professor J. R. Green, Dr Smadar Gabrieli and Dr
Craig Barker of The Department of Archaeology, University of Sydney for their positive and enthusiastic contribution to my experiences at Paphos and for their guidance and direction that helped inform my understanding of the archaeological process. Thank you also to the archaeologists and University of Sydney archaeology students on site who patiently answered my thousands of questions.
A special thank you to Kerry Platt, the dig site surveyor at Paphos, who used his laser theodolite to track and guide my every step as I mapped Paphos
Theatre over two days. I am truly grateful for his efforts and for those of his volunteer assistant, Joseph Stockreiter. Thank you also to Geoff Stennett, the site architect, who generously made available his archaeological plan.
My experiences at Paphos would not have been as deep and rewarding if it wasn’t for the inspirational dialogue of historical, cultural and mythological facts and information provided by my Supervisor, Professor Diana Wood
Conroy. I thank her for this and for the amazing pilgrimage she organised for a small group of our team. During a memorable day’s walk, we followed the ancient pilgrims’ route through the streets of old Paphos, across orchards and fields, alongside highways and foodstalls to pay homage at the ancient sanctuary of Aphrodite, set high on the hilltop of the ancient city of Marion, now Kouklia. I must also thank my two wonderful sons, Alexander and Ruslan Epoff, for their patience and support during the five years they have endured me working on the project. Thank you also to Nick Epoff who encouraged me during the early years of research, and to Kerry Short who has provided me with the love, space and time to see it through to completion. Thank you to my wonderful parents, Joan and Ross Goodman, both of whom passed away during this project and whose unlimited love and faith in me has inspired the closing of this door, so that another may open. And last, but most importantly, thank you to my big sister Julie Edwards who has always encouraged me to follow and achieve my dreams.
ABSTRACT
This research considers digital photography as an innovative tool that invokes a partnership between scientific (outer) and artistic (inner) modes of enquiry to reveal new ways of reading site, remembering place and interpreting presence. Digital photographic processes are both systematic and fluid, facilitate play, improvisation and new ways of perceiving the world. The work explores the capacity to stitch, layer, blend, variegate, transform and recontextualise photographic images and provides new possibilities for artists to explore imagination and memory, through the merging of art and digital photographic technology. My research focuses on the site of an ancient Greco Roman Theatre, an archaeological excavation at
Paphos, Cyprus and asks: how do the processes of digital photography transform artistic practice to represent a contemporary understanding of being-in-place? By examining the digital photographs of key artists, Nancy
Burson, Phillip George, Idris Khan, and Bernd and Hilla Becher, I demonstrate the innovative practice of digital photography in crossing discipline boundaries.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS...... i
ABSTRACT ...... iv
Table of Contents...... v
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS...... viii
INTRODUCTION...... xxii
CHAPTER 1: DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHIC PROCESSES: A NEW
APPREHENSION OF LANDSCAPE ...... 1 1.1 The postcolonial landscape ...... 1 1.2 Relating to land ...... 3 1.3 Reading the landscape...... 5 1.4 Bundanon ...... 6 1.5 Being-in-place ...... 7 1.6 Knowledge of place: site inventory ...... 11 1.7 Making sense of place: ground map ...... 13 1.8 Conclusion...... 18
Chapter 2: Theoretical sources ...... 21 2. 2 Archaeology...... 26 2. 3 Digital photography ...... 30 2. 4 A Revolutionary Form of Practice ...... 34 2. 5 Utopian Views ...... 35 2. 6 Multiple perspectives ...... 38 2. 7 Conclusion...... 40
Chapter 3: Archaeological photography: from traditional to digital...... 42 3. 1 Reframing the past ...... 42 3. 2 Paphos Theatre ...... 43 3. 3 The Sonic Architectures Project...... 47 3. 4 The process of archaeological excavation...... 49 3. 5 Archaeological photography ...... 54 3. 6 Conventional photography and archaeology: parallel developments...... 57
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3. 7 Post-photography ...... 60 3. 8 Conclusion ...... 64
Chapter 4: Case Studies ...... 67
Case Study: Nancy Burson ...... 69 4.1 Chimaeras ...... 69 4.2 Hybrid composites ...... 69 4.3 A new mentality ...... 71 4.4 Subjective perception...... 72
Case Study: Phillip George ...... 74 4.5 Variegated copies...... 74 4.6 Mnemonic Notations ...... 76
Case Study 3: Bernd and Hilla Becher, and Idris Khan ...... 81 4.7 The Bechers: exterior vision ...... 81 4.8 Idris Khan: interior vision ...... 84 4.9 Conclusion...... 86
Chapter 5: PHOTOGRAPHING PAPHOS THEATRE: DIGITAL PROCESS & MEMORY...... 88 5.1 Stepping through site...... 89 5.2 Site mapping with the digital camera...... 91 5.3 Digital assemblage ...... 93 5.4 The body dimension...... 94 5.5 A time-sensitive snapshot ...... 95 5.6 Layers of experience ...... 96 5.7 Mapping being-in-place ...... 97 5.8 Change, loss and renewal ...... 99 5.9 Archaeologies and Topologies...... 100 5.10 Illuminations ...... 101
CONCLUSION...... 102
REFERENCES ...... 104
1 Works Cited ...... 104
2 Bibliography...... 115
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APPENDIX a: PAPHOS JOURNAL ENTRIES ...... 135
APPENDIX b: CR ROM - VIDEO OF MAPPING PAPHOS THEATRE...... 146
APPENDIX c: BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION...... 147
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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Chapter 1
Figure 1.01 Diane Goodman. Wootoona. Digital file: jpg. 2005.
Figure 1.02 Mandy Martin. Puritjarra 2. Found local and sourced pigment, sand, ochre and acrylic on canvas. 76cm x 385 cm. 2004.
Figure 1.03 Mandy Martin and Jake Gillen. Puritjarra Flora. Found local and sourced pigment, sand, ochre and acrylic on Arches paper. 40 x 150 cm. 2004.
Figure 1.04 Mandy Martin and Mike Smith. Detail, Palimpsest Found local and sourced pigment, sand, rock shelter floor matter, ochres and acrylic on Arches paper. 30 x 200 cm. 2004.
Figure 1.05 Diane Goodman. Journal detail. Inkjet print, aquarell and fineline pen on Canson paper. 2005.
Figure 1.06 Diane Goodman. Journal detail 2. Inkjet print and Fineline pen on Canson paper. 2005.
Figure 1.07 Diane Goodman. Journal detail 3: the Bundanon cultural landscape. Fineline pen and aquarell on Canson paper. 2005.
Figure 1.08 Diane Goodman. Journal detail 4: Bundanon cultural landscape: homestead precinct. Inkjet print. 2005.
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Figure 1.09 Diane Goodman. Journal detail 4: Bundanon cultural landscape: northern perspective. Inkjet print. 2005.
Figure 1.10 Diane Goodman. Journal detail 4: Bundanon cultural landscape: river perspective from Bundanon beach. Inkjet print. 2005.
Figure 1.11 Diane Goodman. Journal detail 4: Bundanon cultural landscape: Homestead precinct analysis. Inkjet print and fineline pen. 2005.
Figure 1.12 Diane Goodman. Journal detail: Bundanon land grid. Aquarell and fineline pen. 2005.
Figure 1.13 Diane Goodman. Journal detail: ground map mock-up. Collage of Inkjet printed images. 2005.
Figure 1.14 Diane Goodman. Flooded Ground. Scanned printed fragments blended with digital layer. Digital file: jpg. 2005.
Figure 1.15 Diane Goodman. Island. Digital file: tif. 2005.
Figure 1.16 Diane Goodman. Lagoon. Digital file: tif. 2005.
Figure 1.17 Diane Goodman. Stonyground, 2005. Lambda print on Endura paper.119 x 74 cm. 2005.
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Figure 1.18 Diane Goodman. Homeground. Lambda print on Endura paper. 119 x 74 cm. 2005.
Figure 1.19 Diane Goodman. Buriedground. Lambda print on Endura paper. 119 x 74 cm. 2005.
Figure 1.20 Diane Goodman. Paphos Theatre, Cyprus. Digital file: tif. 2006.
Chapter 2
Figure 2.01 Burson, Nancy. Mankind (an oriental, a Caucasian and a Black, weighted according to the population statistics of 1983), Silvergelatine print. 27.9 x 35.6cm (source: (Amelunxen, Iglhaut and Rötzer)). 1983-84.
Figure 2.02 Nancy Burson. Warhead 1 (Reagan 55%, Breshnev 45%, Thatcher less than 1%, Deng less than 1%), Silvergelatine print. 27.9 x 35.6cm. 1982.
Chapter 3
Figure 3.01 Google Earth images of the Island of Cyprus, situated in the Mediterranean Sea. Paphos is located on the western tip of the island. Google Earth.com. Accessed July 2007.
Figure 3.02 Google Earth image of Old Paphos, Cyprus. The arrow points to the site of Paphos Theatre. Google Earth.com. Accessed July 2007.
Figure 3.03 Diane Goodman. Paphos Theatre, Cyprus. Digital file: jpg. May, 2006
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Figure 3.04 Diane Goodman. View from top of cavea, Paphos Theatre, Cyprus. Digital file: jpg. May, 2006.
Figure 3.05 Excavated stone columns in a trench at Paphos Theatre. Digital file: jpg. May, 2006. Photograph by Diane Goodman.
Figure 3.06 Diane Goodman. Chrysopolitissa Basilica (Ayia Kyriaki). Paphos, Cyprus. Digital file: jpg. May, 2006. Photograph by Diane Goodman.
Figure 3.07 Streetscape in Old Paphos. Paphos, Cyprus. Digital file: jpg. Photograph by Diane Goodman.
Figure 3.08 Diane Goodman standing next to her digital map mosaic of Paphos Theatre. UOW Sonic Architectures Project: Mapping the Ancient Theatre Through Sound and Image. Exhibition, FCA Gallery. Faculty of Creative Arts, University of Wollongong. 17th – 25th September 2006. Photograph by Diana Wood Conroy.
Figure 3.09 Diane Goodman. Detail of digital map mosaic of Paphos Theatre. UOW Sonic Architectures Project: Mapping the Ancient Theatre Through Sound and Image. Exhibition, FCA Gallery. Faculty of Creative Arts, University of Wollongong. 17th – 25th September 2006.
Figure 3.10 Wood Conroy, Diana. Rubbing of detail, Paphos Theatre. UOW Sonic Architectures Project: Mapping the Ancient Theatre Through Sound and Image. Exhibition, FCA Gallery. Faculty of Creative Arts, University of Wollongong. 17th – 25th September 2006. Digital file: tif. Photograph by Diane Goodman.
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Figure 3.11 Diana Wood Conroy. Wall of rubbings, of Paphos Theatre. UOW Sonic Architectures Project: Mapping the Ancient Theatre Through Sound and Image. Exhibition, FCA Gallery. Faculty of Creative Arts, University of Wollongong September 2006. Digital file: tif. Photograph by Diane Goodman.
Figure 3.12 Trench stratigraphy at Paphos Theatre, Cyprus. Digital file: jpg. May, 2006. Photograph by Diane Goodman.
Figure 3.13 Geoff Stennett. The archaeological plan of Paphos Theatre. Cyprus. September, 2006.
Figure 3.14 Diana Wood Conroy. Site map with flawed mirror. Tapestry fragment with gouache, pencil and collage on Canzon paper. 110 x 170 cm. 1992
Figure 3.15 Diane Goodman. Roman glass fragment. Photographed in the Studio at The Apollo Hotel, Paphos. Paphos Theatre, Cyprus. Digital file: tif. 2006.
Figure 3.16 A volunteer barrows excavated debris to the spoil heap. Paphos Theatre, Cyprus Digital file: tif. 2006. Photograph by Diane Goodman.
Figure 3.17 An illustrator uses drawing tools and systems to record excavated finds. Apollo Hotel, Paphos, Cyprus. Digital file: tif. 2006. Photograph by Diane Goodman.
Figure 3.18 Archaeologists analyse photographic records and documented information Apollo Hotel. Paphos, Cyprus 2006. Digital file: tif. Photograph by Diane Goodman.
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Figure 3.19 An archaeologist enters records of excavation finds from Paphos Theatre, using a database of excavated finds. Apollo Hotel. Paphos, Cyprus 2006. Digital file: tif. Photograph by Diane Goodman.
Figure 3.20 Storeroom, Paphos Theatre. Paphos, Cyprus 2006. Photograph by Diane Goodman.
Figure 3.21 Archaeologists, specialists and volunteers meet on the Paphos theatre site to discuss the progress of Trench 1WWW. Paphos, Cyprus. June 2006. Photograph by Diane Goodman.
Figure 3.22 Archaeologist, Kerrie Grant, refers to an excavated feature during an on-site weekly meeting at the Paphos theatre site. Paphos, Cyprus June 2006. Photograph by Diane Goodman.
Figure 3.23 Archaeologists, volunteers and students meet to discuss and sort cleaned finds during regular meetings at the Apollo Hotel. Paphos, Cyprus. June 2006. Photograph by Diane Goodman.
Figure 3.24 Diane Goodman. Trench 1TTT Deposit: 1385. Digital file: tif. 2006.
Figure 3.25 Diane Goodman. Sketch from journal: photographic conventions for studio and site photographs. Paphos Theatre, Cyprus. April, 2006.
Figure 3.26 Diane Goodman. Sketch from journal: improvised studio setup. Paphos Theatre, Cyprus. April, 2006.
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Figure 3.27 Diane Goodman. Site photograph of drain pipe. Photograph shows a ‘plan’ convention: viewpoint directly overhead of the object. Paphos Theatre, Cyprus. May, 2006.
Figure 3.28 Eight site photographs of Trench 1WWW in progress during the 2006 dig excavation reveal the methodological process employed by archaeologists during the excavation process. Paphos Theatre, Cyprus. 2006. Digital files: tif. Photographs by Diane Goodman.
Figure 3.29 The Holmes Boom in action on the site of the Large Basilica, Nicopolis ad Istrum, a Roman, Late Roman, and early Byzantine city in northern Bulgaria, 1988. Source: Andrew Graham Poulter and Ivor Kerslake, “Vertical Photographic Site Recording: The "Holmes Boom",” Journal of Field Archaeology 24.2 (1997): 221-6.
Figure 3.30 I. Kerslake Photomosaic of the northern end of the Roman road and the second century gate. The Holmes Boom was used to create this detailed photomosaic of Nicopolis ad Istrum, a Roman, Late Roman, and early Byzantine city in northern Bulgaria. Source: Andrew Graham Poulter and Ivor Kerslake, “Vertical Photographic Site Recording: The "Holmes Boom",” Journal of Field Archaeology 24.2 (1997): 221-6.
Chapter 4
Figure 4.01 Nancy Burson. Mankind1983-84. Silvergelatine print. 27.9 x 35.6cm. (Amelunxen, Iglhaut and Rötzer)
Figure 4.02 Nancy Burson. Big Brother 1983. Silvergelatine print. 27.9 x 35.6cm. (Amelunxen, Iglhaut and Rötzer)
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Figure 4.03 Phillip George. Tim. Mixed media on paper on canvas 2300 x 1650 mm, (Also exist as an Iris print 1000 x 650 mm), 1990. Source: (George, Mnemonic Notations: A Decade of Art Practice Within a Digital Environment)
Figure 4.04 Phillip George. Mnemonic Notations: Tim #3. Mnemonic Notations: http://phillipgeorge.net/new/01/display.php?page=01&img=01&\
Figures 4.05, 4.06 and 4.07 Phillip George Mnemonic Notations: a progression of works from the Headlands series. 1991. Mnemonic Notations: http://phillipgeorge.net/new/01.html
Figure 4.08 Phillip George. Mnemonic Notations: Landpuls 3 Mixed media on canvas 2300 x 1650 mm, (Also exist as an Iris print 800 x 1000 mm), 1991-1992. Mnemonic Notations: http://phillipgeorge.net/new/01.html
Figure 4.09 Phillip George. Mnemonic Notations: Mnemonicon 4 Mixed media on canvas (Also exist as an Iris print), 1990s. Source: Mnemonic Notations: http://phillipgeorge.net/new/01.html
Figure 4.10 Phillip George. Mnemonic Notations: Mnemonicon 5 Mixed media on canvas (Also exist as an Iris print), 1990s. Source: Mnemonic Notations: http://phillipgeorge.net/new/01.html
Figure 4.11 Bernd and Hilla Becher: Gasometers, Germany 1983-1992. Source: Susanne Lange, Bernd and Hilla Becher: Life and Work, trans. Jeremy Gaines (Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 2007).
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Figure 4.12 Idris Khan. every...Bernd and Hilla Becher Spherical type Gasholders. 2004. Photographic print. 208 x 160 cm. Saatchi Gallery Online. http://www.saatchi- gallery.co.uk/artists/artpages/idris_khan_becher_gas.htm. 20/3/10.
Figure 4.13 Bernd and Hilla Becher. Half-timbered houses, Siegen industrial region, Germany. 1959-1973. Source: Susanne Lange, Bernd and Hilla Becher: Life and Work, trans. Jeremy Gaines (Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 2007).
Figure 4.14 Idris Khan. every...Bernd and Hilla Becher Gable sided Houses. 2004. Photographic print. 208 x 160 cm. Source: Saatchi Gallery Online http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/artists/artpages/idris_khan_becherhouse.htm
Figure 4.15 Bernd and Hilla Becher. Water towers, United States. 1974 – 1983. Source: Susanne Lange, Bernd and Hilla Becher: Life and Work, trans. Jeremy Gaines (Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 2007).
Figure 4.16 Dane Goodman. Studio photograph of archaeological find no. 3522 Paphos, Cyprus. 2006.
Figure 4.17 Dane Goodman. Studio photograph of archaeological find no. 5147 Paphos, Cyprus. 2006.
Figure 4.18 Dane Goodman. Site photograph of archaeological find no. 5416 Paphos, Cyprus. 2006.
Figure 4.19 Dane Goodman. Site photograph of archaeological find no. 5417 Paphos, Cyprus.2006.
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Chapter 5
Figure 5.01 Goodman, Diane. Team members survey the site of Paphos Theatre on the afternoon of my arrival at Paphos, late in April. 2006. Paphos Theatre. Digital file: jpg.
Figure 5.02 Goodman, Diane. Lone Terebinth in late afternoon glow on 31.3.2006, prior to its removal the following day. 2006. Paphos Theatre. Digital file: jpg.
Figure 5.03 Goodman, Diane. Journal detail. Sketch and to-do list. 2006. Paphos Theatre. Digital file: jpg.
Figure 5.04 Goodman, Diane. Journal detail. Sketch considering the vertical plane of the theatre in relation to a musical score. 2006. Paphos Theatre. Digital file: jpg.
Figure 5.05 Goodman, Diane. Hotspot Panorama: centre of orchestra. 2006. Paphos Theatre. Digital file: jpg.
Figure 5.06 Goodman, Diane. Hotspot Panorama: front of Roman tunnel. 2006. Paphos Theatre. Digital file: jpg.
Figure 5.07 Goodman, Diane. Hotspot Panorama: Rock, top left of theatre. 2006. Paphos Theatre. Digital file: jpg.
Figure 5.08 Goodman, Diane. Archaeologists and volunteers at work in a trench and adopt repetitious and systematic processes to excavate the site. 2006. Paphos Theatre. Digital file: jpg.
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Figure 5.09 Goodman, Diane. Journal detail: shards on sorting tables during the process of classification. Apollo Hotel. 2006. Paphos. Digital file: jpg.
Figure 5.10 Goodman, Diane. Plan photograph of glass fragment and centimetre scale. 2006. Paphos Theatre. Digital file: jpg.
Figure 5.11 Dane Goodman. Elevation photograph of amphora shard and centimetre scale. Paphos theatre. 2006. Digital file: jpg.
Figure 5.12. Dane Goodman. Site surveyor, Kerry Platt (left), and his assistant, Joe Stockreiter, align the laser theodolite to the east-west axis and the co-ordinates of the archaeological grid during the mapping process. Paphos Theatre. 2006. Digital file: jpg
Figure 5.13 Cameron Candy. Diane Goodman maps the Paphos Theatre site using her digital camera with lens aligned to the theodolite, with the help of the site surveyor’s assistant. Paphos Theatre. May 3rd 2006. Digital frame from videotape: jpg.
Figure 5.14 Cameron Candy. Diane Goodman maps the Paphos Theatre site using her digital camera with lens aligned to the theodolite, with the help of the site surveyor’s assistant. Paphos Theatre. May 3rd 2006. Digital frame from videotape: jpg.
Figure 5.15 Dane Goodman. Journal entry, showing progressive notation of shot sequence and capture according to mapped rows on location. Paphos Theatre. May 4th 2006. Digital file: jpg.
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Figure 5.16 Dane Goodman. Screen snapshot of folder hierarchy for storing studio photographic files. Wollongong June 2006. Digital file: jpg.
Figure 5.17 Dane Goodman. Screen snapshot, showing folder hierarchy of resized digital files for assemblage into the final map. Wollongong, June 2006. Digital file: jpg
Figure 5.18 Dane Goodman. Screen snapshot, showing extended snapshot of folder hierarchy of resized digital files for assemblage into the final map. Wollongong, June 2006. Digital file: jpg
Figure 5.19 Dane Goodman. Topology, Paphos Theatre. Assembled digital map. Wollongong, June 2006. Lambda prints (3 sections, each 10872mm x 25000mm)
Figure 5.20 Dane Goodman. Topology, Paphos Theatre Detail: Orchestra. Wollongong, June 2006. Digital file: tif
Figure 5.21 Dane Goodman. Topology, Paphos Theatre. Detail: Cavea. Wollongong, June 2006. Digital file: tif
Figure 5.22 Dane Goodman. Topology, Paphos Theatre. Detail: Eastern Parados. Wollongong, June 2006. Digital file: tif
Figure 5.23 Dane Goodman. Topology, Paphos Theatre. Detail: Western Parados. Wollongong, June 2006. Digital file: tif
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Figure 5.24 Goodman, Diane. Topology, Paphos Theatre. Detail: Roman Tunnel Wollongong, June 2006. Digital file: tif
Figure 5.25 Dane Goodman. Trench, Paphos Theatre. Detail: Roman Tunnel. Wollongong, June 2006. Digital file: tif
Figure 5.26 Dane Goodman. Orchestra, Paphos Theatre. Detail: Roman Tunnel. Wollongong, June 2006. Digital file: tif
Figure 5.27 Dane Goodman. Paphos Theatre. May 3rd 2006. Digital file: jpg.
Figure 5.28 Diane Goodman. Palimpsest 1. Digital file: tif. 2007.
Figure 5.29 Diane Goodman. Palimpsest 2. Digital file: tif. 2007
Figure 5.30 Diane Goodman. Palimpsest 3. Digital file: tif 2007.
Figure 5.31 Diane Goodman. Archaeologies 1. Archival inkjet print. Crane Museo Silver Rag. 297mm x 420mm. 2007.
Figure 5.32 Diane Goodman. Archaeologies 2. Archival inkjet print. Crane Museo Silver Rag. 297mm x 420mm. 2007.
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Figure 5.33. Diane Goodman. Topologies 1. Archival inkjet print. Moab Entrada Rag. 1000mm x 1000mm. 2009
Figure 5.34 Diane Goodman. Topologies 2. Archival inkjet print. Moab Entrada Rag. 750mm x 750mm. 2009.
Figure 5.35 Diane Goodman. Topologies 3. Archival inkjet print. Fine Art paper. 1060 x 1570. 2009.
Figure 5.36 Diane Goodman. Parados. Archival inkjet print. Ilford Lustre paper. 2009.
Figure 5.37 Diane Goodman. Illuminations, Row 1. Archival inkjet print. Crane Museo Silver Rag. 400mm x 268 mm. 2010.
Figure 5.38 Diane Goodman. Illuminations, Row 3. Archival inkjet print. Crane Museo Silver Rag. 400mm x 268 mm. 2010.
Figure 5.39 Diane Goodman. Illuminations, Row 8. Archival inkjet print. Crane Museo Silver Rag. 400mm x 268 mm. 2010.
Figure 5.40 Diane Goodman. Illuminations, Row 9. Archival inkjet print. Crane Museo Silver Rag. 400mm x 268 mm. 2010.
Figure 5.41 Diane Goodman. Illuminations, Row 41. Archival inkjet print. Crane Museo Silver Rag. 400mm x 268 mm. 2010.
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INTRODUCTION
“The photography of the future can explore and delineate universes
where multiple principles are at work, and where existence is both solid
and illusory”. Ritchin1
Encompassing deep levels of enquiry and research, Reading and
Remembering Place recognizes the multiplicity and temporality of the material culture of the ground, to facilitate a visual aesthetic arising from digital photographic processes through the visual stitching, superimposition, juxtaposition and blending of both vertical and horizontal layers of past and contemporary presence. The nature of digital photography is quite different to analogue, through its potential and capacity for spontaneous change and mutability. The stitched mapped image of Paphos Theatre comprises over
2,000 separate photographs. The digital assemblage is not dependent upon a solid substratum for effecting change and manipulating the photographic record, a primary requirement for my project. Change is an inherent characteristic of an archaeological site, and although the archaeological photographer employs intricate photographic systems for documenting the changes as revealed through layers of excavated material culture, other equally significant changes become evident through daily engagement and immersion with the ground and its material culture. Digital photographic processes afford a dynamic reading of the ground and its changes, at micro
1 Fred Ritchin, After Photography (London: Norton & Company, Inc, 2009). 181.
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and macro levels, and allow imaginative play with the “record of the visually real”.2
2 Mauren Cheryn Turim describes how digitization allows ‘capricious play’ with visual truth, due to its potential to manipulate disparate materials and its lack of a trace of process, meaning specifically, its lack of a photographic plate or negative that
“collects traces of images”. She refers to its potential to manipulate photographs as if they were drawings. Maureen Cheryn Turim,
“Artisanal Prefigurations of the Digital: Animating Realities, Collage Effects, and Theories of Image Manipulation,” Wide Angle 21.1 (1999): 52. xxiii
CHAPTER 1: DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHIC PROCESSES: A NEW APPREHENSION OF LANDSCAPE
1.1 The postcolonial landscape
“… place introduces specificity and difference – new areas to be
3 investigated within a larger whole”. Benterrak, Muecke and Roe
Landscape was the starting point for my research. In Australia, the term is imbued with unsettling postcolonial connotations, as pointed out by Stephen
Muecke in his 2004 book, Ancient and Modern. Muecke looks at the landscape through the filters of indigenous ‘ways of being in the world’.4 He avoids historical narratives and western ‘objective’ views of reality in favour of deeper narratives5, imaginings of our cultural experiences. Relationships between the observer and the observed, the subject and the object are transformed through actions inspired by specific events, objects, situations, bodies of texts and the meanings they contain.6 A post-structuralist view of being-in-the world underpins my project, and points to a complex sense of place where both ancient and modern layers of meaning are interwoven to give life to the present.7 A site of archaeological excavation such as the ancient Greco Roman Paphos Theatre in Paphos, Cyprus is fertile ground in which to explore Muecke’s notions. The site itself is like a foreign text that
3 Krim Benterrak, Stephen Muecke and Paddy Roe, Reading The Country: Introduction to Nomadology (South Fremantle: Frmantle
Arts Centre Press, 1996). 17.
