Études Écossaises, 19 | 2017 the Uncanny in Writing the Picture (2010) by John Fuller and David Hurn 2

Études écossaises 19 | 2017 Scotland and the Sea The Uncanny in Writing the Picture (2010) by John Fuller and David Hurn De l’inquiétante étrangeté dans Writing the Picture (2010) de John Fuller et David Hurn Aurélien Saby Electronic version URL: http://journals.openedition.org/etudesecossaises/1306 ISSN: 1969-6337 Publisher UGA Éditions/Université Grenoble Alpes Printed version ISBN: 978-2-37747-001-3 ISSN: 1240-1439 Electronic reference Aurélien Saby, « The Uncanny in Writing the Picture (2010) by John Fuller and David Hurn », Études écossaises [Online], 19 | 2017, Online since 01 April 2017, connection on 08 September 2020. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/etudesecossaises/1306 This text was automatically generated on 8 September 2020. © Études écossaises The Uncanny in Writing the Picture (2010) by John Fuller and David Hurn 1 The Uncanny in Writing the Picture (2010) by John Fuller and David Hurn De l’inquiétante étrangeté dans Writing the Picture (2010) de John Fuller et David Hurn Aurélien Saby So many photographs produce a sense of strangeness in the minds of the viewers that it almost rises to the level of a characteristic common to fine photographs. Certainly, in so many pictures, it is an important, even crucial, element in their success. (Hurn & Jay, 2000, p. 53) 1 David Hurn (b. 1934) has always been drawn to unusual landscapes, especially unexpected scenes captured in the Welsh daily life of his fellow citizens, whether in his village, Tintern, in the streets of Cardiff, or at a seaside resort. And so has John Fuller (b. 1937), a keen observer of uncanny littorals: So we stare down the littoral, Just as we calculate the night, For stalactite or meteorite, Behaviour of stone or light Departing from the ususal.1 (“Star-Gazing”, in Fuller, 2012, p. 90) 2 From the late 1980s onwards, the two artists started a collaboration which gave rise to the publication of a book entitled Writing the Picture2 (2010) where Hurn’s photography sparks a poetry in which Fuller draws out meaning and launches into thought- provoking verse. Here is how they relate the origin of their Welsh adventure in the introduction to their common work: DH: We should explain how the book came about. JF: Yes, we met in 1989, didn’t we? Études écossaises, 19 | 2017 The Uncanny in Writing the Picture (2010) by John Fuller and David Hurn 2 DH: I was living in Wales then, having returned from London in 1973. My purpose was to discover through photography what ‘Welsh Culture’ means. I was attempting the gathering of evidence for history. I was asked by Colin Jacobson, picture editor of the Independent, if he could use some of the pictures I was working on in Wales. […] I had just read and enormously enjoyed your novel Flying to Nowhere, so I agreed to supply Welsh pictures on condition that the magazine could get you to do the text. (WP, pp. 8–9) 3 My contention in this article is that the uncanny is one of the points of confluence between Hurn’s and Fuller’s aesthetics. Not only shall we explore the strangeness, oddness or weirdness characterizing the photos and how they are harnessed by the poet, but we shall also examine Freud’s “unheimlich” as a way to better grasp the complex interactions between the pictures and the poems. And for this purpose, Julia Kristeva’s concise definition of Freud’s concept could serve as a starting point for our study: Freud wanted to demonstrate at the outset, on the basis of a semantic study of the German adjective heimlich and its antonym unheimlich that a negative meaning close to that of the antonym is already tied to the positive term heimlich, “friendly comfortable,” which would also signify “concealed, kept from sight,” “deceitful and malicious,” “behind someone’s back.” Thus, in the very word heimlich, the familiar and intimate are reversed into their opposites, brought together with the contrary meaning of “uncanny strangeness” harbored in unheimlich. Such an immanence of the strange within the familiar is considered as an etymological proof of the psychoanalytic hypothesis according to which the uncanny is that class of the frightening which leads back to what is known of old and long familiar, which, as far as Freud was concerned, was confirmed by Schelling who said that “everything is unheimlich that ought to have remained secret but has come to light”. (1991, pp. 182–3) 4 When captured by Hurn, Welsh ordinary life often becomes extra-ordinary, sometimes on the brink of the sur-real or super-natural, thus disarming the viewers whose stable bearings are shattered. According to Hurn, “the best photography not only reproduces the visible but also makes visible the unseen” (WP, p. 