4 Stephen Muecke, Ancient and Modern (Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 2004). 11
5 Muecke cites Greg Dening who he claims is an ‘historian of the imagination’ Dening refers to the importance of imagination in transforming our experiences into deep narratives. 11-12.
6 Michael Serres and Bruno Latour quoted in Stephen Muecke, Ancient and Modern (Sydney: University of New South Wales Press,
2004). 11.
7 Stephen Muecke, Ancient and Modern (Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 2004). 10. 1
begs to be read: horizontal and vertical layers of material culture point to the multiplicity of human culture that has existed on the site over time. The site is a dynamic work-in-progress, transformed continuously as layers of earth are peeled away and presence is excavated.8 The action of working alongside archaeologists, of repeatedly stepping over the site and photographing the ground with my digital camera held close to my body, inspires new ways to understand what being-in-place means.
Places are made meaningful through ritual.9 The will to immerse myself photographically in specific landscapes springs from my connection with
Wootoona (see fig. 1.01), the prime landscape of my childhood, a large agricultural holding outside of Young, NSW, settled by my European ancestors in 1834. The rituals of childhood play with siblings and cousins inscribed tracks and footprints across this vast landscape. Photography has provided a form of psychological communion with this lost place (the property was sold when I was 14 years old) and the way in which I have photographed subsequent land reflects my childhood experience and physical interaction with the land at Wootoona. My enquiry in Reading and
Remembering Place moved from a photographic representation of Australian places to the digital mapping of an archaeological site in Cyprus and reflected a shift in my photographic practice toward a postcolonial
8 The Arrernte people, the original custodians of the Arrrernte lands in the regions of Alice Springs in central Australia acknowledge the simultaneous presence of Ancestors in multiple places and believe that presence is enduring, held in place. Stephen Muecke,
Ancient and Modern (Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 2004). 16.
9 Stephen Muecke, Ancient and Modern (Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 2004). 14. 2
perspective of place that considers multiple viewpoints, an Aboriginal voice and historical and forensic readings.
1.2 Relating to land
“The problem is to understand these strange relationships which are
woven between parts of the landscape, or between it and me as
incarnate subject, and through which an object perceived can
concentrate in itself a whole scene or become the image of a whole
10 segment of life”. Merleau-Ponty
The term ‘landscape’ has been subject to many interpretations, as suggested in this quote by the mid twentieth century philosopher Maurice
Merleau-Ponty. Some of these might focus on an aesthetic response to what we see (e.g. a picturesque landscape), or a description of how we might put it to use (e.g. an arable landscape), yet most interpretations describe landscape in terms of how the eye surveys or appreciates the surface qualities of the land it views.11 Thus, a landscape can provoke a sense of detachment and passivity in the viewer, as something to be observed and classified from a distance. My earlier practice employed traditional analogue landscape photographic technology and processes, a conventional landscape format and a predominately eye-level, horizon-focused vision of land. Reviewing postcolonial theory has allowed me to better understand the
10 Maurice Merleau-Ponty (Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenlogy of Perception: The Visible and the Invisible, trans. Alfonso Lingis
(Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1968)) quoted in Edward S. Casey, Representing Place: Landscape Painting and Maps.
(Minneapolis:: University of Minnesota Press, 2002). xiii.
11 Barbara Bender is Professor of Heritage Anthropology at University College London. She refers to how we ‘scan’ the land and view it as something passive and separate from ourselves. Barbara Bender, Stonehenge: Making Space: Materialising Culture
(Oxford: Berg, 1998). 25.
3
origins of my own photographic work with landscape and, most importantly, how a contemporary notion of place is vital. A postcolonial perspective adopts a different stance, one that affiliates with both Aboriginal ways of seeing place, and digital photographic practice. In Reading the Country (first published in 1984), Krim Benterrak, Paddy Roe and Stephen Muecke explain
Aboriginal relationships between country and self when they describe the dreaming as a practice, “a way of talking, of seeing, of knowing”.12 Their writing points to a new methodology for seeing and communicating through processes of engagement that allow for displacement from one position, one location to another. Place reveals itself through recognition of its existing
‘texts’: diverse knowledge systems, modes of communication, media and forms used to represent it, and the interactions of various types of people who use it or pass through it.13 Consequently, any interpretation of place is transient and fluid, fragmented and contradictory, specific and subject to change according to those who come to it over time. Place flickers with the light and shadow of multiple presences. The viewpoint afforded by a digital camera and the processes and technologies of digital photography can be used to capture multiple moments of presence, to explore new contemporary ways of reading and remembering place.
12 The authors speak of dreaming as opposed to Dreamtime, a mythological construct. They describe Dreaming as a practice that is beautiful, mysterious and poetic. Krim Benterrak, Stephen Muecke and Paddy Roe, Reading The Country: Introduction to
Nomadology (South Fremantle: Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 1996). 18.
13 Ibid.
4
1.3 Reading the landscape
“This piece of country might be insignificant and it might also be ‘full’ of
meanings. But how do we find out what it means, what its significance
might be? What has drawn us towards making the idea of place central
14 to our discourse?” Meucke.
My exploration of the Bundanon environment allowed me to develop a sense of the physical connotations of walking the land and the relationship of the camera to my body and to the site. This work was pivotal in helping me approach, see, and ‘read’ the site of Paphos Theatre through the lens of my digital camera.
Muecke, Benterrak and Roe talk about the importance of ‘reading’ and
‘seeing’ as a means of appreciating country. Active processes of engagement and enquiry lead to the perception of relationships and multiple viewpoints about place. Their use of the word ‘text’ (building on 1980s discourses of semiotics) to describe words and images that respond to country, suggests that the landscape cannot be understood, visually or otherwise, until it is read, interpreted and produced in some form of communication for specific audiences.15 To read a landscape therefore requires an embodied enquiring presence and some form of communicative response, such as artistic practice. Muecke preempts an aesthetic practice that responds to the experience of landscape as a kind of work-in-progress;
14 Krim Benterrak, Stephen Muecke and Paddy Roe, Reading The Country: Introduction to Nomadology (South Fremantle: Frmantle Arts Centre Press, 1996). 16. 15 Krim Benterrak, Stephen Muecke and Paddy Roe, 25.
5
a project never finished with the site “always already occupied”.16 Such a view of the landscape is inclusive of both past and present embodiment, from Indigenous to Chinese, to mission workers and contemporary artists, without one ‘universal’ aesthetic.
1.4 Bundanon
“It all seems so ephemeral: all we are left with, really, are the bones in
the dry rocky hills of the country. These are the signs of an ancient
17 world, which we can see from the shores of our modernity …”. Muecke
Bundanon is a site with layers of historical contradictions and allows a complex reading of its landforms. The property is situated on the banks of the Shoalhaven River, near Nowra, NSW, Australia, is managed by The
Bundanon Trust, and comprises several properties and art collections that were gifted to the Australian people in 1993 by Arthur and Yvonne Boyd18.
The Bundanon project began with a two-week stay at the Bundanon artist- in-residence studios in July 2005, followed by several short stays at the
Riversdale studio, and regular day visits as required to complete my project.
The traditional Aboriginal custodians of the land are the Wodi Wodi. When the Bundanon property, which includes over 1100 hectares of bushland, was purchased under a Land Grant in 1832 and subsequently sold to the
16 Stephen Muecke, Ancient and Modern (Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 2004). 78. 17 Stephen Muecke. 23. 18 The premise behind such an extraordinary ‘gift’ was that “you can’t own a landscape”. Bundanon Trust, 2010 January 2010,
2010 January 2010
6
McKenzie family in 1838, the Wodi Wodi were not mentioned. The land remained in the hands of the McKenzie family for over one hundred and twenty years19, and the cultural landscape was shaped by their presence, their use of the land during this time, and the absence of its original inhabitants.
1.5 Being-in-place
“ Place always opens a region in which it gathers the things in their
20 belonging together …” Heidegger
The philosopher Martin Heidigger commented that we observe a landscape and assess its value through our perceptions of it, however we identify with, and live in place through experience. We manifest and explore places with our bodies and develop a subsequent sense of implacement through perceived relationships that support our needs and desires in the place- world.21 Edward Casey attempts to re-describe Heidegger’s abstract and formal phenomenological notions of ‘being-in-place’ in a manner that rehabilitates a sense of the importance of place in a contemporary world.22
Casey explores the concept of landscape from a phenomenological perspective and argues that the body appears to get lost in landscape, to be
19 Peter Freeman, Bundanon Conservation Management Plan Volume 1 Conservation Analysis, Freeman Architects (Nowra:
Freeman Architects, 1996).
20 Martin Heidegger quoted in J. E Malpas, Place and Experience, trans. Charles Seibert, Digitally printed 2007 (Cambridge: Cambrige University Press, 1996). 157. 21 Edward S Casey, Getting Back Into Place: Toward a New Understanding of the Place World. (Indianapolis: Indiana University,
1993). Xvi.
22 Edward S. Casey refers to Heideggers’ phrase, “being-in-the-world” in terms of its ‘concreteness’, and asks if we might rediscover ‘the full significance’ of place through engaging with that notion. Getting Back Into Place: Toward a New Understanding of the Place World. (Indianapolis: Indiana University, 1993).xv.
7
overwhelmed or moved by its vastness, whilst it belongs in place. Casey describes the body and landscape as boundaries, concurrent “epicentres” around which places radiate and pivot: “Place is what takes place between body and landscape. Thanks to the double horizon that body and landscape provide, a place is a locale bounded on both sides, near and far”.23
However, the relationships between body, place and landscape are mutable and flexible. The boundaries of both place and landscape are open-ended and uncontainable, dynamic according to the lived body: “Place’s inflow and outflow are such that to be fully in a place is never to be confined to a punctuate position; it is to be already on the way out”.24 These ideas about place are relevant to my project in that they suggest a need to define place through exploration and navigation with the body. At Bundanon on the first days of my first visit, I felt a compelling need to explore the site immediately, to emplace myself within it. My digital camera provided me with a frame through which to view the landscape, a grid to pinpoint my presence in relation to the site at any point in time. Whilst the material culture of the ground became a focus for collecting evidence of past presence, the performative action of photographing each step as I moved across areas of the Bundanon site provided an additional layer to the visual archaeology I was capturing with my digital camera.
23 Edward S Casey, Getting Back Into Place: Toward a New Understanding of the Place World. (Indianapolis: Indiana University,
1993). 29. 24 Ibid. 8
William Mitchell describes how we adopt [a sort of] resistance to landscape, unless it captivates us enough to draw us into its space. He refers to the
“dialectical triad” of space, place and landscape as: place as a specific location; space as place in practice, a site activated by stories, actions, movements and signs; and landscape as the ‘encountered’ image of that site.25 The process of thinking about a “space/place/landscape complex, specific in its location and history, scarred and traced by spatial vectors and movements across its face” requires a dialectical engagement that encompasses mediations such as writing, imagination and memory.26
Muecke feels that Mitchell’s dialectical concept of landscape places humans
“too centrally and instrumentally”27, however he does agree that people need to engage with place via communicative forms that are grounded in a recognition of the multiplicity of understanding place. He considers the singular, cyclical movements within landscape that release its potential forces and meanings to allow new aspects of landscape to emerge.28
Muecke’s ideas inspired me in terms of my approach to the Bundanon landscape. I was interested in how it might evolve and transform according to my reading of it, based on experiences, actions and subsequent communicative responses to the places I might identify within it.
25 William J. T Mitchell, “Preface to the Second Edition of Landscape and Power: Space, Place, and Landscape,” Landscape and
Power, ed. William J. T. Mitchell, 2nd Edition (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2002). x.
26 William J. T Mitchell,.xi 27 Stephen Muecke, “A Landscape of Variability,” Australian Perspecta Consortium, Uncertain Ground: Essays Between Art and
Nature, ed. Martin Thomas (Sydney: The Art Gallery of NSW, 1999) 58.
28 Ibid
9
The potential of artists to contribute to a new understanding of landscape is further highlighted in Edward Casey’s argument that places are transmuted and altered through the process of representation, and in particular through the use of diverse media to represent place in new ways. Thus, places are defined by their representation.29 By perceiving place in layers of visual evidence and accumulated knowledge gathered on site, a contemporary view of place emerges.30 These key ideas influenced my intention to read the
Bundanon landscape in terms of cultural signs that might appear through a systematic analysis of the material culture on site, using digital photographic processes and physical hands-on experience. I approached Bundanon as a site, a specific, dynamic, spatial system, embedded with layers and remnants of unique past and present environmental, historical and cultural
‘places’.31
I worked predominately with the ground, for its immediate reference to material culture and evidence of place. Prior to commencing fieldwork, I asked the question: how might digital photography be used to read, record and remember the transient, multi-dimensional places that are revealed or unearthed in the cultural landscape at Bundanon?
29 Edward S. Casey, Representing Place: Landscape Painting and Maps. (Minneapolis:: University of Minnesota Press, 2002). Xv.
30 Libby Robin and Mike Smith consider multiple ‘stacked’ stories about place when working on the Strata project at Puritjarra.
Libby Robin and Mike Smith, “West into the Desert,” Strata: Deserts Past, Present and Future (Mandurama: Mandy Martin, 2005) 10.
31 Susan Best describes place as “a kind of mooring”, or “being in”, a specific landscape. Susan Best, “Emplacement and Infinity”,
Uncertain Ground : Essays Between Art and Nature, ed. Martin Thomas (Sydney: Art Gallery of New South Wales,, 1999) 62.
10
BUNDANON PROJECT: TERRA FIRMA TERRA ALBA
1.6 Knowledge of place: site inventory
“ There are few things more pleasing than the contemplation of order
and useful arrangement, arising gradually out of tumult and confusion …
by degrees larger spaces are opened, plans are formed, lines marked,
and a prospect at least of future regularity is clearly discerned, and is
made the more striking by the recollection of the former confusion”.
32 Phillip 33
At the end of a long dirt road encircled by the arms of the Shoalhaven river, the visual catchment of Bundanon comprises a nineteenth century homestead and clustered out-buildings implanted on a gentle rise amidst a mosaic of flat cleared paddocks. Like signposts in the skyline, the towering canopies of the surviving nineteenth century Bunya pines and Port Jackson
Fig guard the main house; evidence of up to one hundred and thirty years of history visible in girth and limb. Beyond an expanse of cleared land to the north, the fragile branches of surviving old-growth eucalypts thrust skyward behind the border of the forest, which rises like a frontier to signify a point of demarcation between the disparate realms of these two ancient specimens, and those of the cleared, settled places and the natural forested spaces.
For the early settlers at Bundanon, knowledge of this new land expressed itself through a geometric sculpting of the landscape, an order of division in
32 Governor Phillip quoted in “What is This Place?,” P Emmett, The Edge of the Trees (Sydney: Historic Houses Trust of N.S.W., 2000) .14.
11
which they positioned themselves at the centre, some distance from the edge of the forest and the largely unseen realm of the uncultivated, natural spaces. Whilst European colonists may have come to know place through re-shaping and ordering the landscape, contemporary artists such as the
Australian Mandy Martin (born: 1952), employ an aesthetic knowledge system that “locates art in space” through environmental projects which research, document and interpret information, knowledge and ideas about the changing landscape.34 Her 2005 project, Strata: Deserts Past, Present and Future, based at Puritjarra, in Western Central Australia where significant archaeological finds were unearthed in the 1980s, is a collaborative project shared with environmental historian, Libby Robin and archaeologist Mike
Smith. Whilst Martin is a painter, the methodology of the Strata project influenced my own approach to the Bundanon landscape. Through environmental appraisal, Martin’s team perceives Puritjarra in layers of
‘multiple stacked stories’ of knowledge and information, which together with their diverse skills, contribute to the whole story of place.35
Martin paints with pigment sourced from the ground to layer her desert images with the memory and physical nature of place (see fig. 1.02). The
Puritjarra rock shelter is represented from a number of viewpoints: inside out, outside in, alone and through conversations and collaborations with others, such as environmentalist Jake Gillen, and archaeologist, Mike Smith. The
34 Mandy Martin, Libby Robin and Mike Smith, “Introduction,” Mandy Martin, Libby Robin and Mike Smith, Strata: Deserts Past,
Present and Future (Mandurama: Mandy Martin, 2005). 1.
35 Libby Robin and Mike Smith, “West into the Desert,” Strata: Deserts Past, Present and Future (Mandurama: Mandy Martin, 2005)
10.
12
resultant mixed media works visually and aesthetically to appraise the site36
(see figs. 1.03 and 1.04).
Martin’s project at Puritjarra interests me in that it represents the landscape as a malleable, changing, evolving [kind of] place, and recognises the layering of diverse spatial and information systems to describe the multiple dimensions of place. The response emerges through both intellectual and visual modes of enquiry and perception.
1.7 Making sense of place: ground map
“At the beginning of a journey when you are about to cover strange
territory, you are always ignorant and you have to rely on the local
guides. They are the ones who know the safe tracks as well as the
places of danger. And the journey is as much intellectual as it is
37 physical.” Benterrak, Muecke and Roe 38
Fieldwork at Bundanon was driven by the physicality of my photographic practice; walking and photography create a certain harmonic blend of motion and stillness, a way of stepping through the site whilst apprehending the micro and the macro, the particular and the whole, the past and the present, and the multitude of relationships in between. Armed with a sound experiential and intellectual knowledge of the site, I worked concurrently and systematically in the landscape, rhythmically stepping and photographing to
36 Mandy Martin, “Desert of the Mind's Eye,” Mandy Martin, Libby Robins and Mike Smith, Strata: Deserts Past, Present and Future
(Mandurama: Mandy Martin, 2005). 12.
37 Krim Benterrak, Stephen Muecke and Paddy Roe, Reading The Country: Introduction to Nomadology (South Fremantle: Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 1996). 26.
13
progressively map the ground, using the camera lens as a vehicle for
‘reading’ the landscape and the shutter as a tool for capturing evidence and fragmented moments of observation, revealing light as it falls on ground, surface, form and void. Through this process a visual map of place emerged which began to describe a strong visual aesthetic.
The use of a digital camera as opposed to an analogue camera enabled the rapid and instantaneous capture and review of hundreds of successive images. This immediacy enabled me to work in the field and studio in ways not possible with analogue technology. From the hundreds of images collected, downloaded and organized in a system of folders, a range was selected based on their indication of specific points of interest in the landscape, according to the Bundanon grid that I had created prior to photographic capture (see fig. 1.12).
The arrangement of one hundred and forty four of the ground images in a
Photoshop map provided me with a ‘base’ image (see fig. 1.13) from which I developed a number of experimental images which stack and blend multiple layers (see figs. 1.14, 1.15 and 1.16) of information. Photoshop was used as a creative tool to respond to acquired knowledge, physical evidence in the form of material culture, memories and relationships perceived in the
Bundanon cultural landscape.
Fieldwork was also dependent upon sourced knowledge and information which revealed the layers of ‘stacked histories’ at Bundanon. Upon enquiry, the Bundanon Caretaker informed me of two valuable studies which were
14
commissioned by the Bundanon Trust in 1996: one which completed a site inventory, an historical and cultural analysis, and proposed recommendations for the conservation and management of Bundanon39, and another which studied the flora and fauna of the area.40 The Study Centre at
Bundanon provided me with further information through access to the Trust
Archives and Collection. Whilst studying these documents I set about
‘making sense of place’ and translated written and visual information into historical charts, photographic collages and annotated graphical perspectives and illustrations. Observations, photographs and collected data were critically evaluated, systematically compiled and entered into a journal
(see figs 1.05, 1.06 and 1.07). I created detailed perspectives of the visual signs in the cultural landscape: 360° views of the site from the point of view of the homestead, foundation stones from previous structures and architecture, significant places such as the original homestead site, punt, slab hut, island, ruin corridor, stockman’s shack, river, old growth trees etc.
(see figs 1.08, 1.09, 1.10, 1.11).
It is significant to point out that digital capture and post-processing technology facilitated this in-depth research. The ease with which applications such as Adobe InDesign and Photoshop can be used to import and assemble photographs, and add text and graphics, helped me to visually establish relationships and connections that became vital to the
39 Peter Freeman, Bundanon Conservation Management Plan Volume 1 Conservation Analysis, Freeman Architects (Nowra:
Freeman Architects, 1996).
40 Garry Daley and Gary Leonard, Flora and Fauna of Bundanon Shoalhaven City (Nowra: Shoalhaven City Council, 1998).
15
project. Whilst analogue technology could be used to provide similar insights, the processes would be difficult, considerably more expensive due to a dependency upon the purchase of film stock and outsourcing for laboratory processing and tedious due to its dependency upon time intensive linear processes such as development, printing and cut and paste.
Processual differences punctuate the way in which digital photographic technology liberates the artist to work and play with methodology, concepts and visual media. Digital photography and documentation shaped the mode of visual enquiry that grew from the fieldwork and research at Bundanon, a form of photographic mapping which is evident in the subsequent works-in- progress exhibition, Groundworks.
In the Groundworks series, exhibited at the FCA Gallery, Faculty of Creative
Arts, University of Wollongong in 2005 (see figs. 1.17, 1.18 and 1.19), the role of layering in the exhibition images is significant in that it reflects temporal changes embedded in the earths surface. The methodical and systematic experience of digitally collecting, assembling and layering photographic evidence of this changing topology reveals, at ground level, the relationship between the cleared settled spaces and the natural spaces of Bundanon and how these transmute over time as the various occupants since colonization reuse, reshape, reconstruct and re-texture the topology.
The visual reading of place is synonymous with the experience of stepping through it; the work is temporal in many ways. Each photographic layer of photographic data represents a moment of capture, a moment of presence.
16
The layers are painstakingly stitched in a horizontal assemblage which is flattened, duplicated multiple times and heavily layered vertically in the digital file. The process of reassembling and reconfiguring both the points of capture and the whole map (with Photoshop) rekindles multiple memories, and re-enacts the experience of being in place to shape a subjective reading that arises from both the position of emplacement on the site, the material culture captured by the camera lens and the tools and technology of digital photography. The stitched and juxtaposed layers of collected photographic evidence reveal intricate details and traces of the material culture of
Bundanon yet the delineation of the grid is increasingly lost through the process of vertically embedding and blending stacked layers in Photoshop.
The stones of the Bundanon ‘ruin corridor’ signify ‘endangered’ habitats – both historical and environmental whilst the overlaid forest and riparian textures allude to the inter-connected relationships and associations between the natural and settled spaces in the landscape.
The use of traditional photographic technology for such a project would prove cumbersome and limiting in terms of both its chemical and linear processes. The intensive layering of the final map file (see fig. 1.20) would prove impossible to replicate in a darkroom. Whilst multiple exposures are certainly possible using an enlarger, registering one hundred and forty four separate exposures on a single photographic negative emulsion (which requires complete blackout) and then subsequently calculating and superimposing up to ten exposures of the final map negative (assuming it was possible) whilst retaining colour and luminosity of the underlying layers, 17
would prove challenging if not impossible. Analogue photographic processes curtail the instantaneous. The technology is dependent upon such things as: the availability of continuous time, film, chemicals, water, safelights, a darkroom, the latent image, chemical development times and temperatures, test strips and accuracy of one-off exposure and development times. Digital technology provides a point of departure from the analogue through its lack of down-time, its potential for rapid storage and retrieval, discontinuous editing and manipulation, and hybrid forms of input and output. Its algorithmic nature almost defies its definition as a medium.41
1.8 Conclusion
“…the country is here inside my body, and its air is the breath out of my
42 lungs”. Read
Postcolonial texts and projects such as The Strata Project in 2005, inspired a new apprehension of landscape, which in turn led to the project at
Bundanon, where I employed digital photography as a tool for engaging in quasi-scientific processes such as the methodical analysis and recording of existing information systems; fieldwork and the collection, collation and mapping of captured photographic data; and the layering and rendering of this visual information in Photoshop. The systems inherent in digital
41 Mary Anne Doane discusses the immteriality of the digital and how its representations exist ‘nowhere’.Mary Anne Doane,
“Indexicality and the Concept of Medium Specificity,” Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, The Meaning of Photography, ed.
Robin Kelsey and Blake Stimson (Williamstown: Yale University Press, 2008). 10
42 Peter Read, Belonging: Australians, Place and Aboriginal Ownership (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).
18
photographic processes underpinned the collection of visual data to provide evidence of how the site has been used both in the past and present.
The rigorous practice of stepping over the site photographing large sections of the ground, one step at a time, required a detailed digital workflow to facilitate the process of reassembling the map on my computer: downloading, organizing and archiving each photographic frame into folders for subsequent retrieval was pivotal in keeping each photographic fragment of the site in place. The method of deconstructing and reconstructing the site in this way revealed relationships that led to new insights and ways of understanding the multiple signs of presence within the cultural landscape of a specific site like Bundanon. This methodology is not unlike archaeological modes of enquiry. A strong personal sense of being-in-place developed as I repetitively stepped across and over the site for hours each day, with my eye and camera on the ground.