8). This is particularly true of his own work, further delved into by a poet already prone to throwing light on the invisible. Writing the Picture is peopled with uncanny revenants—half human half automaton, or living dead—caught in unsuspected plots involving doubles of themselves, and ourselves, while undeniably testifying to the photographer’s and poet’s skills in renewing the genius of Welsh art. “Departing from the usual” Blurred time and space 5 Spatiotemporal bearings are more often than not bewildering in Writing the Picture insofar as quite a few snapshots are both deep-rooted in Welsh history and atemporal. For example, some photos are very easy to date given their reportage-like quality, as is illustrated by the beach scene in summer time featuring fathers and their children enjoying the sea at low tide (WP, p. 16).3 We may not guess that it was taken in the resort of Barry Island, but the striped swimming suits, together with the bell-bottom trousers of the character on the left as well as the men’s haircuts reflect the fashion of the early 1970s, in accordance with the notes on the Magnum Photos website: “the picture is during the ‘miners’week,’ the holiday period of the miners of South Wales. Études écossaises, 19 | 2017 The Uncanny in Writing the Picture (2010) by John Fuller and David Hurn 3 […] Due to the closing of the pits, this cultural happening no longer takes place.” Yet, the generic present of Fuller’s lines endows this scene with a kind of unexpected universal timelessness: From Colwyn to Barry, From Dee to the Wye, Water’s a carpet To let me lie. (WP, p. 16) 6 By adopting a young child’s viewpoint, the poet takes us out of history, back to timeless happy memories of holidays in childhood—back to our own first encounter with the sea. Furthermore, these lines echo his own poetry for children, notably “Waves” in You’re Having Me On where the speaker makes one with the sea: Underneath the waves I lie That climb their stairs to split and die Over and over and over and Then dizzy on the draining sand, The water tugging at my feet, I crawl where beach and ocean meet. (Fuller, 2014, p. 35) 7 But then comes a twist in the poem which suddenly interrelates pleasure and suffering in the rhyme, before making a frightful statement on the devastating power of time, thus wrecking the wonder of the nursery rhyme-like incipit: The sea taught us our lonely pleasures. The sea that bore us taught us to suffer. […] Sixty years into our oblivion we are locked into pity. 8 All in all, one may conclude that in this case the poem adds an uncanny dimension to a picture that was originally devoid of it, thereby highlighting its artistry beyond its documentary aspect. 9 Conversely, other pictures are almost impossible to date, as is exemplified by the obscure forest taken by Hurn in winter (WP, p. 41). The dead branches, coupled with subtle light and shadow nuances, imbue the undergrowth with an eerie, almost supernatural mood, whereas there are no special effects in the silver print. Because the references are only mentioned at the very end of Writing the Picture (in the “List of Images”, p. 112), it is almost impossible to guess that this photo actually represents Tintern Forest in 1976. Moreover, the poem does give it a temporal frame; but it sets it in the Middle Ages, somehow bringing us back to ageless Arthurian legends: Our course, over across river North to Tintern in that night-run Went, towards winter woods, The climb behind, the calm beyond. (WP, p. 40) 10 In order to illustrate this picture, Fuller chose the complex Old Welsh form of the cynghanedd,4 which has manifold contrasted effects. First, it contributes to strengthening the mysteriousness of Hurn’s picture as the plot involves some ungraspable uncanny revenants in defeat after a battle entirely made up by Fuller, as though the text had been translated—or exhumed—from an Old English tale: Thorns made thin smoke. And so we all sat, uneasily lost, Fellowship’s false hopes, Betrayal by trial That failed the field. (WP, p. 40) Études écossaises, 19 | 2017 The Uncanny in Writing the Picture (2010) by John Fuller and David Hurn 4 11 Second, Fuller’s cynghanedd also enhances the Welshness of Hurn’s art (which is far from obvious in this picture), while opening up the horizons of the photo in an anachronistic blur shattering all stable spatiotemporal bearings. “Here the sun has been excluded” 12 What is more, in a few other photos, Hurn’s perfect mastery of light makes it difficult to know whether they were taken during the day or at night. For instance, Llanwern steel works (WP, pp. 38–9), which was obviously photographed during the working hours of the day, is plunged in utter darkness.

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