The photographic record that grew from the exploration at Bundanon reveals multiple layers of information and material culture, evidence of the both the presence and absence of European colonial settlers, subsequent human occupants over time, and the surrounding natural environment. The final
Groundworks series presented in the works-in-progress exhibition, Terra
Firma Terra Alba, are imaginative reflections of these perceived relationships and map both my embodied presence and subjective experience of place.
They embody both scientific and artistic modes of reading place. Digital photographic technology helped me to approach, apprehend and respond to
19
the landscape as layered, complex and multidimensional, through processes aligned with the methodology of both research and fieldwork.
I took the methodology developed at Bundanon to the ancient theatre at
Paphos, Cyprus, where I initiated a large-scale mapping project on a site of archaeological excavation (see fig. 1.20), the focus of the exegesis. The nature of digital photography is instantaneous, flexible and mutable, and facilitates the complex, intricate visual discourse that originated in my work at Bundanon. An awareness of its potential to encompass a large scale photographic mapping project grew out of this foundational work and so provided much of the stimulus for the Paphos project.
20
CHAPTER 2: THEORETICAL SOURCES
As I summarized in Chapter One, the background research and project undertaken at Bundanon facilitated a new way of reading and remembering place. The use of digital photography informed two distinct phases of my work: a more objective mode of visual enquiry that focused on a digital photographic reading of the material culture presented in front of the camera; and a more subjective inner response to the sense of being-in-place that comes from experiential memory, using Adobe Photoshop. The following post-structural, post-modern, and phenomenological sources provide deeper theoretical understanding of digital photography and the notion of being-in-place, to inform contemporary ways of reading landscape and remembering the place of Paphos Theatre at Paphos, Cyprus.
2. 1 An Aboriginal sense of place
“As transient lives pass through it [landscape], we represent it and it
43 represents us”. Malliard
Whilst some landscapes of the contemporary western world might appear to be ego-centric44, there are many other interpretations that are non-western, non-perspectival and non-visual in nature. British cultural theorist, Barbara
Bender, refers to how Aboriginal people layer the land with creation myths,
“thereby turning a temporal sequence into a spatial grid”. The ‘mythical grid’
43 Joseph Malliard qtd. In Stephen Muecke, “A Landscape of Variability,” Australian Perspecta Consortium, Uncertain Ground:
Essays Between Art and Nature, ed. Martin Thomas (Sydney: The Art Gallery of NSW, 1999) 45-59. 49.
44 Barbara Bender, “Introduction: Landscape - Meaning and Action,” Landscape: Politics and Perspectives, ed. Barbara Bender
(Oxford: Berg, 1993) 1.
21
serves two important functions: it allows both individuals and clan to locate themselves in terms of the renewal of ancestral inheritance; and it forms a topographic map that locates significant sites such as hunting-grounds, camps and water-holes. Bender refers to this idea of landscape as
‘polysemic’, a “process of construction and reconstruction”.45 In an interesting twist to a conventional western view of landscape, the land is a vibrant, dynamic entity that imprints its own identity upon the participant- living kin, to determine natural processes, human identities and ways that living things pass through, temporarily use it or adapt to it. Aboriginal artist,
Ian Abdulla shares memories of his childhood relationship with his country on the Murray River, and describes his association with the land:
“ I think of the river as a friend you can go to, and who you can relax
with … when I’m there I listen to the birds, let all my worries flow out. It
gives an energy back, a feeling of peace and calm … being yourself,
46 alongside the river”. Abdulla
Australian art historian Terry Smith, when discussing the way in which narratives are visually presented in Aboriginal art, describes the act of
“inscribing an area of country”, as a means of “being alive within it”. 47
Aboriginal sand paintings are a form of traditional ceremonial practice in
45 Barbara Bender is a Professor in Heritage Anthropology, at the University College London. She refers to an “ego-centred” landscape as a “perspectival landscape, a landscape of views and vistas”. Bender, B. (1993). Ibid. 2-3.
46 Ian Abdulla, “River, Land and Memory: the Work of Ian Abdulla,” Curated by Christine Nicholls. Ngarrindjeri community liaison consultant: Agnes Love (Bedford Pk: Flinders University Art Museum, 2002) 18.
47 ,Smith, Terry. “Visual Regimes of Colonisation: Aboriginal Seeing and European Vision in Australia,” The Visual Culture Reader, ed. Nicholas Mirzoeff, 2nd edition. (New York: Routledge, 2002). 489.
22
which the ground is shaped to form mounds, patterns and icons that symbolize “the physical and spiritual focus of the ceremony” and configure the sacred land.48 Sand paintings are spiritually complex forms of visual culture embedded in thousands of years of history, the essence of these works is grounded in land, through the actions of being in and moving within the landscape. Awareness of Aboriginal ways of being-in-landscape opened up new possibilities for my own practice. The notion of the ground as the visual interface for looking at place grew out of Bender’s and Australian cultural theorist Stephen Muecke’s writing.
Muecke refers to an Aboriginal sense of place and land when he discusses how place changes according to the mutual transformability of people and their things, and how this might alter the way we ‘see’ and ‘build’ landscapes.49 Anthropologist Deborah Bird Rose describes an Aboriginal cosmology that incorporates a ‘non-human-being-centred’ view of the world, where all constituent inanimate objects, humans, animals and plants are regarded as ‘kin’.50 Muecke asks where a ‘whitefella’ understanding of this kind of Aboriginal way of ‘being-in-the-world’ might begin? He suggests a new way of looking at, and deriving meaning from, “specific situations, events, objects and bodies of texts” and seeing them as things that “inspire
48 Terry Smith, “Visual Regimes of Colonisation: Aboriginal Seeing and European Vision in Australia,” The Visual Culture Reader, ed. Nicholas Mirzoeff, 2nd edition. (New York: Routledge, 2002). 488.
49 Stephen Muecke, “A Landscape of Variability,” Australian Perspecta Consortium, Uncertain Ground: Essays Between Art and
Nature, ed. Martin Thomas (Sydney: The Art Gallery of NSW, 1999). 49.
50 Deborah Bird Rose, Dingo Makes Us Human (Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1992). 218-219
23
action” and hold meaning.51 This post-structural view of landscape encompasses multiplicity, variability and potentiality52, and a sense of being- in-the world comprised of complex layers of “ancient forms and imaginative inventions” that “oscillate between the ancient and the modern”.53 The notion of place is specific and contingent upon the meaningful rituals enacted by human inhabitants within it.54 Place holds an enduring presence and
“becomes the horizon of temporality against which human finitude finds a rhythm”.55
Rituals connect people to places.56 Rituals are enacted through movement and repetition. Muecke considers European practices such as surveying and measuring land as ‘rituals of occupation’ that enabled ‘whitefellas’ to consecrate place.57 In contrast, he describes Aboriginal ritual experiences as forms of expression that respond to a “complex, networked world of living beings and inanimate things”, move beyond representation and carry the
‘vitality’ of country in their configuration.58 Muecke opens a dialogue about a new way of approaching the history of place, one that considers ‘deep
51 Stephen Muecke, Ancient and Modern (Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 2004). 11.
52 Stephen Muecke uses these terms to describe a new way of looking at landscape. Stephen Muecke, “A Landscape of
Variability,” Australian Perspecta Consortium, Uncertain Ground: Essays Between Art and Nature, ed. Martin Thomas (Sydney: The
Art Gallery of NSW, 1999) 45-59.
53 Stephen Muecke, Ancient and Modern (Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 2004). 12.
54 Stephen Muecke. 14.
55 Stephen Muecke. 16.
56 Stephen Muecke. 14. 57 Stephen Muecke. 14 58 Stephen Muecke. 21.
24
narratives’ that require imagination to release them.59 It occurred to me whilst reading Muecke’s texts how my own photographic practice was quite ritualistic in its origins and is fuelled by motion, action and repetitious practice. My work focuses on key landscapes in my life that draw me back to photograph the places within them, repeatedly, over time. Most importantly,
Muecke challenged me to perceive land differently, to move beyond traditional photographic aesthetics, and to construct a visual language that communicates the connection, deeper meaning, and sense of being-in-place that I feel when in those places I photograph. This implies a conscious embodied sense of attention to the signs that reveal themselves in the landscape. The processes of digital photography provide the means to read and respond to the variability, potentiality and multiplicity that becomes evident to me, in place.39 The dialogue that Muecke suggests can be related to notions of post-structuralist archaeological practice, which in turn can be related to digital photographic practices. Archaeologists find, organize, collect and reinterpret abandoned objects that are embodied with time, history, relationships, desire, power and exploitation.60
59 Muecke quotes Greg Dening who he refers to as “an historian of the imaginations, rather than a collector of facts…” Dening suggests that we need to look at the deep narratives that “engulf our cultural experience”. Quoted in 11-12.
60 Yannis Hamilakis discusses the work of Benin-based artist Romuald Hazoumé, and its relationship to archaeological practice.
Yannis Hamilakis, “Review article Contemporary art and archaeology: reflections on a relationship,” Journal of the Royal
Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 13 (2007): 739-742.
25
2. 2 Archaeology
“It is this natural process of change on an archaeological site – the
construction, use, abandonment and destruction and burial – that
archaeologists are interested in. Each different phase will yield evidence
about the chronology of a site and the way in which it was used by
successive generations…. The very process of archaeological
excavation, as more and more of the site is revealed, is also part of the
61 overall history of the site …”. Green
The focus of this research and body of work is the archaeological site of
Paphos Theatre in Paphos, Cyprus, and therefore, research into the nature of contemporary archaeology in relation to landscape and place was necessary for this study. Relationships underpin the practice of archaeology. The archaeologist works with traces of the archaeological past, in the field of the contemporary present, and translates these traces to turn them into inventories, accounts, narratives and explanations.62 Archaeologists perceive the landscape in terms of variability and diversity, and landscape frames human activity and the context in which archaeological evidence is unearthed and processed.63 Barbara Bender refers to the significance of human experience in archaeological landscapes:
61 Green, R., Barker, C., & Gabrieli, S. (2004). Fabrika: An Ancient Thetatre of Paphos. Lefkosia, Cyprus: Moufflon. 8.
62 Michael Shanks, The Archaeological Imagination, ed. Michael Shanks, 15th October 2009, Stanford University, 10th January
2010
63 Given, M., & Knapp, B. (2003). The Sydney Cyprus Survey Project: Social Approaches to Regional Archaeological Survey. Los
Angeles: Monumenta Archaeologica 21, The Cotsen Institute of Archaeology, University of California. Xv.
26
“ Our experience of the world will never be identical with other peoples.
It depends on who we are. Also, it changes with different times in our
lives, and even at a given moment it may be contradictory and
conflicted. There is never a landscape, always many landscapes. And
landscapes are not passive, not ‘out there’, because people create their
sense of identity – whether self, or group, or nation state – through
engaging and re-engaging, appropriating and contesting the sedimented
64 pasts that make up the landscape”. Bender
Bender’s description is inclusive of culture, of the people who have occupied the land in question over time. A landscape allows the past to declare itself in the present, and facilitates endless rewritings of this past in the present through the constant processes of renewal and change.65 Michael Shanks and Christopher Tilley66 claim that archaeology is about our relationship with the past as well as our sense of where we come from.67 Their archaeological model challenges orthodox practice by adopting an approach to archaeology that takes into account cultural values and “the importance of people’s relationship with things”. The subjectivity of this approach has been questioned by more traditional practitioners, however it paves the way for
64 Bender (1993) qtd in Barbara Bender, Stonehenge: Making Space: Materialising Culture (Oxford: Berg, 1998).
65 Inglis cited in Barbara Bender, Stonehenge: Making Space: Materialising Culture (Oxford: Berg, 1998). 26.
66 Their controversial book challenged traditional archaeological theory and practice when it was released in 1992. Michael Shanks and Christopher Tilley, Reconstructing Archaeology: Theory and Practice (London: Routledge, 1992).
67 Michael Shanks is The Omar and Althea Hoskins Professor of Classics, Director of Stanford Archaeology Center's Metamedia
Lab and Co-Director Stanford Humanities Lab, Stanford University. He comments on the publication which is posted in pdf form on his website. Michael Shanks, Reconstructing Archaeology, 2009, 3rd September 2009
2 7
archaeology to be associated with contemporary culture and its obsession with objects.68
The notion of an archaeology infused with relationships is highly significant to my thesis. Michael Shanks elaborates on this idea when he describes how our attachments, feelings and desires for archaeological objects bind relationships and culture to these objects.69 “In archaeology, the past, it seems, is encountered in its material remains”.70 Shanks compares traditional approaches to archaeology where found objects are analysed in terms of stylistic forms and stages of development, with more progressive theories and methodologies that focus on perceived relationships. He explains how a progressive approach to archaeology shapes a map, a
“production map of a network of connections” that reveals relationships between “character, style, production and consumption” of archaeological objects.71 By way of explanation he refers to the design of ancient pots as a riddle, the materialization of a multitude of relationships between “the work of potter, acts of exchange and consumption”, and ritualistic practice.72
These process-focused approaches to archaeology point to the multiplicity of meaning inherent in found objects and consequently the sites that contain them. Archaeological sites such as Paphos Theatre are palimpsests of human culture from both the historical and contemporary past that extend
68 Michael Shanks, Reconstructing Archaeology, 2009, 3rd September 2009
69 Michael Shanks, Experiencing the Past: On the Character of Archaeology (New York: Routledge, 1992). 53.
70 Michael Shanks. 99. 71 Michael Shanks. 87. 72 Michael Shanks. 95.
28
well beyond the site boundaries. “Scatterings of tools and debris recorded in field-walking survey, sites discovered and excavated, material recovered.
Ruins, remains, reconstructions may be visited, collections viewed in museums”.73
“The archaeological process can be described as moving through a
continuity of material worlds that run from ruins and remains to the
materiality of media “proxies”, the world of our media. It is less about
“discovering” the past and more about crafting what remains of the past
into “deliverables”. Into text, graph, map, drawing and photograph: this
is the work of visual media in archaeology”.74
These readings were highly significant to my approach to photographing the archaeological site of Paphos Theatre. The mapping of material evidence of the theatre reveals much about the archaeological process using digital photographic media and processes; multiple contextual layers of visual information emerge, informed by both historical and contemporary processes and knowledge systems and “the topological folding of time inherent in our perception of site or place, as old things mingle with new
…”.75
73 Michael Shanks. Experiencing the Past: On the Character of Archaeology (New York: Routledge, 1992) 99. 74 Michael Shanks quotes excerpts from Michael Shanks and Randall McGuire, “The Craft of Archaeology,” American Antiquity
61:75-88. 61.1 (1996)., during a presentation with Timothy Webmoor on the panel discussion: New Media Practices in Visualizing the Past.at the Stanford Centre’s Visualizing Knowledge: From Alberti’s Window to Digital Arrays Seminar at Stanford University,
2007
75 Michael Shanks describes topology as “The percolating time that folds together the many fragmentary traces of pasts present in any one place”. Michael Shanks, The Archaeological Imagination, ed. Michael Shanks, 15th October 2009, Stanford University, 10th
January 2010
29
2. 3 Digital photography
“It is a supereye – a perceptual prosthesis that can stop action better
than the human eye, resolve finer detail, remorselessly attend to the
subtlest distinctions of intensity, and not leave unregistered anything in
76 the field of its gaze”. Mitchell
In his book The Reconfigured Eye: Visual Truth in the Post-Photographic Era
William Mitchell refers to the camera as “an ideal Cartesian instrument” that records objects observed by the user with accuracy and precise detail. The concept of the impersonal neutrality of a camera that opens its shutter and records the truth with passive objectivity77 has been challenged since the camera was invented. Technical and aesthetic adjustments to exposure, framing and, in particular, the moment of capture are ‘inessential’ intentions made by the photographer, rather than causal effects.78 Mitchell provides an interesting explanation of how images can be seen as belonging to a point on a spectrum moving between algorithmic or nonalgorithmic conditions.
The nonalgorithmic image is created as a result of many intentional decisions, and does not establish that the object represented exists, nor does it provide much in the way of evidence about its existence. It does, however, reveal much of the artist’s mind and intentions. The algorithmic image is mostly constructed automatically from data or information received
76 William J. T. Mitchell, The Reconfigured Eye: Visual Truth in the Post-Photographic Era (Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2001). 28.
77 William J. T. Mitchell refers to Christopher Isherwood’s opening lines in “A Berlin Diary” in The Berlin Stories, 1963. Quoted in
William J. T. Mitchell. 29.
78 William J. T. Mitchell discusses Roger Scruton’s examination of the differences between causal and intentional acts by painters and photographers. William J. T. Mitchell .29.
30
about the object, is not nearly as intentional, and reveals little about the artist but provides substantial evidence about what lies in front of the imagemaking instrument.79 This explanation provided a framework for my work at Paphos. The archaeological photography that I was required to undertake in my role as site photographer was closer to the end of the
‘algorithmic’ spectrum which Mitchell describes, as was the systematic
‘reading’ and mapping of the theatre; however the more subjective and imaginative images that I created during the post-capture stage using
Photoshop were much more subjective and ‘nonalgorithmic’.
In terms of intentions, digital imaging creates conditions for a broad range of intentions related to processes and manipulation of the image. The tools of digital imaging provide many different ways to intentionally interpret or change an image. Mitchell states that it is harder to draw a line between “the causal process of the camera” and “the intentional process of the artist”.80
“The traditional origin narrative by which automatically captured shaded perspective images are made to seem causal things of nature rather than products of human artifice … no longer has the power to convince us. The referent has come unstuck”.81 Mitchell explains how digital manipulation does not conceal the dividing line between an object and its depiction, nor does it fuse “the signifier and the signified”. Rather, it “blurs the boundary between two kinds of depictions …” to create “a new uncertainty about the
79 William J. T. Mitchell explains that images can be placed anywhere along the spectrum between algorithmic and nonalgorithmic.
The Reconfigured Eye: Visual Truth in the Post-Photographic Era (Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2001). 30.
80 William J. T. Mitchell. 31.
81 William J. T. Mitchell. 31.
31
status and interpretation of the visual signifier”.82 Mitchell sees the emergence of digital imaging as an opportunity to confront the debate between objective and subjective modes of photographic representation from a contemporary perspective which is more in tune with contemporary times - an age where digital technology is revolutionising the way in which we use, see and derive meaning from images.83 He alludes to a shifting paradigm– one in which the status of the image is adapted to “deconstruct the very ideas of photographic objectivity and closure, and to resist what has become an increasingly sclerotic pictorial tradition”.84
For the purposes of this thesis I am considering how the technology and processes of digital photography set it apart from traditional, analogue photography to transform artistic practice, however brief discussion related to criticism and debate surrounding the photographic image since digital technology was made available to artists during the 1990s will preempt later discussion in Chapter 3 regarding notions of ‘post-photography’.
Photography was shaped by a Modern vision that featured the photographic subject as an active producer of visual evidence. Digital photography has since supplanted the importance of the human act of ‘looking’ with the significance of technological process. Lutz Koepnick draws our attention to how computer-aided processing transforms notions of photographic
82 William J. T. Mitchell, The Reconfigured Eye: Visual Truth in the Post-Photographic Era (Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2001). 17
83 Ibid
84 William J. T. Mitchell. 8.
32
temporality.85 The photograph as a testimony of ghostly existence is challenged by the digital photograph, which is no longer restricted to one privileged moment of exposure. Through an emphasis on process, digital images “inscribe temporality in the image’s existence itself “ and “infuse spatial representations with temporal unfixity”.86 Digital processes can be employed to challenge conventional views of space and time; the single point of view traditionally associated with embodiment is ruptured when multiple moments or instants are represented simultaneously in one image
(see figs. 5.19 – 5.36).
Mitchell compares the action of descending a ramp to that of descending a sequence of distinct steps, to differentiate the technical basis of an analogue
(continuous), and a digital (discrete) representation. Motion on a ramp is continuous and linear – an analogue depiction of the advance of time which fails to describe the number of levels on the ramp. On the other hand, motion on the steps is recorded in distinct numerical ‘steps’ - as digital representation records the passage of time in terms of defined and successive intervals.87 Digital photographic technology complements a post- structuralist way of looking at landscape, as it is a medium through which concepts of multiplicity and layers of meaning can readily be explored in a visual aesthetic. Whilst the technology can be used to distort and
85 Lutz Koepnick refers to Roland Barthes ideas about the temporal nature of the photographic image; that it possesses an evidential force and bears witness to time as opposed to the subject. Lutz Peter Koepnick, “Photographs and Memories,” South Central Review 21.Spring (2004). 100.
86 Lutz Koepnick. 99 -100.
87 William J. T. Mitchell, The Reconfigured Eye: Visual Truth in the Post-Photographic Era (Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2001). 3.
33
subjectively manipulate photographic evidence, it can also be used to compile and interpret visual evidence through layering and compositing in processes that mirror scientific modes of enquiry and research. Mitchell supports this viewpoint. He states that digital imaging provides us with tools that are well suited to the postmodern age as it is “privileges fragmentation, indeterminacy, and heterogeneity”88, and gives prominence to process over the highly resolved art object. The search for “objective truth assured by quasi-scientific procedure and closed, finished perfection” is outdated and invalid.89
2. 4 A Revolutionary Form of Practice
“A revolutionary new mentality is about to emerge: “We shatter the
world to pieces and then remold it nearer to the heart’s desire”. Or,
less poetically: we calculate the world, then we compute it”.
90 Khayyam
The advent of digital photographic processes pointed to a new postmodern age during the 1980s and challenged traditional perceptions and boundaries pertaining to photography. Photographer-artists such as American Nancy
Burson (born in1948) seized the opportunity to explore the conceptual possibilities of the new medium, through rigorous and intricate processes.
Burson’s ‘morphing’ techniques formed a prototype for identifying missing
88 William J. T. Mitchell, The Reconfigured Eye: Visual Truth in the Post-Photographic Era (Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2001). 8.
89 Ibid.
90 Vilém Flusser quotes the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam in Vilém Flusser, “Nancy Burson: Chimaeras,” Photography After
Photography: Memory and Representation in the Digital Age, ed. Stefan Iglhaut, Florian Rötzer Hubertus Amelunxen (Amsterdam:
Overseas Publishers Association, 1996). 150
34
persons by police departments and indicated how collaborative interdisciplinary projects between art and science might merge and even blur boundaries in the future. Villem Flusser refers to her chimaeras series (see figs. 2.01 and 2.02), to suggest that digital technology provides to its users the potential to ‘program’ or create whatever their heart desires.91 The availability of affordable, consumer-level digital cameras, flat-bed scanners and desktop computers by the mid 1990s coincided with the launch of a newly updated Adobe Photoshop version 3.0, to bring the technology, tools and software needed to create digital photographs within reach of many artists such as Burson. Utopian views on the potential of the new technology re-ignited debates concerning the veracity and truthfulness of the photographic medium and predicted a revolution of sorts.
2. 5 Utopian Views
Digital photography injected new energy into the long established debate about notions of ‘truth’ and reality surrounding the photographic image.
Utopian views sought to establish the digital photograph as a new medium, certain to witness the death of photography. In 1994, Timothy Druckrey declared: “once the image is digital it has very little to do with photographic
91 Vilém Flusser, “Nancy Burson: Chimaeras,” Photography After Photography: Memory and Representation in the Digital Age, ed.
Stefan Iglhaut, Florian Rötzer Hubertus Amelunxen (Amsterdam: Overseas Publishers Association, 1996).151
35
systems. At most, it is implicit in it. In this sense, such images could be called post-photographic …”.92
In 1995 Martin Lister likened ‘post-photographic’ practice to ‘post- structuralist’ theory through the ‘postmodern’ framework and suggested that digital imaging is “the technological counterpart to some propositions of cultural and linguistic theory”.93 Lister commented on the rise of digital photography to suggest that its processes threaten previously held beliefs in analogue ‘truth’ through notions of context and intertextuality.94 He argued that the mechanical process of analogue photography conceals relationships, cultural codes and influences and claimed digital photographs are contextual in that they ‘rework’ or ‘receive’ images from the fragments and layers of other images. Digital photographs are the result of “a meta- form of processes”.95 Lister’s ideas, despite their revolutionary undertones, have currency for this project. Digital photographic processes support the way in which I approach the reading and remembering of sites such as
Paphos Theatre. Digital processes align with research methodology and fieldwork that recognise the multiplicity and contextual diversity of place.
92 Timothy Druckrey quoted in Florian Rötzer, “Re: Photography,” Photography After Photography: Memory and Representation in the Digital Age, ed. Hubertus Amelunxen, Stefan Iglhaut and Florian Rotzer (Amsterdam: Overseas Publishers Association, 1996).
13.
93 Martin Lister refers to William Mitchell’s ideas about how the technology of digital photography has the potential to deconstruct
“cultural and linguistic theory” relating to photographic objectivity and mechanical processes. Martin Lister, The Photographic Image in Digital Culture (London: Routledge, 1995).17 94 Martin Lister. 3.
95 Martin Lister. 13.
36
In 1996 Florian Rötzer denounced the association of anything photographic with the notion of ‘truth’, especially in a digital age; he argued that the digital image should be perceived in much the same manner as a painting or a photomontage, its only relevance to a notion of truth being its regard as a truthful subjective representation. Rötzer likened a digitally manipulated photograph to painting through the creative intentions of the artist, the passivity of the object and the haptic nature of its processes, in comparison to the traditional analogue photographic image that is formed physically and chemically when light reflected from the object imprints itself on the passive surface of the subject.96 He pointed out that the manipulative abilities of digital processes changed the nature of photography: “the image is a naked surface on which the imagination can make subjective drawings. The photographer is no longer at the mercy of the object, the momentary light conditions, the existing colours”.97
In 1999 Fred Ritchin saw the potential for a new approach to visualisation based on the emerging characteristics of digital imaging processes, and went so far as to call such an approach hyper-photography, a blurring between the seen and unseen, the visible and invisible. “One can think of it as a photography that requires neither the simultaneity nor proximity of viewer and viewed, and that takes as its world anything that did, does, will or
96 Florian Rötzer, “Re: Photography,” Photography After Photography: Memory and Representation in the Digital Age, ed. Hubertus
Amelunxen, Stefan Iglhaut and Florian Rotzer (Amsterdam: Overseas Publishers Association, 1996). 14.
97 Florian Rötzer. 21.
37
might exist, visible or not – anything, in short, that can be sensed or conceived”.98
Early discussion on the nature of digital photography by cultural theorists
Lister, Rötzer and Ritchin was focused on ways in which digital technology and its processes were manifesting change in photographic traditions, and much debate at the time also centred on the potential of digital technology to amplify and alter the powers of vision, largely by shifting our observations from the perceptual to the conceptual.99 Criticism fuelled debate concerning the indexical and pictorial tensions between analogue and digital photographic technology. Whilst this debate still lingers in the 21st century, photography has witnessed a cultural revolution, rather than a digital photographic revolution; a revolution focused on technology and images.
The emphasis has shifted toward the domains of technology and culture; process and context now underpin the contemporary digital photographic image.
2. 6 Multiple perspectives
“Undoubtedly hyper-photography will feature a variety of approaches to
representation, benefiting as well from the computer’s ability to make
100 possible a multiplicity of forms of presentation”. Ritchin
98 Fred Ritchin, In Our Own Image (New York: The Aperture Foundation, 1999). 116
99 Kevin Robins discussed the potential of digital photography to amplify vision in 1995. Kevin Robins, “Will Image Move Us Still?,” Lister Martin, The Photographic Image in Digital Culture (London: Routledge, 1995). In Martin Lister, The Photographic Image in Digital Culture (London: Routledge, 1995). 36.
100 Fred Ritchin, In Our Own Image (New York: The Aperture Foundation, 1999). 119.
38
Digital photography has radically altered the ways in which photographic images are captured, stored, retrieved, archived and shared, and has offered artists new ways to see the world and creatively interpret their perceptions.
Increasingly, in contemporary times, it has also changed the way photographs are used; there is a movement away from prints and a shift toward hybrid photographic formats that feature the ability to download to hard disk or mobile technology, upload to internet applications, and allow rapid, instantaneous and global modes of sharing and publication.
Although digital technologies have changed the way photographers practice, the new technology has not resulted in the death of photography; rather, it has radically increased the production and consumption of photographs.101
Digital technology appears to have revolutionised the photograph. In a recent article, Lister also agrees that digital technology has injected new life into photography. He discusses the cultural proliferation of the photograph in terms of contemporary technological culture and the information age.102
Post-photographic cultural codes are determined by the new cultural contexts in which digital photographs are produced and consumed.
Fred Ritchin now claims that what is happening in terms of the digital image revolution is that we are really reinventing ourselves, not just the media available in the marketplace. The flood of imagery washing over us “creates
101 Martin Lister, “A Sack in the Sand: Photography in the Age of Information,” Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies 13.3 (2007).213.
102 Martin Lister, 252.
39
a map of the world that refers increasingly to itself as it mutates into something self-serving and at times rapacious”.103 His suggestion that such a map of the world is self-reflexive and mutative describes the inherent nature and structure of the digital image itself – an array of two integers that can be magnified, multiplied and manipulated, collapsed and reassembled in many different configurations. He describes photography as a means of freezing and slicing the visible into discrete chunks“.104
Digital media forces us to develop multiple perspectives as we peer at the world through its filters. If we approach the development of new imaging strategies in intelligent ways to move beyond the limitations of analogue photography, we might develop new approaches to visualise the world.105
2. 7 Conclusion
“Our complex being-in-the-world” is composed of “layerings of ancient
forms and imaginative inventions. It oscillates between the ancient and
the modern”. Muecke106
Contemporary post-structuralist theories underpin this project. The idea that landscape is a transformative work-in-progress, percolating with the signs and traces of a multitude of past and present places, evident by the material culture it embodies, suggests that an emplaced enquiring body might read it in a multitude of ways. Archaeology is a mediating practice, a means by
103 Fred Ritchin, After Photography (London: Norton & Company, Inc, 2009). 10.
104 Fred Ritchin.11.
105 Ibid. 106 Stephen Muecke, Ancient and Modern (Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 2004). 12. 40
which the remnants of the past can be thought about and creatively acted upon in the present and as this project is focused on the reading of an ancient site, its processes provide a framework, an information system for reading and making sense of the material culture and topology of site.107 The flexibility and mutability of digital photographic processes enable both objective (outer) and subjective (inner) modes of response to site. The systematic mapping of material culture on the site of archaeological excavation at Paphos, and the creative and imaginative amplification of this vision using digital photographic capture and post-capture technology allows an open-ended visual response to the experiential memory of being-in-place, to shape new ways of responding to landscape and place.
The inherent structure of digital technology sets digital photography apart from its traditional counterpart. Its flexible, mutable and algorithmic processes fracture preconceived notions of stability and dependability associated with the analogue photographic image, a technology traditionally renowned for its closed objectivity. Digital photography is different; its structure is hybrid, adaptable and alterable; mathematically encoded it can generate multi-point perspectives and dynamic, multi-layered views of the world. Chapter 3 will address the key differences between digital and analogue processes through investigation into traditional archaeological photographic practice and what can be termed ‘post-photographic’ practice.
107 Michael Shanks, The Archaeological Imagination, ed. Michael Shanks, 15th October 2009, Stanford University, 10th January
2010
41
CHAPTER 3: ARCHAEOLOGICAL PHOTOGRAPHY: FROM TRADITIONAL TO DIGITAL
The potential of post-photographic or digital photographic processes to reconfigure our view of the world, as discussed in Chapter 2, alludes to its potential to accommodate new ways of understanding place. This chapter explores this claim in greater detail and outlines the practice of traditional archaeological photography to consider how digital photographic processes facilitate new ways of reading and interpreting the site of Paphos Theatre.
3. 1 Reframing the past
“… digital images enable the viewer to reframe the past from various
angles and thereby move beyond the tombs of photographic
memory”108
The multiplicity of the digital image and the significant role of processes in its creation that are quite different to analogue, inform the methodology I have devised for the onsite-mapping of the site of Paphos Theatre: a post- structuralist perspective and mode of enquiry, underpinned by a multi- dimensional reading of the site. Paphos Theatre is a site of archaeological excavation that comprises a multitude of fragments, traces, impressions and impacts109 accumulated from thousands of years of archaeologically documented human occupation of the site. At any point in time during the process of excavation, archaeologists unearth individual objects or
108 Lutz Peter Koepnick, “Photographs and Memories,” South Central Review 21.Spring (2004). 101.
109 Michael Shanks, The Archaeological Imagination, ed. Michael Shanks, 15th October 2009, Stanford University, 10th January
2010
42
‘artefacts’ to recontextualise the ‘big picture’ of the theatre and to shape a newer version of a mosaic of relationships.
A brief discussion of the Paphos Theatre site and the archaeological process is necessary to understand how the notions of context, stratigraphy, systems and processes, emplace each ‘find’ to both inform and map this mosaic, and align with digital photography processes to shape the methodology developed on site at Paphos, for this project. This discussion will be illustrated by the work I undertook as archaeological photographer during my project at Paphos Theatre and will pre-empt elaboration on archaeological photography and how it contributes to the record of the excavation process.110
3. 2 Paphos Theatre
“As is so often the case within archaeological sites, the major
architectural and other features at the site of the ancient theatre of
Nea Paphos are ruinous and have been covered by successive layers
111 of soil”. Green Barker and Gabrieli
110 In March 2006 I travelled to Cyprus as a member of the University of Wollongong, Faculty of Creative Arts Sonic Architectures
Project team to map the ancient theatre site at Paphos. A Vice-Chancellors’s Challenge Grant, and the Sonic Arts Research
Network, University of Wollongong, funded my fare and participation in the project. Team members from the School of Art and
Design, Professor Diana Wood Conroy, Dr Brogan Bunt and myself, collaborated with Dr Ian McGrath from the School of
Performance to undertake fieldwork at the Paphos Theatre. My brief was to provide a photographic record of visual material data that could be used along with other mapped modalities to estimate the dimensions, proportions and negative space of the theatre, as well as describe the haptic qualities of the theatre materials. The mapped data could be used as an information system to inform the sonic map of the theatre. Additionally, I undertook the role of official site photographer for the duration of excavation and produced photographic documentation of the progress of excavation on site and artifacts in the studio. 111 Richard Green, Craig Barker and Smadar Gabrieli, Fabrika: An Ancient Theatre of Paphos (Lefkosia: Moufflon, 2004). 7.
43
The site of the ancient Hellenistic-Roman theatre of Nea Paphos occupies an area of land known as Fabrika Hill, in the ancient-modern city of Paphos,
Cyprus (see figs. 3.01, 3.02 and 3.03). The Department of Archaeology of the
University of Sydney has been responsible for excavating the site since
1995, under the auspices of the Department of Antiquities of the Republic of
Cyprus, and the Directorship of Emeritus Professor J. R. Green, Dr Smadar
Gabrieli and Dr Craig Barker.112 Several hundred people, most of them
Australians, including archaeologists and site specialists, students and volunteers, have contributed to the excavations at Paphos since 1995 and have “brought the theatre back to life”.113
The material culture on site at Paphos Theatre reveals multiple layers of natural, cultural and political histories, events and usage. The site was recognised as a theatre in the early 1960s when Cypriot archaeologist
Kyriakos Nikolaou undertook preliminary excavation on the upper part of the cavea114, and in 1987, the University of Trier worked there for one season.
The theatre formed part of the urban plan of the city in ancient times, and was located, according to custom, toward the edge of the city, possibly to facilitate large mobile crowds and to ease the noise levels in the city centre.
112 The excavations are conducted by the University of Sydney on behalf of the Department of Antiquities of Cyprus. Financial sponsorship for the project has been provided by the AAIA (Australian Archaeological Institute at Athens) since 2009. http://www.paphostheatre.com/index.html “The University of Sydney Archaeological Excavations of the Paphos Theatre Sire,
Cyprus” accessed 31.3.2010.
113 Diana Wood Conroy, The Fabric of the Ancient Theatre (Lefkosia: Moufflon Publications Ltd, 2004). x.
114 The cavea is the seating area of the theatre. At Paphos, this is the most stable feature. The central area was carved out of natural rock, and the sides were built up with an earthen embankment. The cavea was semicircular in plan and about 88 metres in diameter. Richard Green, Craig Barker and Smadar Gabrieli, Fabrika: An Ancient Thetatre of Paphos (Lefkosia: Moufflon, 2004). 10- 11. 44
Its position was in close proximity to a main city gate (the north-eastern gate), and in true Hellenistic style, dominated the city.115 Built into the side of
Fabrika Hill, the audience could gaze out over the city, toward the harbour and the sea. This view would not only have provided in-between performance entertainment, but would have afforded good warning of any possible foreign threat to the city116 (see fig. 3.04). The theatre was the focus of social life in the ancient world; theatrical performances united the community, enabling social interaction and participation in public, religious and community events and ceremonies. Gods such as Dionysos (the God of wine) were celebrated in theatre festivals where processions and dramatic performances not only entertained the people, but also reinforced community traditions and culture.117 The theatre was used for a multiplicity of purposes: besides its role as a theatre, it was a venue for public meetings, and may have been used as a sanctuary.118
Over time, the theatre was increasingly adapted and renovated following earthquakes and cultural, economic and political changes. It evolved from its foundational role around 300 B.C. as a traditional theatre linked to Ptolemaic
Alexandria; to its spectacular role, during the mid-2rd century A.D. to reflect the “glory of central Rome”; to its transformation into a multifunctional space for “mass entertainment” during the mid-3rd century A.D.119 The growth of
115 Jolanta Mlynarczyk, Nea Paphos III (Varsovie: Editions Geologiques, 1990). 244.
116 Richard Green, Craig Barker and Smadar Gabrieli, Fabrika: An Ancient Theatre of Paphos (Lefkosia: Moufflon, 2004). 5-6.
117 Jolanta Mlynarczyk. Nea Paphos III (Varsovie: Editions Geologiques, 1990). 6. 118 Jolanta Mlynarczyk. 19. 119 Jolanta Mlynarczyk. Nea Paphos III (Varsovie: Editions Geologiques, 1990). 17-18. 45
Christianity in the latter part of the fourth century resulted in a moralistic attitude toward theatrical or emotive actions, especially false ones, and new attitudes encouraged ‘more appropriate’ public behaviour, resulting in the death of the theatre.120 Following mass destruction caused by the earthquake of AD 365, the theatre lay in ruins and was used as a quarry for the construction of new Christian buildings such as the nearby Chrysopolitissa
Basilica (Ayia Kyriaki) during the fifth century.121 Re-used marble architrave blocks, veneer marble sheeting, spiral-fluted and plain columns, and series of Corinthian capitals can be found there today (see figs. 3.05, 3.06 and
3.07). The seating was removed from the theatre in subsequent years, especially the eastern side of the theatre due to the existing cut blocks of stone.122 Marble was smashed into pieces and used for the lime kiln during this time. During the sixth and seventh centuries the site was used to dump rubbish or to support the odd simple dwelling and Arab coins from the seventh century indicate the Arab raids that occurred throughout this time.123
A complex of buildings was erected over the orchestra.124 It appears that these structures had an industrial nature, with evidence of metal-working, architectural carving, glass manufacture and commercial, glazed pottery manufacture known as sgraffito ware125 pottery. Pieces made here were
120 Richard Green, Craig Barker and Smadar Gabrieli, Fabrika: An Ancient Thetatre of Paphos (Lefkosia: Moufflon, 2004). 22. 121 Richard Green, Craig Barker and Smadar Gabrieli. 24. 122 Richard Green, Craig Barker and Smadar Gabrieli. 22. 123 Richard Green, Craig Barker and Smadar Gabrieli. 24.
124 The orchestra is the flat area between the curved seating and the stage-building. This space is where the chorus of classical
Greek drama sang and danced, in between the audience and the actors and figures on the stage. Richard Green, Craig Barker and
Smadar Gabrieli. 12. 125 Pottery decorated with a surface of paint or slip or plaster and incised with lines to reveal the underlying contrasting colour 46
traded widely throughout the eastern Mediterranean and have been found in
Israel. During this time the area became known as Fabrika - referring to a place of manufacture, a term no doubt applied by Venetian merchants.
Imported Islam pottery and cooking ware from the Levantine coast have also been found from this time.126 Paphos at this time was a prosperous city, it was a bridge between the east and the west, a vital port-of-call, boosted by agricultural productivity, particularly sugar cane. However, when the
Crusaders were expelled from the Holy Land in AD 1291, and a massive earthquake destroyed the city, Paphos’ wealth declined. It appears that the ground level of the harbour had been reduced, restricting the use of the harbour from international trade. The structures at Fabrika were also destroyed and debris such as animal remains, rubble and rubbish was used to fill a well. Reconstruction on site used the remaining foundations and accommodated farmsteads, rather than manufacturing buildings, until the
Ottoman takeover in 1571.127
3. 3 The Sonic Architectures Project
“Landscape is an ensemble, a gathering of activities, people and
128 things within an aggregate mixture of disparate times”. Witmore
At Paphos theatre, archaeologists are interested in the chronology from the beginning of the 3rd century B.C. to the twenty-first century A.D. The overall history of the site is inclusive of the actual process of excavation, and the
126 Richard Green, Craig Barker and Smadar Gabrieli, Fabrika: An Ancient Thetatre of Paphos (Lefkosia: Moufflon, 2004). 30.
127 Richard Green, Craig Barker and Smadar Gabrieli. 32-33.
128 Christopher L. Witmore, “Multiplicity and Landscape: Multiple Fields and Archaeological Practice,” 2009, Traumwerk, Michael
Shanks, December 2009
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future use of the site.129 The theatre site at Paphos reveals evidence and characteristics of both Greek and Roman theatres. Through archaeological associations, the structure and nature of its theatrical performance space, and the relationship between the historical and contemporary past as revealed in the material culture found on site, the theatre contributed to the interdisciplinary nature of the UOW Sonic Architectures Project: Mapping the
Ancient Theatre Through Sound and Image.
At Paphos, and in Wollongong, the artists, actors and musicians involved in the 2006 project used both traditional and contemporary technologies and time-based media to map the site, whilst collaborating with specialists such as the site architect, surveyor and archaeologists. The 2006 Sonic
Architectures project asked: How might an understanding of the ancient theatre give contemporary artists new imaginative insights into working with electronic technologies? The project culminated in a cross-disciplinary exhibition whereby the five artists involved (Diana Wood Conroy, Brogan
Bunt, Ian McGrath, Stephen Ingham and myself), investigated aspects of visual and sonic mapping of the theatre130 (see fig. 3.08, 3.09, 3.10 and 3.11).
Sonic Architectures was led by Professor Diana Wood Conroy, who has been a member of the University of Sydney excavation team at Paphos
Theatre since 1996 when she was invited to work on the site as artist-in- residence, through the initiative of Professor Richard Green. Since then,
129 Christopher L. Witmore, “Multiplicity and Landscape: Multiple Fields and Archaeological Practice,” 2009, Traumwerk, Michael Shanks, December 2009
Council of University Art and Design Schools: Research 07/08 (2008).
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Wood Conroy has brought together artists such as myself, and archaeologists, to collaborate and contribute a significant cross-disciplinary creative dimension to the research of the theatre. Wood Conroy has produced archaeological drawing, tapestry, watercolours, elaborate journal documentation, exhibitions and publications based on her extensive work at
Paphos Theatre.
3. 4 The process of archaeological excavation
“Recreating the past necessarily involves the present – the conditions
and context of the act of creation. Recreating the past is a practice
which reveals the author, the subject in the present.” Shanks and
131 Tilley
The major architectural features of archaeological sites become ruinous, and may be covered by layers of earth over time. Once a building falls into disuse or disrepair, it may collapse, or its parts be dismantled or recycled, for use elsewhere. Layers of soil may be added naturally, over centuries, or by human activity, as the site becomes resettled or occupied for other purposes. As the theatre is set into the side of a hill, soil deposition is accelerated as wind and water promote the deposition of soil and other material over the site. Each layer of soil represents a different period in the history of the site, and forms a visually different layer of colour and texture.
These layers, called stratigraphy, form the basis of archaeologist’s research
131 Michael Shanks and Christopher Tilley, Reconstructing Archaeology: Theory and Practice (London: Routledge, 1992). 16.
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and study of any site.132 They systematically dig down through the stratigraphy to unearth and position objects according to previous evidence of the layers of human occupation of site (see fig. 3.12).
The term ‘site’ is well suited to post-structural views of land as it denotes a kind of anonymous, inclusive rather than exclusive identity that opens the possibility of transformation and change through “the probabilities of what can occur in that place”.133 However, as an archaeological site alludes to a specific space of occupation and inhabitation, it begs to be measured, delineated, plotted and mapped according to Western order and logic.
The grid is the skeleton of the archaeological recording system.134 The datum line defines the grid and this is usually linked to permanent features in the landscape. An axis is set at right angles to this horizontal plane and the grid is mapped to these two lines.135 The gridded structure imposed on the archaeological site at Paphos is significant to the methodology of my project and is as significant as the gridded structure of the digital photograph. The grid is overlaid on the site as a framework that holds the chaotic accumulation of material culture in place (see fig. 3.13). Scientific instruments and measurements support the use of the grid on site: “Only when the scientific apparatus, the grid, the intricate measuring devices that form the basis of this whole archaeological process, are clearly in place can
132 Richard Green, Craig Barker and Smadar Gabrieli, Fabrika: An Ancient Theatre of Paphos (Lefkosia: Moufflon, 2004). 7-8.
133 Stephen Muecke, “A Landscape of Variability,” Australian Perspecta Consortium, Uncertain Ground: Essays Between Art and
Nature, ed. Martin Thomas (Sydney: The Art Gallery of NSW, 1999). 80.
134 Philip Barker, Techniques of Archaeological Excavation (London: B. T. Batsford Ltd, 1982). 150.
Philip Barker. 151.
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the earth be read with any degree of certainty”.136 Wood Conroy repeatedly uses the grid in her work (see fig. 3.14). “There’s great satisfaction in this grid. From large grids of metres to tiny grids of millimetres – I drew a centimetre grid yesterday for the photographer to place beside objects– this net holds it all together to give structure and significance to seemingly unrelated finds”137 (see fig. 3.15). Whilst the grid holds everything in place and in context on an archaeological site, the material culture that appears to be held in place by the grid is in a constant state of flux and change. As new artefacts are unearthed discarded matter is barrowed to the spoil heap. The spaces within the grid are mutable and dynamic, much like the pixels or fragments in a digital image, however the rigorous systems and excavation processes employed by archaeologists are designed to make order out of the chaos that comprises the substance of the site itself - the ground, the earth and its material culture.
Wood Conroy summarises the process of excavation concisely: aerial photographs are often taken of the site to determine obvious outlines that may define buildings, etc.; the site is superimposed with a grid that delineates the sections for excavation; and site levels are documented. As objects are discovered, they are labelled with the levels and details of the object’s material, technique, form and chronology. As these objects are studied in more detail, comparative analysis with related sites is undertaken.
136 Diana Wood Conroy, The Fabric of the Ancient Theatre (Lefkosia: Moufflon Publications Ltd, 2004). 25.
137 Diana Wood Conroy, An Archaeology of Tapestry: Contexts, Signs and Histories of Contemporary Practice (Wollongong:
University of Wollongong, 1995). 29.
51
Detailed archaeological drawings and photographs illustrate and document the plan, section and actual appearance of selected objects.138
Excavation is an investigation that seeks to study the impact of human and natural activity as revealed by the traces discovered in the ground.139 The surface of the landscape accumulates the evidence of cultural change.
Excavation allows archaeologists to sample these changes at specific intervals on site as evidence for interpretation.140 However, as samples are extracted, the site is destroyed in an “unrepeatable experiment”141 (see fig.
3.16). Consequently, elaborate methodology and intricate systems underpin the archaeological excavation process as evidence is systematically excavated, gathered and recorded in written, photographic, illustrated and reconstructed forms.
My role as part of the University of Wollongong team at Paphos was to photographically record ‘finds’ or excavated artefacts, both in situ and in the studio, to contribute to this mosaic, via the archaeological record which is a matrix, an “amalgam of layers”.142 Various records or archives are created by a team of site specialists in pottery, fresco, architecture, glass and marble for the purpose of data retrieval, and to this end, they adhere to strict rules and systems (see figs. 3.17, 3.18 and 3.19). This archive is like a labyrinth, as
138 Diana Wood Conroy, An Archaeology of Tapestry: Contexts, Signs and Histories of Contemporary Practice (Wollongong:
University of Wollongong, 1995). 26.,
139 Philip Barker, Techniques of Archaeological Excavation (London: B. T. Batsford Ltd, 1982). 27.
140 Philip Barker. 11.
141 Philip Barker. 146.
142 Jeffrey Schnapp, Michael Shanks and Matthew Tiews, “Archaeology, Modernism, Modernity. Editors’ introduction to “Archaeologies of the Modern,” a special issue of Modernism/Modernity,” Modernism/Modernity 11.1 (2004): 10. 52
fragments of information are packed and stored in boxes in various institutions and buildings or backed up to computer disks or hard drives (see fig. 3.20). All of these samples of evidence would be out-of-context and irrelevant without an effective retrieval system, as specialists access these secondary sources of archived information, along with other related sources to make “reasoned deductions” about the use of the site in the past.143 The role of context, and the nature of retrieval and archival systems in digital photographic processes resemble these archaeological processes. At
Paphos Theatre, the thousands of sequential digital photographic files I
‘captured’ on-site required a methodical system to enable the collation, archiving, retrieval and compositing of over two thousand photographic
‘fragments’ or frames.
Interpretation is a complex process and archaeologists employ systems and strategies to interpret the excavation of the site. Archaeological processes move from objective excavation categorisation to evidence-based modes of interpretation. Whilst on-site recording of evidence needs to adhere to objective systems, interpretation of this evidence becomes more subjective as speculation increases.144 At Paphos, teams of archaeologists, specialists and volunteers regularly collaborate to discuss the progress of archaeological excavation (see figs. 3.21, 3.22 and 3.23). The site is like a text, a palimpsest that is read and rewritten as each new sod of soil is turned, each new object unearthed and each new record is formed. An
143 Jeffrey Schnapp, Michael Shanks and Matthew Tiews, 12. 144 Philip Barker, Techniques of Archaeological Excavation (London: B. T. Batsford Ltd, 1982). 147. 53
object is classified and interpreted according to its position within horizontal and vertical layers of information, and the archaeological record and archaeological plan. The system of using numbers to document and sequence unusual features and finds keeps objects in context and aims to maintain objectivity (see fig. 3.24). The notion of ‘context’ describes a relational system that emplaces finds within the broader framework or site grid, and acknowledges a specific fragment of evidence in the light of the whole of site.
3. 5 Archaeological photography
“Both photography and archaeology may be considered as cultural
work: they work upon aspects of the material world. They are also
both about time, the past arresting, capturing particles of time”
145 Shanks
Conventional archaeological photography is largely an objective process, one that also depends upon the grid and the archaeological notion of
‘context’ to be relevant and ‘accurate’. The archaeological photographer’s role is to examine, record and document ‘finds’ or artefacts with the sole purpose of publishing and archiving these.146 Archaeological photography is one of the chief forms of visual documentary evidence during a contemporary excavation and the photographer is bound by strict rules and methods of perceiving the objects and features she is required to
145 Michael Shanks, “Archaeologies of the Contemporary Past,” 2006, Traumwerk, Michael Shanks, December 2009
photograph (see figs. 3.25, 3.26, 3.27 and 3.28). These rules conform to an overarching archaeological system that determines the objectivity of the photographic process. Archaeological photographers have also increased the objectivity of their practice by removing their bodies from the point of capture. The use of tripods and mechanical devices (see fig. 3.29 and 3.30) to hone the contextual accuracy and the efficacy of objectivity has effectively distanced the photographer from the experiential dimension of being ‘in- place’, on-site at the moment of exposure. The camera is detached from the body, fixed in mathematical space, confined within the grid of the site plan, to ensure that the object the image documents is situated precisely ‘in context’ with the evolving archaeological system and process. The archaeological photographer is a witness to this process, a collaborator in the process of detachment and objectivity. Each photograph that she takes is a documentary fragment that supports this system, yet remarkably, each image represents merely one possible snapshot within the infinite realm of potential snapshots of visual material culture that exist on site at any given moment. My work on-site mapping Paphos Theatre ensures that my perceiving body is firmly attached to the digital single-lens reflex camera, as instrumental as the digital device.
Since the mid 1990s, archaeological photographers at Paphos and elsewhere have increasingly moved from analogue to digital processes. The digital revolution has changed archaeological practice in several ways: it offers a compact, efficient package through which the world can be represented without the need for time-consuming chemical processing, 55
specialist equipment and space; data and information can be easily managed, shared and archived within digital files, folders, hard drives, databases and networks; information can be transmitted to audiences around the world at almost the speed of light; and virtual worlds/images can be created where information can be juxtaposed and presented to represent the actual world in new ways.147
Yet the switch has not necessarily been without hurdles. Digital processes threaten to undermine the work of archaeologists. As documentary forms, digital files are potentially elusive, unreliable and open to subjective manipulations. CD Rom and DVD technology are not yet reliable and permanent archival mediums; computer hard drives can crash and fail, destroying precious files; digital camera media storage devices and readers are changing rapidly and the digital files themselves can be altered to change the context of the subject, intentionally or otherwise. Digital files are mutable and the process of working with the digital image is non-linear as opposed to analogue processs. Although digital photography holds risks for the veracity of archaeological record, the manipulative potential of digital image editing allows the artist to interpret the memory-experience of working with the
Paphos Theatre site subjectively, yet within a methodological framework that recognises the information systems of archaeological practice that are significant to the site. In this way, the artist’s personal experiences are informed and shaped by existing scientific knowledge systems and
147 Thomas Laurence Evans and Patrick D Daly, Digital archaeology: bridging method and theory (Oxon: Routledge, 2006). 12.
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processes to provoke a perception of place grounded in both the objective and the subjective sense of personal emplacement within the context of site.
3. 6 Conventional photography and archaeology: parallel developments
“Photography is profoundly archaeological. Photographs are like
148 archaeological traces of the moments they capture”. Shanks
Photography and archaeology were born at around the same time and
“helped constitute each other as fields of practice”.149 Sudeshna Guha draws parallels between early archaeology and early photography when he describes both as “self-revelatory … comparatively objective” recording practices, used as witnesses to verify “knowledge formation processes”.150
He refers to photographs as “objects of historical inscription” and to the multiplicity of meanings that can be derived from them. He argues that whilst archaeological and photographic evidence are perceived as “self-revelatory”, there can be no fixed meanings due to contextual changes and shifts in time.151
Photography began to be used to record antiquities when the medium was still evolving in the 1840s. Fox Talbot, pioneer of the ‘Calotype’ process, photographed manuscripts, busts and engravings.152 Early archaeology
148 Michael Shanks, Archaeographer: Michael Shanks, 2007, 17th December 2009
Photography (London: Courtauld Institute of Art, 2006). 1.
151 Ibid
152 Peter G Dorrell, Photography in Archaeology and Conservation, Second Edition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1994). 1.
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centred on antiquarianism rather than contextual study or the sequence of objects and structures. Archaeological sites, and in particular classical sites which were the most popular, were regarded as sources of exhibition materials for public and private museum collections and attracted travellers, diplomats and soldiers who recorded the visible ruins rather than what was buried or hidden.153 Prior to photography being invented, exotic, far-away places were either imagined or represented by artistic renderings. The camera was thought to rediscover ‘antiquity’154 via its offering of a “direct, unmediated slice of reality”155 and the reproducibility of the negative had widespread consequences for public access and publishing potential.156
Photography, rather than lithography or engraving, was first used for documentation in the late 1880s. Late in the 19th century, photography assisted in the development of a more scientific approach to excavation records. The seemingly objective nature of the medium was well suited to the shift in archaeological practice which was moving beyond previously adopted classical traditions and canons where statuary artefacts were the main features documented on site.157 By the first quarter of the twentieth century, photography was considered one of the standard mediums for
153 Peter G Dorrell, Photography in Archaeology and Conservation, Second Edition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1994). 1.
154 Peter G Dorrell. 24.
155 Papadopoulos, John K., Stewart, Lindsey., Szegedy-Maszak, Andrew Lyons. L. Claire., Antiquity and Photography: Early Views of Ancient Mediterranean Sites (Los Angeles: John Paul Getty Museum, 2005). 9. 156 Papadopoulos, John K., Stewart, Lindsey., Szegedy-Maszak, Andrew Lyons. L. Claire. 33. 157 Peter G Dorrell, Photography in Archaeology and Conservation, Second Edition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1994). 2.
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documenting excavation and recording artefacts.158 From the 1880s captive balloons had been used to photograph ancient sites, and aerial photography was developed during the years prior to, and during, the First World.159 In contemporary times, the archaeological photographer photographs sections and fragments of the site after they have been laboriously excavated and prepared for photographic documentation. Each image is photographically coded in terms of lighting, focal point, focus, depth of field, viewpoint and perspective. Additionally, the subject is labelled with a file number corresponding to its exact location on site that is recorded according to a system that locates its specificity in relation to the architectural plan of the excavation. In this way, every photograph of every stage or fragment unearthed throughout the excavation ‘dig’ is documented and archived according to archaeological modes of enquiry and archaeological systems of documentation.
High-resolution digital cameras have become a commonplace tool on archaeological sites during the last 5 years. Each member of the archaeological team has the potential and ability to own and use a digital camera to capture archives of the dig process and archaeological experience. William Caraher, Assistant Professor in the Department of
History at the University of North Dakota, points out that this has shifted the
158 Peter G Dorrell. Photography in Archaeology and Conservation, Second Edition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994). 6. 159 Dorrell cites G. Daniel The Origins and Growth of Archaeology. London: Penguin Books, 1967. 285-290 for account of development of aerial photography in archaeology, in Peter G Dorrell, Photography in Archaeology and Conservation, Second Edition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994). 59
“mechanical difference between the official gaze of the project director and the gaze of the participant”. Digital photography is questioning the authoritative character of the project documents, due to the proliferation of excavation photographs that might happen to be in circulation at any point in time.160
3. 7 Post-photography
“Instead of inviting the subject to go travelling through space and
time, digital culture collapses modern coordinates of spatial and
temporal perception, reconstituting the subject as an abstract effect
of today’s seemingly autonomous and boundless flow of images at
161 the global level. Koepnick
Göran Sonesson, Professor of Semiotics at Lund University, uses the term post-photographic to refer to pictures created ‘after photography’ using computers.162 Troels Degn Johansson from The IT University of Copenhagen expands the view that post-photography describes images conceptualized and constructed through digital or electronic processes, independent of
160 William Caraher, in his paper for the Elwyn B. Robinson Lecture explores the intersection of digital technologies, Mediterranean archaeology and trans disciplinary research. His research points to how new technologies are changing traditional disciplinary knowledge and epistemologies. William Caraher, “Digital Archaeology: Technology in the Trenches,” Elwyn B. Robinson Lecture
(Grand Forks: University of North Dakota, 2010). 7.
161 Lutz Peter Koepnick, “Photographs and Memories,” South Central Review 21.Spring (2004). 99.
162 Göran Sonesson, “Post-photography and beyond (1) From mechanical reproduction to digital production,” 28th October 2002,
Lund Semiotics Site, ed. Göran Sonesson, [email protected], 1st January 2010
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traditional notions of photographic representation and related chemical techniques.163
Post-photography affords artists processes that are well suited for a conceptual representation that reveals both relationships and proportions164.
Lutz Koepnick explains that, unlike its analogue counterpart, digital photography transforms the relationship between an image and “time, finitude, mortality and memory”, as it does not depend upon a single,
“privileged moment of exposure” and is subject to ongoing processes of mutation and modification by both its creator and its user.165 Digital processes expand the possibility of a photographic image to encompass a relationship between what is seen and what is imagined.
Ritchin confirms the potential of the post-photographic image to emphasize the conceptual over the perceptual; to manifest what cannot be seen makes it possible to comprehend realities which are otherwise “abstract and amorphous”.166
Ritchin believes digital photography offers experiences grounded in open- ended encounters with the subject. The digital photograph represents a
163 Troels Degn Johansson, “The New Image: On the Temporality of Photographic Representation after Digitalization,” COSIGN-
2002, Pdf, prod. Lehrstuhl fur Multimedia-Konzepte und Anwendungen, Germany University of Augsburg (University of Copenhagen,
2nd February 2002). 1.
164 Robin Kelsey and Blake Stimson, “Introduction,” The Meaning of Photography., ed. Robin Kelsey and Blake Stimson
(Williamstown: Publications Department of the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute., 2008). 8 165 Lutz cites Roland Barthes and Walter Benjamin who both wrote about the traditional photographic process of exposure, development and display as an act of finitude, or closure. Lutz Peter Koepnick, “Photographs and Memories,” South Central Review
21.Spring (2004).100.
166 Fred Ritchin, In Our Own Image (New York: The Aperture Foundation, 1999). 128.
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point of view that is fluid and impressionistic, “capable of melding with other imagery or of creating variegated copies that may grow, as derivative works, further apart. These images may ultimately infringe less on the uniqueness of that which they purport to depict, just as a one-of-a-kind painting may emphasize the singularity of existence, rather than diminish it”.167 Multiple versions and generations of images respond to the original work by overlapping, contesting and improvising rather than copying it and consequently provide the breadth and depth of a critique.168 Digital photography creates a flexible association through the ability to alter, appropriate and utimately reasssign meaning. This is likened to earlier forms of memory which were reliant upon “conversation, even speculation”, and processes where the past is “recreated, rethought and reinvented”.169
The term post-photography has evolved significantly since it was first used in the 1990s, revealing the inherent dynamic nature of the technology that it describes. The term implies the ‘death’ of photography, yet nothing could be further than the truth as indicated in Fred Ritchin’s 2009 publication After
Photography. Nearly a decade following his initial forecasts for digital photography, Ritchin predicts that digital photographic technology will move photography toward the representation of entirely different cosmologies in the future due to its liberation from conventional temporality, continuous tones and chemical emulsions and processes. He likens the technology to
167 Fred Ritchin, After Photography (London: Norton & Company, Inc, 2009). 57
168 Ibid.
169 Fred Ritchin. 58.
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quantum physics and suggests that it allows for intense explorations of the unseen, where aspects of the universe can be synthesized and analysed in unusual and perhaps illogical ways.170 “A productive “indecisive moment” can surface in a system much larger than we had previously imagined, a map for unknown territories, encouraging a quantum leap into unimagined possibilities”171
It can be argued that digital technology has radically changed our understanding of the function and meaning of photography through the nature of its rapidly evolving technology. This technology manifests new processes which in turn pave the way for new forms of imaging and imagining the world. The mapped images I created at Bundanon and at
Paphos are post-photographic in terms of the spatial constructs created through digital capture, ad post-capture processes of assemblage, blending and layering. Over two thousand moments in time are assembled in the one file to represent an image of Paphos Theatre. This image is further layered and reconfigured using Photoshop in subsequent works to explore concepts of memory and connection to place. Unlike traditional photographic montage where images are superimposed on the emulsion of the substrate, a digital montage or layered file defies conventional notions of spatial depth to embed an image within an image, reconfigure and reinvent the inherent structure of the image itself.
170 Fred Ritchin. After Photography (London: Norton & Company, Inc, 2009). 181.
171 Fred Ritchin. 183.
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3. 8 Conclusion
“The digital domain emphasizes the very large and the very small
and makes possible a re-emphasis on the individual as the primary
actor. Indeed if one believes that it reconstructs human mental
172 processes it may be a proxy for theory itself”. Evans and Daley
Digital photography accommodates a dynamic, contemporary vision of time and space. These concepts are changing due to technological change, particularly digital technology. Traditional representation of space and time limits the spatial reach of individuals and populations to an observable, concrete realism that is not concerned with the experiences or intentions of individuals. Contemporary ethnographic work reveals many societies where these postulates are challenged: spiritual societies are eternal and humans divisible, multi-tasking can be synchronous, time is circular, space is non-
Euclidean, cultural space does not have to be continuous. Archaeologists tend to emphasise the visible rather than the invisible, research and documentation is evidence based. What is visible or invisible is not a matter of sight alone, but is also related to cultural perception. New cultural representations and geometries become apparent when relationships between space and time are recalculated according to different cultural perceptions.173 The use of digital photography facilitates the invention of totally new ways of imaging material culture, space and time, as perceived on an archaeological excavation site. Archaeologists such as Michael
172 Thomas Laurence Evans and Patrick T. Daly, Digital Archaeology: Bridging Method and Theory (Oxon: Routledge, 2006). 20-21 173 Ibid
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Shanks are exploring the potential of digital photography for changing the way that archaeologists read and interpret sites, and practice archaeology.
He describes a new way of working with photographs, where fragments are juxtaposed “together in an archetypal archaeological report”. He claims photographic collage and montage provide an opportunity to construct something new out of something old and to connect seemingly disparate objects to achieve new understanding. The rupture that occurs through digitally reconstructed and montage elements provides new insight through recontextualisation.174
The meaning we attach to the material culture revealed on the ground is derived from the complex, diverse networks that exist around us, on the site and beyond. This meaning, like the networks surrounding the objects themselves, changes at any given instance or moment in the archaeological process, from discovery, recording, preservation and interpretation of the object.175 At Paphos Theatre, meanings are multiple and complex and transitory. Digital processes enable both a reading of place and mnemonic responses that recognize the complex network of relationships on site. The flexible, mutable and dynamic nature of digital photographic processes such as capturing and writing to card, organizing and storage of files, stitching and assembling individual frames, layering, juxtaposing and blending the composited map, point to its potential for creating more than a ‘passive
174 Michael Shanks, Archaeology and Photography, 2006, December 2009
175 William Caraher, “Digital Archaeology: Technology in the Trenches,” Elwyn B. Robinson Lecture (Grand Forks: University of North Dakota, 2010). 5. 65
record’. These processes engage the artist to facilitate new ways of exploring, reading and imaging site, material culture, and place, by pointing both outward at the world and inward, at the point of view of self. 176 Chapter
4 will survey the work of five significant artists who use photographic processes to apprehend the world in new ways. The digital photographic practices of Nancy Burson, Phillip George and Idris Khan will be discussed along with the analogue photographic practice of Bernd and Hilla Becher to support the main insights of this project.
176 Kelsey and Stimson describe how photographers such as Peter Henry Emerson sought to explore cultures and places in the world from the point of view of ‘self’. Emerson stated in 1889: ‘your photograph is as true an index of your mind, as if you had written out a confession of faith on paper’. This notion opposed the idea of a photograph as a passive record of what appeared in front of its lens and elevated the status of the photograph to art form. Through pointing backward, the image could distinctively acquire ‘precious and shimmering artistic insight’ through ‘alchemy’ derived from the ‘barren lead inscription of documentation’.
Robin Kelsey and Blake Stimson, “Introduction,” The Meaning of Photography., ed. Robin Kelsey and Blake Stimson (Williamstown:
Publications Department of the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute., 2008). xvi.
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CHAPTER 4: CASE STUDIES
This chapter surveys the work of five contemporary artists to provide visual support for the preceding theoretical research. The digital photographs of
American Nancy Burson (born 1948), Australian Phillip George (born 1956) and British Idris Khan (born 1978) contribute to my research through their revolutionary practice with digital photography and contemporary understandings of the notions of site and place. The analogue photographic practice of German photographers Bernd and Hilla Becher (born 1931 and
1934 respectively) is significant for their rigorous application of systematic methodology.
Burson, George and Khan use digital photography as an innovative tool for generating an aesthetic conversation between scientific (outer) and artistic
(inner) modes of enquiry. The objective processes of the digital tools and technology employed by each artist have enabled the subjective, internal and conceptual processes of the artist to be expressed in inventive and pioneering ways. Burson’s innovative work in the 1980s revealed the potential of digital photography to transform artistic practice through process. Her seamless blends of photographic fragments of racial groups, world leaders, and fascists employ the human face as a site to metaphorically comment on the potential of digital technology to change the world. George creates an archaeology of the mind’s presence within the site of a single digital image file which he progressively and diaristically overlays with mnemonic information and digital traces throughout a period of over ten
67
years. Idris Khan challenges photographic traditions through his heavily layered appropriations of famous photographic works. More akin to drawing than photography, the original photographic object is ruptured through the process of the digital layering of up to hundreds of variations of the original.
The photographic surface reveals a vertical stratigraphy, a burial site of the original evidence.
Bernd and Hilla Becher worked with analogue photographic technology and tools in processes from 1959 until Bernd’s death in 2007. Much of their time working together since 1996 was devoted to organizing their extensive archive of negatives of contemporary industrial landscapes from around the world, and preparing work for publication177. Their methodology mimics that of archaeological photography, and the contribution they make to this project lies in their methodological process – a systematic reading of place and a workflow which organises the chaos of site through objective processes focused on material culture.
177 Susanne Lange, Bernd and Hilla Becher: Life and Work, trans. Jeremy Gaines (Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 2007). 43.
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CASE STUDY: NANCY BURSON
4.1 Chimaeras
Digital photographic editing software is designed to facilitate manipulation, deconstruction, reconstruction and assemblage of elements. William Mitchell compares this quality to the conventional one-to-one relationship between object and viewer, and likens it to post-structuralist theories of language and meaning, where multiple, flexible meanings are “always in process as they are used”, or ‘indeterminate’.178 In this way, perception is like a work-in- progress, something that evolves through layers of understanding. A theoretical understanding of how the digital photographic image has emerged and evolved since the 1980s will reveal its foundational relationship to my practice, and to new ways of perceiving and responding to the world.
The chimaera series of digital photographs by Nancy Burson will be considered in terms of how digital photography transformed artistic practice during the 1980s and 1990s.
4.2 Hybrid composites
Nancy Burson’s chimaera179 series highlights the fragmentary nature of the digital file and the multiplicity afforded by the structure and process underpinning early digital photographic images. The works comprising the series were showcased in Photography After Photography, initially exhibited
178 William J. T. Mitchell, The Reconfigured Eye: Visual Truth in the Post-Photographic Era (Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2001). 17.
179 The term chimaera can be defined as unrealistic idea that is unlikely to be fulfilled, however in Greek mythology it represents a creature comprising the head of a lion, the body of a goat and the tail of a snake. Collins Cobuild, Advanced Learners English Dictionary, ed. Fourth edition (Glasgow: Harper Collins Publishers, 2004). 234
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in Munich in 1996, and subsequently as part of an international touring exhibition which included the Adelaide Festival in 1997-98. [Sponsored by
Siemens Kulturprogramm from December 1994 to January 1998], the exhibition encouraged photographers to explore the cultural and artistic potential of digital media and relationships between technology, humans and their environments. A central interest of the curators of the exhibition was to invite photographers to debate the cultural aesthetic, cultural and scientific consequences of digital technologies.180 At the time, the availability and use of digital media were accelerating rapidly in the western world, and universities were researching and funding collaborative enterprises between art and science.
Burson’s landmark series of digital images were produced when cutting- edge digital technology was cumbersome and its processes time- consuming. Mankind (see fig. 4.01) is a digital composite, a hybrid of several men: an Oriental, a Caucasian and a Black, weighted according to the population statistics of the time.181 Big Brother (see fig. 4.02) combines pixels from separate scans of the faces of Stalin, Mussolini, Mao, Hitler and
Khomeni to produce a myth-like chimaera, a reassembled personification of dictatorship.182 Burson’s use of scanned facets of human faces in proportion to world statistics metaphorically map the world as she perceives it; the
180 Hubertus v. Amelunxen, Stefan Iglhaut and Florian Rötzer were the creators of Photography After Photography.
181 Hubertus Amelunxen, Stefan Iglhaut and Florian Rötzer, , Photography After Photography: Memory and Representation in the
Digital Age (Amsterdam: Overseas Publishers Association, 1996). 151.
182 Victoria and Albert Museum, Contemporary Photography: a study room resource, 15th January 2010
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resultant chimaeras are sites of the grotesque imagination, places populated with the presence of hybrid dictators and humans created by the very technology that threatens to overtake the world.
4.3 A new mentality
“There is no simple Now: every present is nonsynchronous, a mix of
different times. Thus there is never a timely transition, say, between
the modern [read ‘the digital’], our consciousness of a period not only
183 comes after the fact: it also comes in parallax”. Foster
Vilem Flusser describes Burson’s chimaera images as products of a new mentality arising from digital technology and expresses concern that the dissected and reassembled pixels reveal the type of world that will result from such a mentality: “a world of chimaeras”.184 Burson uses digital photographic processes to challenge traditional photographic notions of truth, seeing and believing. Flusser draws an analogy between the chimaera composites and our ‘heart’s desire’: digital technology has the potential to transform fantasy into reality, through the merging of both tendencies – art and science.185 However, he argues that the deconstruction and reconstruction of pixels of information will not achieve anything new unless something, an added ingredient such as imagination, is introduced. He warns of the danger of a mentality that encloses itself in the science of
183 Hal Foster refers to the way in which an object appears to change its position because the instrument or observer has changed their position. Quoted in Martin Lister, The Photographic Image in Digital Culture (London: Routledge, 1995). 7 – 8.
184 Vilém Flusser, “Nancy Burson: Chimaeras,” Photography After Photography: Memory and Representation in the Digital Age, ed.
Stefan Iglhaut, Florian Rötzer Hubertus Amelunxen (Amsterdam: Overseas Publishers Association, 1996). 150.
185 Vilém Flusser, 152.
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computation using “old information, albeit in chimerical form” rather than responding to digital technology with a spirit of adventure and possibility.186
4.4 Subjective perception
Maggie Hegarty in her 2004 paper, “The Impact of Digital Technology on
Photographic Practice”, refers to the inherent subjectivity of Burson’s morphed images and how the personal process of selection directly affects our perceptions of the resultant images. In ‘Warhead’ (see fig. 3), Burson consciously selects specific features or fragments from each composite photograph according to percentages that correspond to the accumulated nuclear arsenal of world leaders: Reagan, Breshnev, Thatcher, Mitterand and
Deng. Hegarty argues that the scanned segments are selected and composited according to Burson’s subjective notions of terrorising power.187
A photograph cannot be regarded as an ‘authentic’ or ‘truthful’ document; its veracity is always coloured by the photographer’s affection, technique and subject, as well as the circumstances and events surrounding its precise moment of capture and those of the viewer. Today, digital images can be created from entering numerical data directly into a computer application, yet even that process retains an element of human subjectivity – data needs to be entered, information needs to be coded. Burson’s selection criteria, through the very nature of subjectivity, adds the extra ingredient to which
Flusser refers, the artistic and conceptual dimension that may well begin with
186 Vilém Flusser, , “Nancy Burson: Chimaeras,” Photography After Photography: Memory and Representation in the Digital Age, ed. Stefan Iglhaut, Florian Rötzer Hubertus Amelunxen (Amsterdam: Overseas Publishers Association, 1996). 153. 187 Maggie Hegarty, “The Impact of Digital Technology on Photographic Practice,” School of Creative Arts Research Seminar
Series 2004 (Melbourne: School of Creative Arts, University of Melbourne, 2004). 4
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scientific calculation but also involves the inner, embodied, sensual and imaginative world of the perceiver. The significance of Burson’s work to this project lies in recognition of how digital photographic processes enable artists to conceptualise and visually merge both the outer-objective and the inner-subjective worlds of perception, in unprecedented ways.
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CASE STUDY: PHILLIP GEORGE
4.5 Variegated copies
“Digital processes have begun to facilitate the renewed interaction of
the arts and sciences. As in the geography of a coastline, it is at the
boundaries where one energy system or one paradigm interacts with
another that interesting things can happen. It is the coexistence of
accumulated multiple visions and their interactions that lend structure
188 and meaning to my work”. George
The impact of digitisation on photography has been described as a crisis, brought about through the notion of “impossible rendering”. To illustrate this idea, Mark B. N. Hansen recalls a scene in Bladerunner, the 1982 Ridley
Scott film, where a machine enters, “unpacks” and explores the three- dimensional space inside a two-dimensional photograph and proceeds to print a close-up image of this “invisible – indeed non-existent – part of the two-dimensional original”.189 Hansen describes this example as a prophetic illustration of the ways in which digital processing challenges conventional indexical notions of photographic truthfulness, firstly by revealing the technical capacity of digital processing to alter a photograph, and secondly, by presenting a new more radical understanding of photography as a three- dimensional or virtual space. No longer perceived necessarily as a material
189 Mark B. N. Hansen, “Seeing With the Body: The Digital Image in PostPhotography,” Diacritics 31.4 (2001): 54.
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object, the photograph is perceived as data to be altered, rendered and viewed from multiple perspectives.190
The rendering of an image captured by a digital camera is not unlike this
‘virtual’ scenario. When a digital jpg image is downloaded from a camera memory card to a computer and opened with software such as Adobe
Photoshop, the image is decompressed, or ‘unpacked’ to reveal a full resolution image, which can be further manipulated and altered using the software features and tools. Once ‘saved’ and ‘closed’, the image is ‘packed up’ and put away or filed until reopened: thus the original photographic referent is ‘synthetic’, “a data set, not a fragment of the real”.191
In some ways digital photography is like writing in that it essentially comprises many different kinds of work that should not be approached as
“one grand, selective and linear enterprise held together by a unifying idea and a defining set of canonical works”.192 Its fluidity offers both the photographer and the reader new ways of engaging with its subject. In contrast to the analogue photograph, which tends to be regarded as a form of reproduction, the digital point of view is more “synthetic and impressionistic” and can expand and merge with other images to form extended derivative responses, “variegated copies” that contest and overlap
190 Mark B. N. Hansen, “Seeing With the Body: The Digital Image in PostPhotography,” Diacritics 31.4 (2001): 54. 191 Mark B. N. Hansen. 57.
192 Martin Lister quotes John Tagg (from his book The Burden of Representation (London: Macmillan, 1988)) in Martin Lister, The
Photographic Image in Digital Culture (London: Routledge, 1995). 10.
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the original.193 Fred Ritchin suggests that the alteration and appropriation of generations of digital images creates a pliable relationship to memory and provokes “a variety of thoughts and reminiscences as well as confusions. In the digital arena one cannot with any certainty look at a photograph as say
“So that’s how it was.” This can be liberating - digital photography might
“evoke a more complex past”, one that is reinvented, recreated and reconsidered, like conversation, poetry and fictional writing.194
4.6 Mnemonic Notations
When Phillip George began using digital media in 1990, they provided him with a completely new methodology and allowed him to further develop innovative aspects of his production process, previously focused on the manipulation of photographic images using painting and photocopy techniques. “I could finally produce work that I could visualize but found difficult to manufacture. It became easier to express complex issues and develop continuity within my thought processes”.195 He describes a number of ways in which his practice has been transformed: the computer hard drive reduces the need for studio space as it becomes the storage site for “diverse and disparate iconographic elements” that can be blended and merged into one image file; the digital workspace is like a ‘wet’ canvas, a visual space that enables the work to be modified and edited in a continuum; the hard drive functions as a diary, a “visual notation manuscript”, that automatically
193 Fred Ritchin, After Photography (London: Norton & Company, Inc, 2009). 57. 194 Fred Ritchin refers to Plato. Fred Ritchin, After Photography (London: Norton & Company, Inc, 2009). 58 – 59. 195 Phillip George, “Mnemonic Notations: A Decade of Art Practice Within a Digital Environment,” Leonardo 35.2 (2002). 121. 76
and digitally records dates and times of entries, and provides an ongoing record of the digital imaging process; the memory function enables numerous files to be worked on concurrently; and an image file can be reworked and reconstructed repeatedly in any number of variations or mutations.196
Mnemonic Notations was initially generated in 1990 and embodies over a decade of digital practice in one image file. George has repeatedly modified, inscribed and layered the original photograph of a figure (see fig. 4.03) with a system of photographs, images, fragments, marks, symbols and inscriptions to represent his memories and thoughts over time. The body is viewed as a site of presence and represents “the housing of the physical body and its memory”.197 The work attests to the hybridity and mutability of digital practice as it has been translated as photographic and mixed media works, paintings, interactive installations and CD-Roms. Mnemonic Notations had its origins in the question: can an image ever really be complete? George uses the file as a diary to document his passing thoughts and ideas in a kind of mnemonic continuum, and emplaces them “in varying configurations within time and space - this space being integral to the work itself”.198 The file is a site defined by the digital matrix with its pixel coordinates and boundaries. Over time, George progressively embeds and layers mnemonic fragments and information within the virtual and analogue spaces of the site
196 Phillip George, “Mnemonic Notations: A Decade of Art Practice Within a Digital Environment,” Leonardo 35.2 (2002): 121-127. 197 Phillip George. 122.
198 Phillip George. 121.
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to shape endless mutations and variations (see figs. 4.04 and 4.05, 4.06 and
4.07). Mnemonic Notations creates a dynamic archaeology - its material culture comprises digital traces of the mind’s presence, buried deep in the complex layers of site, of time. Like the stratigraphy on an archaeological site, there is no clear distinction between the vertical and horizontal edges of time or change.199 Memory plays a role in his work; “it brings the past into the present in order for it to be reflected upon, interpreted and assimilated …”.200
George describes his images as cluttered, metaphors for the mental process whereby the mind wanders from thought to thought and often back again.
He often adds the same visual fragment to multiple images, and works on these simultaneously in a process that facilitates conceptual tangents and maps the intuitive meanderings of his mind201 (see fig. 4.08). George returns to previous images to reinterpret, reassess, re-contextualize, re-position and re-navigate “the interface of imagery that is “history””.202 Once he considers a work ‘completed’, he takes it to a new level, a new beginning, by adding other fragments and reworking it digitally203 (see figs. 4.09 and 4.10). The completed works are temporal snapshots that digitally map evidence of how thoughts, ideas and memories are buried and unearthed, deconstructed and reconstructed over time.
199 Schnapp, Shanks and Tiews describe the discontinuity of stratigraphy, where one layer blurs into another.
Jeffrey Schnapp, Michael Shanks and Matthew Tiews, “Archaeology, Modernism, Modernity. Editors’ introduction to “Archaeologies of the Modern,” a special issue of Modernism/Modernity,” Modernism/Modernity 11.1 (2004): 10. 200 Adam Lucas, Digital Mantra, Phillip George, 15th January 2010
203 Phillip George. 122.
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Aspects of George’s practice reveal relationships between digital imaging and mnemonic processes. When a digital image/memory is closed, its structure collapses. When re-opened/remembered, the pixels/thoughts are
‘refreshed’: reimaged on the screen/mind anew. The layers in a digital
Photoshop file, like the memories stored in a human mind are interactive: parts can be revealed or hidden; masked, blended, altered or totally reconstructed. When the digital image is closed, the layers of data are invisible, however when it is ‘flattened’, the layers are embedded, and new pixels are formed. George refers to the degree of control that digital practice provides: “The pixels in a digital image are like atoms. By going into the image you can modify it: atom by atom, pixel by pixel” and thus “manipulate the atomic structure of the image”.204 Looking at the world through the digital frame and its associated processes expands visible reality, radiates outward to connect to images, events and ideas that were previously perceived as external to the frame. With such a view, the photographer can be “more present, aware, less confident that it is the camera that will ‘remember’. And as author and viewers grapple over time with the photograph’s meanings, creating new links and interpretations, it will become evident that the photographic processes necessarily involves an ensuing conceptualization”.205
204 George quoted in Adam Lucas, Digital Mantra, Phillip George, 15th January 2010
As George returns to work on his image, he is returning to familiar ground, a familiar place. When he opens the digital file, the site opens up on his computer screen, a virtual place inscribed with his imagination. The tools of digital photography enable him to shape and reconfigure the site at will, according to his memory, thoughts and engagement with the elements and layers within it, and with others he chooses to add. The co-ordinates of the original file are as malleable as the enclosed pixels, the site is a chaotic palimpsest of George’s mind and memory. The value of George’s work to this proposal lies in the suggestion that artists can transform notions of site and place through the use of digital imaging software, such as Adobe
Photoshop, and that site can be created, revisited, recontextualised and reconfigured in the virtual space of a digital file, using digital photographic processes to represent the relationship between memory and place
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CASE STUDY 3: BERND AND HILLA BECHER, AND IDRIS KHAN
4.7 The Bechers: exterior vision
Digital photography is a mode of engagement206 that provides opportunities to explore new ways of experientially reading and remembering site. Like the contemporary archaeologist, the digital photographer can capture evidence of contemporary and historical pasts in the material remains of site, to shape a map of connections and relationships, a new way of perceiving site and place.
The found object on an archaeological site is heterogeneous, without identity until it is unearthed and processed. We collect for reasons of personal and cultural memory and collecting assigns identity: our own cultural identity.
Bernd & Hilla Becher have worked for over forty years, initially in regions within Germany and Holland and subsequently in various locations around the world such as Belgium, Luxembourg, England, Scotland, America and
France, to photographically collect evidence of historical industrial architecture such as water towers, gasometers, and blast furnaces, and sites such as mines, iron and steel works, coking plants, lime kilns, cement works, gravel plants, and power plants. Although the Becher’s employ analogue photographic processes, their photographic collections of industrial objects are created through rigorous methodology similar to that of archaeological photography, including aspects of fieldwork, classification systems, photographic techniques and the imposition of the grid to create order out of
206 Michael Shanks, Photography as mode of engagement, ed. Michel Shanks, 5th April 2006, metamedia@stanford, 17th January
2010
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chaos. Using the same approach and techniques207 (see fig. 4.11 and fig.
4.13), the Bechers’ rigorous and repetitive system of photographic documentation produces detailed, ‘truthful’ interpretation of the subject, and technical accuracy and continuity, to facilitate the juxtaposition of photographs from various shoots into photographic assemblages called
‘typologies’.208 Where available, they gather data and information related to their ‘objects’ prior to each shoot. Their work rigorously encompasses three varying types of photographic representation for each object: full frame shots of the object regardless of scale; detailed shots of functional and technical features that characterise the object; and shots of the object in its environmental context, which they refer to as ‘landscapes’.209
The Bechers’ ‘typologies’ combine sets of similar or contrasting objects and individual objects selected for their structural and functional properties and assemble these into a grid of three rows and nine photographs, although this can vary according to the number of features recorded.210 By juxtaposing images of similar subjects, the eye is drawn to the intricate details of each object, yet to perceive the relationships within the collection, the viewer is encouraged to stand back and observe the group as a whole.211 A study of their photographs, Half-timbered houses, Siegen industrial region, Germany
(see fig. 4.13) and Water towers, United States (see fig. 4.15), reveal detailed
207 Susanne Lange, Bernd and Hilla Becher: Life and Work, trans. Jeremy Gaines (Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 2007). 196.
208 Susanne Lange.30.
209 Susanne Lange.44.
210 A typology is a scientific classification and description of a group of objects according to “uniform characteristics”.Susanne
Lange, Bernd and Hilla Becher: Life and Work, trans. Jeremy Gaines (Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 2007). 51-52. 211 Michael Collins, “The Long Look,” Tate Magazine. http://www.tate.org.uk/magazine/issue1/thelonglook.htm (n.d.). 82
and precise photographic recording and clarity. The neutral backgrounds emphasise the form and shape of the industrial objects depicted, and the objective frontal viewpoint of the typologie is similar to the photographic conventions of archaeological objects that are employed both in the field and in the studio (see fig. 4.16 – 4.19). Both are products of a rigorous system of analogue photographic documentation, an objective, truthful recording of the exterior world presented in front of the camera obtained through technical continuity.
A discussion of the Bechers’ typologies is relevant to this project in terms of the initial ‘outer’ view of site adopted in [my methodology for] photographically mapping Paphos Theatre. The mapping of the theatre was grounded in rigorous, systematic visual enquiry and documentation through the alliance with archaeological and digital photographic processes and workflow, to ensure that the reading of site was contextually relevant to the brief and the project. Subsequent post-capture processes however, became increasingly subjective as I grappled with notions of place and memory when
I returned to Wollongong, Australia. Digital photographic processes enabled me to layer these personal inner domains with the more objective photographic evidence captured at Paphos.
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4.8 Idris Khan: interior vision
“Strictly speaking, nothing is erased in Khan's work, but rather
overlaid to the point of illegibility. It amounts to the same
212 thing…”Dillon
Idris Khan uses digital photographic processes to tediously overlay multiple images of scanned or re- photographed ‘objects’ of cultural value213, such as entire scores of music, books like the Holy Koran and images of the Becher’s photographs. His work appears to defy the conventions and characteristics of the photographic tradition, and points to a new way of perceiving the
Becher’s objective photographic collections of industrial objects. Khan describes his condensed photographs as “a playful emblem of our own departure from the corpse of photography, burdened with what the Futurist
Anton Guilio Bragaglia once referred to as its ‘glacial reproduction of reality’.”214 Each individual image could be perceived as a vertically aligned series of photographs. Khan’s every … Bernd & Hilla Becher Spherical Type
Gasholder (see fig. 4.12), and every... Bernd and Hilla Becher Gable sided
Houses (see fig. 4.14), comprise multiple layers of second-generation photographs of entire photographic collections of gasholders and gable houses from the Becher’s photographic archives. Khan’s compilations appropriate the Becher’s painstakingly methodical photographic system:
212 Brian Dillon, “The Revelation of Erasure,” http://www.tate.org.uk/tateetc/issue8/erasurerevelation.htm, Vol. Autumn, 8 (TATE
ONLINE, 2006).
213 Idris Khan refers to the material he uses in his images as objects. Magnus Anderson, “Idris Khan's multilayered photos: (an interview with Idris Khan),” Photo Slaves @ http://photoslaves.com/?p=39 (2009).
214 Caroline Lewis, “Idris Khan At InIVA And The Victoria Miro Gallery London,” http://www.culture24.org.uk/art/photography+%2526+film/art40005 (Culture 24, 2006). 84
each object is vertically stacked on top of the others using Photoshop; each layer has its opacity reduced and aligned according to personal decisions that Khan’s makes during the process. Subjectivity plays a significant role in his work. The subtle shifts in alignment and opacity metaphorically fracture the cultural and historical value associated with the objects and the image appears more like a drawing than a photograph. As they are embedded and buried deeper in the virtual matrix, the details of the objects’ surfaces blur into one another, more indicative of the chaos in which the Becher’s objects were originally emplaced. Khan has literally gathered them up and thrown them all together, on top of each other. He “transforms their rigid geometries into a fuzzy, vibrating mass, more like a smudged charcoal drawing of a shivering iron jelly than a photograph”.215
Like spoils on the site at Paphos or the boxes of archives in the storeroom, without the imposed grid and the classification system they appear lost, out of context in terms of cultural time and place. On certain layers some details have been selectively emphasised via subtle digital tonal adjustments to reveal traces of the form of the original objects. Meaning becomes increasingly ambiguous: multiple digital duplications recontextualise the objects of material culture; the concrete analogue form of the object is ruptured: our perception shifts from object to process, from objectivity to subjectivity, from crisply detailed delineation of form to blurred vision. The image overwrites itself until it can no longer be read. Multiple
215 Geoff Dyer, “Between the Lines,” http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2006/sep/02/art (guardian.co.uk, 2006).
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superimpositions create a palimpsest, “a blur of meaningless ciphers”.216 It loses its material existence.217 Khan’s digital photographs are highly relevant to my work in reading place. The process of digitally layering and manipulating the opacity of multiple images in a vertical stack challenges the original meaning of that which is represented. Intricate and repetitive processes transform the individual photographic layers to create a new ambiguous, malleable meaning, independent from the notion of ‘truthfulness’ that we have come to expect from an analogue photograph. Any idea of truth or objectivity is buried deep within the translucency of the digital stratigraphy.
4.9 Conclusion
The intention of this chapter is to research the ideas presented in the preceding chapters, in terms of how digital photographic processes can transform visual arts practice, particularly in relation to contemporary ways of apprehending and understanding place. The digital photographic works of
Nancy Burson, Phillip George and Idris Khan and the photographic practice of Bernd and Hilla Becher make a valuable contribution to contemporary ideas about site and place. Digital photographic processes can be used to conceptually and materially manipulate the body as a site, a metaphor for the world of the imagination where traditional notions and visual representations of being-in-place are challenged and ruptured. Post-photographic processes
216 Brian Dillon, “The Revelation of Erasure,” http://www.tate.org.uk/tateetc/issue8/erasurerevelation.htm, Vol. Autumn, 8 (TATE
ONLINE, 2006).
217 Magnus Anderson, “Idris Khan's multilayered photos: (an interview with Idris Khan),” Photo Slaves @ http://photoslaves.com/?p=39 (2009). 86
facilitate the physical and conceptual appropriation of the objectivity inherent in traditional analogue photographic processes, to question the veracity of the iconic photographic image, through equally intricate and detailed digital processes. Digital photography questions stereotypical definitions of site, place and even photography, and points to the ambiguity of such terms in contemporary visual arts practice. The personal sense of being-in-place I recognised at Bundanon was grounded in digital photographic processes and physical engagement with site, however the post-capture work undertaken in Photoshop and experienced in the realm of my memory and imagination up to five years later, was equally significant.
The research underpinning this project has revealed to me that a place can exist in the memory and that a site can be recreated in a virtual space via the tools and processes of digital photography. This is a significant finding of my research. Digital photography avails a new fresh perspective of the world, one that can blend the outer more objective exterior view presented in front of the lens, with the inner, subjective, conceptual and imaginative viewpoint of the artist who looks through the digital frame. This inner view is coloured by the artist’s perception, memory and experience. Image editing software such as Photoshop illuminates and facilitates new ways of understanding sites and places of both the real, exterior world and the imagined, interior and conceptualised world.
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CHAPTER 5: PHOTOGRAPHING PAPHOS THEATRE: DIGITAL PROCESS & MEMORY
“The very notion of reality relies heavily on memory: not just a personal
memory, but a collective memory. Presented with the same event,
different people will focus on different features and remember things in
218 different ways”. Lucas
My invitation to join the University of Wollongong, Faculty of Creative Arts,
Sonic Architectures Project team at Paphos in Cyprus, required me to consider how digital photography might contribute to the sonic mapping of the theatre. However it also involved another role - I would travel to Cyprus as a working member of the University of Sydney, Australian excavation team of Paphos Theatre, for the six-week archaeological excavation season of 2006. Whilst I had previously travelled through parts of Asia, the
Mediterranean landscape was completely foreign to me. Following the work I had undertaken during the previous two years at Bundanon, set on the banks of the Shoalhaven River amidst dense Australian forest, the surrounding landscape on route to Paphos appeared arid, barren and bruised (see figs. 5.01 and 5.02). The foundational research to this project was postcolonial theory; as outlined in Chapter 1 of this document. My project at Bundanon had developed a methodology using digital photographic processes to represent the Australian landscape, with particular focus on perceived relationships between European settlers who occupied the site at Bundanon. At Cyprus, I found myself looking at the new
218 Adam Lucas, Digital Mantra, Phillip George, 15th January 2010
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landscape through the filters of this research and experienced empathy for the sense of disorientation that the McKenzie family must have felt as they forged a sense of place in the unfamiliar environment they originally found themselves in the land they called Bundanon.
In Chapter 3, I provided a detailed background to Paphos Theatre and explained its history and relevance to this project. This final chapter responds to the key question: how do the processes of digital photography transform artistic practice to represent a contemporary understanding of being-in-place?
5.1 Stepping through site
“As is so often the case with archaeological sites, the major architectural
and other features at the site of the ancient theatre of Nea Paphos are
ruinous and have been covered by successive layers of soil. Both events
are part of the natural process that an archaeological site undergoes”.
219 Green, Barker and Gabrieli
Studying the configuration of the surface of an archaeological site such as
Paphos Theatre is like trying to decode a palimpsest, as the surface presents an entanglement of “lines and and forms” of simultaneous co-existent traces of past and present histories that invite organization and codification. Like the contemporary archaeologist, the digital photographer can capture evidence of contemporary and historical pasts in the material remains of site, to shape a map of connections, a new way of perceiving site.
219 Richard Green, Craig Barker and Smadar Gabrieli, Fabrika: An Ancient Theatre of Paphos (Lefkosia: Moufflon, 2004). 7.
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The process of mapping a site reveals the material culture brought to light by archaeology. At Paphos, the study of objects and structures reveals much about the human culture that existed on the site throughout its 600 year history220. The site is a work-in-progress: as the site is surveyed, ordered and excavated over many seasons, new discoveries are unearthed to reshape and recontextualise the emerging picture of the past. By photographically capturing and documenting the material evidence of this process over a particular period of time, I wanted the map to reveal both historical remnants and the actuality of contemporary processes over the passing light of morning and evening.
The problem I faced as a photographer was to develop a mapping process that would enable me to visually record the site topology of the theatre using the mathematical co-ordinates of the existing archaeological grid whilst maintaining a ‘hands-on’ embodiment and presence on the site. I was interested in how digital photography could be employed to align with the more objective, scientific methodology of the archaeological process, whilst maintaining a visual arts focus, a creative visual conversation about site. I posed several key questions: How can I physically align my body and camera to the theatre axis? How can other site specialists assist me? How long will the process take? How can I order the digital capture of the topography? How will I manage such a digital project in terms of file storage, processing and post-processing workflow? I was also interested in how the
220 Geoff Stennett and Richard Green, “RDAC Report on Paphos Theatre,” 2002-2003. 90
process itself might inform a personal more subjective understanding of the theatre site, and facilitate a visual and aesthetic system to emerge.
The methodology for the project was shaped at Bundanon, and although
Paphos Theatre was a completely different site, it also required an approach grounded in mutual engagement with the site through systematic process: physical action and exploration, journal documentation (see figs. 5.03 and
5.04), reading the site itself and the surrounding landscape for cultural and historical signs using the frame of the digital camera. I used a panoramic tripod to capture 360° overviews of the cultural landscape, taken at key
‘hotspots’ around the theatre such as the centre of the orchestra (see fig.
5.05), the front of the Roman tunnel (see fig. 5.06) and the uppermost section of the theatre (see fig. 5.07). The work of archaeologists, the processes they undertook on site and the material culture they unearthed, sorted, classified and documented absorbed much of my attention during the early weeks on site (see figs. 5.08 and 5.09), as did my own role as the archaeological photographer on the team (see figs. 5.10 and 5.11). The camera reads the material culture of site as evidence of the human use of site in the past and propels intellectual research and discovery, which in turn leads to thinking about place in new ways.
5.2 Site mapping with the digital camera
The mapping process mirrored the archaeological process in several ways: it was repetitive, labour-intensive, methodical and anchored to systems based on the grid. My map of Paphos recorded the dimensions and topology of the
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site through an exterior view of what lay in front of the camera and real-time physical navigation up and across the theatre space over a two day period, from May 3rd to May 4th, 2006.
I enlisted the assistance of the site surveyor, Kerry Platt, who used a laser theodolite to reference the co-ordinates of the archaeological grid, in much the same way as he assisted the architect when mapping excavation trenches and finds (see fig. 5.12). Several information systems besides the digital photographic system of capture and file storage inform the grid, and thus inform my map: the surveying system which pinpoints local datum co- ordinates, the archaeological system of excavation which visually textures and orders the topography, and the architectural system which records boundaries, co-ordinates and the process of excavation on the architectural plan of the site. This ensured that each fragment of digital capture was aligned to the archaeological grid with scientific and electronic accuracy.
The position to start mapping was chosen by the site surveyor for its significance to the archaeological grid. The blue-grey colour cast across several rows in two areas of the map indicate the early morning light and the two starting points each day. (see fig. 5.22)
The repetitious and somewhat mechanical process of moving up and over
4,250 square metres of uneven ground for two days was directed by the theodolite’s position on the orthogonal axis of the theatre and the surveyor calling to me ‘forward…back…’ to keep my lens aligned to the east-west axis of the grid, as I captured image after image (see fig. 5.13 and 5.14). The
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map comprises 55 rows spaced 1m apart and incorporates a total of 2,143 images. During capture each individual image covered up to 1.5m width of space, depending upon the variable height of the topography underfoot at the time.
The resultant visual system described the material culture of the Paphos
Theatre site at a particular moment of the excavation, blurring boundaries between archaeological process and the topology itself. Through mapping I can document the material qualities of the theatre. As old layers are sifted, trowelled and discarded by archaeologists, new layers of the past emerge to re-shape and re-contextualise the history of place.
5.3 Digital assemblage
Undertaking a project of this nature requires stamina and perseverance, and a kind of vision that borders on the obsessive. Managing over 2,000 digital images, each with an original file size of 16.1mb was a challenge and required a rigorous approach to digital workflow. As each row was captured using a Nikon D200, file names were recorded in a journal and any unexpected variations to the system were noted (see fig. 5.15). Images were downloaded from high capacity CompactFlash cards to a laptop three times a day and were backed up to CD Rom in the evening. The map was composited using Adobe Photoshop CS2, following the rules of yet another system. Files were archived in folders, reduced in size and assembled in rows based on the capture documentation (see figs. 5.16, 5.17 and 5.18), to
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provide an overall mapped image of 4m x 2.95m (see fig. 5.19). The original files have the potential to produce a 12m x 9m map without interpolation.
The assemblage of photographic frames titled Topology, Paphos Theatre creates a visual manifestation of the grid, as images are ordered and composited as they were captured, in time and ‘in place’. The sharp focus and detail of the mapped material culture is the outcome of the Nikon D200 digital camera features and settings I chose such as lens focal length, shutter speed, aperture and focus of my camera (see figs. 5.20, 5.21, 5.22, 5.23, and
5.24). Digital photography interpreted the eagle eye that I cast over the site during all aspects of my site work and explorations, an exterior view focused on the surface, the material culture of the site.
The visual aesthetic of the final mapped assemblage depended upon the changing light, the consistency of photographic techniques and settings, the systematic application of a digital workflow, the topographical height and irregularity of the site, and my stepping sequence. The level of concentration and the communication between me and the surveyor and his assistant were equally important.
5.4 The body dimension
Yet my body was not a purely ‘mathematical point in space’. Not merely an electronic ‘eye’. This recognition first occurred at Bundanon, and was based on personal, action-based experiential knowledge of moving across, up and down, reading the site through the lens of my digital camera, whilst feeling and engaging with, a sense of being-in-place. Like a roving eye, the lens
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systematically captured sequential photographic fragments of the theatre as
I rhythmically stepped across the site, releasing the shutter after each step.
However, the mapping process was not seamless. Unlike other mechanical devices used in archaeological photography, my body did not hover above the site. It was firmly connected to the earth, anchored to the site co- ordinates as I stepped up, down, across and over the terrain of the theatre.
The momentum of the practice was akin to a ceremonial ritual, a meditative, sensual experience of connecting to place, like an immersed child playing a favourite game in the landscape. Trench (see fig. 5.25) and Orchestra (see fig. 5.26) from the Ruins, Remains and Reconstructions works-in-progress exhibition (2009), reveal the shadow of my body falling on the site, following my footsteps, framed by the digital camera. Its shape and direction varies according to the time of day when it was captured.
5.5 A time-sensitive snapshot
Topology, Paphos Theatre (see fig. 5.19) contributed to the UOW 2006 Sonic
Architectures: Mapping the Ancient Theatre through Sound and Image project. It provides a record of visual material data at a specific moment in time (see fig. 5.27), a frame of reference for further study related to the haptic, spatial and acoustic properties of the ancient Greek theatre. The process of visually mapping the ground also leads to a new understanding of site as a work-in-progress. The digital photographic process pieces together fragments of place through moments of interaction, intersection and conjunction as I stepped across the surface of the theatre. These fragments
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are encapsulated “needle points” charged with “states of contentment” and
“dull visceral aches”.221
5.6 Layers of experience
“The use of digital photography as a tool of artistic practice has been
found to heighten experiential memory and stimulate the artistic
222 imagination” Treadaway
The nature of digital photographic processes determined the artistic refiguring of my project, as much as the elusive nature of the archaeological site. My search for clarity and illumination in my personal life was reflected in the almost obsessive reconfigurations I made of the map of Paphos Theatre which co-incided with the death of both parents, a family breakdown and moving home. Whilst some aspects of my project slowed, my creative practice continued, albeit erratically. The heavily layered versions of the map that were created during 2007 and 2008 reflected my inner experiences and arose through imaginative play with Photoshop layers and transformation tools. Manipulating the opacity and blending modes of multiple vertical stacked layers reconfigured the theatre as a ruined, ambiguous, distant landscape (see fig. 5.28). The clarity of the ground is obscured through up to twenty-five layers stacked, blended, rotated and reduced in opacity, reminiscent of Idris Khan’s photographic assemblages. The process of
221 Michael Shanks, Experiencing the Past: On the Character of Archaeology (New York: Routledge, 1992). 102.
222 Cathy Treadaway in her article, Materiality, Memory and Imagination: Using Empathy to Research Creativity, explores how perception is informed by the sensory experiences of our body, and remembered and reconstructed through creative processes.
She researches how textiles artists use digital technology to creatively and imaginatively represent materiality and physical experience. “Shorelines: Revealing Experience in Digital Practice,” NMC Media-N: Journal of New Media Caucus 4.2 (2008).231. 96
layering, blending and rotating sections of the Topology, Paphos Theatre reflects the archaeology of the site and the archaeology of my mind as I excavated and re-inscribed the map following both internal and external processes. Palimpsest 2 (see fig. 5.29) and Palimpsest 3 (see fig. 5.30) include layers of artifacts that I had photographed in the studio at Paphos.
These works are the only images that included material other than the original mapped file.
5.7 Mapping being-in-place
Key questions that I asked myself at the time were: What experiential data can be collected and what system can be developed to facilitate the mapping of the inner world of experience and being-in-the-world? Janet
Abrams and Peter Hall make an important distinction between the activity of mapping and the document called a map. The process of mapping can be perceived as an enterprise, a “creative act that describes and constructs the space we live in, a project that ‘reveals and realizes hidden potential’”.223 A map depicts the relationship of objects to each other in a “seemingly indisputable representation of the world” based on the logistics of conjunctive co-ordinates.224 A conventional map represents an instantaneous, mono-cultural moment of space-in-time, constructed from the infinite array of alternate possibilities located in time-space. It is like a photographic snapshot that freezes and preserves time so that “time both
223 Landscape architect, James Corner, quoted in Janet Abrams and Peter Hall, “Whereabouts,” Elsewhere Mapping: New
Cartographies of Networks and Territories, ed. Janet Abrams and Peter Hall (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Design Institute,
2006).12.
224 Simon Ryan, The Cartographic Eye: How Explorers Saw Australia (Cambridge: Cambride Press, 1996). 97.
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stands still and is ever present in its own time in the photograph”225. Yet the process of mapping is a vital activity that can link the tangible with the intangible226. The slippage between reality and the map itself 227 suggests a space into which we can venture, and presents an opportunity to use the process of mapping to ‘re-describe’ the world228.
The exhibition Photographing Paphos Theatre: Digital Process and Memory maps the experience of being-in-place on the site of Paphos Theatre. But it also maps the inner state of remembering through the notion of the topology as described by Michael Shanks: “The percolating time that folds together the many fragmentary traces of pasts present in any one place”229.
The emplacement of the artist in such a topology is integral to shaping an imaginative dialogue between the visual comprehension of information and data out in front of, and beyond the camera at the point of capture, with the experiential and relational dimensions of memory and being-in-place, behind and surrounding the photographer’s vision. My approach is to emphasise that post-capture digital processes can give form to the shape of this
‘interior’ vision. The Archaeologies and Topologies series of works were
225 Anne Marsh, The Darkroom: Photography and the Theatre of Desire (Melbourne: Pan Macmillan, 2003). 265.
226 Janet Abrams and Peter Hall argue that mapping is an interdisciplinary activity that transcends and links physical and digital worlds. Janet Abrams and Peter Hall, “Whereabouts,” Elsewhere Mapping: New Cartographies of Networks and Territories, ed.
Janet Abrams and Peter Hall (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Design Institute, 2006).12.
227 Simon Ryan, The Cartographic Eye: How Explorers Saw Australia (Cambridge: Cambride Press, 1996). 101.
228 J. B Harley described maps as social constructions that re-describe the world. He brought a cross-disciplinary approach to the art of mapmaking. Cited in Janet Abrams and Peter Hall, “Whereabouts,” Elsewhere Mapping: New Cartographies of Networks and
Territories, ed. Janet Abrams and Peter Hall (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Design Institute, 2006). 12.
229 Michael Shanks, The Archaeological Imagination, ed. Michael Shanks, 15th October 2009, Stanford University, 10th January 2010
created in my studio in Wollongong, from 2007 to 2009, in response to these ideas.
5.8 Change, loss and renewal
In life as in archaeology, change is a constant, an inherent characteristic. The changes in the ground at Paphos Theatre can be revealed through horizontal and vertical layers of material culture. The earth is inscribed with multiple layers of time, place and presence, endless rewritings that document the processes of loss and renewal. The act of archaeological excavation encompasses loss; site is continually being ‘ruined’ through the process of deconstruction and reconstruction. Our attachment to archaeological objects manifests loss and binds us to objects through relationships and culture.230
Accepting site as a work-in-progress ruptures stereotypical views of landscape, place and life itself. Moments of clarity and form, like memory, are fleeting and change is as inevitable as loss and renewal. Memory shapes identity, whether personal or cultural, through the process of collecting fragments of information “of the present and a disorder of select moments, impressions and subjective states”.231 And memory is not passive: “it is an active act of remembering from the present, albeit one in which the present may play a role of precipitant rather than choosing at will”.232
230 Michael Shanks, Experiencing the Past: On the Character of Archaeology (New York: Routledge, 1992). 53.
231 Michael Shanks, 101. 232 Michael Shanks, Experiencing the Past: On the Character of Archaeology (New York: Routledge, 1992) 102. 99
5.9 Archaeologies and Topologies
In the Archaeologies (2007-2008) series, sections of the original file of
Topology, Paphos Theatre were obsessively duplicated, layered and flipped counterclockwise, clockwise, horizontally and vertically, up to twenty times.
Layers were blended using Photoshop Blend modes to merge these multiple viewpoints. Archaeologies 1 (see fig. 5.31) and Archaeologies 2 (see fig. 5.32) suggest the multiple possible readings of the ancient theatre during the excavation process, to the point of confusion. The visual complexity and chaos of the ever-changing archaeological site challenged me in the early days at Paphos, as I struggled to make sense of the site. Due to a long history of earthquakes, the material culture at Paphos is highly fragmented; artifacts are rarely unearthed intact. Although buried in the debris of the site, the grid remains evident as an underlying structure.
I used Photoshop to duplicate and layer files vertically and diagonally as opposed to horizontally in the Topologies (2009-1010) series (see figs. 5.33,
5.34). In Topologies 3 (see fig. 5.35), a layer was duplicated from Parados
(see fig. 5.36).233 The twenty images forming the mosaic are from the
Parados hotspot234 sequence, one of a series of mapped ‘hot-spots’ around the theatre. Each duplicated layer was realigned systematically and had its opacity reduced using the Photoshop Batch action command. This process
233 Parados is an image exhibited in the May 2009 works-in-progress exhibition, Digital Photography and the Mutability of Visual
Information: Ruins, Remains and Reconstructions.
234 In addition to the ground map, I also mapped several key ‘hotspot’ areas of the theatre such as the Parados wall, the Roman tunnel etc. I attached my digital camera to a panoramic tripod head to capture the sequences. Fig. 20 reveals the workflow of the hotspot shoot for Mel’s trench.
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of reconstruction played with the concept of stratigraphy where layers of the past are deposited vertically on both the Paphos site and the file ‘site’.
Photoshop layer masks were applied to adjust the strength of tone or contrast and to emphasise specific elements and details.
5.10 Illuminations
The 12 images in the Illuminations series (2010) (see figs. 5.37, 5.38, 5.39,
5.40 and 5.41) were created through the tedious systematic overlay of multiple sequential images of the theatre rows. Stacked in layers following the order in which they were captured, each image has been set to the opacity of 9%. Selected sections of features on certain layers have been revealed using layer masks to suggest the process of excavation where certain artifacts or finds are deemed valuable, and others cast aside to be buried in the debris of site. The red archaeologists’ ‘finds’ bucket features in
Illuminations, Row 1 (see fig. 5.37). It appears in frame 25, out of 49 frames in row number 1, which was the first row to be captured at 6am on the morning of May 3rd.
The processes underlying the creation of these works challenge the archaeological grid. Time, memory and place cannot be catalogued and classified, but rather can be illuminated through artistic processes of both outer and inner enquiry.
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CONCLUSION
This thesis has demonstrated that the use of digital photography as a tool for reading and remembering the site of Paphos Theatre leads to a greater understanding of the archaeological process and reveals a network of relationships, patterns and connections between the integral components of this research: the archaeological site, the process of excavation, the digital photographic process and my artistic practice.
The digital grid, like the archaeological grid on the site of Paphos Theatre, contains a labyrinth of information that can be endlessly reconstructed and reconfigured. The process of mapping Paphos Theatre creates a contextual layer of visual information, a topology that points to a partnership between scientific (outer) and artistic (inner) modes of enquiry in my approach to place.
I have demonstrated how digital photographic processes can be used to map specific moments in the cycles of change that occur on the Paphos archaeological site and to effect a dynamic reading of the ground and its material culture, revealing much about the use of the place over time and the people who have passed through it. As I systematically stepped across the
Paphos Theatre site, my digital camera firmly attached to my body and pointing outward at the world in front of the lens, the objective details of material culture, the evidence of presence and of place, emerged in moments of clarity and focus. The ritualistic practices determined by digital
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photographic processes anchored me to the theatre, providing a platform from which I could find a new rhythm for my life.
The inherent mathematical structure, mutability and layer ability of digital technology transform traditional concepts of space and time to provide the artist with the tools and processes needed to devise fresh ways of representing the world. The images from my exhibition, Photographing
Paphos Theatre: Digital Process and Memory digitally capture, stitch, assemble, and map thousands of moments of photographic interaction and intersection with the ground of the ancient archaeological site. The key map,
Topology, Paphos Theatre is a spatial construct: each photographic fragment embedded within it incorporates a different point of view, a different perspective of place and its material culture, determined by the precise co-ordinates of my position as I moved across the site.
Multiple layers of material culture, time, place and presence are digitally juxtaposed and reconfigured in subsequent reworkings of the map. The post-capture process creates a slippage into which I reflect and remember the experience of being in place.
An emphasis on process facilitates play and reflection, which ultimately leads to new ways of understanding, of reading and remembering the experience of being-in-place.
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Fairfax Digital: Entertainment /Arts. 2004. http://www.theage.com.au//ffximage/2004/05/23/24e_laur,0.jpg&imgrefurl=h ttp//www.theage/com.au/articles/2004/05/2/1085120111843.htmlWilliam, John. “Janet Laurence” Artwrite. COFA. UNSW. 2003. http://www.artwrite.cofa.unsw.edu.au/0329/1500_work/johnwilliam_janet/jan et_lawrence.html Webmoor, TimothyWhats Going On: Contemporary Indigenous Art from the Murray Darling Region Mildura: Mildura Arts Centre, 2002. Wigoder, Meir. History Begins at Home: Photography and Memory in the Writings of Siegfrid Kracauer and Roland Barthes. Project Muse. Accessed 7.1.09 133 Wike Lori. “Photographs and Signatures: Absence, Presence, and Temporality in Barthes and Derrida” Invisible Culture. 2000. http://www.rochester.edu/in_visible_culture/issue3/wike.htm Witmore, Christopher. L. Special Reviews Section: Archaeology on the ground: the memory practices of David Webb: Diggers Alternative Archive, website and photography by David Webb: www.archdiggers.co.uk/diggers/frameset.html European Journal of Archaeology 2007; 10; 85. DOI: 10.1177/14619571070100010507. The online version of this article can be found at: http://eja.sagepub.com. Sage Journals Online. Accessed online 12.10.2009. Wolseley, John. 1938- Nomadism: John Wolseley: Twelve Years in Australia - Paintings and Drawings. Parkville Vic : University Gallery, University of Melbourne, 1988. World of Dreamings: The Enigma of Emily Kngwarray National Gallery of Australia 5 April 2005 http://www.n.g.a.gov.au/Dreaming/Index.cfm?Refrnc=Ch6 Wood Conroy, Diana. The Fabric of the Ancient Theatre. Lefkosia: Moufflon Publications Ltd., 2004. Wright, Judith. Collected Poems: 1942-1985. Sydney: Harper Collins, 1999 (first pub 94 repr 96, 98 x 2) 58, 288. Yee, Susan. „The Archive“. Evocative Objects; Things We Think With. Ed. Sherry Turkle. Cambridge Massachusetts.and London: MIT Press. 2007 134 APPENDIX A: PAPHOS JOURNAL ENTRIES The following journal entries document my first week at Paphos, Cyprus, to reveal some of my earliest observations, which led to deeper research and enquiry. The value they contribute to this thesis is through reflection. Approaching a foreign place with digital camera in hand requires a fresh perspective. With eyes wide open, I sought to find meaning through my presence on the site of an ancient theatre, to read the signs in front of me, and to seek knowledge from the local guides. Armed with this background, my digital camera could bridge a dialogue between what lay in front of the camera and my thoughts, feelings and subjective responses behind the camera. Journal Details: excerpts from Week 1. The journey took me on flights from Sydney to Dubai, then on to Larnaka, Cyprus. During the taxi ride from Larnaka airport to Paphos on the south- eastern tip of the island, I appreciated the running commentary provided by my supervisor, Professor Diana Wood Conroy. Major landmarks, roads and 135 points of interest helped me begin to orientate myself to this new terrain. I was aware of a sense of feeling quite out-of-place. “Scribbly green foliage clings to a landscape of crumbling white limestone boulders, through which I occasionally catch glimpses of the sea ”.235 Yet, despite the jet lag threatening to overcome me, I couldn’t help but feel a sense of exhilaration and anticipation of seeing Paphos Theatre for the first time. Such an irony, I mused, that I had travelled to the other side of the world with a team of Australians, with the specific intention to document the process of archaeological excavation of an ancient Greco Roman theatre in the divided land of Cyprus.236 30.3.2006: The terebinth On my first visit to the site of Paphos Theatre at 1pm on the day of my arrival, the pale limestone surfaces of the theatre are flooded with the soft glow of light (see fig. 1). The shadows are open at this time of day due to the gentle overcast Spring conditions. A lone terebinth tree stands to the right of the centre of the orchestra237. Legend has it that it is nine hundred years old, however archaeologists have dated it to around 250-300 years. Diana238 235 Goodman, Diane. Excerpts from Paphos journal. 30.3.2006. 236 In 2006, the Cypriot border between Turkish dominated Northern Cyprus and Greek-dominated Southern Cyprus had been tentatively reopened, permitting travel between the two divisions. 237 The orchestra is the flat area between the curved seating and the stage-building. This space is where the chorus of classical Greek drama sang and danced. 238 Throughout this exegesis, I will refer to my Supervisor, Professor Diana Wood Conroy as Diana. 136 informs me that the tree is to be removed the next day; to enable the excavation of the western part of the orchestra and cavea239. I return to photograph it in the late afternoon whilst the theatre is silent and wander over the site for a while, enjoying the small space of seclusion that I find there, before circumambulating the girth of the terebinth, camera pressed hard up against its skin, capturing it in vertical and horizontal sequences, wanting to document all of it before its demise (see figs. 2-4). The tree is an anchor, provides me with a sense of the familiar and I am sad to think it must go. The word slaughter gets stuck in my throat as I ponder that many travellers such as myself may have rested in the shadows of its canopy. 2.4.2006: The complexity of site Like an old friend, I wave goodbye to the terebinth in the flush of dawn, to the sound of the circular saw. Adonis, the Cypriot tree-feller, doesn’t look happy as we chat for a few minutes, both of us survey its splayed limbs. Bright lime Spring buds are already beginning to wilt in the warm morning sun. I take some photographs and walk back to the Apollo Hotel, our residence for the season. The thought of Annie’s hearty breakfast does not settle the sense of anxiety I feel. I wonder how I will relate to the site, with the only living form on the site gone. 239 The cavea is the seating area of the theatre. 137 We are given a day off to settle into Paphos. Most of the team are here now and it is exciting to meet new faces. I enjoy the sense of comraderie and community that characterises team interactions. We visit the Paphos Archaeological Site, known as Nea Paphos, the nearby site of the ancient city, a vast complex that contains excavations of the Paphos Mosaics, Agora, Asklipieion, Odeion and Saranta Kolones Fortress. The ruins of the old city appear to me as parts in a puzzle that include our theatre and I feel an urgency to begin to read and research. The labyrinths depicted in the Paphos mosaic grab my attention. The complex patterning of the tesserae reflect the complexity of this place I find myself in. I am reminded of Benterrak, Muecke and Roe’s text, Reading the Country, such a pivotal piece of research for me at Bundanon. I am starting out on an amazing journey but I feel completely ignorant in this unfamiliar territory. Seek help from local guides, they advise. The guides hold the knowledge, they know the way.240 I declare the archaeologists and Diana as my designated guides and I seek their knowledge to help me orientate myself to this place so that I can commence the journey of understanding this place. 3.4.2006: The process of excavation The excavation team works a five-day week for the duration of the six-week season. Volunteers complement the work of the University of Sydney and 240 Benterrak, Muecke and Row discuss the significance of asking the local guides to help provide knowledge and wisdom on the journey of ‘reading’ place. They are the ones who can point you in the right direction. Krim Benterrak, Stephen Muecke and Paddy Roe, Reading The Country: Introduction to Nomadology (South Fremantle: Frmantle Arts Centre Press, 1996). 26. 138 University of Wollongong teams of archaeologists and specialists. Today, over thirty-five workers clear the debris, weeds, loose rocks and detritus from the trenches and theatre proper. The site needs to be prepared for the new season, and all team members use pick axes, hoes and trowels to reveal the clean, hidden surfaces of previous excavations (see fig. 5). It is hard physical work and I am relieved when we head to the Paphos Museum in the afternoon to examine examples of pottery, sculpture, glassware and frescoes from Archaic to Byzantine periods so that we can readily identify significant finds241 in the field. In the late afternoon light I head back to the deserted theatre. I love this time of day there, but my joy is short-lived as I survey the sacrificial burning of the Terebinth limbs (see fig. 6). The trunk portions are loaded on the truck to be used for firewood by the Department of Antiquity. After dinner, I am exhausted, but stay awake long enough to download and archive to CD, the many preliminary images of the theatre and the immediate surrounds I have captured. When not working with the team, I am walking and photographing, exploring the theatre, the old streets of Paphos, the catacombs and the modern harbour precinct. The digital workflow that I develop here is so important to ensure that precious files are not lost and 241 A find is a significant artifact or object unearthed during the excavation process. 139 that each shoot is catalogued and archived within the context of the excavation and my work for Sonic Architectures. 4.4.2006: Digging deep Today the team commences digging. There are four excavation trenches open. The plan is that I will work with the excavation team until the site photographer, Bob Miller, arrives, when I will assist him with the site and studio photography. I work with a team of eight others and learn the system of excavation first hand, which is essentially: pick, hoe, sort for finds, shovel the spoils, remove to spoil heap! Repeat! The very fine trowel work and brushing occurs only when something significant emerges. It is hard physical work (see fig. 7). It is with a tinge of relief that I am informed that I must begin the archaeological photographic work for the exacavation. Bob will not be arriving for another four weeks and I am the designated site and studio photographer, as of tomorrow. I feel a huge learning curve awaits me. 5.4.2006: Initiation After breakfast, I set out to take the first of many trench photographs: the start photos for each of the four trenches. It is a fascinating system of documentation and the many guides on site are eager to explain its significance to the process of excavation. Each photograph incorporates a scale, a sign that documents the trench /find number/code, and the area of the trench deemed appropriate by the supervising archaeologist (see fig. 8). Tim is helping me. Last season he worked with the photographer and so has 140 a good overall understanding of what is needed in each shot. I am most grateful for his knowledge. In the afternoon we setup a studio from an assortment of photographic gear and bits and pieces found in the Apollo cupboards (see fig. 9). It is an improvised studio and I am amazed that it functions so well. In the afternoon, Diana and I find time to view her plaster wall in the parados242 and she informs me of the process of unearthing the delicate painted plaster pieces and stones in previous seasons (see fig. 10). Together we survey the wall for evidence of the turquoise, red and pale yellow colours of the decorative garlands she describes that once decorated the parados. We discuss the significant areas of the theatre that I must work on for our Sonic Architectures project, features of the theatre that narrate the journey of the theatre patron: the centre of the orchestra, the front of the Roman tunnel, the plaster parados wall, the western parados, the centre cavea, the rock top left of the theatre, Mel’s trench (the perimeter of the Roman wall) and the Corinthian column on the edge of the orchestra. Diana refers to these features as ‘hotspots’ and it is decided that I will photograph and stitch some panoramic images of the theatre from these hotspots (see figs. 11, 12, 13 and 14 ). This will assist me in making sense out of the chaos of the theatre site. 242 The parados is the entrance to the theatre. Richard Green, Craig Barker and Smadar Gabrieli, Fabrika: An Ancient Thetatre of Paphos (Lefkosia: Moufflon, 2004). 8. 141 The site is changing daily according to the progress of the archaeological processes and I am sensing the dynamic nature of this ancient site. It really is a work-in-progress and the fragility of presence is evident in the nature of the material culture. One expects archaeologists to unearth beautifully preserved relics and treasures, yet the reality is that, at Paphos, the material culture is predominately dirt embedded with debris and fragments, due to the history of earthquakes and occupation over time. This challenges what is stereotypically expected from an archaeological site, indeed from any site. Already, I am thinking that my mapping of the theatre needs to be extensive to reveal the fragmentary, fragile nature of this site – the state of flux and flow that is a part of the history and excavation of Paphos theatre. At Bundanon I discovered the capacity of digital photographic processes to handle a large- scale mapping project. At Paphos, site is much more contained within quite compact orthogonal co-ordinates, although today I calculated that the entire site occupies an area of four thousand two hundred and fifty square metres of uneven ground. 6.4.2006: A work in progress I can’t believe I have been here for one week. Today wasvery frustrating. I struggled to get the first object photographs done – the studio lighting is uneven and Tim and I had to borrow a car to go to the local hardware shop to purchase some more cheap photoflood lamps. I managed to get Diana’s scanner working and got my camera settings sorted. My role as the dig photographer is incredibly time-consuming and demanding yet it is 142 fascinating and exciting at the same time. I am based in the studio at the Apollo and when I get a text message that I am required on location, I grab my gear and backpack to trek the block and a half to the theatre. Once completed, I make my way back to the Apollo where I download and archive the shots, before resuming photographing the continuous stream of objects that are lined up in the studio. I am photographing glass fragments and amphora sherds, and each of these requires the application of rigorous photographic conventions to ensure they meet the standards for publication (see figs. 15 and 16). As this is the first year that the Paphos dig will be documented digitally, I am also responsible for developing the digital workflow: finds are photographed, then tonally adjusted using Adobe Photoshop. A copy of each file is converted to black and white. Each file is saved and stored in appropriately labeled folders on my laptop hard-drive and are archived in tif. and jpg. formats on CD Rom, according to the archaeological numbering system (see fig. 17). Additionally, an Excel spreadsheet keeps records of the workflow process. This afternoon I steal some time to walk to the Chrissopolitissa Basilica. I am amazed to find columns and capitals that match those found on the site of the theatre. Diana explains that they were relocated and reused when the Christians built the Basilica. Much of the theatre was plundered during these times. 143 I fall asleep by the laptop in my room whilst it is backing up and burning todays work to CD Rom. My journal entries may be compromised by the demanding work routines, however I am determined to keep a comprehensive photographic record of all that I encounter. I am feeling much more connected to the theatre due to my involvement and work with the excavation team. Climbing and traversing all parts of the theatre to photograph the excavations and finds, is helping me develop a sound understanding of the archaeological process and how digital photography contributes to that. Additionally, I am finding quiet reflective space of the theatre at the end of each day to wander the site, observe and experience its aura, free from all distractions. There is a magical calm in the evenings when the colours of the day have faded to pastel hues. Strangely, I developed this routine at Bundanon, however it was the forest that provided me with breathing space on that site. Yeat another equally significant dimension of the map reveals the inner world of the artist and my personal need to anchor myself to the places in which I live and photograph. This need stems from a childhood spent outdoors playing in the surrounding landscape of Wootoona (explained in Chapter 1). Also, in 2006, my personal life in Australia was subject to change and inner turmoil and in contrast I found my experiences at Paphos so positive and enlightening. In seeking to make sense and order out of the chaos that I encountered on the site of the theatre as I systematically worked within the space of the theatre, I was metaphorically attempting to examine, sift, deconstruct and reconfigure aspects of my life. The process of stepping 144 across site whilst digitally capturing each framed fragment, with the surveyors’ voices calling “forward”, or back” and the cacophony of excavation, ‘white noise’ in the background, created a meditative, trance-like state in which I could focus purely on the moment. The mapping process occurred over two days duration, late during the last week of my visitation and it was a culminative experience, a finale before I returned home to Australia (see fig, 33). The assemblage of 2,143 photographic frames was undertaken back home in Wollongong at a time when my life was in pieces. When everything else seemed chaotic and in disarray, the slowly emerging digital file that was becoming Paphos Theatre was something of a refuge, a place where I could retreat, as beckoning as the theatre itself in the failing light of day. The creative act of reconstructing Paphos Theatre empowered me to take control of other aspects of my life and to see my life with clarity and focus. The repetitive digital processes of resizing and assembling each captured file on Photoshop was predictable, systematic and ritualistic. The map reflected both the reality of both place and life: dynamic, chaotic, multilayered and unpredictable; a work-in-progress in a state of constant flux and flow. 145 APPENDIX B: CR ROM - VIDEO OF MAPPING PAPHOS THEATRE University of Wollongong Fine Arts graduate, Cameron Candy videotaped the process of me mapping Paphos Theatre on May 3rd, 2006. Within a week of mapping the theatre, when I arrived back in Wollongong, I edited his footage in iMovie and added the voice narration to document my immediate response to the experience of stepping over the site for two days, with my eyes focused on the ground, the material culture of place. 146 APPENDIX C: BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION Bernd Becher was born in Siegen, Germany in 1931 and died in 2007.. Hilla Wobeser was born in Potsdam, Germany in 1934. Bernd and Hilla Becher began working together to photographically document industrial architecture and architectural landscapes, in 1959. Barbara Bender is a Professor in Heritage Anthropology, at the University College London. Nancy Burson is an American digital artist. She is well known for her pioneering work in morphing technology and has collaborated with scientists since the 1980s. She has been a visiting professor at Harvard and a member of the adjunct photography faculty at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University. Timothy Druckrey is curator and writer and editor of Arts Electronica: Facing the Future (MIT Press, 1999). He researches digital media and its culture. 147 Phillip George is a Senior Lecturer at the School of Media Arts and the Centre of Contemporary Arts and Politics at the College of Fine Arts, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia. Maggie Hegarty was the Coordinator of Photography at the University of Melbourne up until 2005. Idris Khan was born in Birmingham in 1978. He graduated with an MA in Fine Art from the Royal College of Art in 2003. Terry Smith is the Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Contemporary Art History and Theory in the Henry Clay Frick Department of the History of Art and Architecture at the University of Pittsburgh. From 1994 to 2001, he was Power Professor of Contemporary Art and Director of the Power Institute at the University of Sydney’s Foundation for Art and Visual Culture. William J. T. Mitchell is Professor of Architecture and Media Arts and Sciences at MIT, holds the Alexander W. Dreyfoos, Jr. (1954) Professorship and researches art theory, design theory, computer applications in architecture and urban design, and imaging and image synthesis. Fred Ritchin is currently the Acting Chair Professor at the Tisch School of Art, New York. He is the editor of Pixel Press, and was the founding director of the photojournalism and documentary photography educational program at the International Center of Photography. Ritchin researches and lectures internationally on new media and documentary. Lutz Koepnick is Professor of German, film, and media studies at Washington University in St. Louis. He has published texts on German 148 literature, film, media, visual culture, new media aesthetic, and intellectual history from the nineteenth to the twenty- first century. Florian Rötzer is a theorist and art critic who lives in Munich who has written books and articles on electronic art and digital technology. He was editor of the communications magazine "Tumult” and is a new media event curator. 149 Reading and Remembering Place through Digital Photography: Exploration of an Ancient Site A thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the award of the degree Master of Arts Research from University of Wollongong by Diane Goodman School of Art & Design Faculty of Creative Arts 2010 VOLUME 2 CHAPTER 1: IMAGES CITED Figure 1.01 Goodman, Diane. Wootoona, Digital file: tif 2005. 1 Figure 1.02 Martin, Mandy. Puritjarra 2 Found local and sourced pigment, sand, ochre and acrylic on canvas 76cm x 385 cm 2004. 2 Figure 1.03 Martin, Mandy and Jake Gillen. Puritjarra Flora Found local and sourced pigment, sand, ochre and acrylic on Arches paper 40 x 150 cm 2004. 3 Figure 1.04 Martin, Mandy and Mike Smith. Detail, Palimpsest Found local and sourced pigment, sand, rock shelter floor matter, ochres and acrylic on Arches paper 30 x 200 cm 2004. 4 Figure 1.05 Goodman, Diane. Journal detail Inkjet print, aquarell and fineline pen on Canson paper 2005. 5 Figure 1.06 Goodman, Diane. Journal detail 2 Inkjet print and Fineline pen on Canson paper 2005. 6 Figure 1.07 Goodman, Diane. Journal detail 3: the Bundanon cultural landscape Fineline pen and aquarell on Canson paper 2005. 7 Figure 1.08 Goodman, Diane. Journal detail 4: Bundanon cultural landscape: homestead precinct Inkjet print 2005. 8 Figure 1.09 Goodman, Diane. Journal detail 4: Bundanon cultural landscape: northern perspective Inkjet print 2005. 9 Figure 1.10 Goodman, Diane. Journal detail 4: Bundanon cultural landscape: river perspective from Bundanon beach Inkjet print 2005. 10 Figure 1.11 Goodman, Diane. Journal detail 4: Bundanon cultural landscape: Homestead precinct analysis Inkjet print and fineline pen 2005. 11 Figure 1.12 Goodman, Diane. Journal detail: Bundanon land grid Aquarell and fineline pen 2005. 12 Figure 1.13 Goodman, Diane. Journal detail: ground map mock-up Collage of Inkjet printed images 2005. 13 Figure 1.14 Goodman, Diane. Flooded Ground Scanned printed fragments blended with digital layer Digital file: jpg 2005. 14 Figure 1.15 Goodman, Diane. Island Digital file: tif 2005. 15 Figure 1.16 Goodman, Diane Lagoon Digital file: tif 2005. 16 Figure 1.17 Goodman, Diane. Stonyground, 2005 Lambda print on Endura paper 119 x 74 cm 2005. 17 Figure 1.18 Goodman, Diane. Homeground Lambda print on Endura paper 119 x 74 cm 2005. 18 Figure 1.19 Goodman, Diane. Buriedground Lambda print on Endura paper 119 x 74 cm 2005. 19 Figure 1.20 Goodman, Diane Paphos Theatre, Cyprus Digital file 2006. 20 CHAPTER 2: IMAGES CITED Figure 2.01 Burson, Nancy. Mankind (an oriental, a Caucasian and a Black, weighted according to the population statistics of 1983), Silvergelatine print. 27.9 x 35.6cm (source: (Amelunxen, Iglhaut, & Rötzer, 1996)) 1983-84. 21 Figure 2.02 Burson, Nancy. Warhead 1 (Reagan 55%, Breshnev 45%, Thatcher less than 1%, Deng less than 1%), Silvergelatine print. 27.9 x 35.6cm 1982. 22 CHAPTER 3: IMAGES CITED Figure 3.011 Google Earthrth imaimagesges of the Island of Cyprus,Cyprus, situated in the MediterraneanM Sea. Paphos ilis locatedt dth on the westernt titip of f thethild island. Google Earth.com. Accessed July 2007. 23 Figure 33.02.02 Googlee Earth image of OOldld PaPaphos,p Cyprus. The arrow points to the site of Paphoss TheatreTheatre. Google Earth.com. Accessed July 2007. 24 Figure 3.03 Goodman, Diane. Paphos Theatre, Cyprus. Digital file: jpg. May, 2006. 25 Figure 3.04 Goodman, Diane. View from top of cavea, Paphos Theatre, Cyprus. Digital file: jpg. May, 2006. 26 Figure 3.05 Goodman, Diane. Excavated stone columns in a trench at Paphos Theatre. Digital file: jpg. May, 2006. 27 . Figure 3.06 Goodman, Diane. Chrysopolitissa Basilica (Ayia Kyriaki). Paphos, Cyprus. Digital file: jpg. Stone columns and capitals were removed from the theatre and re-used in the construction of nearby during the fifth century. May, 2006. 28 Figure 3.07 Goodman, Diane. Streetscape in Old Paphos. Paphos, Cyprus. Digital file: jpg. Architectural remnants recycled from Paphos theatre can also be found in municipal and domestic structures around Old Paphos. May, 2006. 29 Figure 3.08 Diane Goodman standing next to her digital map mosaic of Paphos Theatre. UOW Sonic Architectures Project: Mapping the Ancient Theatre Through Sound and Image. Exhibition, FCA Gallery. Faculty of Creative Arts, University of Wollongong. 17th – 25th September 2006. Photograph by Diana Wood Conroy 30 Figure 3.09 Goodman, Diane Detail of digital map mosaic of Paphos Theatre. UOW Sonic Architectures Project: Mapping the Ancient Theatre Through Sound and Image. Exhibition, FCA Gallery. Faculty of Creative Arts, University of Wollongong. 17th – 25th September 2006. 31 Figure 3.10 Wood Conroy, Diana. Rubbing of detail, Paphos Theatre. UOW Sonic Architectures Project: Mapping the Ancient Theatre Through Sound and Image. Exhibition, FCA Gallery. Faculty of Creative Arts, University of Wollongong. 17th – 25th September 2006. Digital file: tif. 32 Figure 3.11 Wood Conroy, Diana. Wall of rubbings, of Paphos Theatre. UOW Sonic Architectures Project: Mapping the Ancient Theatre Through Sound and Image. Exhibition, FCA Gallery. Faculty of Creative Arts, University of Wollongong September 2006. Digital file: tif. 33 Figure 3.12 Goodman, Diane. Trench stratigraphy at Paphos Theatre, Cyprus. May, 2006. Digital file: jpg. May, 2006. Stratigraphy refers to the relationships between vertical layers, surfaces and depths of the excavated earth. Discontinuities in the profile during excavation reveal the various deposits or layers, from which ‘finds’ may be unearthed, analysed and documented. Significant finds or exacavated objects are recorded according to their position or context within this stratigraphy. 34 Figure 3.13 Stennett, Geoff. The archaeological plan of Paphos Theatre. Cyprus. September, 2006. The archaeological plan is an information system, a work-in-progress produced by the site architect. It records the location details of trenches, features and significant finds in relation to the co-ordinates of the overlaid Cartesian grid. 35 Figure 3.14 Wood Conroy, Diana. Site map with flawed mirror. Tapestry fragment with gouache, pencil and collage on Canzon paper 110 x 170 cm. 1992. 36 Figure 3.15 Goodman, Diane. Roman glass fragment. Photographed in the Studio at The Apollo Hotel, Paphos. Paphos Theatre, Cyprus. Digital file: tif. 2006. The centimetre scale or grid forms part of a rigorous photographic system to ensure documentary accuracy. It is positioned carefully alongside the artifact, to contextualise the find in relation to the excavation process. 37 Figure 3.16 A volunteer barrows excavated debris to the spoil heap. Paphos Theatre, Cyprus. Digital file: tif. 2006. Photograph by Diane Goodman. Archaeologists are confronted with mounds of debris on site. They meticulously excavate the precious stratigraphy to extract what is deemed significant. All insignificant excavated material is barrowed to the spoil heap on site: a massive accumulation of discarded, blended and juxtaposed fragments and debris. 38 Figure 3.17 An illustrator uses drawing tools and systems to record excavated finds. Apollo Hotel, Paphos, Cyprus Digital file: tif. 2006. Photograph by Diane Goodman. 39 Figure 3.18 Archaeologists analyse photographic records and documented information Apollo Hotel. Paphos, Cyprus. Digital file: tif. 2006. Photograph by Diane Goodman. 40 Figure 3.19 An archaeologist enters records of excavation finds from Paphos Theatre, using a database of excavated finds. Apollo Hotel. Paphos, Cyprus. Digital file: tif. 2006. Photograph by Diane Goodman. 41 Figure 3.20 Storeroom, Paphos Theatre. Paphos, Cyprus. Digital file: tif. 2006. The archive of excavation records was stored in several storerooms on the theatre site at Paphos, prior to its relocation in June 2006. Retrieval of these records is entirely dependent upon rigorous systems. Photograph by Diane Goodman. 42 Figure 3.21 Archaeologists, specialists and volunteers meet on the Paphos theatre site to discuss the progress of Trench 1WWW. Paphos, Cyprus. Digital file: tif. 2006. Photograph by Diane Goodman 43 Figure 3.22 Archaeologist, Kerrie Grant, refers to an excavated feature during an on-site weekly meeting at the Paphos theatre site. Paphos, Cyprus. Digital file: tif. 2006. Photograph by Diane Goodman. 44 Figure 3.23 Archaeologists, volunteers and students meet to discuss and sort cleaned finds during regular meetings at the Apollo Hotel. Paphos, Cyprus. Digital file: tif. 2006. Photograph by Diane Goodman. 45 Figure 3.24 Goodman, Diane. Trench 1TTT Deposit: 1385 Digital file: tif 2006. The numbers used to document archaeological finds form a complex system or record to enable as much objectivity as possible when interpreting excavated objects. Such systems keep finds in context and therefore relevant to the record. 46 Figure 3.25 Goodman, Diane. Sketch from journal: photographic conventions for studio and site photographs Sketch illustrates photographic conventions employed when photographing ‘finds’ or artefacts. Paphos Theatre, Cyprus. April, 2006. 47 Figure 3.26 Goodman, Diane. Sketch from journal: improvised studio setup. Cyprus. April, 2006. Sketch illustrates photographic conventions employed when I setup an improvised studio for photographing finds. Apollo Hotel. Paphos, Cyprus. 2006 48 Figure 3.27 Goodman, Diane. Site photograph of drain pipe. Photograph shows a ‘plan’ convention: viewpoint directly overhead of the object. The scale is positioned parallel to the photographic frame, adjacent and in the same plane as the object. The label reveals the object in the context of the theatre; the trench is 1YY, the object is feature 2045, the arrowhead indicates the direction of North according to the archaeological plan. Paphos Theatre, Cyprus. Digital file: tif. 2006. 49 1. Trench 1WWW Start photo 2. Excavation of Medieval Room 5. Detail: Graffiti Stone 6. Detail: Graffiti Stone 7. Trench Finish photo 8. Trench Finish photo Figure 3.28 Goodman, Diane Six site photographs of Trench 1WWW in progress during the 2006 dig excavation reveal the methodological process employed by archaeologists during the excavation process. Paphos Theatre, Cyprus. Digital file: tif. 2006. 50 Figure 3.29 The Holmes Boom in action on the site of the Large Basilica, Nicopolis ad Istrum, a Roman, Late Roman, and early Byzantine city in northern Bulgaria, 1988 Mechanical devices and apparatus have facilitated ‘vertical photography’ for over 50 years to provide varying degrees of success in photographing a detailed, seamless topographic view of the site. Source: Andrew Graham Poulter and Ivor Kerslake, “Vertical Photographic Site Recording: The "Holmes Boom",” Journal of Field Archaeology 24.2 (1997): 221-6. 51 Figure 3.30 I. Kerslake Photomosaic of the northern end of the Roman road and the second century gate. The Holmes Boom was used to create this detailed photomosaic of Nicopolis ad Istrum, a Roman, Late Roman, and early Byzantine city in northern Bulgaria. Source: Andrew Graham Poulter and Ivor Kerslake, “Vertical Photographic Site Recording: The "Holmes Boom",” Journal of Field Archaeology 24.2 (1997): 221-6. 52 CHAPTER 4: IMAGES CITED Figure 4.01 Burson, Nancy. Mankind1983-84 Silvergelatine print. 27.9 x 35.6cm Source: (Amelunxen, Iglhaut, & Rötzer, 1996) 53 Figure 4.02 Burson, Nancy. Big Brother 1983 Silvergelatine print. 27.9 x 35.6cm Source: (Amelunxen, Iglhaut, & Rötzer, 1996) 54 Figure 4.03 Phillip George Tim. Mixed media on paper on canvas 2300 x 1650 mm, (Also exist as an Iris print 1000 x 650 mm), 1990. Tim is the original photograph from which the Mnemonic Notations series began. The body becomes an archetypal icon.1 Source: (George, 2002) 1 Phillip George, “Mnemonic Notations: A Decade of Art Practice Within a Digital Environment,” Leonardo 35.2 (2002): 122. 55 Figure 4.04 Phillip George Mnemonic Notations: Tim #3. Source: Mnemonic Notations, http://phillipgeorge.net/new/01/display.php?page=01&img=01&\ 56 Figure 4.05 (left), Figure 4.06 (middle) and Figure 4.07 (right) Phillip George Mnemonic Notations: a progression of works from the Headlands series. 1991 Source: Mnemonic Notations, http://phillipgeorge.net/new/ The body is layered with cartographic references and maps and influences from the Landwork movement and artists such as Robert Smithson and Richard Long.2 2 Phillip George, “Mnemonic Notations: A Decade of Art Practice Within a Digital Environment,” Leonardo 35.2 (2002): 122. 57 Figures 4.08 Phillip George Mnemonic Notations: Landpuls 3 Mixed media on canvas 2300 x 1650 mm, (Also exist as an Iris print 800 x 1000 mm), 1991-1992. Source: Mnemonic Notations, http://phillipgeorge.net/new/ The Headland, Landpulse, Icon and Maze series incorporate notions of ‘the body as landscape’. George paints the digital image at various stages and then reworks the image. The work is output to print, painted and then the process begins again on the computer.3 3 58 Figure 4.09 Phillip George Mnemonic Notations: Mnemonicon 4 Mixed media on canvas (Also exist as an Iris print), 1990s. Source: Mnemonic Notations, http://phillipgeorge.net/new/ 59 Figure 4.10 Phillip George Mnemonic Notations: Mnemonicon 5 Mixed media on canvas (Also exist as an Iris print), 1990s. Source: Mnemonic Notations, http://phillipgeorge.net/new/ Mnemonicon means “memory icon”. The landscape format was a significant shift in 1995, when the figure dissolved amidst “a mass of imagery and icons”. These works were attempts to represent the notion of synchronicity4 4 Phillip George, “Mnemonic Notations: A Decade of Art Practice Within a Digital Environment,” Leonardo 35.2 (2002): 123-124. 60 Figure 4.11 Bernd and Hilla Becher Gasometers, Germany 1983-1992. Source: (Lange, 2007) A typology of various gasometers photographed in Germany. The system of photographic documentation allows for uniform assemblage of the objects within the grid. 61 Figure 4.12 Idris Khan every...Bernd and Hilla Becher Spherical type Gasholders 2004. photographic print 208 x 160 cm Source: Saatchi Gallery Online http://www.saatchi- gallery.co.uk/artists/artpages/idris_khan_becher_gas.htm 62 Figure 4.13 Bernd and Hilla Becher Half-timbered houses, Siegen industrial region, Germany 1959-1973. Source: (Lange, 2007) 63 Figure 4.14 Idris Khan every...Bernd and Hilla Becher Gable sided Houses 2004. photographic print 208 x 160 cm Source: Saatchi Gallery Online http://www.saatchi- gallery.co.uk/artists/artpages/idris_khan_becherhouse.htm 64 Figure 4.15 Bernd and Hilla Becher Water towers, United States 1974 – 1983. Source: (Lange, 2007) 65 Figure 4.16 Goodman, Diane Studio photograph of archaeological find no. 3522 Paphos, Cyprus. Digital file: tif. 2006. 66 Figure 4.17 Goodman, Diane Studio photograph of archaeological find no. 5147 Paphos, Cyprus. Digital file: tif. 2006. 67 Figure 4.18 Goodman, Diane Site photograph of archaeological find no. 5416 Paphos, Cyprus. Digital file: tif. 2006. 68 Figure 4.19 Goodman, Diane Site photograph of archaeological find no. 5417 Paphos, Cyprus. Digital file: tif. 2006. 69 CHAPTER 5: IMAGES CITED Figure 5.01 Goodman, Diane Team members survey the site of Paphos Theatre on the afternoon of my arrival at Paphos, late in April. Paphos Theatre. Digital file: jpg. 2006. 70 Figure 5.02 Goodman, Diane Lone Terebinth in late afternoon glow on 31.3.2006, prior to its removal the following day. Paphos Theatre. Digital file: jpg. 2006. 71 Figure 5.03 Goodman, Diane Journal detail. Sketch and to-do list. Paphos, 2006. Digital file: jpg. 72 Figure 5.04 Goodman, Diane Journal detail. Sketch considering the vertical plane of the theatre in relation to a musical score. Paphos, 2006. Digital file: jpg. 73 Figure 5.05 Goodman, Diane Hotspot Panorama: Centre of orchestra. Paphos Theatre. Digital file: tif. 2006. 74 Figure 5.06 Goodman, Diane Hotspot Panorama: front of Roman tunnel. Paphos Theatre. Digital file: tif. 2006. 75 Figure 5.07 Goodman, Diane Hotspot Panorama: Rock, top left of theatre. Paphos Theatre. Digital file: tif. 2006. . 76 Figure 5.08 Goodman, Diane Archaeologists and volunteers at work in a trench and adopt repetitious and systematic processes to excavate the site. Paphos Theatre. Digital file: tif. 2006. 77 Figure 5.09: Goodman, Diane Journal detail, shards on sorting tables during the process of classification. Apollo Hotel, Paphos. Digital file: tif. 2006. 78 Figure 5.10: Goodman, Diane Plan photograph of glass fragment and centimetre scale. Paphos theatre. Digital file: tif. 2006. The ‘finds’ I was photographing in the studio had been cleaned and classified, and were mostly fragments due to the history of earthquakes at Paphos over many hundreds of years. 79 Figure 5.11 Goodman, Diane Elevation photograph of amphora shard and centimetre scale. Paphos theatre. Digital file: tif. 2006. Learning the conventions of archaeological photography gave me valuable insight into the archaeological processes. 80 Figure 5.12 Goodman, Diane Site surveyor, Kerry Platt (left), and his assistant, Joe Stockreiter, align the laser theodolite to the east-west axis and the co-ordinates of the archaeological grid during the mapping process. Paphos Theatre. Digital file: tif. 2006. 81 Figure 5.13 Candy, Cameron. Diane Goodman maps the Paphos Theatre site using her digital camera with lens aligned to the theodolite, with the help of the site surveyor’s assistant. Paphos Theatre. May 3rd 2006. Digital frame from videotape: jpg. 82 Figure 5.14 Candy, Cameron. Diane Goodman maps the Paphos Theatre site using her digital camera with lens aligned to the theodolite, with the help of the site surveyor’s assistant. Paphos Theatre. May 3rd 2006. Digital frame from videotape: jpg. 83 Figure 5.15 Goodman, Diane Journal entry, showing progressive notation of shot sequence and capture according to mapped rows on location. Paphos Theatre. May 4th 2006. Digital file: jpg. 84 Figure 5.16 Goodman, Diane Screen snapshot of folder hierarchy for storing studio photographic files. Wollongong June 2006. Digital file: jpg. 85 Figure 5.17 Goodman, Diane Screen snapshot, showing folder hierarchy of resized digital files for assemblage into the final map. Wollongong, June 2006. Digital file: jpg 86 Figure 5.18 Goodman, Diane Screen snapshot, showing extended snapshot of folder hierarchy of resized digital files for assemblage into the final map. Wollongong, June 2006. Digital file: jpg 87 Figure 5.19: Goodman, Diane Topology, Paphos Theatre Assembled digital map. Wollongong, June 2006. Lambda prints (3 sections, each 10872mm x 25000mm) 88 Figure 5.20 Goodman, Diane Topology, Paphos Theatre Detail: Orchestra Wollongong, June 2006. Digital file: tif 89 Figure 5.21 Goodman, Diane Topology, Paphos Theatre Detail: Cavea Wollongong, June 2006. Digital file: tif 90 Figure 5.22 Goodman, Diane Topology, Paphos Theatre Detail: Eastern Parados Wollongong, June 2006. Digital file: tif 91 Figure 5.23 Goodman, Diane Topology, Paphos Theatre Detail: Western Parados Wollongong, June 2006. Digital file: tif 92 Figure 5.24 Goodman, Diane Topology, Paphos Theatre Detail: Roman Tunnel Wollongong, June 2006. Digital file: tif 93 Figure 5.25 Goodman, Diane Trench, Paphos Theatre Detail: Roman Tunnel Wollongong, June 2006. Digital file: tif The Ruins, remains and Reconstructions exhibition explored key sections of the theatre map. Extracted from the Topology, Paphos Theatre file, these images play with the notion of the digital array, or mosaic. Certain areas within the image have been selected, duplicated and pixellated, breaking down the detail into blocks of colour, which, when blended with the background layer, create subtle abstractions across the surface of the site. 94 Figure 5.26 Goodman, Diane Orchestra, Paphos Theatre Detail: Roman Tunnel Wollongong, June 2006. Digital file: tif 95 Figure 5.27 Goodman, Diane Paphos Theatre. May 3rd 2006 Digital file: jpg. This photograph reveals and overview of the theatre on the morning of the first day of the two days spent mapping, four days prior to the closure of the dig season. 96 Figure 5.28 Diane Goodman Palimpsest 1 Digital file: tif 2007. 97 Figure 5.29 (top) Diane Goodman Palimpsest 2 Digital file: tif 2007. Figure 5.30 (bottom) Diane Goodman Palimpsest 3 Digital file: tif 2007. 98 Figure 5.31 Diane Goodman Archaeologies 1 Archival inkjet print Crane Museo Silver Rag 297mm x 420mm 2007. 99 Figure 5.32 Diane Goodman Archaeologies 2 Archival inkjet print Crane Museo Silver Rag 297mm x 420mm 2007. 100 Figure 5.33. Diane Goodman Topologies 1 Archival inkjet print Moab Entrada Rag 1000mm x 1000mm 2009. 101 Figure 5.34 Diane Goodman Topologies 2 Archival inkjet print Moab Entrada Rag 750mm x 750mm 2009. 102 Figure 5.35 Diane Goodman Topologies 3 Archival inkjet print Fine Art paper 1060 x 1570 2009. 103 Figure 5.36 Diane Goodman Parados Archival inkjet print Ilford Lustre paper 2009. 104 Figure 5.37 Diane Goodman Illuminations, Row 1 Archival inkjet print Crane Museo Silver Rag 400mm x 268 mm 2010. 105 Figure 5.38 Diane Goodman Illuminations, Row 3 Archival inkjet print Crane Museo Silver Rag 400mm x 268 mm 2010. 106 Figure 5.39 Diane Goodman Illuminations, Row 8 Archival inkjet print Crane Museo Silver Rag 400mm x 268 mm 2010. 107 Figure 5.40 Diane Goodman Illuminations, Row 9 Archival inkjet print Crane Museo Silver Rag 400mm x 268 mm 2010. 108 Figure 5.41 Diane Goodman Illuminations, Row 41 Archival inkjet print Crane Museo Silver Rag 400mm x 268 mm 2010. 109